Dharma in the Belly

This article was written by Barbara Brodsky.

April, 12, 1994, Journal
I lie in a hospital bed. Tubes needled into my veins feed my body; tubes through my nose and down my throat pull out the liquid my digestive system cannot allow to pass through. I have been here for five days, flat on this bed, kept alive by pumps and technology, my bowel twisted and closed. The pain is intense. White hot thunder throbs from the middle of my belly, a pounding drum. There is little I can do but breathe and note aversion and the desire to be elsewhere. There is no place to go. The nature of my suffering is quite clear. Pain. Aversion to pain! It fills every moment. "Breathing in, I am aware of pain; breathing out, I exhale fear." Slowly making space for this fire in my belly, I allow it to float, watching the fear arise and then subside, and arise again. I am present as I have never been before. There is no place to go!

Thirty-six hours of severe vomiting, the result of virus or food poisoning, tangled my bowel into this blockage and left another mark, a tear in the stomach wall through which the bloated bowel pushed itself. Intestine that should be safely within the armor of the muscle pulsated angrily through only a bare layer of skin.

April 13, 1994, Journal
My intestines are alive and violent, a wild panther, all needle claws and snarls, howling to escape the confines of the skin/cage. With the pressure of each breath it feels like the cage will burst, gut spew forth an array of claws, blood and red rage. I fight with each breath, lungs screaming for air, belly shrieking "No!" to the increased tightness of each new breath.

April 16, 1994, Journal
In the days of lying here, stomach tubes draining the excess, the bowel's violence has subsided, yet each time I touch this tender spot I am alarmed to feel what belongs inside the body's armor lying so precariously close to the surface.

Like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill and commanding it to stay there, I command this bowel to untwist. I will it with every ounce of my being and it doesn't listen. As the days pass I begin to see how the tension of wanting is held in the belly. I understand that I must relax and surrender to the present, must stop dictating to my body and just let it be.

And with that space finally allowed, with tension released and kindness offered to this body, slowly it did untwist. The surgical removal of the bowels would not be necessary. Healing began. A first sip of water carefully observed-how cool and sweet water felt on the tongue after eight days of parched mouth-moved through without pain. Later, a half cup and then several. Tubes were removed. Gingerly I left the hospital and went home, back to my old relationship with my body.

I had never lived in my body but tolerated, even cared for it reasonably, as a tool. Always I maintained a distance. Many years ago I lost my hearing and the nerves which control balance. I learned to be deaf, to read lips, guessing and stumbling my way through the shapes that pronounce language. I relearned to walk with visual balance, never again sure-footed but coping, each step a walk across a balance beam. I felt my body had betrayed me but I would not let it announce the parameters of my life nor create limits. I tolerated its distortions and we got along sufficiently.

When the hospital released me, I went home with what they call a hernia, or tear in the stomach wall. The intestine was back inside. "No surgery now," I was told. "Go home and see how it is." Passing weeks deceived me into forgetting as I ate an increasingly "normal" diet with only minor pain. And then began a busy summer, four ten-day retreats in distant cities, each following closely on the heels of the last. Dictating began again. "Listen," I told my stomach, "no nonsense!"

I had to keep my bowels soft or the intestine protruded. I began to eat a diet overbalanced with fiber. My stomach was constantly agitated but it agreed to its part of the bargain for awhile and stayed within its confines. I tolerated the pain of its increasing agitation as food digested. "Stay put, " I commanded. On an almost daily basis I would feel the enraged panther begin to pace and snarl, would lie down on my back and literally push this seething mass back inside. I was at war with my body and it at war with me. As I lived this pattern, summer turned to winter turned to spring again.

May 19, 1995, Journal
Another round of retreats. Far from home I lie in agony on a bed, intestines forced out, pulsating. I push them back and go to the meditation hall. The months are passing. I am exhausted. I can not dictate any more.

May 25, 1995, Journal
I returned from California last week. I have rarely been so sick. I went to the doctor and told him I am ready for him to operate. I see that I just wanted it fixed so I could go back to my old ways of living, feeling safely in control of mind and body, free of pain. "No," he said. "It will not hold. I can not sew it up." The responsibility for myself is handed back to me. What shall I do?

July 29, 1995, Journal
I'm sitting on the screened deck of a cabin in the forest. Here I have been graced to live for eight weeks this summer, in a "tree house" on a steep hill. Screening on three sides is all that keeps me from the mosquitoes, raccoons, birds and other woods inhabitants. The first gray of morning through dense trees opens my eyes; I do some yoga to stretch myself awake, then climb down the still dark forest path to the lake. To the east, the leading edge of a red orb of sun climbs from the treetops. A mile swim across the lake is a time of joyful reconnection, the universe touching me through the cool water and dawn-pink sky. As I pass his perch, brother heron swoops from his dead tree branch and skims low over my head, flying on to the marsh. This is our morning ritual; I have become another creature of the lake and feel a greeting in his passage. Swimming home, the sun is just beginning to offer gentle warmth. I gratefully receive it.

This morning after swimming I sit for an hour on the dock, clear water reaching down to waving seaweed beneath my feet. There, a thousand fish dart through sun and shadow. Ten yards away, water lily leaves rest emerald on the sky-blue surface, white blossoms unfolding golden hearts to the early morning sun. On a nearby log perches mother duck and nine small ducklings, babies asleep while momma remains alert to any movement from me. Boundaries dissolve. I become the blossoms opening to the sun. I am heron. I am duck and ducklings, am awake and asleep. I am the boundless sky. Edges blur like the reflections stirring in the first breeze. Awareness opens to deeper truth.

After sitting by the water I return to the cabin to eat and meditate again. And now I'm at my small table, forest opening around me as a rising morning sun weaves threads of spun gold through dense branches. What am I doing here? A month ago I was full of answers, of expectations and opinions. Now I can only offer a grateful "don't know" which constructs no limits nor expectations, and rest in healing stillness.

The decision to offer myself this eight weeks was based on deteriorating physical conditions of the body and a sense of dis-ease. I felt the hernia rip would heal itself if the bowel ceased protruding out several times a week, which experience created further tearing. And yet each time I ate, pressure pushed against the tear. I spent two weeks in the spring on a liquid diet but pressure still was exerted on the tear. Nothing helped.

Furthermore, this June I'd developed severe tendinitis in one shoulder. My entire body and energy field teetered increasingly out of balance. I felt disconnected.

I came to the wilderness with a program to mend what was "broken." I would do intense meditation and some exercise, try a set diet, work with specific body energy practices, all of which sounded reasonable to my brain. I began this "healing regimen." and, no surprise, there was no change in the hernia or pain, nor in the painful tendinitis nor energy imbalance.

I'm a slow learner. From the hospital last year I wrote in my newsletter about the Greek myth of Sisyphus, condemned for eternity to push a boulder up the hill and watch it roll back down. "You can't make it stay there," I observed. "That's where the suffering lies." Yet here I was, still trying to make my body and mind follow certain rules rather than listening deeply to see what is, and hear what healing is wanted.

August 1995, Journal
All summer I have been reading from the sutras and especially from this new book…. "If the body is cultivated, then the mind can be cultivated." To cultivate my garden is to reach my hands deep into the soil. I see how I have been refusing to "dirty" my hands with the body, but strived to stay apart from it, untouched by its pains.

Slowly I stopped trying to control and fix, stopped trying to tell my body what to do and began to listen to both body and heart at ever deeper levels. I put "diet" aside and began to eat small amounts of food and then meditate, to discover what foods my body could not tolerate. Nurturing "don't know," instead of dictating terms, I asked and listened, I got a deeper sense of the imbalances I have carried, not just for a year but for lifetimes. I began to understand the ways karma, as energy, had planted the seeds for present experience, and slowly began to open to that experience instead of resisting it. The tear and the whole of my body seem to be healing but what does healing mean? I watch.

There's more, of course, for the body is shaped by the mind. Finally entering my body, dwelling there with each breath, I realize that I must watch contraction in the body to see the movement of tension and release. I observe the natural balance, noting the small tension at the end of each exhale, as body reaches for more air. As the inhale begins, the tension dissolves; and then the cycle begins again. The body/ mind complex is naturally balanced between these two energies-holding, opening, kyo and jitsu. Sometimes there is contraction; sometimes it is released.

I begin to observe closely the ways that this balance becomes distorted by my lack of presence. It is not the tension and release which throws off the balance but my relationship to that rhythm. As soon as I'm not fully present, "pleasant" and "unpleasant" set up further waves of contraction. I am not caught in the initial contraction but in my relationship with it.

August 4, 1995, Journal
The contraction of the energy field is a natural response to a physical, emotional or mental stimulus. This morning a small shell pierced my foot and energy contracted with that unexpected fiery explosion in the instep. I could see the whole process-feeling pain, experiencing the contraction around that pain, noting aversion to pain as separate catalyst-each arising phenomenon just another cloud upon which there was also no need to fixate. When awareness observes the contraction with a spaciousness that doesn't judge, grasp or fear, the contraction runs through me and then dissolves as its catalyst changes. It will go when it's ready and leave no trace. Mind's old conditioning is what holds contraction. With the first cut of the shell came a memory of an infected foot, old memory of pain and judgment. I was able to look gently, not hate myself for that contracted reaction nor hate the shell, but to move kindly and skillfully to wash the wound. The contraction isn't stored in the mind or body. It creates no karma. it's just the energy's natural movement. It will pass.

I remember a swim in the ocean last spring, just after a storm. The waves were fierce and knocked me down. I couldn't get to my feet, lay there tossed and battered on the sand, knees and elbows scraped and bleeding, then was lifted and tossed again, and again by that immense power. My breath was locked away by the wet and salty mask that buried mouth and nose. Noting: "fear," "anger…." With awareness noting, time moved into slow motion, seeing each mind state with a clarity that acknowledges and releases, just watching to see what will arise next-fear, anger, pain…. Then, in the midst of pain and panic there was a great calm. In that spaciousness I shouted "no!" to the ocean and rose on wobbly legs, stumbled in to the shore. Sitting on the sand, waves lapped at my feet. I realized that in those moments I lost all separateness from the ocean. The force of the waves, the force of my body-one. When I ceased struggling with the ocean there was nothing left to do but walk out.

This morning I held the shell which cut me, held the bleeding foot. No separation. I learn to move in harmony with the earth, not in contradiction and power dispute. My body is the teacher. I look at the fears when stomach goes into spasm. Just a thought. Just energy. Nothing to do. It will pass. No need to fixate on fear.

As I watch these contractions in my body, I begin to see my relation to them more clearly, especially the unnoticed judgments of them. These thoughts about contraction are the secondary contractions. Thought, in itself, is a tool the personal self has used to feel safe, a mechanism for control. There is no need for such perpetual thought when there is harmony. I do not get rid of thought. It ceases to arise because there is no fear calling it out.

When there is kindness and awareness of the process we are in, our natural compassion arises with any tension, allowing us to open our hearts to the pain we feel and equally to the pain of that which catalyzed anger.

August 11, 1995, Journal
I see how much I have stored the tensions of a thousand mind and body moments, following up that initial contraction with secondary contraction, with need to flee or to control. It is all stored in the belly!

August 15, 1995, Journal
This pattern is not just with strong emotion, thought or sensation. I see it in ten thousand ways. Feeling thirst. Wanting water. I see how I have held the contraction of that desire through the entire process of arising, getting glass and liquid, and drinking, as if the thirst and process of alleviating it were an adversary to be defeated. "Notice the contraction. Notice and release. Come back to wholeness, to pure heart/mind." Again and again!

This morning when I reached the far end of the lake, storm clouds had gathered. I began to swim home fast, me against the threatening storm, but of course my sore shoulder couldn't tolerate that intensity of movement. Seeing the nature of the tension as movement of fear, just watching how it moved, I relaxed back into the harmony of the lake. The storm was not separate but a part of the whole environment, within me too. There is no adversary. Come home, back into harmony. As I did so, I actually felt the wind shift one hundred and eighty degrees, no longer coming into my face but now behind me, helping my progress. A half hour later, as I finally stood on my beach, the first lightning shouted across the sky.

I see the subtle judgment of my experience and the way mind moves into duality. Suddenly I am not "with" the experience but trying to separate myself from it. In so doing, I separate myself also from myself. I put this experience outside of me. And I store the contraction instead of allowing it to pass naturally through me. For myself, I find that I "swallow" it, thus storing the tension in the abdomen. I also hold it in my shoulders. For how many lifetimes have I done this?

I'm learning to watch these myriad contractions which fill my days and not get into a relationship with them. Instead I note "contracted, contracted," allow the deep experience of that contraction and note any holding or opposition to it, just further contraction. As I look deeply at the whole process, I see the catalyst and my own contraction as a series of conditioned expressions, just natural movement. All conditioned phenomena arise from conditions and cease when the conditions cease. This is a primary teaching of Buddhism, confirmed by my own experience. There is no need to attack the contraction or otherwise perpetuate it. I find it very powerful to watch the whole movement and see how it eventually dissolves. The more I work with it, the more spaciousness I experience. There is nothing which is not expression of the divine, nothing which I need to fight or hold on to.

October 3, 1995, Journal
I sit at a rolling desk in my cellar office, pushed under high slits of window where predawn morning gray peeks through the spruces beyond the glass. On the altar the candles are still lit. The counter behind my back holds the inevitable piles of mail, class notes, and phone messages awaiting attention before I leave town for retreat. My appointment book announces a day of meetings and a promised evening of folk dancing with my family. My belly speaks a warning, "tension, tension," and I bring gentle awareness to the tight place. "Breathing…" Tension is just tension. No need to let it go further.

Yesterday afternoon the intestines pushed through the hernia as they have not done for several weeks. Bean sprouts; another food I can not eat! For the first time there was no Sisyphus holding the rock at the top of the mountain, just a soft awareness that touched this tender spot with mercy. I went to lie down, embraced belly and pain. A shrug. If it's going to be out, it will be out. Seven P.M. and 24 people waiting for me to begin the class with a sitting, belly still out. I lifted myself from my bed, walked out to my cushion, briefly sat and told the class why I would lead the sitting lying down. "We must be honest with our bodies…" Lying there in the warm glow of candle light, surrounded by the loving energy of these students, I watched the tension release completely. No secondary contraction and no denial, just there with pain, aversion, noting it all arise and move on.

Copyright © 2000 by Barbara Brodsky