As we move toward Fall here in Western Montana, I offer some poems from the many liminal spaces I seem to be inhabiting these days. Speaking of transitions, I’m feeling pretty sleepy, and it’s about time for bed, so I’ll leave it at that.

Wishing you peace in the in-between,

Terri

Through the Haze

In the space between
night and dawn,
we see one another
in flashes
through dark and smoke.
Orange gibbous moon,
star shining through the haze,
bats swooping and sailing and diving for their dinner,
cats returning from the nighttime hunt,
hurtling their bodies across the street
as the morning commute begins,
as our neighbors’ televisions click on,
sending flashes of light onto the sidewalk.

Two Truths

Everyone is marveling
at the tiny crayfish in the Clark Fork River.
Segmented body, tiny claws.
A miracle, really.

I don’t even look.
‘Aren’t those a sign of poor water quality
and warming waters?’ I doom-say.

‘Well, they do tend to live in warmer waters,’
our friend responds,
'But I love crayfish!'

My wonder, my curiosity – stolen, yet again,
by the inability to hold
two truths at once.

Hiking the Trails around Missoula in August

Loving these sun-scorched brown hills
requires appreciation for impermanence.
The ability to see and remember the wildflowers,
even when they are not flowering,
The knack for being with the knapweed
and leafy spurge
when they are the only ones blooming.
Kinship with the brown grasses
and all who are still here,
holding on.

Now

Wishing myself into the future yet again –
this exciting possibility,
that shiny new adventure – 
the same as wishing away
the moment I’m in right now.
The mountain and the friends,
the crisp air,
my body,
strong, resilient, and alive.

Berry Gratitude

It’s a four-berry day
on the shoulders of Stuart Peak.
Huckleberries, grouseberries,
serviceberries, and thimbleberries!

As we indulge,
a friend visiting from out of town says:
'I’ve never just picked berries off the trail before.'

I am stunned
and humbled
and even more grateful.
How did I become so lucky
as to develop intimate friendships
with the berries and their generous gifts?

Correction

I’m sorry this is taking so long.
I’m brain-dead after seven already-exhausting hours.
I’m sorry I didn’t notice
your wheel and tire were different sizes,
and you’ve given yourself a blood blister,
trying to make them fit.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
I’m sorry I routed your chain incorrectly.
Isn’t this a great learning experience?
This is a little embarrassing …
We did it! Great job!
I’m sorry we didn’t have time to get your shifting perfect,
or to switch out that old seat.
Without me, you wouldn’t have a
fully functional bike.
You’re so very welcome!

No Thank You

Opportunity for growth came knocking,
and I did not answer.
The chance to really push my limits arrived,
and I softened into no.
Spiritual transformation beckoned,
and I politely declined the invitation.
Praise and validation called,
with all their shimmering promises,
and I saw them for who they were
and kept my distance.
More chances to serve came,
and I allowed others to answer their call
and reap their benefits.
And all the ‘No thank yous’ built up,
into a small, growing pile
of quiet, stillness, and ease.

Reaching Out through the Cold

Walking to the mailbox
with a letter in my hand,
written to a friend far away,
is one of my favorite activities,
especially in the early morning
when the air anticipates Fall
and the hand carrying the card
goes chilly at the fingertips,
especially when there is a letter
waiting in the cold
for me, too.

Three Haikulings

From across the lake,
Eagle, are you watching me?
Like I’m watching you?


A windy lake scene
as dark ripples across light.
Indescribable.


49 degrees!
Outer chill of Fall’s approach.
Joy nestles inside.

Tea Ceremony

Thunder echoes our words in poetry,
reverberating meaning within this intimate circle.
Lightning illuminates
our joy, our aspirations, our longing,
in brief, ungraspable flashes.

No rain arrives
to wash the world clean.
And still we sit.
We drink our clouds.
Allow each crash and flash
to penetrate.

And on the ride home,
the full moon shines
above ridgelines of clouds,
guiding me steadily home.

Veera

My roommate sees how overwhelmed I am
and orders us dinner
from the greasy-spoon vegan place.
The decadent burritos
explode every which way
in a messy, luxuriant meal
we use as an excuse
to waste our valuable texting-and-emailng-and-planning time
with laughter,
and listening,
and teasing the dog.

Intimate Relationship

We were third cousins
with Dolly Parton.
The East Tennessee side of our family
swore up and down it was true.
And I rolled my eyes,
little know-it-all Northerner
who poo-pooed
the heat and humidity,
the endless array of jellos
topped with whipped cream and Nilla Wafers
and fancy names like ‘Ambrosia.’

Surely no one as famous, or beloved, or talented
as Dolly Parton
could belong to us.

It wasn’t until I was well into adulthood
that I considered it was quite possibly true.
My grandparents grew up in those same hills east of Knoxville,
Just a couple dozen miles from where Dolly did.
And there weren’t very many people there
in the 1930s and ‘40s.
And probably everyone was related,
one way or another.

With this new information
I reconsidered
our Mammaw’s love of strawberry shortcake,
because it reminded her of when she met Pappaw
while picking strawberries.
And I wondered
if Dolly, too, had an intimate relationship with strawberries.
And gelatin and whipped cream.
If she loved strawberry shortcake, too.

Parallel Lives

A mold-scented
crate of bicycle parts
arrives at the shop,
origin unknown.
Nauseating, and fascinating,
all at the same time.
Transporting me back to 28321 Suburban Drive,
dank smell of the junk room
in a corner of our suburban basement,
as I sort through ball bearings in 35 millimeter film canisters.
Bolts and springs inside
General Foods International Coffee Suisse Mocha tins.
Musty testaments
to someone else’s life 40-odd years ago.

I ponder our parallel lives,
brought together through this chance meeting
between donated bike parts
and a part-time bike mechanic
with their own basement memories.

What was the bike tinkerer’s mold-scented cellar like?
Did they know the childhood thrill of taking cover
while tornadoes swirled nearby?
Maybe they worked on bikes during the tornado warnings,
while we played He-Man and She-Ra.
Maybe their basement was full to the brim with memories, too.

Apocalypse Avoided

I regale my young co-worker
with tales from the turn of the millennium:
‘We all thought the world was going to end
at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 1999!’

I shake my head, smiling
at my crude understanding
of what world catastrophe might mean.
The very idea that we would all be able to blame the devastation
on a two-digit software problem,
instead of on our greed, our ignorance,
our fear.

How quaint it seems, now,
that a group of young newspaper reporters
stayed awake until midnight,
just to learn that nothing had happened.
That potential disaster had been averted
by the computer scientists.

How nostalgic – how hopeful –
to remember
a predicated apocalypse
that didn’t pan out.

Into the Mountains I Carry

Tent, sleeping bag,
earth-shattering sound of a glacier collapsing,
screams of those who were washed away,
and those now mourning.

Water filter, extra socks and underwear,
anguished cries of siblings
wrenched from families,
hunted, murdered, and held in inhumane conditions.

Rain gear, food,
Dolly Parton’s songs, and laughter, and kindness,
her way of seeing the beauty in each human,
her big hair, her big heart, her big love.

Thermal underwear, an ultralight puffy jacket,
the self-described ‘bearded, burly’ trans men in Kansas,
protesting the state’s transphobic bathroom law,
by using women’s bathrooms
as legally required.

Toothbrush, toothpaste,
Our unhoused friends,
including the one with the leg wound that won’t heal,
and the one who brings a trumpet with her everywhere she goes –
one especially precious item among meager possessions.

I carry all of it with me,
uphill and down,
across creeks and through forests –
a weight so much heavier than this backpack,
made lighter by
the sounds of rushing water,
pileated woodpeckers, and one lone, bugling elk.
Lifted, just a little, by the chipmunks, the water striders,
the wind, the clouds, the sun,
and the peaceful silence
bearing us all.

Thank You

Thank you to the thimbleberries.
To every creek still flowing,
no matter how much or how little.

Thank you for frigid dips in alpine lakes,
and the soaring peaks behind them.

Thank you to the subalpine firs
who shelter my tent,
the pine and larch and spruce
who whisper their secrets into the wind.

Thank you to the waterfalls,
to the snow fields
still holding on at the end of August.

Thank you to the crisp air,
the fog on the lake in the morning
– Fall on its way.

Thank you to all the more-than-human beings
who teach me,
again and again,
how to live in the world.
How to withstand, adapt, and flow.

The Plunge

I hear them before I see them:
waters plunging 30 feet
over rock and vibrant green.

Pouring, leaping, dashing,
flying pell-mell over the edge
as sunlight spills across the mist,
a shimmering rainbow caught
in the final drop.
This cascade of water.
Me.

Below, a perfect plunge pool.
I know snowmelt feeds these waters,
and it is not so warm today.
Still the waters beckon.
How can I not plunge in?

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Rest is the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be. .... To rest is to give up on the already exhausted will as the prime motivator of endeavour, with its endless outward need to reward itself through established goals. To rest is to give up on worrying and fretting, and the sense that there is something wrong with the world unless we are there to put it right …

We are rested when we are a living exchange between what lies inside and what lies outside, when we are an intriguing conversation between the potential that lies in our imagination and the possibilities for making that internal image real in the world; we are rested when we let things alone and let ourselves alone, to do what we do best, breathe as the body intended us to breathe, to walk as we were meant to walk, to live with the rhythm of a house and a home, giving and taking through cooking and cleaning. … To rest is not self-indulgent; to rest is to prepare to give the best of ourselves, and to perhaps, most importantly, arrive at a place where we are able to understand what we have already been given.

– David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

Your life is your gift to the Sangha, not your responsibilities.

– Greg Grallo, friend and lay Dharma teacher

Today I woke up at 2:30 am. Which isn’t terribly unusual for me, especially in the sweaty heat of summer with no air conditioning. What was unusual, the past few years at least, was I never got back to sleep because I couldn’t stop thinking, well, if I just get up now, I could get so many things done this morning! I have So Many Things to Do!

Eight months since I returned to Missoula from Deer Park Monastery and post-monastery travels, and the busy-ness of lay life has crept right back in – along with low-grade insomnia and the never-ending To Do lists. Hello, old habit of believing my worth is based on how much I do and how well I do it! Hello, Self-Righteousness who convinces me that I Am the One Who Must Change the World! Hello, dear old friend Seeking Validation as Proof That I’m a Good Human Being!

Friends, I am the quintessential straight-A student. The whole gold star thing was made for me. And there are reasons for this. Excellent reasons. I already mentioned in last week’s essay some of the ways I’ve managed to turn mindfulness practice into a worthiness competition. Of course I can turn anything into a worthiness competition. These are hard habits to break!

The genuinely funny thing is, I am currently living exactly the life I aspired to when I decided to end my time as a long-term resident at the monastery. I am working to “earn my living” only 25-29 hours a week at Free Cycles while living simply with a fellow practitioner as a roommate and “practice partner.” I’m writing lots, including here. I’m back to practicing regularly with and being very involved with Open Way Sangha. This includes practice leading; helping with our Fall retreat; serving as our librarian; coordinating a proposal to assess how welcoming and inclusive our Sangha really is, and to help us do better (fingers crossed!); and getting our new Rainbow Sangha off the ground. (woot! woot!) And there are a few Sangha-related things I really want to work on more but keep failing to find the time for.

I also continue to hike and backpack and generally get outside. Oh, and I’m a first reader and commenter for a cool book that a friend recently wrote! And yes, I do maintain my (almost) daily practices of seated meditation, touching the earth, and chanting with former monastic Melina Bondy’s Chanting Sangha. I am so happy with the life I’ve manifested!

Busy-ness, or being?

I just didn’t realize – or somehow didn’t remember, after I’d been on monastic time for more than a year – that if I was fortunate enough to manifest all the things I wanted in my life, I would also be very, very “busy.”

(I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with the word “busy,” because it feels like the word itself feeds into our whole American capitalist model of excessive and enforced productivity. I prefer to say life is “very full” or “overflowing with good things.” Because that really is how it feels. And also … I am feeding into the whole American capitalist model of excessive and enforced productivity if I’m basing my self-worth on how much I do rather than simply breathing and being “a living exchange between what lies inside and what lies outside.”)

I was perfectly capable of making myself busy-busy-busy when I was living at Deer Park, too, but I could only do that during my free time, which was limited. Hours of sitting, walking, eating, and mindful service meditation each week, plus chanting and listening to Dharma talks, were all built in. Not to mention unofficial nap time after lunch every day, which I took full advantage of.

The monastic schedule is designed to allow us to practice mindfulness by just being with everything we are and everything we do. Once, seeing me hurrying from one thing to the next during one of the big retreats we all volunteered for, Sister Boi Nghiem pulled me aside, looked me in the eye, and said, “Terri. No more rushing, OK?” When I nodded, she said, “Pinky swear?” and hooked her pinky finger in mine with such kindness and understanding. (I already knew Sister Boi Nghiem had the energy of busy-ness in her, too; I’d seen it.)

Perhaps I failed to see how manifesting all these things in Lay Life 2.0 was not unlike striving to achieve a series of goals. One of my aspirations upon leaving the monastery was to arrange my life so I could live as simply as possible and have the time and space to make mindfulness practice a central part of my life. But, again: mindfulness practice is the practice of just being. Just breathing. Just being aware of what is in and around me. Mindfulness practice is not about to do lists, or achieving goals, or saying yes to everything that comes my way.

As I mentioned last week, it’s so easy for me to turn any practice into striving for something to be different than it is – whether that something is within myself, our Sangha, our nation, our world, or all of the above. Most activities I’m currently involved with are ones I’m really grateful and excited to be part of – actions and causes I deeply care about. A couple I signed up for for the wrong reasons. Almost all of them involve some level of striving and/or looking for validation and gold stars.

Inviting gentleness back in

In the midst of my recent overwhelmed-ness and insomnia, I found myself crying more often than usual, and without warning, like, “Why am I crying right now? What the heck is happening? I thought I was really happy!” Turns out, I’ve had a lot of fears and feelings coming up, but I didn’t recognize any of them because I wasn’t allowing myself enough rest.

I wasn’t even doing it on purpose. (I never do.) But filling my life with doing is an excellent way of keeping myself from feeling, and I am so good at it. I had nearly four decades of training, after all. Feeling, I’ve since learned, is what I do when I rest and breathe; I become aware of what’s actually going on in here. When I don’t allow myself enough time to rest and breathe, those feelings don’t go away. They just build up until they leak out. Sometimes through crying that catches me totally off guard. Sometimes as an explosion of anger or resentment. Sometimes as running away, either physically or emotionally.

Something else I remembered just this week: My word of the year is Gentle. And there hasn’t been much gentleness in the way I’ve thrown myself into project after project lately, allowing myself to become totally overwhelmed with busy-ness and to-do-ing.

Ways I’ve been inviting gentleness back in the past week, both before and after I began writing this blog on Monday. (It’s now Tuesday):

• I’d planned to go on a big, 20-mile hike today by myself. A friend reached out the night before and asked if I’d be interested in a much shorter hike up one of our local Missoula peaks; she didn’t know I’d been planning something bigger, and she didn’t have time for what I’d planned. I joined her instead, and suddenly my day opened up with ease and spaciousness and listening and storytelling.

• I stepped down from one of the Sangha responsibilities I’d said yes to for the wrong reasons.

• I said no to the potential for a new, very intriguing, and very part-time job. Just the possibility was bringing up a lot of previously buried emotions, and my initial reaction was: “This could be the perfect opportunity to work through all of that!” Then I noticed the “working through” and “challenging myself” language in my inner dialogue – and the striving behind it. I also noticed how flattered I was that someone I respect had brought the opportunity to my attention and thought I would be good at it – and how that was influencing my decision-making process, too. I realized I was on the brink of again saying yes to something for the wrong reasons, so I politely declined.

• I’ve taken naps three days in a row, on all my off days this week!

As I look ahead to going back to school in January while keeping my job at Free Cycles, I imagine I’ll need to check in a lot more on why I’m saying yes to things. I will certainly have to say no more often. Can I complete a graduate degree without striving and looking for those gold stars? Can I bring gentleness into that space, too?

To return to David Whyte’s words: “To rest is not self-indulgent; to rest is to prepare to give the best of ourselves, and to perhaps, most importantly, arrive at a place where we are able to understand what we have already been given.”

I have been given so much. And giving back isn’t about my responsibilities, or my busy-ness, or my striving; I can’t think of a single gift I’ve received that has been about those things. What if, in the words of our friend Greg, my gift is my life? My very being, and breathing? What if those are your gifts, too?

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Practice from Completeness

When realization is something we hope to acquire,
practice is subtly organized around lack.
We sit because something is missing.
We meditate because we want to awaken.
We practice because we hope eventually
to become what we are not.
Eihei Dogen overturns this entire framework.
Practice does not arise from deficiency.
It arises from completeness.

– Roshi Joan Halifax, August 17, 2026

Twisting a Cage into Freedom

Like any tool that falls into these hands
under the wrong conditions –
which is to say, exactly the conditions
our society intends –
Buddhism and mindfulness
can be the perfect justification
for finding fault.
Can be clever reasons
to bludgeon myself
with judgement and shame
when I am not
perfectly equanimous, peaceful, open, and loving,
because I have come to believe that I am
“Too Loud” and “Too Much.”
“Controlling,” “Rigid,” and “Selfish.”

Oh, all the ways
I’ve internalized this violence.
The external expectations
of this body, this skin,
steadily working it all into sharp sticks and iron bars,
when all my soft heart wants
is to rest,
and bask,
in the warmth
of my own beauty and
perfection.

– Terri F. Nichols, August 7, 2026

Dear Friends,

If you only knew all the apologies I’ve written, then (mostly) deleted, for these essays I write here. Apologies for writing last-minute and not putting as much thought and care into the words as I would like. For not being able to articulate my feelings. For the mere possibility that I may have said something hurtful or ignorant or unskillful. At least half my essays have begun with some kind of apology that I then delete, realizing there’s nothing I need to apologize for. But the urge remains. And I don’t always see the apologies for what they are, so I don’t always delete them.

Spoiler alert: This isn’t something I do only online, or in print. Apologizing for my words and actions is a deep-rooted habit in me. Long ago, I learned I needed to apologize for my very existence, and I learned that lesson well. At its core, this was and is violence against myself. Violence against all of us and our innate capacity to live in freedom. To be truly, uniquely ourselves.

Hélène, a dear friend who has known me for well over two decades now, recently noticed another apology in my recent post, “Serendipity in the Maha Sangha Embrace.” There I list several “terrible financial decisions” I’ve made recently. Hélène and I talked not long after I sent this one out, and she told me: “Terri, you are one of the most financially responsible people I know! It’s how you’ve been able to live so simply!”

Another one Hélène caught 10 or 15 years ago was my repetition of the phrase, “I’m terrible at relationships!” She was like, “If you were terrible at relationships, I wouldn’t be friends with you.”

Ah, the gifts of wise spiritual friends!

The violence of non-cherishing

“Apology” here really feels like a euphemism for killing. Killing my own feelings, thoughts, and aspirations. Killing my way of being in the world. Killing myself, slowly and relentlessly. The first of the Five Mindfulness Trainings sums this up well. The line I’ve italicized below was a revelation when I first came to understand it.

The First Mindfulness Training: Reverence For Life

Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating the insight of interbeing and compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, or in my way of life. Seeing that harmful actions arise from anger, fear, greed, and intolerance, which in turn come from dualistic and discriminative thinking, I will cultivate openness, non-discrimination, and non-attachment to views in order to transform violence, fanaticism, and dogmatism in myself and in the world.

The Alaya version of the 5 MTs, originally developed for Alaya’s “Eightstepping” Recovery Program and apparently not in existence anywhere online, resonates even more deeply:

The First Mindfulness Training: Cherishing Life

I will respect the right of all life to exist and find its own destiny and direction. I will not kill or abuse my own feelings, perceptions, or aspirations, or those of others. I will respect, cherish, protect, and nurture all life. This includes me.

Oof. Straight to the heart, that one.

For the record, I kill many, many feelings, perceptions, and aspirations of others, too. My judgmental habit is one of the ones I bludgeon myself for the most. I know it comes from learning at an early age to be very efficient at killing my own feelings, perceptions, and aspirations when they were inconvenient to others, or dangerous to reveal. It probably also comes from my parents and grandparents, who I now see often did the same — to protect themselves just as I was trying to do.

How we keep ourselves in cages

During a recent round of killing, I was trying to convince myself that I am not the kind of person who could be a good counselor or writer or teacher or spiritual mentor – really any of the things I feel drawn to. Because – and this is an old, old story in my brain – I am Gregarious. Loud. Selfish. NOT a good listener. Oh yes, and I’m Ditzy and Forgetful and Don’t Pay Attention. (And yes: all these bear capital letters in my mind.)

Someone who might fill the roles I list above should be Calm. Quiet. Non-Judgmental. Generous. Sensible. Definitely a Good Listener. All of the things I imagine I am not.

Not long after this latest dive into non-cherishing of myself, I was like, wait a minute … let’s look at the bigger picture here. Where is this idea coming from that I am so Gregarious, Loud, Selfish, Forgetful, etc.? Where is this idea coming from that those are negative traits? Where is this idea coming from that I must be Calm, Quiet, and Generous? Why do I value some natural, human traits above others?

Oof! Patriarchy, Terri! Duh! The traits I’ve learned to value are exactly the traits that keep us all in our assigned places, especially anyone who was assigned female at birth or who steps outside the assigned binary gender boxes. Keep quiet. Don’t be “too much” or “too opinionated” or “too needy.” Give yourself generously to caring for others by listening well and speaking as little as possible. Talk less. Smile more. Wait for it. (And now I understand why I resonate so deeply with the character of Aaron Burr in the musical Hamilton. And feel grateful to hear this from a male perspective.)

From as far back as I can remember, the very idea that I might be Loud, Gregarious, and Selfish (or – gasp! – all three!) was quashed by many adults with a vigor that I took straight to heart. It was so very clear to me that to be loved, I needed to make myself small and quiet and obedient. I needed to be generous and understanding of everyone around me. You know, all those good “feminine” qualities that I struggled and flailed with and patently did not understand. (And why are these feminine qualities?!? Gah!!!

How we break ourselves free from the cages

I’m gonna bring it back to me and Roshi Joan here. “Practice does not arise from deficiency. It arises from completeness.” I want to do much, much more resting and basking in the warmth of my own beauty and perfection. I want to lay down the sharp sticks and iron bars and just be me. Perfectly imperfect. Perfectly complete and incomplete at the same time. I want these to be my mindfulness practices, even as I continue to grow and transform. Because, let’s face it, growth and transformation are natural states, if we allow them to be. They are not sticks to beat ourselves with.

I deeply value personal growth and transformation, and all the therapy and the Buddhist mindfulness practices that have allowed me to dive more deeply into these liminal spaces. And yet, I still sometimes find myself in repeated cycles of self-bludgeoning thinly disguised as “self improvement.” I usually come out of the latest cycle when I’ve become so angry at having to try so hard to change myself that I am exhausted.

But what if changing who I am isn’t self-improvement at all? What if, actually, I am all the things I imagine to be both good and bad traits? What if they are all in me, and one is no more important or correct than any other?

I hear the hollowness of those apologies more and more. I notice, and I delete. Notice, and delete. With growing reverence for all that I am.

I am unlearning. By which I mean, I am liberating myself. Not with sticks and bars but with Gentleness and Compassion. With Cherishing and Reverence. You are, too. I can feel it. Letting go of killing and abusing our feelings, perceptions, and aspirations, and those of others. Respecting, cherishing, protecting, and nurturing all life. This includes all of us.

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I’ll be taking another backpacking break next week, so you won’t see another essay from me here ‘til August 20. Maybe you can take a leisurely two weeks to explore these poems instead. And you can always check out previous Messy Middle Way posts on the website.

I hope you, too, are finding ways to nourish your soul.

Love, Terri

Accidental Beauty

Metal flashes,
silver and gold,
in waves of reflected light.
A wall of keys brought to life
by the gentle bump
of an Ace Hardware employee.

Resonant

The rhythm and craft
of moving words.
Never perfect.
Just a little more resonant each time.

On Independence Day

He spends his 63rd birthday at the community bike shop,
wearing a baseball cap that reads: “All gave some. Some gave all.”
He’s considering breaking up with his longtime partner
who remains a general in the same army he joined at age 17
and left 25 years ago.
“I hated the generals,” he says. “But I can’t blame her.”
She is in Syria, and all three of his children died in wars overseas,
so he has no one to spend his birthday with
but the few bike shop regulars who’ve come out on this ambivalent holiday.

He tells me how awful it was the first time he killed someone.
How terrible he felt.
How his superiors kept telling him, “Get over it! Get over it!”
How he finally got used to it,
but it left him with a lifelong hatred of guns.

Now he works at the local airport
and in his free time
cracks codes on donated cable locks.
He hands me one with the code written on a bright yellow tag.
“One benefit of military service!” I joke.
He smiles. Goes to crack another.

Reverence

About halfway up the road to the North Fork trailhead,
cruising along,
listening to a Buddhist podcast,
I see a squirrel dart
into the middle of the gravel road.
I hit the brakes as hard as I dare
and swerve,
and swerve again.
But the squirrel swerves, too.
Runs between my wheels at the last minute.

I want to believe
she made it out alive,
but I doubt it.
I pull over and walk back down the road,
calmly,
as there is nothing to be done.
I arrive just in time to witness
her last few breaths.
I crouch to be with her,
in her final moments of life.

I remember the dying chipmunk
I once finished off with a rock
because I couldn’t bear to watch her suffering
after the bobcat left her for dead.
My mother, dying of cancer
in a nursing home bed.

Once I am certain the squirrel has passed on,
I find two perfectly shaped branches.
Carefully as I can, 
I carry her body to the edge of the forest,
with all the reverence I wasn’t able to show
for the chipmunk,
or my mom.

I wish her peace and ease,
and walk slowly back to the car,
mindful of the life I’ve taken,
and all the others I’ve taken,
knowingly and unknowingly,
and all the lives who have touched mine,
become part of me,
then moved on, but never left.

Unbound

Few things make my heart sing like a wetland, intact.
Un-drained, un-ditched, unbound.
Maybe this is why I love the wet, forested Bob Marshall Wilderness so much.
So many natural sponges
receiving rain and snowmelt and streams,
allowed to simply be.
Allowed to absorb and morph and change
to nourish the sedges and rushes,
wildflowers,
and waters,
cleansed, and emerging,
vital and clear.

Beauty with a Cost

Waves of purple penstemon flowers
surf atop saturated soils
in the middle of an electric-green sea.
What else can I do
but stop, sit, and admire.
Even though some plant around here –
maybe the very penstemon I’m admiring –
is making my slightly miserable
with itchy eyes and sneezing.
Even though the mosquitoes are persistent
in my eyes and ears, the backs of my knees.

Thirst

I return to Trilobite Lake
after a three-year absence,
sweaty and anticipating
the delicious, frigid plunge
of my body into an alpine body of water.

Instead I find what looks like a tiny pond,
way out in the middle of a wide wetland ring
thick with sedges and rushes.
Far beyond my reach.

I wade, thigh-deep in muck,
just to find water deep enough to filter for drinking.
Rinsing the sweat from my body seems futile
in the murky waters that churn with each step,
nevermind jumping in.

Trilobite Lake, in their drying up,
becomes another shrine
to the memory of cooler, wetter conditions,
the new reality of extended heat, and drought,
and our thirst
for a more generous way of living.

Right Path

There seems no right path to walk
in a meadow already clipped and trampled
by the teeth and feet of horses.
Do I crush one more footstep of living soil crust?
Do I step on the pussytoes?
The yarrow? The geum? Or the sedums?
Do I trample the knapweed on purpose?

Or can I trust,
that simply by walking,
barefoot and listening,
the meadow may speak to my body.
May guide me in a good way.
Maybe the meadow will even lead me away from
the freshest piles of horse manure.
Those older piles, full of native grasses and wildflowers?
Well, what is the earth, anyway,
if not the soil,
made up entirely of poop, decay, and countless footsteps?

Also, This

Back home after time in the wilderness,
I find sitting on the mowed lawn,
gazing at the wood-and-brick apartments,
and our neighboring mountain,
equally beautiful.

No Sustenance

Did you think you would find food here,
little friend?
Instead of the plastic foam sleeping pad
you chewed on?
No sustenance at all
after all that effort
to gnaw through
the mesh corner of my tent.

Shimmery Haiku

Trembling aspen,
light shimmering from each leaf,
nature’s glitter paint.

Holding Loosely

How nourishing
to have regular practices 
that I sometimes skip.
Setting an intention that I return to
with purpose,
not rigidity.
With integrity,
not self-blame or disappointment.
The real practice
is allowing myself grace
and holding loosely to what I love.

To Do List

The human-built world began to creep in,
as soon as I pointed my feet downstream,
in the direction of the parking lot.
No longer immersed in the trees.
Now on a mission
to get to the car,
the To Do list,
and the rest of my life.
As if this very footstep,
and the next and the next,
are not also crucial items
on my life’s agenda.

The Joys of Forgetfulness

Forgetting the poles
that hold up my tent,
a night under tree canopy and stars
is my unexpected reward.

Present Moment Haiku

An 18-mile hike
almost to Sheep Mountain’s peak.
I took no photos.

Other Forms

I sleep late
and don’t have time for seated meditation.
Plant-care meditation,
lunch-prep meditation,
bike-riding meditation,
and brake-adjusting meditation
will have to suffice.

July 15

I am on the verge of tears all day.
My co-workers blame it
on the New Moon in Cancer.

Well then, that moon must know:
This is the day, 22 years ago,
when our mom died.

It was sunny and warm that summer day, too,
though I didn’t feel it within the walls of the nursing home.
I didn’t feel much else, either, as she took her last breaths,
with me the only other person in the room.

Later, the nurse
told me, “It is a great honor to be with a parent when they die.”
I didn’t feel honored.
I felt she’d made the wrong choice of who to die with.
Or maybe it wasn’t a choice at all, but mere circumstance.
Sometimes numbness is the safest thing to feel.

Which, perhaps, is why,
grief took years to visit.
And now shifts and changes,
in rhythm with my opening heart.

Intimate Drawing

A different clipper guard.
A new line,
a new angle.
A palette of lengths
and shapes.
Make of my skull
a work of art.

Listening to Christian Music through Rural Eastern Washington

At this point in the drive,
the Christian station is the only one I find
amidst the radio static.
In the past, knee-jerk aversion
would’ve led my fingers straight to the off button.

But today I stayed
and was pleasantly surprised
by a catchy song
about all the opportunities we miss to offer love and compassion
when we’re too self-absorbed.
About wanting to be more like grace.
More like mercy.
More like patience.
More like love.

There is just one line I object to:
“A little more like Jesus. A little less like me.”
“No!” I shout aloud. “You are Jesus! Jesus is you!”
A little more like Jesus,
a little more like me!

And I laugh at myself,
the Buddhist I’ve become,
now trying to mend fences
with my childhood spirituality,
but more on my terms,
when there are no fences to be found.

Visitor Center Theater Drama

The short film showing
at the Mt. Rainier National Park visitor center
includes ominous music
over dramatic narration
about the “fierce competition”
among the plants surrounding Mt. Tahoma.
How the volcano has repeatedly “destroyed”
life around it,
and one day will again.

What does it say about us,
that we are so compelled
to invent – and perpetuate –
the story of sinister intentions
in every relationship?

Dedication

No longer sung alone,
the words of the incense offering
fill the tiny zendo.
No, we are not 200 people
within a giant meditation hall.
But as our voices swell,
I feel the chorus expand
beyond these small walls
as we chant with, and for,
all our relatives,
near and far.

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My joy is like Spring, so warm,
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
so the door of my heart
can be left open,
the door of compassion.

Bright morning stars are rising
Bright morning stars are rising
Bright morning stars are rising
Day is a-breakin’ in my soul

Oh, where are our dear mothers?
Oh, where are our dear mothers?
They’ve gone up to heaven, shouting
Day is a-breakin’ in my soul

One week ago today, I sang these two spiritual songs aloud, acapella, all by myself as I drove south from downtown Seattle. It was after dark, and I sang the entire 30-minute drive, alternating between the two without stopping, hand on my chest, feeling the vibrations of many voices as city lights and memories flickered past.

I didn’t sing to keep myself awake. Though it was an unusually late evening for me, I wasn’t tired. The songs just emerged, and I stayed with them. Continuing to sing felt important in ways I may never put into words.

The first song comes from a poem by Thich Nhat Hanh, “Please Call Me By My True Names.” I’d sung it earlier that evening with friends new and old, including a couple dozen Seattle Sangha members and five Deer Park monastics I hadn’t seen since early December. We sang other songs, too, accompanied by guitar, bass, and, for some songs, one of those little sand shakers. (Shaker-beats courtesy of yours truly.)

The second song is an old Appalachian folk hymn I’ve heard many times. Most recently, poet and author Ocean Vuong sang it on an episode of The Way Out Is In that I’d listened to on the drive from Missoula to Seattle, knowing I’d be attending an in-person interview with Ocean immediately after the monastic gathering.

All the causes and conditions

Actually, two friends and I left the monastic gathering early to get to the interview with Ocean and local journalist and author Putsata Reang. With a bow, I exited the Dharma Gate zendo after the guided meditation. I felt a little regretful about missing the upcoming question-and-response session. But the event with Ocean was also part of all the causes and conditions that brought me on what was turning into a full-on Sangha-reunion-tour weekend.

As it turned out, Ocean’s interview felt like a Dharma talk. Vulnerable and insightful and profound and uproariously, unapologetically hilarious, even as he spoke of the deep suffering in our nation, our world, and ourselves.

There was no singing at that event, but it felt like spiritual revival as a new friend and I laughed and “oh, damn!”ed and looked at each other in open-mouthed amazement and recognition at so much of what Ocean was saying. We’d only met the day before, but this was a bonding event if ever there was one.

On my left, taking it all in much more placidly, was Lila, a dear friend I’d lived and practiced with for three months during the 2024-2025 Deer Park Rains Retreat. Lila had invited me and several others into this big Maha Sangha adventure, but she doesn’t want me to use her real name here, so I won’t.

Instead, I’ll call the whole four-day experience by its True Names: Serendipity. Heart-Bursting Joy. Sadness and Longing transformed into Understanding, Gratitude, and Contentment. Renewal. A reminder of all the forces and conditions that have brought me – sometimes kicking and screaming – to exactly where I am, and nowhere else. Certainly not to where I thought I’d be right now. But Oh My am I grateful for those forces and conditions when I look back on my path over the past three years. Which was pretty much exactly what I got to do through this little excursion to Seattle to spend time with the Plum Village Maha Sangha.

Agreeable things not sought for

Merriam-Webster defines Serendipity as: “The ability to find valuable or agreeable things not sought for” and “luck that takes the form of such finding.”

I certainly did not seek for this valuable and most-agreeable experience. Instead, Lila texted me on July 11: “Terri!!! Are you doing anything July 22-25? There’s a Day of Mindfulness Happening in Seattle w/Sister Phú Nghiêm!! Wanna come??”

My response: “What’s the actual date of the DoM? I work the 23-25 and was trying to do a mindful Sangha hike on the 26th, but the 26th isn’t set in stone yet (sorry, Open Way!) and maybe I could get a day or two off work … it’s just tricky cuz I have no PTO, so if I take time off it’s unpaid. But … if you AND Sr. Phú Nghiêm will be there, that would be amazing!!”

Lila proceeded to send me the whole list of events: Hiking in Mt. Rainier National Park with the five monastics on Wednesday, evening with local Sanghas and the monastics on Thursday, Seattle sightseeing tour with the monastics on Friday, Day of Mindfulness on Saturday. And she shared the names of all the monastics who would be attending, including a couple Brothers I know and love.

Then, Lily texted:

“Alsooooo there’s an evening with Ocean Vuong! Thursday July 23. He just happens to be in Seattle (unrelated to DP). So I’m gonna see him do a talk!!!! Which you are also welcome to come to!!”

Then, she offered to help pay a good chunk of my costs for the weekend! “I just wanted you to know that before you decide!!”

How could I say no to all of that? Also, all the exclamation points may give you some indication of why Lila and I get along so well, and why I wanted to see her. She exudes a sincere enthusiasm and a strong commitment to the Dharma and the Sangha that speak directly to my own heart.

(This serendipitous trip was also made possible by the generosity of friends Hélène and Steve, who let me stay at their place every single time I’m in or passing through Seattle – even when they’re not home.)

Yes to it all

This invitation was the first of many, many reminders of the joys of flowing as a river with the Maha Sangha – this great, big, worldwide Plum Village and more-than-Plum-Village community that I am just beginning to understand how much I’m a part of. The joys of simply saying yes and letting go and allowing the possibilities to unfurl even when worry and fear are holding me back from something my heart deeply wants. This is not – ahem – the first time I’ve done this. I’m getting better at it.

Despite Lila and Hélène and Steve’s generosity, taking an unpaid week off work while on a very tight budget to drive to Seattle was a terrible financial decision that will have some consequences. But so what?

Was spending an entire year at Deer Park Monastery a good financial decision? Were taking months off afterward to hike the Pacific Crest Trail and visit friends and start a Substack newsletter and then accepting a part-time seasonal job good financial decisions? What is life for if not to say yes to as many serendipitous opportunities as possible, as long as they lead me along the path of greater happiness, understanding, and love?

Trusting and saying yes to my Inner Sangha and the Maha Sangha (which may not, in fact, be separate …) was how I found myself singing spirituals on a late-night drive through Seattle, full of inspiration and love for the world

Saying yes to the Maha Sangha, in the form of Lila’s invitation, was how I found myself waking up at 3 am last Wednesday to drive from a remote campsite on the Cle Ellum River to make it to Mt. Tahoma in time to go hiking with the monastics at 9 am. Even though – surprise! – no one else arrived ‘til 11:30 am. And then we hiked just two miles in the blazing sun on a paved trail, even more slowly than usual because one of the Sisters was having dizzy spells. And we collectively decided not to hike the extra two miles round-trip to Panorama Point because the monastics were in a bit of a time crunch to get to a dinner they’d been invited to. We then proceeded to spend an entire hour sitting and eating lunch and chatting.

There is a parallel universe in which I could’ve felt irritated at this whole scenario and let that ruin my day. Instead, I felt so much joy the whole afternoon, because I got to hang back and spend time with the dizzy Sister at random shady spots and catch up with the Brothers on the latest goings-on at the monastery, and the views were stunning and I was so happy just to be with friends on the path. All my time flowing in community at the monastery taught me nothing if not the beauty and ease I find when I let go of my irritations and expectations (and fears) in favor of enjoying what is right in front of me, right now.

Saying yes to the Maha Sangha was how, after that hike, Lila and another friend and I found ourselves driving four hours round-trip to the home of another Deer Park monastic’s parents to eat ridiculous amounts of incredibly delicious, homemade Indian food. (They’d invited the monastics. Then the monastics invited us – unbeknownst to the parents, I’m pretty sure.)

And then, just before we departed, Sister Phú Nghiêm suggested we sing a song of gratitude to those monastic parents. So we sang “All in My Heart.” I don’t get to sing those silly, beautiful Plum Village songs very often these days, and it was the first time I’d sang with monastic Siblings in many months. By the end, tears were falling from my eyes. I excused myself for a few moments. Found Lila in the kitchen, asked for a hug, and then sobbed in her arms. “I miss this so much!” I told her.

Lila just held me, but a couple days later, reflecting on that moment together, she told me she’d been thinking: “There’s nothing to miss! It’s all right here!” Meaning, it’s all always right here. And she’s right. Deer Park Monastery. The oak trees. Escondido Rock. The monastics. Every single shining human I’m now connected with through that place. All in my heart.

Intertwining

Trusting the Maha Sangha brought all of us, finally, to an outdoor amphitheater for a public Day of Mindfulness that had all the ingredients I’ve come to love and expect from a Plum Village Sangha event: Mild chaos. People who had nothing to do with organizing the event becoming volunteers and decision-makers. A few challenges (like finding bathrooms, because the building that we’d been told would be open was locked); new friends drawn in by the Dharma energy; and, of course, singing!

At one point, Sr. Phú Nghiêm expanded on a common Plum Village metaphor about growing our roots deep so we can weather the storms of life as the trees teach us. The longer we practice together in community, she added, the more our roots intertwine and support one another, just like the trees’ roots do.

Later, as we enjoyed silent eating meditation in a big, tree-shaded circle, I envisioned all of our roots growing and twining together. After we ended our silence, I said to Lila, “You did it! You brought all of us together!” I was just one of several people she’d successfully invited to at least some part of this weekend. “Eat some blueberries!” she responded, shoving a container at me. Knowing when I’m being told to shut my mouth, I happily complied.

Then, somehow, Lila and I got ourselves invited to one more dinner, with the monastics and retreat organizers – including three lay friends I also knew from the monastery and hadn’t even realized were in Seattle. One more delightful, unexpected gathering that kept me up well past my bedtime and was so very worth it.

Lila dropped me off at the light rail so I could make my way back to Hélène and Steve’s place. The transit entrance was a little confusing. So she just stopped in the left turn lane and turned on her emergency lights so we’d have time for a long hug. In Lila’s embrace, I felt the whole Maha Sangha. I felt deeply at home.

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What’s different today is the composition of bodies: Eight queer humans, hailing from many letters of the 2SLGBTQIA+ rainbow, together in a small, intimate circle. In my own, unusually quiet inner space of concentration, I’m also surrounded by queer ancestors and teachers, both known and unknown. I am thanking each of the known ones, one by one, for helping us manifest this beautiful seedling of community.

Everyone’s eyes are closed, and still I feel seen.

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For the benefit of all beings everywhere to awaken to their true nature and freedom

This is the very first gathering of the Missoula Rainbow Sangha – a tiny seed planted in my final weeks at Deer Park Monastery before I returned to Missoula and Open Way Sangha. Now sprouted, more than nine months later, thanks to support from queer Open Way friends and some gentle nudging from one dear Sangha friend in particular, Kylie.

At the opening of our gathering, I read a slightly modified version of the Opening Statement used by Chrysanthemum Sangha, the online Plum Village LGBTQIA+ Sangha I sat with before I had a job that conflicted with their Thursday evening meetings: (You can find the full version on their website.)

This morning we have the opportunity to practice mindfulness together as a 2SLGBTQIA+ community. Through the practices of mindful speech and deep listening, I invite us to cultivate mutual respect for one another in regards to both our shared identity as queer folx, as well as in regards to the vast array of identities this community contains. Let us acknowledge these multiple and intersecting lines of differing identities which include, but are not limited to: sexuality, sex, gender, race, ethnicity, age, size, abilities, neurodiversity, socio-economic class, religious or spiritual beliefs, political affiliation, and immigration status.

May this sangha co-create a courageous space, guided by the shared intention of providing one another with opportunities to be seen, heard, honored, and respected in ways we may not always feel in the world. Practicing mindfulness together as a sangha, may we begin to wake up individually as well as collectively. And from this place, may we leave feeling more inspired and empowered to embody and fully express our true and whole selves, for the benefit of all beings everywhere to awaken to their true nature and freedom.

Yes. Yes. And Yessssssss!

Rainbow Sangha in action

As someone who came to see, feel, and understand my own queerness later in life, and came out even later, Deer Park Monastery was – surprisingly, perhaps – the first place I experienced queer and trans community. Not just isolated spiritual friendships, but real, queer Sangha in action. Or, as we like to say in the Plum Village tradition: Rainbow Sangha in action.

I say surprisingly because in many ways the monastery was and is steeped in patriarchy. Steeped in homophobia and transphobia. (At the same time, some queer lay friends have argued that the monastic tradition is actually incredibly queer. I love the view from this lens, and the implications. But that’s a discussion for another day, led by one of those friends rather than me.)

Even though the Plum Village tradition is the most progressive in Buddhism, binary gender segregation based on the erasure of gay love and the false idea that separating “men” and “women” will help everyone keep their vows of celibacy is still central to monastic practice. No real place exists for trans and nonbinary lay practitioners, let alone trans and nonbinary monastics. There is a serious lack of understanding of queer and trans experiences.

Basically, it’s the world in microcosm. Only, as with many things at the monastery, distilled. Amplified.

Amplified especially when you’re the only queer lay person in the hamlet with the Sisters for months on end and you happen to be a baby queer who’s just discovered the joy and freedom of welcoming all the parts of yourself and now you are raging because it feels like the monastics are trying to shut all that down in you. Not that I would know anything about that …

So at first it seemed unbelievable that Deer Park was also the first place I experienced queer community. Even better, queer spiritual community. In many ways, though, it makes perfect sense. Of course Buddhism, with its strong focus on openness, non-attachment to views, and awareness of suffering, draws in queer people like a magnet. Many of us come to see our queerness literally through and as a direct result of mindfulness practice, including the core practice of looking deeply.

Put a bunch of strong queer Buddhist mindfulness practitioners together in the both-nourishing-AND-harmful monastery environment, where we experience both deep peace AND deep suffering at the very same time, and we find one another. Just as we do in the rest of the world. Only distilled. Amplified.

There was a small group of us who lived together with the Sisters in Clarity Hamlet during the three-month Rains Retreat, holding and supporting one another and queering the heck out of the Clarity campground. And the longer I stayed, even as the lone long-term lay person in Clarity, the more the queer Deer Park lay community appeared: locals who came to Days of Mindfulness, people who’d been long-term residents long before me, week-long retreatants. Those who were new to the monastery, and those who’d had a relationship with the place and the monastics for many years.

Many checked in on me specifically. Some sought me out as someone who might help them through their own monastery suffering. All offered me their love and support. SO much love and support. As I write this, I am remembering literally dozens of people who saw me and shared their wisdom with me. I offer gratitude to each of these teachers.

This experience touched me so profoundly that I returned to Missoula with a strong aspiration to grow Rainbow community here. I started talking about the idea almost from the moment I got back at the end of December. But I had a LOT of ideas, and a LOT of things I wanted to manifest in my own life, too. And, truth be told, I still had the imposter syndrome of a baby queer. I didn’t feel like I was queer enough to be creating a queer Sangha! Surely the other 2SLGBTQIA+ mindfulness practitioners in Missoula would see right through me and know I was a fraud! No one would want ME leading this thing!

So, after a few excited initial conversations with Open Way friends, I didn’t do much with the idea. Until one day a few months ago, Kylie asked, “So what about that queer Sangha? When are we going to do that?”

From seed to sprout

Now, we’re doing it!

At the first Rainbow Sangha gathering, I knew we’d have three people, including me. I told myself I’d be very happy to have four. To have eight, from a wide variety of identities and backgrounds and practice experience levels, was pure joy.

Our gathering wasn’t all rainbows and puppy dogs, as they say. Our sacred text reading from Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, which I’ll share more of below, was full of difficult truths to sit with. So were the Dharma sharings from Rainbow Sangha friends afterward. There was Grief. Discomfort. Love. Compassion. A strong desire among us to hold and honor multiple truths: Care and harm. Joy and suffering. The yearning to be loved and embraced alongside the need to protect oneself.

We ended our practice together with three sounds of the bell and the chant, “May the merits of this practice benefit all beings and bring peace.” Almost immediately, one Rainbow friend volunteered to make the paying-respects-to-all-our-ancestors part of our Opening Statement more inclusive. A few wanted to put up more Rainbow Sangha flyers in more places around town or share additional queer Buddhist readings for future gatherings. Another excitedly agreed to steward Rainbow Sangha emails.

Talk about feeling love and support.

How can we be both tender and liberated?

I’ll end with some words from the book Kylie and I (well, OK, mostly I, with some input from Kylie) chose to read for our first several Rainbow Sangha gatherings: The Way of Tenderness: Awakening through Race, Sexuality, and Gender, by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel. It’s one I’d recommend to everyone, including our straight and cis-gendered Sangha friends. Manuel is a Soto Zen priest who writes from her lived experience as a queer Black woman. These passages speak to so much of what this whole Rainbow Sangha journey has awakened in me, from waking up to the nonbinary-ness within me through meditation to the emergence of the Missoula Rainbow Sangha:

We may feel that [awakening] cannot exist within conflict, strife, or pain. We may not feel spiritual awakening is accessible where there is difficulty, suffering, or hardship. Many feel it almost certainly cannot be found amid social struggles related to race, sexuality, and gender. Some may believe that the indignation, ire, and anger that motivate movements of protest only move us “backward” or away from what is more profound about our lives.

But if we were to simply walk past the fires of racism, sexism, and so on because illusions of separation exist within them, we may well be walking past one of the widest gateways to enlightenment. It is a misinterpretation to suppose that attending to the fires of our existence cannot lead us to experience the waters of peace.

Profundity in fact resides in what we see in the world. Spiritual awakening arrives from our ordinary lives, our everyday struggles with each other. It may even erupt from the fear and rage that we tiptoe around. The challenges of race, sexuality, and gender are the very things that the spiritual path to awakening requires us to tend to as aspirants to peace.

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At Open Way Sangha, we rotate who leads our weekly meditation and mindfulness practices, and who gives the monthly practice talk. (Just like it sounds, a practice talk is a talk about our mindfulness practice. :+) Last week it was my turn to offer the talk again, and I gave what feels like my most vulnerable talk yet.

The audio recording is below, followed by the written version, which I began with before offering it as a talk and then edited a little to better reflect what I actually said in the moment. The two versions aren’t identical, but they’re pretty close. So you can listen or read. The talk arose out of my practice with Larry and Peggy Ward’s Inner Sangha talks and meditations, which I highly recommend.

Gratitude to Open Way Sangha for trusting me to share my practice and experiences. You can find this and many other talks offered at Open Way, Be Here Now, and other Montana Sanghas on the Montana Open Way SoundCloud page.

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Dear Thầy, Dear Sr. Chân Không,

Dear Sangha, Dear Friends,

By which I mean, gratitude to all my teachers. By which I mean, gratitude to everyone who is part of my life’s journey and therefore is one of my teachers.

Thank you all for being here tonight.

Recently, some Sangha friends hurt me with their words and actions.

This simple statement may have brought up some discomfort in you. Maybe you’re wondering, “Was I one of the people who hurt Terri?” Maybe you’re looking around the room thinking, “Who was it?” Or asking yourself: “Why is Terri bringing this up in a practice talk?”

If you’re having any uncomfortable feelings at all about me saying that some Sangha friends hurt me recently, I encourage you to simply sit with that discomfort. Maybe later, after this talk, you can look more deeply into it. But for now, just notice.

The reason I mention the hurt I experienced is because it’s the starting point of the story I’m about to tell. It’s not the point of the story; it’s simply the beginning. And I can’t tell that story without being honest about where it began.

It’s pretty much a Buddhist truism that there is no happiness – or transformation – without suffering. Well, a few months ago, I was very much suffering. Struggling with my practice, and really questioning everything. Why am I practicing? Why am I part of this Sangha? What is the point of all this meditating and mindfulness together if we’re still causing harm to one another?

As I sat with all of this, I remembered that one of our beloved lay Dharma teachers in this tradition, Larry Ward, put out into the world a series of talks on our Inner Sangha not long before his death last year. And here I also want to offer gratitude to another lay Dharma teacher, Valerie Brown, for introducing me to Larry’s Inner Sangha offerings in a talk she gave in December 2025.

At the time, I was still making my way back to Missoula from Deer Park Monastery. Still processing my year at the monastery, and still very much excited about returning to Missoula and Open Way. So I didn’t feel like I needed the Inner Sangha teachings at that time. I watched the first of the five installments and I told myself I’d get to the rest later.

Inner Sangha as refuge

Flash forward to early May of this year. My personal practice had been feeling flat and uninspired for almost two months at that point. And I’d been struggling to be here with Open Way for about the same amount of time. Then, from out of where I do not know, I remembered: The Inner Sangha! If I can’t seem to find comfort in the “Outer” Sangha, maybe I’ll find some in my Inner Sangha! That feels safer!

Over the next month, I listened to all five of Larry’s Inner Sangha talks, along with five corresponding guided meditations offered by Peggy Ward, another wise Dharma teacher in our tradition and Larry’s spouse. If you haven’t listened to these, I highly recommend them! They’re all here on the Plum Village app.

The series helped me bring my most open, curious self to investigate and get to know better my Inner Sangha – which is basically all the beings who have shaped me, and who may come to me with words of wisdom in times of need or struggle or questioning. These beings include those I’ve known personally and those I’ve never met. Beings who have been alive within my lifetime and those who died hundreds or thousands of years before I was born.

Some of these beings also come to me with words of not-wisdom-at-all. Because we don’t get to choose who’s in our Inner Sangha. (So, in some ways, it’s not as safe in here as I wanted to believe.)

My Inner Sangha includes all the people and places and more-than-human beings who’ve touched me and influenced me. And it’s up to me to decide who I want to listen to at any given moment. To know which members of my Inner Sangha are offering me wisdom I want to heed, and which members I want to offer compassion and maybe a cup of tea to, but not allow them to run the show.

Caretakers

This is where our Inner Sangha CTC comes in. CTC stands for Caretaking Council. Open Way has a CTC that takes care of the building and the finances and the general health of the Sangha and the Mindfulness Center. All the monasteries and lay Sanghas within the Plum Village tradition have CTCs, too.

Just like in our “Outer” Sanghas, our Inner Sangha Caretaking Council is ideally composed of some of our wisest and most compassionate teachers. Those we feel safe with and can put our trust in.

Like Other Sangha CTCs, Inner Sangha CTCs change over time. Because the wisdom I need today is not the same wisdom I needed five years ago, or the wisdom I will need this Fall. The beauty of my Inner Sangha CTC is that it can change along with me. Sometimes, I need to be held with compassion, told how much I am loved. Other times, I may need a gentle shake to wake me from a lack of awareness or understanding.

Beginning to understand my whole Inner Sangha, and all the teachers who have shaped me became, pretty naturally, a practice of gratitude. Because, again, when I say teachers, I mean everyone who is part of my life’s journey. Whether skilled or unskilled, wise or not-yet-wise, I have absorbed lessons, perceptions, and very real parts of myself from every one of them.

Cultivating my Inner Sangha CTC became a practice of joy. Gratitude times 10. Because here I got to choose, from among the thousands of teachers within me, the beings from whom I currently felt the most support. The most compassion. The most wisdom. The most love.

To help explain, here are some of the teachers I asked to serve on my Inner Sangha CTC back in May. (Lucky for me, they all agreed.) I honor each of them by naming them here.

• Mamma – (For those of you who don’t have family from Appalachia, that’s Grandma to you.) Our Mamma was a true WWJD Christian who approached everyone she knew with an open heart and a true desire for understanding. Mamma was both kind and firm when she needed to be. She didn’t shy away from a conflict, and she approached conflicts with love.

• Mr. Minella – My fifth grade teacher. The first adult I remember who showed up as his full, authentic self even when that wasn’t popular. Mr. Milella was gentle and joyful. He also read Rohl Dahl books to us every day after lunch.

• Lake Otsego – The lake in Northern Michigan that my family visited nearly every summer for the first 12 or 13 years of my childhood. Lake Otsego held me when I needed to be held, and taught me that cleansing waters are often supported by thick muck you could sink waist-deep into when jumping off the dive platform. (No mud, no tadpoles or crayfish to catch!)

• The Clark Fork River. I’ll share more about my relationship with the Clark Fork in a minute.

• Thich Nhat Hanh, who forged the Plum Village tradition that I’m now part of out of great compassion born from great personal and societal suffering during the wars in Vietnam.

• Sister Thanh Sơn, who offered me her wisdom with honesty, love, so much humor, and genuine care for me as a person.

• Sister Ân Hạnh, who is skilled at balancing deep reverence for the practice with understanding for our imperfections AND a knack for having unconventional and uproarious fun.

• My current Inner Sangha CTC also includes Mt. Sentinel, the Colorado Desert of Southern California, four dogs – Fisher, Ginger, Roxy, and Piper – and other spiritual teachers, including Ruth King, Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Mary Oliver.

Love and harm

Then I got to the part of the Inner Sangha journey where Peggy Ward asks us, in a guided meditation, to pose a question to one of the members of our Inner Sangha CTC. Any question, any CTC member. Without much thought at all, a question I hadn’t even known was there popped into my head: “How do I love those who have hurt me?” Pretty quickly after that, I knew who I would ask: the Clark Fork River.

The Clark Fork River has been one of my greatest teachers since I moved to Missoula in 2016. I came here to earn a master’s degree in Environmental Studies at UM, and my studies centered around community-based conservation – how people with widely different views and backgrounds can come together to heal and protect a place they love.

The place I focused on happened to be the Clark Fork River and their banks just upstream from Frenchtown, at the river’s confluence with O’Keefe Creek. This is where the Smurfit-Stone pulp and paper mill operated from 1957 until January 2010, providing an economic engine to the Frenchtown community before leaving behind nearly 2,000 acres of industrial waste treatment areas, as well as cancer-causing contaminants and heavy metals. It’s also where a group of concerned citizens was beginning to form a Community Advisory Group in hopes of shaping the clean-up of the land and water.

As many of you know, the Smurfit-Stone mill site isn’t the only part of the Clark Fork that we’ve harmed. From the copper mines in Butte to the Anaconda smelter to the old Milltown Dam to all the urbanization right here in downtown Missoula, we and our colonial ancestors have caused harm and used the Clark Fork as a dumping ground for a couple centuries now. We still use that copper from the Berkeley Pit in Butte in our homes and our electronics and even our solar panels. We’ve altered the flow of the Clark Fork with our roads and railroads and towns. We have hurt that river a LOT!

And yet, the Clark Fork River loves the heck out of us! They embrace us as we float and play in their waters. As we run and ride our bikes along their banks. The Clark Fork welcomes us when we go down to the water to admire the wildflowers each spring, to cool off in the summer, and to watch the herons fish from the ice floes in winter. I believe the Clark Fork also loves us for all the work we’ve done as a community to repair the harms we’ve caused to them in the past.

When I thought of who on my Inner Sangha CTC to ask: “How do I love those who have hurt me?” there was no conscious part of me that was thinking of all this. But my love and respect for the Clark Fork just bubbled up in that moment, and I knew who to ask.

Now, the Clark Fork didn’t answer me with words. Instead, as I visualized the river flowing, the Clark Fork’s answer simply arose within me. The words I’m about to say are the best way I can explain it: “Just Flow. No matter what anyone throws at you. Stay true to your path. Travel with ease around the obstacles. And by continuing to flow through life as your true, authentic self, you’ll have more capacity to nourish yourself AND those who’ve hurt you. Without even trying. And without abandoning yourself or your feelings, either.”

And guess what, Friends? In that moment, the Clark Fork reminded me of my Dharma name, Flowing Spring of the Source. Another one of my beloved teachers, Rowan Conrad, gave me that name when I formally received the Five Mindfulness Trainings.

And that isn’t even the end of the story! Well, probably there is no end, but I am getting to a stopping point.

After I finished that Inner Sangha meditation, I practiced the Five Earth Touchings. With the first three we offer gratitude to our blood ancestors, our land ancestors, and our spiritual ancestors – basically, our Inner Sangha.

The Fourth Earth Touching begins: “In gratitude and compassion, I bow down and transmit my energy to those I love.” The Fifth Earth Touching begins: “In understanding and compassion, I bow down to reconcile myself with all those who have made me suffer.”

So I’m lying on the ground in child’s pose doing my best to reconcile myself with all those who have made me suffer. And I’m still absorbing the Clark Fork River’s words of wisdom. And suddenly, this came to me: “Oh! The people I love and the people who have hurt me are the same people!” And then, “Oh! I’ve hurt the people I love, too.”

It’s hard for me to put into words how this understanding hit me in the moment, but it’s something I’ve come back to again and again in the weeks since I felt it. And I’m still sitting with it and unravelling it. It’s become like a series of koans:

Are the people I love and the people who make me suffer different? Am I different from the people causing harm in the world? Am I separate from the harm that is caused in the world?

Co-creating one another

As I’ve looked more deeply into all of it – all my ancestors and all the teachers in my full Inner Sangha (not just the ones I’ve chosen to be there), and all my varied experiences with all of them – I also remembered some wisdom from a lay friend I met at Deer Park Monastery, Shannon. Shannon once told me their practice has been fundamentally changed by imagining, every time they interact with someone, that that person’s ancestors are surrounding them and fully participating in the conversation.

I don’t know about you, but that imagery helps me a lot with cultivating understanding and compassion for myself and everyone around me.

A little over a month ago now, just a few days after all these little revelations, I showed up here on a Tuesday night, as usual, and felt genuinely safe and happy to be here – for the first time in, honestly, a couple months. It was like my Inner Sangha CTC had helped me find a light switch in a dark room. Nothing had changed, except my own understanding, because I could see a little more clearly.

And, fascinatingly, the week after I felt this shift in myself, magical shifts and transformations began to happen in our Sangha, too. And it was wild to observe those shifts. Because it was like, wait, did my new understanding and perspective cause these shifts to happen? Was I only able to see them after I loosened my grip on my suffering? Is this yet another example of how we all inter-are?

The only thing I do know is that my Inner Sangha is here with me, and all of your Inner Sanghas are here with you, too. Sometimes they offer us precious words of wisdom. Sometimes they give us some bum advice. And they’re always leading us toward what interbeing really feels like – if we’re willing to listen.

We are, quite literally, co-creating one another. My Inner Sangha is showing me how I can show up here, in this incomplete, imperfect, beautiful body within this incomplete, imperfect, beautiful Sangha, and keep flowing.

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I’ve been receiving so much love and support lately, including from all of you. It was refreshing to take a break here last week and engage more fully in other heart-work, including Sangha service and the June poetry bouquet below. (And I did go backpacking for a few days – just not the weekend I’d planned, because it was again pouring rain, and even I don’t love clouds that much!)

I trust that both lightness and darkness are making their way into (y)our world wherever you may be reading from right now. It is the same here, on Salish and Kalispel lands. I hope you are feeling the courage and grace and love welling up in our communities alongside the darkness. Please know I’m sending all that love right back out to you!

With a deep bow,

Terri

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After Three Days of Steady Rain

We sit in the park
on picnic tables and blankets,
wet wood and soil and grass
soaking into our underwear,

and we sing.

We sing of rivers
and the feeling of being held.
Of holy breath
and burdens eased,
and who we will be when we reach the sea.

We call forth the light
in each of us,
and as our harmonies swell,
the sun emerges,
flooding 30 shining humans
with warmth.

Something Shiny - Part 1

I’m still getting this down –
the noticing and attention
that poetry requires of me.

Still learning the art
of transforming
clunky, inadequate words
into something beautiful.

Of turning barely legible handwriting
into something
shiny,
precious,
and free.

Something Shiny - Part 2

If someone hadn’t thrown to the ground
a red candy wrapper,
if I hadn’t stooped to pick it up,
I never would’ve seen
the pale mushroom,
circumference upturned,
emerging from the damp earth.

After Four Days of Steady Rain

A familiar side path –
stealthy accomplice –
beckons me down
to the swollen Clark Fork River,
and into the green, green, green
of Oregon grape and False Solomon’s Seal and grasses beyond naming,
all still droplet-covered,
soaking my shoes and socks.

The path is more overgrown,
and goes further,
than memory holds,
and still it leads me to the place where,
once,
I released
long inches of hair to the flow,
hoping the strands might be a gift
to nesting birds or mice or squirrels,
since they were no longer of use to me.

Today the wide gravel bar
from which I released
part of my self
into the wild
is submerged,
willows waving in the current.

The water
remakes this place –
mostly slowly,
sometimes suddenly –
and also me.

Hanging Laundry

Thick cottonwood seeds
dance a fluffy June two-step
with the socks on the clothes line.

Non-Quilting

I used to save 
T-shirts from races and events.
Textiles from places I’d lived, or visited.

I moved them with me
from place to place to place,
imagining one day I would create from them
(or ask someone else to create from them)

a quilt,
summarizing
all my most important and transformative life experiences.

Instead, all that cloth
grew heavy, bulky,
as I carried it from the past to the future.

And probably I was never going to make that quilt.
And maybe I didn’t need all this fabric
to remind me where I’d been.

So I kept a few shirts
(to actually wear),
gave away the colorful wraps,
and donated the rest.
And now I am lighter, and freer,
with the vastness of life’s experiences
compactly within.

They/Them/We/Us

We contain multitudes.
All our ancestors – 
land, blood, spiritual –
carry us forth,
to this precipice.

And the next
And the next.

Shape us.
And make us

more of who we truly are.

They are here with us still.
differently gifted and abled,
happy and hurting and healing.
All adding a little something,
urging us onward.

Of course we inhabit
countless identities.
Contrasts.
Contradictions.

Even this poem
required three different pens for the writing.
A new one stepping in
each time the ink on another ran dry.

Talkative

How many words per day
escape my mouth?
How many of those words
really are escaping?
And how many would be quite happy
to stay put?
Finding safety
and refuge
and ease
in not going out into the world?

The Search

Somewhere in these woods,
at the base of a stump
from an old Ponderosa Pine –
or maybe a Doug Fir –
is a pile of rocks
collected from across the country,
then deposited, lovingly,
at the edge of a parcel of land
where friendship and practice take root.

We walk the hillside
looking for these travelers.
It’s only been two years.

Yet somehow, they’ve vanished.
Maybe covered by the squirrels’
discarded pine cone scales.
Maybe scattered
by snow and rain – nature’s movers and shakers.
Maybe our friend has simply forgotten
the cherished stones’ resting place.

They are here somewhere, though,
these pieces of what are now
California, New Hampshire, Wyoming, Oregon.
Transported here to Montana,
as mysterious in their departure as in their arrival.

Rich, Indeed

Today I watched
an osprey, riding the wind above the Clark Fork River,
reading the depths for a meal.
A day-old fawn camouflaged
in a carpet of pine cones and needles.
Tiny lilies,
their insides adorned
with purple hairs.
Four colorful paragliding sails,
carving the blue sky above the mountain.
All in one day I remember:
I am rich, indeed.

Ravens and Roses

The Ravens click and caw from branch-perches and from the air.
The Wild Roses lure with perfumed petals.
The Mushrooms flash colors: orange, pink, white –
the Lupine and Paintbrush and Arnica, too.
Loudly, softly, or silently,
everyone is calling for attention.
Or maybe, simply,
for space to be who each is meant to be.

Shifting Haiku

Behind the downpour,
partly cloudy sunset hues.
This storm won’t last long.

Inside the Warehouse

Hundreds of red and white reflectors
flash from the dark.
The shimmering possibility

of bicycles
waiting for the right person
to work and will them back to life.

Opening

The top of my old green thermos
sometimes gets stuck.
Mis-threaded.
For years when this happened,
I wrestled with it. 
Turning and turning and probably damaging the threads,
probably making it worse,

until one day,
I walked away

and returned a few minutes later
to find the cap had released,
all on its own.

Now I know: this works every time.

Maybe it’s like that with the ways I tried to fix you,
struggling with something
that may or may not have been a problem.

How one day I just let go,
and something shifted.
Not in you, but in me.
I stepped away,
and there was this release.
This opening.

Urban Oasis

Nestled between the parking lot
and the two-bedroom units
are the only two conifers in sight.
Native siblings –
a Doug Fir and a Ponderosa Pine –
who I visit often,
as an ordinary part of my day.

Then one morning
I shared the canopy
with a spotted fawn –
one day old, maybe two –
resting on the needles and cones.
Abdomen rapidly rising and falling.
Otherwise perfectly still.

This soft-earth,
urban oasis -
wilder than I imagined.

Rain + Time + Patience

Steady pattering of water,
+ time
+ patience,
become rising rivers,
overflowing banks,
liberatory experience.
Soaking into my core.

Red

Ruby red streaks
in the nectarine’s flesh
and the edges
of the exposed center stone.

Mixed, now, with ruby red blood
released from an unmindful slice.

Later, wound bandaged,
the taste of iron and sweetness
mingle in the oatmeal.

Exploring Pronouns

Cracks open worlds of certainty
as They take on layers and shades of meaning,
and We expand and make space
for the multitudes within Her
within Zim,
within all of Us.
As we become
both subject and object.
Ambiguous.
Interwoven.
Inseparable.

Thumb Gratitude

Carefully lifting one digit away each time I wash dishes,
chopping vegetables minus one phalange
struggling to find a firm grip on my free weights, the cast iron, the wash cloth.
Typing on my phone? Do-able, with effort.
Flossing? Impossible!

Dear Thumbs, I’ve never appreciated you so much
as when one of you is out of order.

Welcome Excuse

The rain fell all day,
and I thoroughly enjoyed

the recliner

and the joy

of the great indoors.

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Next week I will be taking a break from writing here. I’m planning a four-day backpacking trip (if the weather cooperates 🤞). I’ll also be working on a practice talk for Open Way Sangha in early July. Both will take up some of my usual blog-writing time. So you won’t see a post from me next Thursday. If you’re in need of a Messy Middle Way fix, you can always check out previous posts on the website. 😀 I hope you’re enjoying some summer breaks, too!

Love, Terri

Kissing the Earth

During walking meditation,
we kiss the Earth with our feet,
I explain to a friend.

‘Can we kiss loudly?’ she asks,
and I imagine the soles of our feet
planting big smackers into the soil,

as we run downhill,
toes insistent,
chests heaving,
arms entangled in trees
and mosses and rivers and wind.
Making out with Mother Earth.
Embracing all
that is.

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If you appreciate these free weekly posts and want to offer support, you can sign up for a paid subscription here, or make a donation at the Buy Me a Coffee (or Tea!) site or through Venmo (terrifnichols). And you can always do the free subscription thing here to receive these writings in your inbox. I’m so happy you’re here!

“You hike like someone’s chasing you,” Sarika tells me. It feels like a judgement. And an accurate observation. “Just my demons!” I joke. We’re hiking up toward Escondido Rock with a few other lay friends staying at Deer Park Monastery and, as usual, I am close to leaving everyone else in the dust.

As far as I could tell, I was the fastest hiker in Clarity Hamlet for the entire year I lived there. At least among the monastics and any lay friends who stayed more than a week or two. The people I run and hike with here in Missoula are mostly much speedier than I – very capable of leaving me in the dust. The monastery, on the other hand, seemed to attract people who like to take it slow. Go figure.

Before I went to Deer Park, I was running ultramarathons – running up trails like the one Sarika and I were now walking up. Hiking at the monastery was a huge change of pace for me. And I’m not even talking about walking meditation, which I’ll get to in a minute. I just mean going on a regular hike and having to moderate my pace to stay with the group.

Walking meditation with the Sangha

Fast-forward about 19 months, and I am leading a group of Missoula Open Way Sangha friends up a local trail in silence. We are walking very, very slowly.

We began our mindful hike by gathering in a circle, where I gave my best, monastic-inspired description of walking meditation:

• This is an opportunity to take our practice out into the world.

• We follow our breath and match our footsteps with our breath.

• Just as we do when we walk in slow, small circles during indoor walking meditation at the Mindfulness Center, we can take each step as if we are kissing the Earth. Walking outside makes this practice more tangible.

• We will make several stops along the way to our destination, both to make sure we stay together and to allow us time to enjoy the views, the wildflowers, and the beauty of nature around and within us.

• It will take us about 45 minutes to reach the shady spot where we’ll then practice sitting meditation for 10 minutes.

• We will remain in silence until we end our 10-minute sit.

Yes, I am capable of walking slowly, I told our friends, who know me and my energy levels and have their doubts. I swear.

In fact, we take an even more leisurely pace than I’d envisioned. It’s hot, and we’re in full sun, and the route is all uphill. I turn regularly to walk backwards – another joyful habit I acquired from the Sisters in Clarity Hamlet. I do this because it slows me down. Because I enjoy it. And because it helps me keep track of where everyone is and see when a break might be needed. We take more breaks than I’d envisioned.

I pause to admire the white tips of the purple vetch flowers. The impossibly tiny yellow flowers dangling from the tips of the smooth brome. I try not to call them “weeds” or “invasives” in my head. (I didn’t use these names at our opening circle, either, when I talked about taking time to enjoy the wildflowers.) I remember they are now part of this place, just as we are.

Choices

A cascade of yellow mustard, purple vetch,
red-brown cheatgrass, and the occasional magenta bloom of thistle
covers the western slope of Mt. Sentinel.
Other words for this abundance of color spilling down the mountainside?
‘Weeds.’ ‘Non-native.’ Sometimes even ‘Invasive.’
We could place these labels on
the majority of humans in this valley, too.
Most of us are not native to this place.
In some ways we are very invasive,
with our huge homes and big-box stores and cars and roads and dams and parking lots.

And yet.
With our feet grounded to this Earth, to this place,
whether by history or personal decision,
we choose what to propagate
with our blossoms and seeds.
Beauty and ease? Or urgent rushing?
A greedy takeover of the hillsides?
Or an expansive welcoming
of all we share?

It takes us nearly an hour to reach our destination, and I consider stopping short. Our friends are visibly sweating, and a couple people look like they’re struggling. But I continue to see everyone smiling at the views, pointing out interesting insects, watching the deer and enjoying the birdsong. And I know everyone will appreciate the shade of the Ponderosa Pine we’re nearing for our seated meditation. So I carry on. Slowly.

I thoroughly enjoy the entire experience. I have no urge to hike my usual pace, no urge to rush or to hurry. I love walking slowly and mindfully, sharing steps and breath with a group of friends. This is so much easier to do – and so much more pleasant – when I am with the Sangha and we all have the same simple goal: Presence. We carry one another along, even in the blazing heat. The beauty of the seven humans walking with me is as striking as the beauty of the forested slopes and snow-covered peaks in the distance.

I first learned these lessons at Deer Park, where I practiced walking meditation almost daily. Most days with the Sisters in Clarity Hamlet, as one drop in a stream of brown robes, and once a week with all the monastics as well hundreds of lay friends who came to visit for Days of Mindfulness. One drop in a lazy, meandering river. I also sometimes led walking meditation for lay friends only, on days when we practiced separately from the monastics. I found the beauty of flowing together as a river.

Side note: I also learned to love not having to struggle to keep up with the fast people. It was kinda nice to not be the slowest hiker all the time.

Presence and ease

Less helpfully, I began to see walking meditation – or even hiking slowly with the Sisters – as different from my extracurricular running and hiking. This was largely due to the impression I got that certain people didn’t think my running and fast hiking were particularly mindful.

Sometimes, they were right. It is absolutely possible for me to race uphill while barely noticing anything around me. Just like it’s possible to sit in meditation and let my thoughts carry me away the whole time.

It’s especially easy to lose my awareness while racing uphill and talking with a friend. Numerous hiking and running buddies have told me they are perfectly capable of holding a conversation and hiking and still being present to the wildflowers and the scenery and the conversation, all at once. This remains nearly incomprehensible to me. Whatever the opposite of a multi-tasker is, that’s me. Engage me in conversation while on the trail, and I will miss most of the scenery. Or not pay attention to anything you’re saying. I can only do one thing at a time.

All of that changes when I introduce silence. When I’m by myself, I can be fully present in my body. I can move – even quickly – in rhythm with my breath. I am aware of the beauty within me and around me.

When I walk or hike in silence in a group, a whole new level of presence and ease emerges. The whole Sangha is breathing with me. Enjoying the birdsong with me. Kissing the Earth with me. Carrying me along. In some ways, I feel more present – and more free – walking in silence with the Sangha than I do when I’m alone.

I received a master class in this type of flowing presence when I was at Deer Park. Our mindful Open Way Sangha hike is a reminder.

The idea that I cannot be mindful while moving quickly is a wrong view, to be sure. There doesn’t need to be any distinction between walking meditation, fast hiking meditation, and running meditation. For me, the last two simply require a stronger practice, because I can feel, strongly, that the faster my body goes, the faster my mind goes.

There is nothing wrong with racing up a hill, if my body is up for it. When I began to see that at the monastery, my whole practice – and a lot of the internal conflicts I felt between hiking with other humans and hiking by myself, at “my” pace – evaporated.

I’ll leave with one last poem – one I wrote in July 2025, during a time of big transformation for me at the monastery, when I began to trust my own practice and to let go of some of the judgments I’d unknowingly absorbed about what may or may not be mindful.

Good for my practice

I am tired of questioning
whether running is
‘good for my practice.’
Whether I am mindful enough
as I travel quickly through the chaparral,
over boulders and sand.

Am I mindful enough doing anything?

I love running.
Love the feeling.
Love exploring new trails.
Love covering long distances on foot.

Breath, footsteps.
Breath faster, breath slower.
Up and down, in and out of fog.

I notice my spiraling thoughts.
I come back.

To the flowering buckwheat.
The monkey flowers.
The field of yellow mustard
and the electric-green wetland meadow.
Rocks and ridges rising out of the mist to infinity.

Feeling my body.
Expanding my lungs.
Drawing in deeply.

If this isn’t mindfulness,
I don’t know what is.

Next up is Stacey’s new bike – a fixer-upper available through Free Cycles’ Build-a-Bike program, where anyone can volunteer for 90 minutes, pick a used bike from the warehouse, and make it into a reliable ride with help from Free Cycles staff, tools, and shop space. Stacey tells me her car recently broke down, and she doesn’t have the money to fix it. She needs a reliable commuter bike to get to her job at Taco John’s. Luckily Alex’s school is on the way, so they can bike together and she can drop him off.

I am keenly aware that, between Stacey’s volunteering and the bike repairs, she and Alex have already spent a large chunk of her day off at Free Cycles. If she sticks with me, she might well spend most of it here. I approach one of my more experienced co-workers and ask if they’d mind helping Stacey with her bike, which will need more work than Alex’s. They agree.

But when we walk over to the bike station together and I tell Stacey that working with someone else will get her on her way more quickly, her face shows disappointment. “But we want to work with you!” she exclaims. I am touched. And more than happy to keep working together.

Surprisingly, at least to me, we spruce up Stacey’s new bike more quickly than Alex’s, even though it does indeed need more work. We’ve found our flow, having gotten to know each other’s communication and work styles. Stacey takes the bike out for a test ride and comes back with a big smile. We exchange high fives. Stacey and Alex roll their bikes out the door, happy and satisfied with a job well done. I grin and move on to the next station.

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‘This is so fun!

Some version of this happens over and over again in my new job, and apparently it needs to to make a decent dent in my self-doubt:

I’m feeling frustrated with how long it’s taking me to figure out why someone’s chain isn’t shifting properly. Or why their brakes keep rubbing on the wheel rims no matter what we do. Or why I cannot for the life of me remember anything about what I’ve learned about replacing bottom brackets or free wheels or all the other terms I’ve just learned within the past six weeks. I’m ready to give up and ask a more experienced co-worker, because I can’t find the right answer.

At that moment, the person I’m working with says: “This is so fun! I’m learning so much!” And I remember why we’re here: To learn from one another. To support healthy, sustainable transportation options. To slowly and sometimes awkwardly grow community in a drafty old warehouse space, and to make that space feel equally welcoming to the teenagers who come in to volunteer for school, our unhoused neighbors who bring in the bikes that are their lifelines, the men wearing black-and-white American flag baseball caps and aggressive tattoos, and all the regulars who come from all the diverse backgrounds you can imagine. We are here to get use-able bikes into the hands of people who need them, and to help all of us learn and grow.

We are NOT here for perfect bike mechanicking. It’s taken a while for this to sink in for me, and it’s still sinking. I still ask my co-workers for help a lot.

I like to think of myself as a creative, open-minded, expansive kind of person. In many ways that’s true. I also do a lot of binary, black-and-white, right-and-wrong thinking. (Aren’t we all just a big bundles of contradictions!) In spite of recently spending a year within all the imperfections of living in community at Deer Park Monastery – and nearly 10 years before that in the complex, consensus-based world of collaborative conservation in Montana – somewhere deep in my brain I maintain the illusion that there is such a thing as perfection with a fervor that continues to surprise me. (See, again, the characteristics of White Supremacy Culture.)

What I’m learning at Free Cycles is that bike mechanicking – like growing relationships and community – is an organic process. Sometimes there’s a clear answer for why your chain is skipping or your brakes are rubbing or you’ve had three flats in a month. Sometimes not. Sometimes the fix for your bike’s particular ailment is straightforward. More often, the cure involves a lot of experimenting. Go on a treasure hunt for the part you need, loosen this cable, tighten this screw, adjust this part, oil everything … then step back, take another look, and try something new.

It feels like community-centered bike mechanicking is literally changing the way my brain operates, allowing me to see the world with fresh eyes. It’s different from the ways meditation and mindfulness practice, or anything else, have changed my brain. Maybe it’s the working-with-my-hands thing. It’s a way of seeing that I’ve noticed in friends who are visual artists or who have other more hands-on-type jobs. Before Free Cycles, it completely perplexed me.

The stories we tell

Once upon a time, some adult told me I wasn’t good at mechanical things. I absorbed the message and carried it with me. It made sense within one of the primary narratives of my childhood: “Terri is booksmart, but they don’t have any common sense.”

I was a straight-A student who loved to read and dreamed of being a writer when I grew up. In our blue-collar family, where no one had a college degree and everyone worked for the auto companies or the service industry, I received a combination of praise for my “booksmart-ness” and eye-rolling for being a “know-it-all.” No one expected me to be good with my hands, so no one showed me how to be good with my hands.

I worked trails for a handful of seasons in my 20s and early 30s, but I always suspected I wasn’t very good at it, and I didn’t stick with it long enough for that to change. I’d internalized this message: If you’re not naturally good at something, you can’t just become good at it. You’ve either got it or you don’t. So I went back to jobs that focused on communicating, facilitating, organizing, coordinating – things that kept me in my comfort zone.

Even though the Free Cycles job called to me from the start, I had to downplay the bike mechanics part of it to myself to get myself to apply. There was a strange pull to this work that I didn’t fully understand. Yet, when it came time for our one-and-only official day of training, I listened to my brain tell me again and again: “You can’t do this! You’ll never be good at this! You’re not good at mechanical things!”” Thanks to my mindfulness practice, I noticed. Smiled to my fears. Told myself, “Terri, you got this! You can totally do this! You can learn how to do this!”

An extension of mindfulness practice

I’ve been telling myself that nearly every day since. As I use a wheel grinder for the first time to turn old wheel spokes into pokey tools that get into tight places. As I fix bike stands with old, punctured tubes and electrical tape. As, for about the 40th time, I help someone fix a flat, and, for about the 38th time, it doesn’t go as planned and now the brake is rubbing when it wasn’t before and now we have to fix that …

“Terri, you got this! You can totally do this! You can learn how to do this!”

As I coach a pair of seven- and eight-year-old siblings with no parental figure in sight through fixing up two bikes that they are so excited about, and then their aunt comes to pick them up and the bikes are still missing seats and they can’t fit the bikes in their vehicle and their aunt promises they’ll come back to get them but they never do, and I hope that, maybe, their afternoon of bike mechanicking and learning was enough.

As I work on a very rusty bike that needs a lot of work with a woman who is unhoused and doesn’t have a bike lock, and it’s $10 or 30 minutes of volunteering for the thick cable lock she wants, and she’d rather pay the $10 but her debit card isn’t working, so she goes out to find an ATM and insists she’ll be back and I set aside the lock for her with her name on it, but she never returns and I wish I’d just given her the darn lock, because it’s highly likely her bike will get stolen.

“Terri, you’ve done what you can. You tried. You are enough.”

It’s all an extension of my mindfulness practice – another step along the path of noticing my perceptions and attachments and save-the-world complexes and opening to new possibilities. Another way to continue letting go of certainty, perfectionism, and ideas of right and wrong. Another opportunity to choose which seeds to water – whether those are seeds of judgement and self-doubt or seeds of mindfulness, concentration, and insight.

Come to think of it, the progression of Mindfulness, Concentration, and Insight describes the process of fixing a bike just as well as it does meditation. Bike mechanicking at Free Cycles makes me want to add two additional steps: Tinkering and Transformation. There is no insight, and no transformation, without a lot of open-minded experimentation.

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Unintentional Haiku

Like any practice,
any natural process,
writing ebbs and flows

Dear Friends,

In March and April, my mindfulness and daily poetry practices both faltered. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. When I’m feeling frustrated and afraid, I tend to go inward. I become less aware of what’s going on outside this skin. Both mindfulness practice and poetry writing require noticing. They require stopping and looking deeply. And I wasn’t doing as much of that. I was questioning everything while feeling frequently irritated and angry, and slacking off in the looking deeply department.

The months between leaving Deer Park Monastery and settling into a stable home situation and a paid job were unpredictable, sometimes chaotic, and a little stressful. During that time, I’m pretty sure I clung to all the mindfulness practices as a kind of life raft – the one stable thing I had going in a sea of instability. Then I lucked into an affordable apartment, an amazing roommate, and a fabulous job. I was stable. And maybe I needed a break from the strict, still monastery-like mindfulness practice I’d been holding on to. Maybe I needed a reminder that, as I share in one of the poems below, everything can be a practice if I allow it to be.

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My mindfulness and poetry practices didn’t go away. They just went underground to rest and renew for a while. And I deeply believe that resting, renewing, and questioning all my habits and practices are all essential for sustaining a deeper commitment to my path for the long haul.

I can’t say what exactly it was that renewed my commitment to both looking deeply and daily poetry writing, but I have some guesses. One is: “Camping on the shore of two glacial lakes for five nights in a row.” Another is: “The deep gratitude of making it to age 49.” The third guess will probably end up in a post here after I’ve done a little more processing and sitting with and – ahem – looking deeply into it. Both renewals happened around the same time, in mid-May. Regardless of the whys, I know something deep within me missed feeling joy, so I scrounged some up through words and gentle remembering. Slowly, joy-spotting, as one of our Sangha friends likes to call it, returned naturally. Then, so did poetry.

Now, in that same spirit of gentleness, I’m giving myself grace for only making it about seven months with my practice of writing a poem a day. I’m also remembering that, despite the short poetry dry spell, I have continued writing something every single day for more than a year now. Since March 1, 2025! And that’s no small thing. And many of those writings are poem-like. ;+)

So even when I’m feeling uninspired, I’m still showing up. (That was kinda the point of starting this blog, too.) Through March and April and early May, I still meditated, still joined the Sangha most Tuesdays and Saturdays, still wrote, still noticed some things. My writing wasn’t the most inspiring it’s ever been, but that’s OK, too.

In celebration of continuing to practice and to write, and of my return to a more regular poetry-and-joy practice, here are some poems from May, from the before- and the after-inspiration times.

Love, Terri

During a Pause in Walking Meditation at Flathead Lake

Laying in this meadow, on the new spring grass,
occasionally dozing off,
one might forget everything but the softness, the sunshine,
the hands on heart and belly.

Luckily I remember, a minute or two in, to take off my shoes and socks
and to walk barefoot the whole way back,
thrilled that the soles of my feet remember this, too:
The texture of grass, Doug Fir cones, sticks, rocks, and,
near the very end, mud,
soft and cool and wet,
conforming to the shape of my toes.

The Noticing

The sun has not yet crested the ridge
above Tally Lake
and already the sounds of large trucks on the gravel road,
the beep beep beep of backing up
the crash of heavy machinery,
once of the earth,
slamming back into the earth.

Somehow, last night, I never saw the waning moon,
though I know she is still ⅔ full,
though I know she must have risen sometime in the night,
though I slept with the rain fly off,
only mesh and well-spaced larches above me.

Even with as much time as I’ve spent
living and sleeping outside the walls of buildings,
Some parts of me remain detached,
closed off,
to the subtleties of nature.
I can so easily miss the beauty,
tune out the soothing sounds.

Only the bang-crash of human civilization
is sure to catch my attention in an otherwise quiet place.
I know there is a metaphor here, somewhere,
for how I can ignore the soft, gentle voice inside me,
the tender feelings seeking my attention.
How it often takes a tidal wave of emotion crashing down around me
to get my attention.
How easy it is to wait for the dramatic
to take notice.

And yet,
last night, I watched the beaver skim the lake with their sleek bodies
and piercing black eyes.
Listened to the woodpecker, the loon, and the osprey.
Saw the purple and yellow violets peeking up from the forest floor.
Walked slowly back to my tent for the night,
silently singing praises to the Larch and Doug Fir.

Mindful Murder

Scrubbing plant crevices with rubbing alcohol
to remove tiny, armored insects
one by one
(or should I say, truthfully,
killing, killing, killing)
becomes an oddly meditative experience,

consumed as I am
by love for Jade,
this plant who’s been with me for nearly 10 years
(the first house plant I managed not to kill,
the first who thrived in my presence).

What else on earth would I do,
upon seeing a friend
covered with life-sucking insects I do not know,
or understand,
other than murder,
so my friend may live?

Partly Defended

Snowshoe hare bounds across my path,
then hides in the shrubs,
watching me as I watch her.

Brown body still sporting white-booted feet.
Mostly camouflaged in the brush,
but with a little vulnerability showing.
A flashing sign that says,
“See me! I am here!”
Dangerous.
And beautiful.

Cloud Gratitude

Here in Western Montana,
it’s common to refer to clouds and rain as “crappy weather.”
To exclaim over the beauty of a bright, cloudless day.

My relationship with the sun
is more complicated.
It has always felt to me
as if the sun requires something from me:
That I go outside.
that I be awake and productive.
Cheerful, even.

The clouds ask nothing of me.
They softly encourage me
to relax,
to go slowly,
to say no.
To be lazy, even.

Important Questions

What is this practice anyway?
Is it only sitting in meditation,
touching the Earth,
walking and eating slowly and mindfully?
Isn’t it also connecting with a friend?
Laughing uproariously?
Isn’t it also letting go on purpose
of the rules and restrictions
I place on myself?
And occasionally staying awake ‘til 11:30 pm,
reading a love story?

Mindfulness practice isn’t about tying myself in knots.
It isn’t about rules and regulations.
Or forcing myself to do “the right things.”
It’s about living, joyfully,
my own clinging to austerity and control (read: Safety) be damned.

In Between

The desire for community
and the desire to be alone
tug at me with equal force.

Each path with its own difficulties,
its own joys and rewards.

The loyal, dedicated Sangha builder
and the flaky, commitment-averse loner,
forever entwined in this fluid dance.
Now one leads,
now the other.

I drift toward the silence of forest monk
and gregariousness pulls me back.
I become overwhelmed with socializing,
and the wise sage
embraces me with quiet.

They are all within me.
Each saying, “Look deeply.”
“You contain multitudes.”
And "Each facet of your whole self
shines with its own beauty.”

The Ache

My brother needs to unload
some old family trauma.
And I need to walk,
with his voice in my ears,
and my phone in my pocket,
up the steep slope of Mt. Sentinel.

Dark clouds and sunshine play hide and seek.
Water runs in rivulets down the trail.
Thunderstorms flash in the distance,
traveling away from the town they’ve just pummelled.

I feel
the unease in me.
The restlessness.
The wonder.
The ache.

A Nap Instead

"How you do anything is how you do everything,"
a mentor once told me.
She meant it as a compliment.
She meant that I was reliable, diligent, persistent,
and thorough
in my cleaning of the yoga studio.
In how I showed up in class
and in my practice.
I felt pleased.

Now, years later, I see more
clearly
the blessing and the curse
of this statement.

As I push myself
in various ways,
to keep showing up,
even when I’m tired.

I do not give up while peddling
a heavy and unwieldy bike trailer
whose front tires are rubbing hard against the frame,
making the flats almost as slow as walking,
the uphills nearly impossible.
I do not turn around,
even when I must climb over dozens of large, downed trees
as I make my way up the trail.

I keep showing up
with my whole heart,
even when I fear I may fail.

These are all admirable traits,
and still …
do I want to do everything the way I do anything?
Or do I sometimes want to be
Less reliable,
Less diligent,
Less persistent,
Less thorough?

Maybe I want more nuance.
And the opportunity to say,
every once in a while:
"I’d like to give up now."
"I’d like to turn around."
"I’d like to let this one go."
"I’d like to take a nap."

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Last week, as a birthday gift to myself, I decided to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a while: Share some paragraphs and poems directly from my journal. An unfiltered, less crafted post. Then life got a little busier than I expected, and I didn’t find the time to strain over my unfortunate handwriting and type it into the laptop. So here, as a belated birthday gift from me to you and to myself, are some observations and notes and musings and poems from an overnight birthday backpacking adventure in the Bitterroot Mountains May 25-26.

Enjoy!

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Monday, May 25, 2026 – 6:29 pm, on the shore of Big Creek Lake

Sun is shining through clouds above Stormy Pass, illuminating a rapidly melting snow field and fueling at least three waterfalls down the granite cliffs on the other side of the lake, one of which is massive and, I imagine, would be tough to cross on that part of the trail. Which I didn’t visit, because 9.5 miles of not-so-well-maintained trail was enough for me today, on this second backpacking trip of the year.

So funny how, over and over again, I do some version of this: Plan to backpack just a few miles to the Blodgett waterfall and spend the afternoon reading and writing and relaxing, then change my mind because what if that trail is crowded or that one spot by the waterfall is taken and Hey! I could hike 10 miles up to a lake that will probably offer more solitude – and more challenging hiking … and I somehow can’t say no to a longer hike …

I’ll never know what actually happened up Blodgett, and I do kind of wish I’d had more time around camp (like I would’ve if I’d done a shorter hike), but overall I’m pleased with my decision. I do indeed have the whole place to myself, as far as humans go. And I took my time on the way up, stopping to admire the Cedars. (I forgot there were Cedars up here!) And the Trillium and Glacier Lilies and Fairy Slipper Orchids and Phlox. And the Larch and Yew and Grand Fir and Spruce and Doug Fir.

And so much water! Rushing through Big Creek and their tributaries. Making it impossible not to get my feet wet in places, but I didn’t mind. Icy foot-plunges were a good preview of my frigid dip in the lake after I arrived and set up the tent. (Fourth Spring lake plunge so far this year!) Of course that’s exactly when the wind picked up and the clouds thickened. And of course now the sun is shining on me and the rocks, so I keep layering and de-layering, layering and de-layering.

Which reminds me of the beautiful Spring weather throughout the hike. About halfway in, I watched dark clouds gather, both down in the valley and up toward the lake. But there were patches of blue all around, and it looked like any rain would pass quickly. So confident in this (and hungry) was I that I sat down to eat half a bag of potato chips even as a few scattered drops of water came down. A little further up the trail, after my snack, it actually sprinkled: A stunning, gauzy curtain through the larch and lodgepole pines, and still there was blue sky here and there, so there must’ve been a rainbow somewhere that I didn’t see.

I did see two snakes on the way up, and 10 humans heading downstream and out. And I didn’t think to bring underwear, which is making me a little nervous lest I have an urgent morning poop after eating an entire bag of potato chips with avocado oil over the course of the day. (Because I will surely finish the bag after dinner.)

As I often do on my birthday, I’ve felt incredible gratitude today, simply for still being alive. This time it hit me first while eating breakfast, still at home, as I realized I’ve now outlived my biological mom, Bev, by 18 years. And I’m only four years away from out-living my second mom, Sherry. I have no preview of what I’ll look like when I grow old. I have just a few photos of Bev, forever frozen at age 30 or 31. The last time I saw my dad, he was just 50. I’ve never considered this before, but how strange.

So much of my gratitude for simply being alive at age 49 comes from all the times I wished myself dead, and all the times I said, in my teens and 20s, “Carpe diem! I’d better do all the things now, because I could drop dead at age 31 just like my mom did!” (and secretly wanted that to happen.) I remember waking up on my 32nd birthday and looking in the mirror, stunned. Touching my face. Whispering, “I’m still alive.” In the lead-up to that birthday, I did sometimes wonder if I’d jinxed myself, and I found myself quite surprised at how happy I was that I hadn’t.

After meditation this morning I practiced a short version of the Five Earth Touchings, and that added to my gratitude. So much so that I had tears in my eyes for much of breakfast, feeling my ancestors with me, sharing the delicious and abundant oatmeal.

Stepping onto the trail, I tried something new, inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer and something someone shared at the recent Flathead Lake retreat with Open Way. I introduced myself, thanked the trees and the Earth for their presence, and vowed to do as little harm as possible and to share more joy than suffering along the hike. I did the same when I reached this campsite. I’ve always greeted the trees, but it’s surprising to me that I’ve never fully introduced myself and my intentions before.

Here, in no particular order, are some of the places my mind focused on as I walked for five hours from the trailhead to this beautiful campsite above some boulders sticking out into the lake:

• Imagining walking with Bev, and growing my relationship with her.

• Imagining walking with 3-year-old Terri, and 11-year-old Terri. Bold, curious, expansive, just before fear and depression became frequent companions.

• Random songs and scenes from Heated Rivalry.

• Plans for future backpacking trips.

• Come back, Dear Terri, come back! This moment is all we have. And what a beautiful moment!

• Ooooo! Snake! Orchid! Rain falling through Larch and Lodgepole Pines and sunlight! So beautiful!

• The new Larch needles are soooooo soooooft …

• It is getting harder for my body to contort into all the shapes and push my whole weight up with one arm and one leg like I need to do to get over all these downed trees … but I can still do it!

• Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude – for my life, my body, and all the people and conditions who’ve brought me right to this moment.

Now the sunlight is making the illusion (is it an illusion??) of a huge, semi-circular crack in the snow below Stormy Pass. And the shape is not shifting with the clouds. What could be causing that?

And those tiny birds – swallows? – threet, threet, threeting and skimming the surface of the water. I want to stay on this rock until the sun dips below the ridge, but I don’t know if I can stay awake that long. It’ll probably be another hour, and it’s already 7:30 pm! So late! (Thanks to the thick clouds, the sun disappeared at 7:45, so I didn’t have to wait. :+)

Also gratitude for my feet, who have retained a lot of the sole toughness they built up going barefoot at Deer Park and around camp on the Pacific Crest Trail – much more than I would’ve expected them to have over the winter.

I never get tired of watching storm clouds, and the swirls of rain they drop onto neighboring peaks and valleys as they make their way slowly towards me. But I do get sleepy …

Playing with the Storm

The rain is moving closer now,
from across the lake,
the clouds about to make good
on what they’ve been promising all day.

So I scramble around,
collecting from dead branches
clothes in various states of sweaty, wet, and damp,
and secure everything in the tent.

Then blue sky emerges,
with fluffy, non-threatening clouds.
The storm is gone, and I laugh.
The temperature has dropped,
but the rocks along the lakeshore are still warm under my bare feet.
So I stand and watch the sky a little longer.

Tuesday, 26 May 2026 – 5:49 am, on the shore of Big Creek Lake

Stunned by beauty yet again.

Rain on the tent last night, for the first time since Deer Park. First rain I’ve experienced backpacking since that HUGE storm in the Bob Marshall in July 2024. Clear sky this morning, and I’m thinking of Dabney, who was with me the last time I was here, in 2022, I think. Sending her love.

Slept like a rock last night among the rocks, but for the two times the Rain passed through. Lulled to sleep by the beautiful cadences of Chris LaTray’s One Sentence Journal, and the sound of that huge and distant waterfall. Awoke a little before 5 am with a very full bladder that didn’t even allow me to consider whether I had to poop, but I did. Climbed up the trail, then up some rocks, in the near dark. Found deep, rich, wet soil and apologized to the tiny plants I was about to dig up. And there was that song again from the monastery (which comes from the Gatha for Planting a Tree):

“I entrust myself,
I entrust myself,
to the earth,
to the earth,
and she entrusts herself to me.”

Pretty sure I’ll think of that for the rest of my life, anytime I’m digging a cat hole to poop in.

And now there are wispy clouds over Packbox Pass, and I’m remembering how, on the other side of that pass, Dabney and I found some of the least maintained trails I’d seen to that point, and slogged through thick brush and downed trees and then lost the trail altogether heading up toward Bear Creek Pass and actually had to use some orienteering skills, and how we eventually found our way back up and over the pass, stunning above Bryan Lake, but vowed to never trust the trails on the Idaho side of the Bitterroots again. (Though I continued to explore them on my own and continued to question my sanity each time.)

Just after I awoke this morning, eyes still closed, one hand on my heart-mind and one on my belly, I recited the Five Remembrances, which I’ve been doing most mornings. And I remembered, again, yes: “All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them. I inherit my actions of body, speech, and mind. My actions are my only true belongings. My actions are my continuation.”

One more deep breath, shared with Lodgepole Pines and Subalpine Firs. I am ready to get on the trail.

But wait!

And now the sun is shining on the snow field across the lake, and I can see clearly what wasn’t obvious last night: water is streaming in sheets down the rock nearly everywhere below those granite mountains. (And how can I leave now??) And I’m reminded of how, earlier this morning when I went to the water’s edge to rinse off my face in the cold, clear water, I slipped on these rocks, still wet from the night’s storms, and nearly fell into the lake. What a different morning that would’ve been!

Tuesday, 26 May 2026 – 3:02 pm, back at the trailhead

While looking down at my feet

A dark-brown-black, furry someone
leaps off a log along the trail ahead.
Not a skunk or a raccoon,
too big to be a squirrel. Definitely not a chipmunk.
Pine marten? Badger?
My imagination runs wild,
and I briefly curse my habit
of looking down at my feet (and the wildflowers!) as I walk.

The uncleared trail

When I first fell in love with hiking
and scrambling,
among the sandstone boulders of the Santa Ynez Mountains,
my brother came to visit,
took one look at my knees,
and asked: “How do you still have skinned knees at age 25?”

Now, on an early-season backpacking trip
in the Bitterroot Mountains
on my 49th birthday,
I hoist myself over Downed Spruce #35,
right leg and left arm
lifting my body and backpack
while left leg turns,
carefully but not gracefully,
180 degrees, and …
Smack!
My knee and a sharp stob make sudden contact,
adding to the 15 other scrapes and bruises
adorning my legs.

What can I do but laugh?
How does one navigate a world
full of sharp and scratchy obstacles
without some cuts and scrapes? A little blood?
What season of life is worth living
that doesn’t leave a few scars?

I carry on,
awkwardly thrashing
while I still can,
for as long as I can,
and the next day, on the hike out,
less than a mile from the trailhead,
I pass the trail crew
heading up,
saws and axes in hand,
and I thank them for their work,
and laugh to myself again,
because of course I have chosen
the uncleared trail
just before someone else makes it a little easier.

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This past week has hit me like a tornado. So many things happening, both out in the world and inside of me. (And I’m reminded again that these are not separate realms …) In the midst of it all, I took time for an overnight backpacking trip, a yoga class, a couple naps, and a difficult-and-important conversation with a friend. Because I’m getting better at taking care of myself, and I knew this was all important stuff.

I knew all these activities were cutting into my time to write here. I had a couple excellent ideas and wrote a ton in my journal, but somehow none of that made it to the laptop. And now here I am, Thursday morning, 90 minutes before my regularly scheduled posting time.

So this week, I’m doing a bit of reducing and re-using. Which we all know is beneficial to the health of the Earth and all of us, right? ;+) This is the original text from the second practice talk I gave at Open Way, “Finding Freedom in the Messy Middle Way,” back in June 2024. If you’d rather listen to an audio version that is not exactly true to the original text because I’m very much an ad-libber when I speak, here’s the link on Open Way’s SoundCloud page.

This talk is interesting to me for a few reasons. First, I offered it four months before I went to live at Deer Park Monastery, during another time of tumult and transition in my life. (Or maybe I should say, “during a time of mini-tumult-and-transition within this larger window of transformation I seem to have been in for a few years now.”) Second, this talk in a roundabout way led to the creation of this blog, since it was the first time I used the term “Messy Middle Way.” And finally, it speaks to how we continue to practice – and even to grow – when it feels like we’re totally backsliding. Or at least not making any “progress.” And wow if this doesn’t feel very much like where I’m at now, too.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this two years later. I hope you do, too.

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The talk

Thank you all for being here. Not just tonight, but every Tuesday. And sometimes Wednesdays, and Saturdays, and Sundays, too.

I told a friend recently that I feel like kind of a fraud being up here, giving a practice talk. I am not a member of the Order of Interbeing. I have read very few books about Buddhism. I just learned exactly what the Four Noble Truths are - the very foundation of Buddhist practice - about a month ago.

More than that, though, this past year – the same year in which I gave my very first practice talk, back in February – I’ve encountered the biggest struggles in my practice since I began meditating regularly about eight years ago. Certainly the biggest struggles I’ve had since I began sitting with Open Way Sanghas in 2018.

I can feel that those years of regular, steady practice, both on my own and with the Sangha, have been helpful. I know we practice in the relatively easy, peaceful times of our lives so that we have the practice to lean on when the trail gets rocky and the thunderstorms roll in.

And yet, this past year has still thrown me for a loop. I’ve experienced a lot of pain and suffering, and I have not been particularly skillful in engaging with that pain and suffering. Toward the end of last year, my two closest friendships ended, within just a few months of each other. Then in January, after six months of silence, one of those friends reached out with a very sincere apology that melted my heart and made me want to try again. Now we’re trying to repair our friendship, but I can’t seem to stop feeling angry, or to find forgiveness in my heart. It’s making me feel very un-Buddha-like, and I’m ping-ponging back and forth between thinking I “should” be more Buddha-like in this relationship, and then thinking, no, I just need to just cut and run, to protect myself. And then there are some family things that are a little too complicated and personal to explain here.

And amidst all of this -- in one of those wild, cosmic turns that practically shouts: “Everything is inter-connected!” -- I’ve been experiencing intermittent dizziness for almost exactly a year now. Sometimes it’s intense; more and more lately it’s just barely there, in the background. But it doesn’t seem to be going away.

So, in some ways, it makes sense that I would be struggling in my practice right now. I feel so tired that sleep sometimes feels more important than morning meditation, or coming to Tuesday night Sangha practice. More than that, though, I can’t seem to stop watering seeds of anger, resentment, and frustration in myself. I recently noticed that I’ve gone back to my old habit of clenching my jaw. And I cannot seem to eat a meal without picking up my phone and scrolling, as a way of distracting myself from what I’m actually feeling. Transforming suffering and finding joy have not been my strong suits lately.

But I am not a fraud up here. For one thing, in case you haven’t noticed, there’s no “up here” in this practice. We are all on equal footing. We are all, truly, in this together. And all giving a practice talk is about is sharing something we’ve learned from our practice, no matter where we’re at in that practice.

No “ta-da!”

I have this tendency – probably because our entire society has this tendency – to think that I don’t have anything worth sharing until I’ve made it through to the other side. ‘Til I can say, “Ta-da! The practice of mindfulness has cured me! My mind is as clear and calm as a cloudless sky. I am kind and generous with everyone I meet. I have achieved enlightenment!”

But how many of us can actually relate to that? Who here in the trenches of daily life with other humans, with suffering and aversion and joy and craving swirling all around us, can actually relate to that? Even if you’re not suffering in your personal life, there is so much suffering all around us.

After all, this practice is about transforming suffering. Without suffering, there is no practice. And just on the off chance that there’s someone in this room right now who, like me a month ago, doesn’t know exactly what the Four Noble Truths are, let me read them for you. (Here’s a link so you can read them yourself, if you’d like.)

So, really, this practice is all about being in the messy middle, with no “ta-da!” moment to share. It’s about finding a middle way through my strong emotions and unmindful speech and actions and anger and resentment, and finding peace anyway. Not in some grand epiphany that takes me out of that suffering forever and ever amen. But in small moments, wherever I can find them.

Freedom

I’ve heard a few people talk about having an awakening. Not too long ago, I thought, “I have no idea what they’re talking about. I’ve never experienced that. I just sit in meditation, over and over again, and I consider it a major accomplishment when I am actually present for 10 breaths in a 20-minute sit.” (And I do not mean 10 breaths in a row. Just any 10 breaths, anywhere in there.)

Then just recently I realized: oh, wait. Those 10 breaths – even that ONE breath – when I am right here. When I am aware that I am a human being who is breathing. That IS awakening. That IS enlightenment. So is the brief moment when I’m running or hiking and I notice the first coral root orchid I’ve seen this spring, and I stop and kneel down in awe to say hello. So is the moment when I am talking with my friend, and I am crying with hurt and rage and blame, and I look up, and I see his face, and I see that he is suffering, too. In those moments, no matter how fleeting they may be, I have arrived. I am home.

So yes: I am in the messy middle. I don’t have a “ta-da!” moment for you. What I do have is this: Every year, as we near the Winter Solstice, when the darkness is greatest, I choose a word. The word is simply an intention. A direction in which to move in the coming year. The meaning of that word, for me, almost always shifts and changes as the year goes on. Which is part of the beauty of this particular practice for me.

Near the end of last year, as I was deep in my own suffering, I chose my word: Freedom. Ironic, I know.

In these first five months of 2024, there have been so many times when I’ve wanted to make that word into something it’s not. To change the word “Freedom” to mean quitting my job and going to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. That would be freedom, right? Getting away from everyone and everything that is causing ME suffering, so I can find that enlightenment somewhere else.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with hiking the PCT. I may still do it. I hope I do. But I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that hiking by myself for three or four months will not in and of itself get me any closer to freedom. Freedom is being right here, in the messy middle of everything happening in my life, and finding those moments of “awakening” wherever I can. So I practice anyway. I show up to and for this Sangha anyway, even when being seen within this community feels scary and vulnerable and I’m afraid I’ll burst into tears when someone gives me a hug. I look for those moments of freedom wherever I can find them, inside myself instead of outside.

Freedom, for me, is practicing the middle way. Understanding that it’s OK – sometimes even helpful – to be a little less strict about my practice. To not be so hard on myself. To not berate myself when I need to sleep in and I skip seated meditation. To not berate myself for feeling angry or hurt or resentful. To not push away my feelings, no matter how much I do not want to be having those feelings. To not beat myself up, or call myself a fraud, when I still get lost in fantasies about getting the heck away from all of this.

Dharma doors

There’s this Buddhist teaching that I heard several years ago that’s been really helpful to me. It’s this concept that there are 84,000 Dharma Doors. In other words, 84,000 practices. 84,000 doors through which we might achieve enlightenment. Now, I don’t know why 84,000 and not 93,875, but for me, what the concept reminds me of is that, when I’m in the middle of suffering and struggle, I don’t have to cling to just meditation, or reading the Sutras, or any strict interpretation of the “right way” to find freedom.

I’m going to end with a little story about one of the many Dharma Doors that’s carried me through recently. Earlier this month, I was planning to camp in the Columbia River Gorge and do a whole lot of trail running on my way out to see our middle brother, Lee, in Oregon. And then I tore my calf muscle a little. And it was pouring rain in the Gorge. And camping without running didn’t seem appealing in any way. But neither did going back to work when I’d already turned off my computer and said: “It’s time for 12 days of vacation!” So I stayed in town, putting off the trip day by day, thinking maybe my calf would heal, maybe the rain would stop. It wasn’t all bad. I took a nap every single one of those days – and for the whole vacation, actually – and rest is also one of my practices lately.

Finally, though, Lee said, why don’t you just drive straight out here and stay a few extra days? I was wary. My brother currently lives in a one-bedroom apartment, and in the past we’ve struggled just being together for three days, nevermind a whole week. But we’ve been repairing our relationship, slowly and steadily over the past few years, and our last couple visits have been really good. And I was touched by his offer. So I drove out and spent an entire week with Lee and his three dogs, who are the Dharma Doors I’m about to tell you about.

If you open the weekly Open Way emails regularly, you’ve seen these three dogs from time to time, when I think maybe we need a break from all my photos of mountains and creeks and wildflowers.

Dora is a chihuahua mix. She is high-energy. Spunky. Dora lives her life on high alert: barking, barking, barking at the slightest noise or movement. She is ever-vigilant – always ready to protect her loved ones, whether or not that’s necessary, or even a healthy impulse. She reminds me a lot of me.

Bash is a dachshund. A little wiener dog. Bash is the sweetest. He is easily frightened. When there’s too much stimulation happening, he refuses to eat, or pee, or do anything, really, until things Calm. Down. Bash lives his life seeking love, affection, and a lap to cuddle in. He is perfectly capable of jumping up on the couch, but he will refuse, looking at you with the most mournful expression you can imagine until you sigh, pick him up, and put him in our lap. Bash reminds me a lot of me, too.

And then there’s Oscar. Oscar is 100% mutt. A small, scruffy ball of curiosity. Almost nothing ruffles Oscar. Dora starts barking, Bash joins in. Oscar looks around, sees nothing amiss, and goes back to his chew toy. Dora and Bash are taking up all the real estate in my lap. Oscar goes and finds a blanket to curl up in, perfectly content. Oscar was also the one who slept with me on the air mattress almost every night, perhaps grateful not to be fighting for a spot in Lee’s bed. I guess I’d have to say I aspire to be more like Oscar.

But here’s the thing. There is nothing wrong with any of these adorable little dogs. They are each perfect, just as they are. They have developed habit energies that have helped them survive hard times. Practices that, to some extent at least, work for them. Just like me.

Almost every morning of my stay with them, Lee would get up early to go to the gym or to work. And all of those little Dharma Doors, disturbed from their sleep, would pile onto the air mattress with me. Bash clamoring for my affection. Dora renewing her other life’s mission: To lick me inside my mouth. (Why do some dogs have to do that???). And Oscar, disturbed from his peaceful slumber just like me, nonetheless joins in the morning scrum of little dog excitement, climbing all over me with everyone else.

In that moment, Oscar, too, is like me. Because I am not annoyed in the slightest by being woken up early, or by the chaos of dogs climbing all over me. Or even by Dora’s fervent attempts to lick my mouth. I am not fuming with anger, or on high alert, or desperately seeking love, or approval, or enlightenment. I am not suffering. I am right here. Full of joy, without even trying. In this moment, brief and fleeting though it may be, I have arrived. I am home. I am free.

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That page stayed blank for months – so long, in fact, that I filled that journal and another one before I came back around to the idea.

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When unhelpful or “unskillful” thoughts, words, and actions rise up in me, I’m slowly learning to recognize that they’re not entirely my own. Just like everything that makes “me,” well, me. When I’m feeling judgmental, selfish, resentful, and/or afraid, I can look deeply to see that these feelings were also strong in my ancestors (blood and otherwise), and they’re strong in our society as a whole. I’m beginning to actually recognize that I am a product of generations upon generations upon generations of imperfect humans, and I can hold those emotions with a little more compassion – for all of us.

This practice has been really helpful for moving beyond the self-loathing and shame I used to feel when I acted in ways that weren’t in line with my values and aspirations. It also helps me let go of my little-ego self and move just a little closer to seeing my true, larger, cosmic self. I’m also entirely capable of using the practice of honoring my ancestors to blame all of them for my own actions. And to focus on all the unbeneficial habits I’ve inherited, rather than the beneficial ones. Like any mindfulness practice, it’s a tricky balance!

Honoring ancestors

I’ll be honest: right up until I lived at the monastery, I had a very hard time with all the ancestor-honoring that Buddhists do. (Even though I was clearly becoming a Buddhist myself, haha.) I’m a white American who grew up solidly within White Supremacy, without a cultural context for connecting with my ancestors. I also grew up in a rough home environment that caused me to run, run, run away from anything that reminded me of my parents – especially my father – for years.

At Deer Park, my deep fears about what I’d inherited from my blood ancestors softened as the monastics generously included me in their regular practices of Touching the Earth, Hungry Ghost Ceremonies, and more. Participating in the Vietnamese hungry ghost ceremony in particular felt like total cultural appropriation to me. Like something I shouldn’t take any part in. The ceremony involves chanting and offering food to all beings stuck in the lower realms of suffering, to help them reincarnate to higher realms and ease their suffering. Then one day I joined two of the sisters in chanting, and one of them explained to me that my understanding wasn’t complete. “We all have a hungry ghost inside of us,” she told me. “We are chanting for everyone to be free.”

When we begin to free ourselves, we free all our ancestors, too.

Touching the Earth is about seeing all our blood, land, and spiritual ancestors within us, without discrimination. It became and remains an important part of my personal practice. It still often brings tears to my eyes. I’ve now offered my own version of Touching the Earth to Open Way Sangha here in Missoula, which is a lightly modified version of Plum Village’s Five Earth Touchings. It includes offering understanding, compassion, gratitude, and love to all of the following, while bowing or laying in what many Americans would recognize from yoga as child’s pose:

1. The generations of ancestors in my blood family.

2. The generations of ancestors in my spiritual family.

3. The land I live on and all the ancestors who have stewarded and cared for this land.

4. All those I love.

5. All those who have made me suffer.

In spite of the powerful realizations this practice has brought up in me, large and small, it still feels uncomfortable most of the time. It’s much easier to offer love and compassion to those I love than to those who have made me suffer. And much easier to offer gratitude to the nebulous ancestors I never knew than to my parents, grandparents, and other family I actually grew up with.

It’s also been much easier to identify the unbeneficial habits I’ve inherited than the beneficial ones. (We as a society do also have the collective habit of focusing on the negative rather than the positive ...)

A glimpse of healing

Thankfully, I’m not always trapped in the negative. In the summer of 2024, not long before I went to live at Deer Park, I was backpacking by myself in the Bitterroot Mountains. Suddenly, with no warning or forethought, I felt the presence of all three of my parents with me. Amidst the incredible beauty all around me, I realized that all three of them, in their own way, would have loved this hike. And through my upbringing and my very body, they were, quite literally, there with me.

My biological mom and my dad both loved spending time in nature. I don’t know if they ever hiked in the mountains, but they spent a lot of time hunting and scouting in the woods of Northern Michigan. My father was the one who nurtured my own love of nature, during the two weeks we spent at a rented cabin on a lake in Northern Michigan each summer when I was young. He was the one who first showed me the Big Dipper, and the Milky Way.

My second mom, who married my dad when I was three, soon after my first mom died, wasn’t as into outdoor pursuits. But after I’d been living in California for a couple years and had gotten seriously into hiking and backpacking, she told me she’d been thinking about coming out to visit. “Maybe we could hike a hill together,” she said. “Not a mountain, but I think I could handle a hill.” Which, after a lifetime of feeling like we had very little in common, warmed my heart more than I can explain. We never got to hike that hill before she died, but I knew she would’ve loved the abundant wildflowers I was now sauntering through in the Bitterroot.

It was a beautiful and life-changing day in which I realized that, in spite of the difficulties and abuse our family experienced, my parents and I shared some fundamental values that are a huge part of who I am today. I no longer felt the urge or need to apologize to any of them, as I’d often felt I needed to in the past when I would imagine them with me. I also didn’t feel any anger or hurt or desire for them to apologize to me.

So it seems a little weird that, just a year or so later, I couldn’t think of a single beneficial habit I’d received from my ancestors. It’s just the place I was in.

If I’ve learned anything in my years of mindfulness practice, it’s that when I try to do something, however beneficial it may seem, it rarely works. If anything, I come up against a giant wall of resistance in which all my ancestors rise up in me to say, “We don’t want any part of this stupid mindfulness exercise! This whole Plum Village Buddhism thing is a great big cult! Get out! RUN!” (Have I mentioned that the energy of suspicion and conspiracy theories is also strong in my blood family? Very strong.)

That day in the Bitterroot, I wasn’t trying to reconcile anything in myself or my family. It all arose naturally, without thinking. But that list I was trying to write at the monastery? Blech.

The gifts emerge

A couple months later, when I was in a different mind space and not thinking about any of this, it came to my attention how courageous I’d been in speaking up about a number of issues during my stay at Deer Park. I’d also had the courage to live in a monastery and to look deeply at all my habits, for an entire year. Then, out of the blue, I was like, Oh! That courage comes from my direct ancestors! I’d seen it myself as a child. Every one of my parents and grandparents experienced hard times. Poverty. The unexpected death of loved ones, often at a young age. Mental and physical illness. Alcoholism. Abuse at the hands of family members. Fear. And every one of them carried on.

And then, Oh! My sense of humor, especially in difficult times. My adaptability to all kinds of situations. My curiosity. My creativity. My thriftiness. My sensitivity. My strength. My Queerness! My love of trees and thunderstorms and reptiles and wildflowers and mountain lions and all our more-than-human ancestors.

As the beneficial habits of my ancestors have come to the forefront of my awareness lately, it’s been a little tricky to figure out what’s really “mine” at all. My emotions? Nope. My accomplishments? My mindfulness practice? My bigotry? My laugh? My attachments and aversions and fears? No, no, no, no, no, no, and no.

A huge way I’ve been noticing this lately is when someone praises my writing. Every time, I feel like, “Wait, is this writing even mine?” Literally every word I write came from somewhere. Not only generations of family, but also friends, teachers, mentors, spiritual ancestors from many traditions, the mountains, the creeks, the flowers … Sometimes I can attribute a particular thought or idea to a specific being, but often I can’t.

Yes, I’m the one stringing together all the words and ideas, giving them new life. There’s definitely a big dash of Terri F. Nichols in here, and I take full responsibility for what I write.

But there would be no writing, no desire to write, no discipline to write, no need to write within me without all the beneficial and unbeneficial habits of my ancestors. The sparks of courage and humor and despair and anger and creativity and joy all come together in me and then spill back out into the universe.

It’s pure, beneficial magic, really.

Thank you. And, you’re welcome. 😍

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“Why?” I asked, though I thought I might know the answer. “The silence,” she said.

Yep. I’d recognized Katelyn’s tone and nervousness. We’re both outgoing, gregarious, talkative people. Silence does not come naturally to either of us. Let’s be honest, though: We’re not the only ones. Our society rewards talking and being extroverted. We do not reward introverts for their quieter approach, or silence generally. Not to mention, many of us have learned that silence equals anger. (Think, “The Silent Treatment.”)

In our Sanghas, we create and nurture spaces where we can practice silence together, in sitting and walking meditation, and in Dharma sharing, where we encourage everyone to take a few breaths after each person shares, and where we sometimes sit in silence for a minute or two before the next person speaks.

But even in Dharma sharing, it’s common for people to feel uncomfortable in that space between words, and to jump right in and talk. I’ve been there. A three-day retreat where we speak as little as possible? Where we eat all meals together in silence? Talk about discomfort! I mean, where are you even supposed to look when the person directly across from you isn’t speaking to you?

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Freedom in silence

Over the years, I’ve learned to love silence – including sharing silence with a group of people who all have the same goal of cultivating greater presence and awareness together. But Katelyn’s confession brought me right back to my own first, super-nervous experience of intentional silence.

I gratefully credit the practice of yoga for gifting me my first brief experiences of stillness and quiet with other people. Also for leading me (eventually) to meditation. In 2002, when I stepped into my first yoga class at a gym across from the office where I worked, laying quietly on my back in corpse pose at the end of each class felt like torture. As in, it felt scary and uncomfortable, just laying there, with my eyes closed, in a room full of people. Inside, I was screaming: “Why are they making us do this?! This is not relaxing!” I loved the rest of the class: the stretching and strengthening, the focus on breathing and movement. But at first, the stillness and silence at the end made me not want to be there.

Ten years later, the yogic path led me to a 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training course. Toward the end of the 9-month training, our teachers, Jodi and Julie, sprung this on us: During our next weekend together, we would have an entire day of silence, in which we would not speak from the time we woke up until, like, 4 pm! I don’t remember exactly how I felt when they announced this, but I know there was something similar to fear— or horror — in my reaction.

At the end of that day of silence, Jodi and Julie gathered our group of 15 yoga teacher trainees in a circle and asked us to share our experiences. Normally I would’ve been one of the first people to speak. But this time, every single person spoke before me. Even then, I remained silent. Finally, Jodi asked, “Terri? Would you like to share?”

I hesitated. I didn’t want to talk. That day had felt like the most freeing, liberating experience of my life to that point. I didn’t want it to end. I felt like a huge burden had been lifted from my shoulders. It was the first time I saw a glimpse of all the ways I had felt compelled to talk throughout my life – as a way to be seen, to be heard, to reassure and soothe others. To convince people that I’m funny and smart and capable and interesting to be around.

One of my mom’s favorite stories was how, when I met her at age three, a month or so after my first mom had died, the first thing I said to her was: “Do you want me to sing you a song?” She said yes. I sang her “You Are My Sunshine,” and she instantly fell in love. (I was adorable, if I do say so myself.) Even at that young age, I had learned that I needed to use my voice to lure people in, to get them to love me.

Of course. Even as babies, we cry to get our parents’ attention. No wonder letting go of our voice, even for a few hours, feels so scary.

Also at that Yoga Teacher Training, I learned about the existence of Vipassana retreats, which involve 10 whole days of complete silence. I was fascinated by this possibility. When I finally made it to the Northwest Vipassana Meditation Center in 2016, those 10 days were also a revelation.

Sure, it was challenging — sometimes painful — to sit in meditation for hours when, up until that point, I’d never meditated for more than 10 or 15 minutes at a time. But the silence? I loved it! On Day 9, when everyone at the retreat was allowed to speak to one another in preparation for going back into the very noisy world, I was shocked by how many of my fellow retreatants had struggled with not talking, or with not checking their phones. I had, again, felt a sense of freedom and relief.

The discomfort of ambiguity

That Vipassana retreat led me to establish a daily meditation practice. It also led me to Montana’s Open Way Sanghas a couple years later. Which in turn led me to Deer Park Monastery. This more recent part of my spiritual journey has fundamentally shifted my experience of silence.

Honestly, it is so much easier to practice silence at a Vipassana center. There, we weren’t even supposed to look at one another. This certainly made mealtimes interesting, as we all attempted to get our food and find a seat without running into one another. (I watched people’s shoes a lot.) It also took away the element of non-verbal communication. There was no pressure to smile, to offer a compassionate glance, or to worry how anyone was interpreting whatever expression was on my face.

At Deer Park, and also at Open Way retreats, there are two kinds of silence: Noble Silence, which generally lasts from after the last activity of the day until after breakfast, and Mindful Silence, which we hold the rest of the day. During noble silence, the invitation is to not speak unless it is absolutely necessary. During mindful silence, we’re encouraged to notice when the urge to speak comes up, and to ask ourselves, “Do I really need to talk right now?” If we decide we do, we’re asked to quietly and mindfully convey whatever we need to say, and nothing more. During both types of silence, smiling to one another and even hugging or holding hands is common. And unlike Vipassana, everything is framed as an invitation, not a requirement.

As someone who tends to rely on strict rules and boundaries and perfectionism to make myself feel safe, this kind of nuance can feel scary. So the fuzzy, even ambiguous, Plum Village version of silence is much more difficult for me. It’s much more challenging to know that I can speak if I really need to, that I can smile at a friend any time I want to. Because I then have to understand what I actually need in any given moment, and hold my own boundaries around that without worrying what anyone thinks. (I also have to understand whether I’m choosing to be silent to support my practice, or as a form of avoidance – which can also be a thing.)

At Deer Park, due to both the energy of strong monastic practice and Vietnamese culture generally, it was common, and even welcome, for the Sisters and I to not even look at one another during noble silence. This felt a little uncomfortable at first, but I grew to love it, for all the reasons I mentioned above. I loved being able to walk through Clarity Hamlet early in the morning and not have to acknowledge anyone. I loved being able to focus completely on my steps, my breath, and how I was feeling. I became totally comfortable sitting in silence directly across from people during meals. I learned to focus my gaze on the food, or somewhere behind the person in front of me, or to simply close my eyes and savor the meal.

I also learned that when strong emotions came up in me, I didn’t have to go talk to someone about it, or seek advice, when I hadn’t even had the time to look deeply into those emotions for myself. I could sit or lay or walk with myself and grow within myself the capacity for understanding and loving all the parts of me. I could figure out what was right for me, in that moment, rather than relying on my habit of outsourcing my needs to other people.

The noisy, ambiguous world

At Open Way, there isn’t the same level of comfort with silence. (Otherwise, Katelyn might not have been so nervous about the retreat.) We’re a lay Sangha, and many of us have never been to a retreat, period, nevermind one with monastics. Sangha friends talk away in our meditation space before our weekly practice sessions. I sometimes go back to my old habits and jump right in.

During our recent retreat, people smiled at me and clearly wanted me to smile back at them. People wanted to talk with me about things we didn’t actually need to talk about. On the last day, during our last meal together, I myself got it in my head that, since this was the last day, we should be allowed to talk after 10 minutes or so of silence, right? Wasn’t this the end of our silent time? Weren’t we done with this now?

Our table got a little rowdy (for a mindfulness retreat), and much to my amusement, one of the Dharma teachers walked over and kindly asked us to maintain our silent eating meditation. (This also felt a little embarrassing because I was literally on the retreat organizing team with this Dharma teacher.) The habit energy of talking creeps back in so easily!

Which is all such a beautiful part of this practice. Because I get to notice every time the urge to speak comes up. I get to feel my strong desires to be heard and seen and known and loved. And then I get to ask myself: “Do I really need to speak right now? Is it necessary? Where is this urge coming from?” I get to befriend my impulses to talk, to outsource my own knowing, and to make my face look pleasing to others. I get to ask those impulses: “Why are you here?” I get to ask myself, “Why do I feel so uncomfortable right now?” Over time, I know, these are the questions that will allow me to live with more ease and freedom in this noisy, ambiguous world.

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During the entire year I lived at Deer Park Monastery, I stayed happily in my tent, in the Clarity campground. During the second half of my stay, I also went running by myself on the trails around the monastery – on the down low and totally against the rules – when my one running partner couldn’t join me. In general, I had a lot more alone time than the Sisters did. They sleep four or eight to a bedroom and never go anywhere without another Sister as a “second body.”

The Sisters also rarely sleep outside. Me? I got to spend an entire year sleeping on the very same platform under the very same oak trees. What a gift, in this modern world of buildings and highways and indoor living, to get to know so intimately the rhythms and sounds and patterns of sunlight on one small piece of land. If I’m honest, it’s one of the things I miss most about living at Deer Park.

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For this post, I did a quick, conservative estimate, and I have spent well over five years of my adult life living outside. That feels fairly impressive even to me. Most of that time has been in community with other humans – as part of trail crews and stream- and wetland-monitoring crews, or at the monastery. I also count the two years and three months I lived in rural Zambia where, yes, I had a roof over my head, but the roof was made of grass, and, like my neighbors, the only thing I did inside that small mud-brick home was sleep; life was lived entirely outside.

I’ve also spent a decent chunk of that time camping and backpacking by myself. This began when I was in my 20s, out of necessity. I could never seem to find anyone who wanted to do it as much as I did, so I went solo. And pretty quickly grew to understand I was never really alone in nature. Immediately after I left the monastery, I hiked for three weeks along the Pacific Crest Trail, seeing just two to five humans per day that late in the year. The perfect silent retreat.

When I’m living outside, my whole body responds positively. I sleep well – and that was true even during the decades when I was a near-constant insomniac when living indoors. I feel more at ease. More relaxed. More aware. My digestion is fantastic, and my morning poops are regular and satisfying. Yes, even in Zambia. Unlike many Peace Corps Volunteers who were frequently sick with intestinal ailments, my body was never happier.

Refuge and healing

Long before I found my way to meditation, before I even considered therapy, before I even knew what backpacking was, I found refuge and healing in a patch of thin forest alongside Interstate 75, just north of Fenton, Michigan. From ages 21 to 23, when I was as big of a mess as I’ve ever been (so far), I worked as a newspaper reporter for the Flint Journal, covering the suburban communities of Fenton and Lake Fenton. City council and school board meetings, development, crime, lake protection and conservation – that sort of thing. Every time I drove from my home in Flint to Fenton or Lake Fenton, I planned every meeting and interview around my lunch or dinner break, so I could spend time with those scraggly-but-beautiful-to-me trees.

Amidst 50+ hour work weeks full of deadlines and the general stress of unprocessed childhood trauma, I walked and walked through those trees, responding to some primal need I didn’t even know I had. I know now that a lot of healing happened in that patch of suburban woods, and others like it during my childhood.

Though I now have many more ways of accessing peace within myself, spending time in the woods or the mountains remains a primary source of refuge. I have the urge to say: “My primary source of refuge from other people.” But what I really mean is: “My primary source of refuge from the fears and attachments and insecurities that are my frequent companions when I’m around other people, but that simply don’t come up when I’m the only human around.” When I’m out in nature “by myself,” my body can let go and relax in ways that it rarely does at other times.

I’m such an interesting paradox this way. I love being around people. I love deep conversations with friends. I love building and engaging in community, and human community nurtures me in so many ways. And there is still a deep part of me that sometimes doesn’t feel safe in groups of people, or in human relationships, period. The part of me that remains on the lookout for danger, or for proof that I am un-loveable. I don’t feel this way about plants and other animals. No more-than-human being has ever hurt me, unless you count poison oak or mosquitoes or sunburns. And none of that strikes the emotional chords that we humans do when we hurt one another.

Retreat from the retreat

Last weekend, Open Way Sanghas hosted our spring retreat on Flathead Lake. About 70 people, living and meditating and eating and walking, mostly in mindfulness, together, for three full days. I slept in my tent, on a rocky outcrop above the lake, far from the main camping area.

Throughout the retreat, all the usual feelings came up, with sometimes maddening, sometimes hilarious, regularity: Resentment, Overwhelm, Irritation, and of course my dear old friend, the Feeling of Not Belonging. Having time to myself out on that cliff over the water helped me recharge. Here are two poems I penned during that time:

What Is

Full moon is shimmering on Flathead Lake.
Fish are leaping in the light.
Cars are swooshing along the highway.
I am sitting on the rock.
Friends are on the beach below.
Each of us a participant
in the story of now.

What We Miss

Frog chorus,
a little faint,
just across the narrow bay.
Were they silent last night?
Or did I just not hear them?

Listening takes time,
and enough silence
for our ears to tune into
the softness.

To understand
there is no such thing as silence.
Just an opening
to the subtle vibrations
we miss
if we’re not paying attention.

After the retreat, knowing my body might appreciate a little extra alone time to process everything, and having a few more days before I started my new job, I camped for two more nights on Tally Lake, about an hour to the north. To my great joy, I found that the campsite was just above Logan Creek, which flows into the lake and mostly blocked out the noise from the logging landing on the other side of the campground. (I used to be more picky about my outdoor experiences, but over the years, I’ve learned to be OK with roadside camping and logging operations and gravel pits next door. I now see, a little more clearly, that we’re all of the earth.)

I went for a hike. I spent hours reading and writing and sitting alongside the lake, and the stream, moving when my body or the sunlight prompted it. I watched three beavers swim past, one by one. Watched a snowshoe hare, still with white-booted feet, watching me from the shelter of a patch of alders. Listened to loons and osprey and frogs. Said hello to the tiny yellow and purple violets and the fairy slipper orchids, admired the towering larches, and luxuriated in the soft new needles of the baby larches. And this:

Always Wear Red

For years, I have worn the same
bright red tank top
while backpacking in the mountains.
And nearly every time,
a hummingbird will visit me.
Hover, and look into my eyes.
Disappointed, I imagine, that I am not a flower.

Today it happened again,
as I was sitting next to a stream.
The familiar whir of energy beside me.
Tiny beak,
hot-pink throat,
wings a-blur.
I wasn't even backpacking.
I wasn’t even wearing my red tank top.
But as he flew away, I noticed
my red socks and pink sandals,
and smiled.

I’m sorry, little friend,
that I have no nectar to offer you.
But not sorry at all
that I drew you in
under false pretenses.
When else would we have the chance
to gaze so closely
upon each other’s brightness?

I also, on my last morning at that campsite, sat alongside Logan Creek and cried. Tears had welled up throughout the retreat, and again on the drive as I left. Once I arrived at Tally Lake, I hadn’t felt like crying. But I knew those feelings were still there, and this was my opportunity to let the stream and the lake and the willows hold me. So I sat, and I cried. Then I practiced my favorite kind of meditation, looking at a spot in the stream and feeling the impermanence of everything, including emotions and relationships. Not long ago, this stream was covered in ice and wouldn’t have felt quite so welcoming. Not long ago, the snowshoe hare was completely white. Not long ago, I wouldn’t have allowed myself to just sit and cry for no particular reason.

Defenseless except for his mind

Sr. Chùa Xưa wasn’t the only one who saw in me the need to be alone in the forest. K, a friend I got to know during the family retreat at Deer Park, later gave me a copy of a chapter from Forest Recollections: Wandering Monks in Twentieth-Century Thailand. It recounts some of the monks’ many encounters with tigers, and how they used those experiences to develop concentration and overcome the fear of death.

“Fear of tigers and the vivid imagining of oneself being devoured by tigers often drove the mind to one-pointed samadi (concentration). … If a monk was afraid of tigers, Ajan Man sometimes put him deep into the forest, at some distance from the other monks. At night, when fear attacked his mind, a monk would force himself to do walking meditation in the open. … Thudong masters believed that this method of learning the dhamma was far more difficult than studying scriptures. In the wilds a student had to be ever cautious of lurking dangers, which forced him to be constantly alert. He was defenseless except for his mind … In the battle between fear and dhamma, as Man’s biographer observes, ‘If fear is defeated the mind will be overwhelmed by courage and enjoy profound inner peace.’”

After I’d read K’s gift, I was incredulous. I asked them, “Do you know how much time I’ve spent living outside?” Nope. “Did someone tell you my mountain lion story?” What mountain lion story? All K knew of me was that one week at the monastery, and the fact that the Plum Village monastic path had given me a big “no.” Somehow, K just sensed I might be the kind of person who would do well as a Thai forest monk.

Oh yeah: that mountain lion story. Well, the short version: About 14 years ago, I was out running alone in the forest and suddenly found myself face-to-face with a mountain lion. As in, six feet away, just on the other side of the trail. I’d gotten a little too close to her two cubs without knowing it.

We gazed into each other’s eyes for perhaps one second. Then she crouched low and lunged at me. She did this several times over several minutes – enough time for me to imagine my own gruesome death and to wonder if she was using me to teach her cubs to hunt. Each time she charged, I raised my arms over my head, tried to look big, and yelled for all I was worth. (This isn’t how the Thai forest monks reacted, but I’d been well-trained by years of work-related videos on what to do in various wildlife encounters.) Finally, when she wouldn’t go away, I ran at her. I don’t even know what survival instinct made me do that, but it worked. She ran far enough away that I could no longer see her.

Those moments, and the hour afterward when I worked my way very, very slowly back along the trail, with a rock in one hand and a large stick in the other, looking for any sign that the mountain lion was following me, have come to feel like my first real experience of mindfulness. At least as an adult. I was completely and utterly aware. Completely focused. I could see every leaf move on every tree. Like the monk who was “defenseless except for his mind … ever cautious of lurking dangers, which forced him to be constantly alert.” I did not totally defeat fear that day. But I experienced a little of what that might feel like. And I feel so grateful to that mountain lion.

I suspect this encounter, and probably others I’ve had, make more than a few people think I’m a little nuts for still wanting to spend so much time “by myself” in the wild. But for me, living outside — even for a short time — remains a true refuge. It allows me to come back to myself in ways that then allow me to step back out into the world of humans. A little more grounded. A little more at ease. A little more aware that we are all of the earth, and nothing on this earth lasts forever.

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This week I write to you as an employed person!

On May 15, I will receive my first paycheck in a year and nearly eight months. During that time, I’ve had the immense privilege of living without exchanging my skills and labor for money. I’ve done plenty of “work,” but none of it has been paid. I’ve been able to live, quite happily, off the savings I built up during 6.5 years at a “professional” job, three months’ worth of government food assistance here at the end, and the incredible generosity of friends and community all along the way (including a little extra cushion from donations/paid subscriptions to this newsletter – thank you!).

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As with every time I’ve taken a few steps away from the capitalist treadmill – whether as an AmeriCorps volunteer, a Peace Corps volunteer, or a traveler between seasonal jobs – I’ve learned more about what I want and am willing to do in the realm of paid work. This discernment is part of “Right Livelihood,” also sometimes known as “Wise Livelihood” — part of the Eightfold Path to reducing suffering and harm. In The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “The way you support yourself can be an expression of your deepest self, or it can be a source of suffering for you and others. … Our vocation can nourish our understanding and compassion, or erode them. We should be awake to the consequences, far and near, of the way we earn our living.”

In my very first post here on Substack, “Unfolding Together,” I wrote: “I want to do work that is meaningful and fulfilling and that may or may not involve a paycheck, letting go of worries about my rapidly dwindling savings and embracing a life of simplicity.” I also vowed to not work more than 30 hours a week for a paycheck, to work with other humans in-person rather than through a computer, and work somewhere where I could care for myself and the world, at least in some small way.

You may not be surprised to hear that this seriously limited my job choices. One of my brothers and I were unemployed at the same time, and he applied to nearly 100 jobs over the course of four months. I applied to 14 in two months. At certain points, I worried I was being lazy, selfish, stupid, or all of the above. Of course I did. Our society is set up to give me those worries.

Then, almost magically, I ended up exactly where I wanted and needed to be. I’m back in the nonprofit conservation and climate action world I worked in pre-monastery, just in a different part of it. That wasn’t even part of my work vows, but I’m happy it worked out that way.

Community bike mechanic

Next week I begin work as a community bike mechanic. (What a great job title, right?) I’ll be working with Free Cycles, a donation-based, nonprofit bicycle repair shop that offers the tools, parts, and skills necessary for anyone to fix their bike. People can also build an entire bike for free in exchange for 90 minutes of volunteer labor. And they offer their space, also free of charge, for community events outside operating hours. Here’s their mission statement: “Free Cycles believes we all have the right to move freely and safely in an unpolluted world. We empower Western Montana to choose sustainable transportation by removing barriers to bicycles, parts, workspace, tools, guidance, education, and a gathering place for community.”

Luckily for me, the job doesn’t require bike mechanic skills. This week they provided training in that. What Free Cycles does want are people who can help create a space that feels safe and welcoming for everyone who walks in the door, and where we can support individual and community well-being. And this brings up another part of Right Livelihood: It’s not just about what job you do, but how you do it. I can show up to any amazing, beneficial job and act like a jerk. Or I can show up to a job that seems not-so-beneficial on the surface, but do it in a way that brings more love and joy into the world by the way I do the work.

At my last job, with the Montana Watershed Coordination Council, I worked 40 hours a week mostly behind a computer to support local stream restoration and habitat protection as a watershed programs manager earning $22 an hour. I loved the work, and it certainly felt like Wise Livelihood.

At Free Cycles, I’ll be working 25 hours a week at $17 an hour teaching people how to fix their bikes in person. In addition, my new co-workers have assured/warned me and the other three new community bike mechanics that we will also serve as unofficial social workers, conflict mediators, and facilitators of this community space for the many people from all walks of life who can’t afford to bring their bike to a regular bike mechanic, or buy a bike at all. Which all sounds like exactly what I want to be doing right now as I move in the direction of going back to school to become a mental health counselor next year.

It may also sound utterly foolish to some people, at least financially. I will be earning just over $1,500 in net monthly income – less than many people in Missoula pay for rent. And did I mention this job is seasonal? Though there’s the potential for long-term employment, I’m only guaranteed work ‘til the end of September.

I was offered this job and one at the local natural foods store within one day of each other. The grocery job would’ve paid $18.57 an hour and offered many benefits, including paid vacation time, a 20% discount on everything in the store, and permanent employment that would’ve gotten me all the way through grad school. Free Cycles offers no benefits except free bike parts and a warm, welcoming environment that I love. I definitely experienced some fear and heartburn making the decision. It would be easy to argue that both jobs constitute Right Livelihood. But when I really thought about what I want to be doing with my time, what I want to be learning for my own personal growth, and who I want to serve in our community, the decision was obvious. Besides, I tell myself, contributing less money in taxes to the wars, violence, and oppression being committed by our nation has its own benefits.

Right Livelihood is not just a personal matter

Which leads me to an important point in all this.

First, for many people living in the United States, it would simply not be possible to live on my Free Cycles pay. For one thing, I don’t have any dependents. Also, another miracle has occurred in my life: One of my Open Way Sangha friends asked me to be her mindful housemate in a small but unbelievably affordable two-bedroom apartment in this city of unbelievably unaffordable housing. (More to come in a future post on my excellent post-monastery decision to embrace housemates.)

I have aspired and learned throughout my life to live simply. To not require, or even want, much in the way of stuff. Ask anyone who knows me well, and they will tell you: They have no idea how I’ve lived on so little, even pre-monastery. I’ve spent years sleeping on the floor, or with camp chairs as my only living room furniture. Living at Deer Park only reinforced my desire to let go of material possessions. There I lived in a four-person tent, with some overflow into my trusty 1996 Subaru Outback, and I still felt like I had so much stuff! I struggle mightily with relationship attachments, and with attachments to love, praise, and chocolatey baked goods. I do not struggle with attachments to online shopping or subscriptions to streaming services or clothes or make up or interior decorating. It is one of my great gifts.

Embracing simplicity is also part of Wise Livelihood. As Thay says in The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching: “Everything we do contributes to our effort to practice Right Livelihood. It is more than just the way we earn our paycheck.”

The reason working only part-time has been such a major goal of mine this time around is because of all the Wise Livelihood I want to embrace that does not pay the bills. Like meditating, spending time in nature, and writing poetry. Like practice leading, helping organize mindfulness retreats and workshops and other community events, and managing the lending library at Open Way. Like writing this newsletter. I wrote earlier how donations to my writing here have been one form of support that has gotten me through this time of unemployment. Which is true. It’s also true that donations here have resulted in less than $298 net in my bank account.

Finally, and crucially for how I choose to live my life outside of paid work, I cannot choose Wise Livelihood in a vacuum. Every time I drive my Subaru to go for a hike, and every time I use the immense energy suck of AI data centers against my will because I’m doing an internet search and there’s no way to turn the damn thing off (if you know of a way, please let me know!), I am impacting everyone else’s livelihood. To give just one example out of millions, our collective consumption essentially requires that someone must work in the Bakken Oil Fields, the Alberta Tar Sands, and other places of fossil fuel extraction and destruction. (And lest you think that 2021 article I linked is old news, production in Alberta’s tar sands hit a record 4.1 million barrels per day in 2025, a 4.2% increase from 2024, and plans for more oil pipelines are in the works.) Here’s another example, again from The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching:

“Right Livelihood is not just a personal matter. It is our collective karma. Suppose I am a schoolteacher, and I believe that nurturing love and understanding in children is a beautiful occupation. I would object if someone were to ask me to stop teaching and become, for example, a butcher. But when I meditate on the interrelatedness of things, I see that the butcher is not the only person responsible for killing animals. We may think the butcher’s livelihood is wrong and ours is right, but if we didn’t eat meat, he would not have to kill. Right Livelihood is a collective matter. The livelihood of each person affects everyone else. The butcher’s children might benefit from my teaching, while my children, because they eat meat, share some responsibility for the butcher’s livelihood.”

Now that I have a job and can breathe a sigh of personal relief, I want to expand my search for Right Livelihood to look at the bigger picture: What can I do that will make Right Livelihood possible for everyone? I know the answer doesn’t involve berating myself for my consumption. We are all part of much bigger systems here – ones that are designed from and fueled by greed, ignorance, and fear. Instead, how can I continue to look deeply into all my choices? At the systems of oppression that are deep within me, influencing my actions in ways I often don’t even see? How can I act, as often as possible, from a place that prioritizes love and care for all beings, including myself?

I don’t have the answers. I remain a messy, incomplete mindfulness practitioner. And, I am grateful that I get to begin with helping people fix their bikes, keeping a whole lot of metal out of the landfill, and leaving plenty of time to rest and play and expand my ideas about what it means to be of service.

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Eighteen hours later, a huge, unexpected wave left me flailing in rage. That pummeling led to one of the biggest moments of insight and transformation during my year at Deer Park. And it wasn’t one of those joyful moments of seeing clearly our inter-being nature or feeling deeply the support of the earth and the Sangha. No. This was one of those insights I didn’t really want to have, into habits I didn’t really want to see.

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Let me back up. This was the Vietnamese Retreat. The time when Vietnamese-Americans who are part of the ancestral lineage of Plum Village practice get to come to Deer Park and have the place all to themselves. When the Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American monastics get to have a sort-of family reunion with people who share their language, culture, and history. It’s also a thank you to the retreatants, many of whom were part of the effort to bring a Plum Village monastery to Southern California in 2000. These people, or in many cases now, their parents, helped to buy the land on which Deer Park now sits and convinced Thich Nhat Hanh and Sr. Chan Khong to build a new monastery there.

For all these reasons, the retreat initially brought up a lot of gratitude. What a gift to welcome and serve the people who made it possible for me to be here in the first place. What a gift to see the Vietnamese monastics playing traditional games and eating Vietnamese street food and laughing uproariously, without having to struggle to express themselves in their second or third language. What a gift to learn more about the history of this place, and the people who made it happen.

Then came the Rose Ceremony.

The big wave

The Rose Ceremony began in Vietnam in the early 1960s, after Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a prose poem titled “A Rose for Your Pocket.” It’s about motherly love. Thầy sent the poem to monastics still living in Vietnam, who then copied and distributed it and began organizing annual Rose Ceremonies to honor first mothers, and later fathers, too. Vietnamese people also sent the poem to friends, with a red rose for people whose parents were still alive and a white rose for those whose parents had died. At Deer Park, the monastics now host the event every year during the Vietnamese Retreat.

This is all I knew about the ceremony when I stepped into the big meditation hall on the last morning of the retreat. Everyone else was wearing their finest, many in colorful áo dài – the national dress of Vietnam. Feeling underdressed, I found a seat. The woman sitting next to me asked, “Is this your first Rose Ceremony?” When I said yes, she responded, “Oh, you’re going to love it!”

The whole ceremony was in Vietnamese, with English translation for the non-Vietnamese lay people and monastics. I settled in with my headphones. One monastic read “A Rose for Your Pocket” aloud as six young people dressed in elegant áo dài walked around the hall with trays of pink fabric rose pins, giving one to each person to pin on their chest. With the first line of the poem, I felt myself begin to shut down.

Then, another monastic read a letter written by a monk to his father. About how grateful the monk was that he and his father had been able to reconcile despite his father’s alcoholism and abuse, and the distance that had created between them. The letter was long and elaborate, glossing over the hard times and abuse but including detailed stories of times the father had shown his son love. I was already crying by this point. Thinking this was not what I had expected. Then came the line, “I can only imagine how painful it must have been for you to feel that your own children had abandoned you.”

I lost it. Crying turned to sobbing. I could barely keep myself from making embarrassing noises. I’m actually not sure I succeeded. I desperately wanted to run out of the meditation hall, but I was too far from the door. I worried I’d make a scene at this cherished event. Then came another letter, from a nun to her mother, all about how her mother had never been able to have dreams of her own because she was so focused on her children.

At this point, the whole ceremony becomes fuzzy in my memory. Somewhere in there, the woman next to me – the one who had been so excited for me to experience my first Rose Ceremony – tried to hand me a tissue. I pushed her arm away, so angry with her that I silently shouted expletives at her.

I now understand that those letters were bringing up very painful feelings of guilt, shame, regret, and grief. I wasn’t able to reconcile with any of my parents before they died, but most days it feels like I’ve mostly healed those wounds. Now, suddenly, this ceremony was bringing all of it to the surface. I was completely blindsided.

Rage and blame

At the time, though, I wasn’t feeling any of those emotions. All I felt was anger. Rage is probably more accurate. As I sat there with snot and tears running down my face, refusing even the kindness of a tissue, all that was going through my head was, “How dare you do this to me! How dare you make me sit here and listen to these awful stories! How dare you bring up all of this when I just had a relatively calm retreat! What is wrong with you people that you would spring this traumatic event on people with no explanation and no warning?! F*** this lady and her tissues!” I am not exaggerating, and I am not proud of these thoughts. I was in full, major meltdown mode.

The funny part of this is, when I shared these thoughts with one of the Sisters a few days later – when I asked her why the monastics didn’t give us a trigger warning before the ceremony – she was like, “Everyone else knew exactly what this ceremony was about. They’re Vietnamese. You’re the only one who didn’t know.” To be fair, I wasn’t the only one crying. I don’t know if anyone else had as strong a reaction as I did, though. It’s also funny that I was so deep in these stories and my own rage that I never thought to just take off the translation headphones and stop listening.

But there was nothing funny about any of it at the time. The moment the ceremony ended, I tore off my headphones, dropped them on the table rather than waiting in line to hand them back, and practically ran down the hill back to Clarity Hamlet and to the hidden hammock that I’d long ago dubbed my “crying hammock.” At one point I tried to do the mindful thing. To slow down and practice walking meditation. To calm my feelings. But my body rebelled. I couldn’t do it. The closer I got to that place of safety in the crying hammock, the faster I ran. I was terrified of someone seeing me in that state. Terrified of what I might do or say.

When I got to the hammock, I unpinned that pink rose and threw it to the ground. Then I got in the hammock and continued crying and raging. Eventually, I began to feel the sadness underneath. I didn’t get to “grief” until a day or two later, but I was at least beginning to feel things again. Eventually, I cried myself to sleep. Skipped lunch, the ending festivities, and any opportunity to say good-bye to the people I’d gotten to know. I knew I was in no shape to see anyone.

Naming the blaming

When I woke up, I felt drained. And a little lighter. As I came to, the voice blaming the monastics for my suffering began to pipe up again, quieter this time. Now it felt kinda ridiculous. The next thing I knew, I was laughing. Out loud. I saw how silly it was for me to be blaming the monastics who wrote those letters, and that sweet woman who just wanted to give me a tissue and some comfort. Suddenly, I realized: Oh. I’ve been blaming everyone else for my suffering! Then: Wait, do I do this … all the time???

It wasn’t just the Rose Ceremony. I’d been blaming other people for my suffering, and carrying around resentment over it, for a lot of my time in Clarity Hamlet. Hmmmm … My old friend resentment … isn’t this an emotion I feel a LOT? Oh no … I am blaming other people for my suffering … all the freaking time … Maybe that’s why I feel so much resentment …

OMG. I had never really felt this before – how often I look for someone to blame when things don’t go the way I want them to. Often it’s myself. But I’d venture to guess I blame others even more often. And I had never truly seen this.

As I continued to laugh, I felt I wasn’t alone. Dad! Here you are! Blaming everyone and everything else for your suffering: God, your wife, your kids, people of other races and ethnicities, the neighbors … Our mom carried her fair share of blaming and resentment, too. In fact, I’d say blaming others for our suffering and then seething with resentment was part of the fuel that ran our family.

I can remember a few family trips and events during which one of my parents hurt me, intentionally or unintentionally, and I refused to let it go. I wouldn’t say anything or rebel in any obvious way. That was out of the question. Instead I did what was available to me: I seethed with resentment. Refused to have a good time. This was me at 9, 10, 11 years old. SO good at holding a grudge. Of course. I’d learned from the masters.

Somehow, by the grace of the Oak Trees or the practice or the beneficial habits that my ancestors also carried, these little epiphanies didn’t feel awful. They felt like relief. Then a voice emerged from my lips that I swear wasn’t my own. Out loud it said: “There is no one to blame. This isn’t my fault. This isn’t your fault. It isn’t anyone’s fault. Life is just painful sometimes.” And now I was crying again, but they were gentler tears. It all felt so true, so obvious, and so not blame-ful or resentful. I could feel us all soften a little. Let go a little.

Carrying it with me

I’ve carried this rather dramatic realization with me ever since. None of it is resolved. I still sometimes blame friends and family for the emotions I’d prefer not to experience. At the monastery, I continued to say yes to too many requests for help and then resent my way through the work. (Yes, this is also about my struggles with boundaries, which also go back to doing things I didn’t want to do as a child. I suspect my ancestors struggled with boundaries, too.)

Just this past weekend, I said yes to filling in as a Saturday morning practice leader at Open Way when I didn’t really want to, but I didn’t feel I had a “good reason” to say no. So I had one hour less in my Saturday morning. I’d gone for a short walk, and on my way back I decided I’d sit and drink tea in silence for a few minutes before breakfast and heading out the door. But when I got home, my roommate Marci was sweeping the living room. And there it was: “How dare Marci sweep so early in the morning, when I wanted to have tea!” I laughed a little to myself. “There you are, blaming and resentment!” Decided I could also relax while mindfully cleaning the bathroom (my chore for the week). So we enjoyed a little mindful apartment-cleaning together, which turned out to be lovely. The practice leading at Open Way was lovely, too. (And next time, I might say no.)

As with many of the habits I’ve actually realized I have, it’s not like I’ve stopped doing the blaming-and-resentment dance. I’m just noticing, and not running away. Acknowledging that this isn’t just me. I’m not some irreparably flawed or cruel human being. Like all of us, I am a product of generations upon generations of family and culture. Of course we have baggage. Of course that baggage is sometimes packed so full and forced closed so tightly that it explodes at inconvenient moments. And of course, as I wrote about a few weeks ago in “MFs and the Realm of the Mind,” I don’t always want to look for joy and happiness when it does.

And yet, those explosions, inconvenient as they may be, are often the only thing that can shake me awake to the habits and emotions I’d prefer not to see. Their very dramatic nature – their very ridiculousness – is what allows me to lighten up, if and when I’m ready to. To laugh at the messiness. To love myself and everyone else a little more.

I think it’s called grace. When I can see how ridiculous my reactions sometimes are, and understand where they’re coming from. When I can laugh and cry about them at the same time. Both/And. Blame/Grace. Suffering, Understanding, Love.

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I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life

Love, love, love, says Percy.
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.

Then, go to sleep.
Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
Then, trust.
 
– Mary Oliver

In the days following the only significant snowfall we experienced here in Missoula this winter, I took Piper the dog out hiking and walking even more than usual. Just so she could have the joy of sticking her head under the snow and rolling around in it. And so I could have the joy of watching her.

Snow is one of Piper’s favorite things, but she doesn’t seem to get attached to it. She’s happy when there is deep, fluffy snow to bound around in. When there are just a few small patches left, she’ll find them and roll around in them and have just as good of a time. She’ll also happily go out when it’s warm and sunny.

Piper is my friend Brian’s dog, and I’ve known her for seven of her 10 years. I’ve dog-sat for her at my place and at Brian’s. Taken her on many hikes and runs and thrown many, many sticks and balls for her. She’s one of two dogs I’ve known best in my adult life. (Roxy, my brother Lee’s dog, was the other.) Getting to spend consistent time with Piper was one of my favorite parts about living at Brian’s place the past month. (No offense, Brian. :+)

Piper doesn’t care one bit whether we walk to the park four blocks away or hike to the top of Mt. Jumbo. Whether we’re out for 20 minutes or five hours or eight days, as we were on one backpacking trip a few years ago. Brian and I both like to tease Piper by setting out on a walk, or getting out of the car at a trailhead, and turning right back around. “That’s it!” we’ll say after just a minute or two, “We’re going home now!” Every time, she seems pleased with our two-minute jaunt, and just as happy to be going home. Almost as if time is meaningless to her.

Piper is simply happy to be outside. Happy to be with me or Brian or whatever human is paying attention to her at the moment. I’ve said a few times that Piper’s theme song could be “Love the One You’re With” by Crosby, Stills & Nash. That line, “If you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with,” describes her attitude perfectly. She loves Brian obviously, eternally, and unconditionally, but when he’s not around she doesn’t sulk. She’s happy to spend time with me or Brian’s other friends and family, or, really, anyone. Happy to play in the snow or trot along the trail. She is happy to play with the other dogs on the trail or to leave them alone if they’re not interested. She doesn’t seem to take offense when they’re grumpy with her.

The path to enlightenment

Some of the Sisters at Deer Park Monastery – the ones who believe in a more literal version of reincarnation than I do — shared with me their wish to return as human beings in their next lives. Because only humans can practice meditation and mindfulness. Only humans can walk the path that leads to liberation and enlightenment for the benefit of all beings.

I always playfully and humbly disagreed. I’m aware that I know much less about liberation and enlightenment than these monastics who’ve dedicated their lives to it for years or decades. And also, I would argue, if I came back as, say, an oak or a cottonwood tree – or as a dog – I wouldn’t need to walk the path of liberation and enlightenment. I’d already be there. Because from what I can tell with my very unenlightened human senses, trees and dogs don’t seem to cause themselves suffering in the ways we humans do. And if you don’t get all wrapped up in fear and clinging and aversion and all those ideas about “me” and “mine” and “you” and “yours” to begin with, perhaps you don’t need to find enlightenment.

(Side note: Buddhist monastics aren’t allowed to have pets. Their aspiration is to love all beings, without preference or discrimination. If they were allowed to keep dogs or cats, I’m guessing they might develop some strong attachments and love them more than the other beings.)

Now, Piper does get a little sulky when her humans are all busy on their laptops and won’t pay attention to her. And when it’s getting close to meal time, she has this hilarious habit of laying down in front of her empty bowl, licking the inside of the bowl slowly and elaborately, and then looking mournfully up at whichever human is in the room. So maybe she has a few attachments. Or maybe she’s simply using the language she has to clearly communicate her needs. Another practice I could learn a few things from! :+)

But when I compare Piper’s general approach to life to my own clinging to relationships, longing for the past, fears about the future, and grasping at praise or how much time I get to spend outside, I’d say she’s much further along that path to enlightenment than I am.

Canine Oracle

Piper says: “Who cares if we missed the sunrise?”
Piper says: “Who cares if you didn’t sleep well last night?”
Piper says: “Who cares that this has been such a warm winter, and the snow is already melting?”
Piper says: “It’s always worth going outside. Every patch of snow is precious. Why do you spend so much time looking at that screen-thing anyway?”

“Every moment is a chance to watch the crows’ acrobatics,
to look up at the mountains,
to smell all the smells.”

All of this as she trots along,
back legs moving in a circle,
top of her left ear flopping.
A perfectly imperfect oracle.

I sigh. Let go of whatever fear or clinging or resentment 
I’m holding onto today.
Just for a little while.
I say, humbly as I do to all the wise ones: “Thank you, teacher.”
Then: “Let’s play a little more before we go home.”

– Terri Nichols

No wonder Mary Oliver wrote so many poems about her dogs. Especially Percy. One day, I hope to offer words of canine gratitude as beautiful as the ones Mary wrote for her pups. It’s not only Piper. The dogs who’ve been part of my life have always been among my greatest teachers.

Percy, Waiting for Ricky

Your friend is coming, I say
to Percy and name a name

and he runs to the door, his
wide mouth in its laugh-shape,

and waves, since he has one, his tail.
Emerson, I am trying to live,

as you said we must, the examined life.
But there are days I wish

there was less in my head to examine,
not to speak of the busy heart. How

would it be to be Percy, I wonder, not
thinking, not weighing anything, just running forward.

– Mary Oliver

I dedicate this post to all the dogs who’ve shared their wisdom with me, including some I may have forgotten here.

Fisher, Ginger, Prince, Bones, Roxy, Apple, Basil, Abbey, Chewy, Gracie, Dora, Oscar, Bash, Moxie, and Wren

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Thank you for being here. For reading and for supporting my writing. It means so much. I am overflowing with ideas for these weekly essays, and yet many of them are so personal that some weeks I feel a little too naked to write authentically. Maybe I’ve had a few too many hard conversations already. Sometimes everything I’m feeling and thinking is still percolating and not yet ready for public viewing. Sometimes I’ve simply gotten too wrapped up in my to-do lists and have waited ‘til the last minute to write and don’t feel like I can do the topic justice on a deadline. This week, it feels like all of the above.

So, for the first time, I’m going to rely on one of the fun-and-easy topics I’ve kept on the back burner. I hope you enjoy the shift. This probably won’t be the last time.

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One of my favorite mindfulness practices is silently reciting gathas – short poems that invite me to be fully present to whatever I’m doing, from washing the dishes to taking out the trash to any daily activity you can imagine. It’s one of the practices I picked up while living at Deer Park Monastery, where I memorized dozens of them; before that, it was barely on my radar. In Plum Village practice, there are more than 100 gathas just that I know of. Many practitioners make up their own, too. We can recite a gatha while following our breath, which allows us to cherish both the ordinary and extraordinary moments of daily life.

Here are my Top 10 favorite gathas, with a little commentary for each. If you’d like to know more about gatha practice, check out this excellent article in Lion’s Roar magazine, “How to Do Gatha Practice.” You can find many more gathas in the book Stepping into Freedom by Thich Nhat Hanh. I learned them from an older version of the book, so some of these are slightly different from what you’ll find in the newer version.

10. Stepping out of Bed

Morning, evening, and night
all little creatures, look out for yourselves!
If I step on you by mistake
may you quickly transcend suffering.

The exclamation point emphasizes the impact I have with every step I take – both literally and metaphorically. It’s a good first-thing-in-the-morning reminder for me: There is no way to avoid killing and harm, but we can do our best to tread as lightly as possible and show respect for all beings, no matter how small. Especially useful when I was living in a tent in Deer Park’s Clarity Hamlet, and I stepped from my tent out into an oak grove each morning. But no less important living indoors.

9. Brushing Your Teeth

Brushing my teeth and rinsing my mouth,
I vow to speak purely and lovingly.
When my mouth is fragrant with Right Speech,
a flower blooms in the garden of my heart.

What a beautiful image! When I found this gatha, it made me want to brush my teeth more often. :+) I copied this gatha onto an index card with colored pencil and taped it next to the mirror in the communal lay friends’ bathroom in Clarity Hamlet.

8. Entering the Meditation Hall

Entering the meditation hall,
I return to my true self.
Upon taking my seat,
I vow to cut off all distractions.

Surprise! I never fully succeeded at that last line. But reciting this gatha silently to myself every morning when I entered Deer Park’s main meditation hall felt like a sacred reminder. Meditating together with more than 60 monastics and many lay friends in the dark of 5:45 am was one of the most beautiful parts of my time at the monastery.

7. Inviting the Bell

With body, speech, and mind in perfect oneness,
I send my heart along with the sound of this bell.
May the hearers awaken from forgetfulness
and transcend the path of anxiety and sorrow.

There are multiple gathas for inviting the bell, and they’re all beautiful. (And yes, we say “inviting” the bell rather than “ringing” or “striking” the bell. Every bell has its own voice – often referred to as the voice of the Buddha. We simply ask them to sound, with gentleness and respect.) This is the first one I learned, when, early in my time at the monastery, I was called on to lead morning meditation for all the lay friends during the Rains Retreat. The idea of sending my heart along with the sound of the bell was especially meaningful to me then and still is now.

6. Listening to the Bell

I listen, I listen,
this wonderful sound,
brings me back
to my true home.

As I mentioned above, the sound of the bell is often considered to be the voice of the Buddha – aka the pure awareness or awakened nature in each of us. This is our true home. If you want to hear a beautiful song that combines all the inviting and listening to the bell gathas, I highly recommend the new-ish Plum Village song, “Listening to the Bell.” I was so very lucky to get to learn this along with the Sisters when I was in Clarity, and I wish I had a recording of all of them singing it together. It was magical! (Well, it was after several weeks of practice; it’s not an easy song to learn!)

5. Washing Your Feet

The peace and joy
of one toe
is peace and joy
for my whole body.

I came to love this one at Deer Park because I went barefoot so often, and my feet were perpetually dirty. Having dirty feet in the meditation hall is a big no-no, so I learned to thoroughly enjoy washing my feet. (I also carried a thin pair of socks with me at all times, for when I failed to wash my feet.)

4. Cleaning the Toilet

How wonderful
to scrub and clean!
Day by day,
my heart and mind grow clearer.

Although the Sisters tended to assign me to mindful service duties that involved heavy lifting, power tools, and other manual labor, I also did a lot of toilet cleaning while I was there. We all did. This gatha became even more meaningful when I led the bathroom-cleaning retreat families I write about under #3.

3. Using the Toilet

Defiled or immaculate,
increasing or decreasing –
these concepts exist only in our mind.
The reality of interbeing is unsurpassed.

It’s hard to fully express the joy I received from this gatha while I was at Deer Park. For one thing, copies are taped in most toilet stalls in the monastery, including the composting toilet I used, so it was impossible not to memorize it. For another, there is a separate gatha for urinating, so clearly this one is about pooping specifically, though I’ve never heard anyone say this out loud. Who doesn’t love a good poop gatha?

I also led the bathroom-cleaning mindful service family for three of the five retreats I volunteered for at the monastery. Every time, I introduced our family to this gatha and the one below. At the end of each retreat, all the retreatant “families” get to perform at a Be-In – the mindful, Plum Village version of a talent show. The first of my three bathroom-cleaning families – interestingly named the “Moon Family” by monastics for whom English was not their first language, so we assume this wasn’t on purpose … – had the most fun with this. They insisted that I recite this gatha, in a very dramatic voice, at the beginning of our performance. I was more than happy to oblige. The main part of our performance? A parody version of the Plum Village song “The River is Flowing.” There is no recording of our performance, but imagine lines like, “The toilets are flushing back to the sea.”

2. Turning on the Water

Water comes from high mountain sources.
Water runs deep in the Earth.
Miraculously, water comes to us and sustains all life.
My gratitude is filled to the brim.

Anyone who read my recent post, Watering Seeds of Restoration and Healing, will understand where I’m coming from with this one. It feels like the most sacred of all the gathas to me. I hope to never get over how grateful I feel every time I turn on the faucet, or wade my feet into an ice-cold stream, or cannonball my naked body into an alpine lake. Pulling up water with a bucket attached to the end of a rope, hand over hand, for the two years I lived in Mfuba, Zambia as a Peace Corps Volunteer only deepened my respect, as did watching the immense courage of the Water Protectors who put their very bodies on the line to protect the Missouri River from the Dakota Access Pipeline running across the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Clean, fresh water is a gift that far too many people no longer have access to. This is the other gatha I copied and taped up in the communal lay friends’ bathroom in Clarity Hamlet.

1. Gatha on Openness and Welcome

We gather here to look deeply at life.
Everyone is welcome to practice here.
This is a place to express ourselves honestly and openly, without fear,
No matter our concerns or persuasions,
No matter our race, gender, or abilities,
No matter our community standing, history, or experiences.
We are grateful for each person.
May we see each other’s depth and wisdom clearly.

I mentioned in the beginning of this post that many Plum Village mindfulness practitioners make up their own gathas. Our Open Way Sangha friend Ellen wrote this one. We read it every week, at the beginning of every Dharma sharing circle, just before we are invited to share from our hearts what is alive for us and our practice. While I and the rest of our Open Way friends are far from perfect at creating true welcoming in our Sangha, this gatha represents our aspiration and diligent efforts to make this a reality. Every time I listen to this gatha, I close my eyes and gratefully take in those efforts.

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