Meeting a Master

*‘To be with such a teacher in this lifetime is a huge honor and blessing. ‘*

Sometimes you don’t know what is going to change your life forever. In fact I’d say most times I don’t know. I guess that is why it’s called the Mystery. One day in my late twenties I was sitting on the steps in my house with my friend and then house mate who was telling me about Palestinian home demolitions. Not that I wanted to know, because who wants to know about suffering far away? We were both taking Landmark Education courses and we were also talking about ‘ways of being.’ Like for example, self righteous indignation…a very popular way of being these days. Munteha embodied it as she role played with me, “You are ignorant and I must teach you!! They rounded up all the Japanese people, American Japanese people and put them in internment camps!” Kay, so she switched it from Palestinian land seizure and house demolitions to Japenese Americans being abducted a forcibly placed in camps during World War II…which to be truthful my younger self did not know about either at that time. That conversation with my 23 year old house mate did change my life forever, because it led to an opening of heart and willingness to see what is unpleasant and painful to see. It even led to travel to see and hear different stories that most American citizens and most people will never get a chance to hear/see. I have Munteha to thank for meeting my spiritual root teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh.

After the conversation on the stairs, Munteha ventured out to actually go witness for herself what was happening on the ground. She went with Leah Green and the Compassionate Listening Project to Israel and Palestine. The group of international citizens sat in people’s homes and listened to their stories. They visited Jewish families, Palestinian families, military officers, people on the ground in Gaza (you could get in back then), Israeli orthodox Settlers and peace activists from every faith. It was called a Compassionate Listening Delegation and the sole purpose was to listen deeply to people’s stories and that in itself would do two things…it would alleviate suffering and it would open people’s eyes within the delegation to what is actually unfolding on the ground thereby cutting through ignorance.

I’m not Jewish, I’m not Arab and I had no interest really in Israel at the time. But I do follow intuition. It was a clear Yes to accept Munteha’s invitation to participate in my own Compassionate Listening Delegation even though I didn’t really know why I was going. The first step in that journey was being trained on how to listen. We are not trained in this culture how to listen deeply. Especially if I don’t agree or like what the other person is sharing or saying. The Compassionate Listening Manual was the first time I saw the name Thich Nhat Hanh and that name did not mean anything to me but the poem Call Me by My True Names embodied everything that the Compassionate Listening delegation was about. So the name of this Vietnamese monk that grew up in war stayed with me.

First, I met this Master through a poem. Then I met Gene Knudson Hoffman, who was Leah Green’s mentor. Gene’s words, “Who prays for the Oppressor?” dropped like a seed into my consciousness because it was so radically different than how I had been trained in a culture bent on punishment. Gene had Thich Nhat Hanh as a mentor and was an elder when I entered as a Compassionate Listening delegate. Compassionate Listening came from Thay into Gene and then Gene transmitted it to Leah. Ripples are like that, they may go out so far and wide like the ocean and we may never know the reverberations. Leah went on to lead 26 delegations to Israel/Palestine as well as delegations in other countries. I could write a book just on the experiences of the Compassionate Listening delegations I participated on back in 1999 and 2001 but that is for another day.

When I was in Diapers, Thich Nhat Hanh made his way from his monastery in Vietnam to Washington DC in the United States. He went to the US government to make visible his people’s suffering and ask for an end to the bombing. “You ask what I want, I want you to stop bombing my people…” I was not even six months old when he was offering a proposal to end the war and and to asking the United States to offer reconstruction without ideological strings attached. It was that call for peace in 1966, without condemning people and without blaming one side or the other that had the then government of Vietnam exile Thich Nhat Hanh for being a traitor. He was not allowed to come back for 39 years and he did not know if he would ever be allowed back. In exile, he transformed the suffering in his own heart and learned to make his heart his home.

*‘The Rage is my baby and the energy of love and mindfulness wraps around the Rage and calms it down.’*

Despite being in exile, despite being labelled a traitor and having his work banned; Thich Nhat Hanh wrote books, poems and teachings. He wrote under pen names and his work was shared in a clandestine underground network in Vietnam. He was considered a subversive so someone caught reading his work took the risk of being punished.

The Rage Bomb that I returned with from being witness and listener in Israel/Palestine invited me deeply into practicing with All of It. That’s when I needed Thay’s gentle presence telling me to make friends with my Rage. Not to judge it or supress it and definitely not to spew it out onto others. Look for the root cause of the rage like a mother looks for the root cause of a baby crying by holding the baby in her arms. The Rage is my baby and the energy of love and mindfulness wraps around the Rage and calms it down. After it had calmed down I could see clearly what was beneath the Rage was a sense of helplessness and grief. And overwhelm. Under anger was an ocean of tears. The rage is not like it was back in the days of re-entry from the Compassionate Listening Delegations, but the tools of honoring grief, fear, overwhelm, anger…I use them every day.

Thay said often that he would not want to be born on a planet without suffering, because without suffering you cannot develop your compassion. He would also say, “It’s not enough to suffer….” Be in touch with the wondrous, healing and nourishing elements in us and around us…that is my job too. Alleviate suffering, water the seeds of joy. In the mindfulness trainings is the line, “I have more than enough conditions to be happy…happiness is not dependent on external conditions…”

*“A cloud can become vapor, it can become rain, but a cloud never dies.”*

To be with such a teacher in this lifetime is a huge honor and blessing. He transitioned into a cloud on January 22, 2022 at the age of 95. “A cloud can become vapor, it can become rain, but a cloud never dies.” No death and no birth may be the most potent teaching of all right now because it can be an antidote to fear. Everything continues, albeit in a different form. As a testament to how he lived, he was allowed to re enter his homeland in the last years of his life and open ceremonies for Thich Nhat Hanh’s transition were held in and live streamed from Vietnam making them available to people all over the world. Yes, war is impermanent. Yes, compassion can move mountains over time. Breathing in I feel deep gratitude, breathing out I allow these gifts to flow to others. Deep bow of love and gratitude.

Begin At Home

“*The beauty can arise from the mud, look deeply and you will find the beauty.”*

The beauty of this present moment is here now if I am here now. You are here, if I am here. When the mud of distraction is stirred up, a beautiful being can be standing right in front of me… a two legged being, a four legged being, or an eight legged being and I don’t even see them. Is the same true for you? Your son, your friend, your boss is right in front of you, can you see him/her? The gift of the present moment is here but sometimes I forget and get lost in dispersion surrounded by constant distractions. Stop thinking my dear, it is all right here. The beauty can arise from the mud, look deeply into the mud and you will find the beauty.

I live in a country where I can walk peacefully on the land, can go grocery shopping and eat whatever I want. I have a job, a home, a car and my health. I have friends on the path and loving animal companions. Begin with gratitude and deep awareness of whatever gifts are yours right now. How to hold the awareness of so much suffering and so much beauty co-existing at the same time? Gently, kindly, patiently, and humbly. When I lay in my tree, I hear there is nothing to fix. My mind has other opinions. Over time I have learned to trust the wisdom of tree more than mind. My tree, the one I climb almost daily has a tree friend now in the Amazon. I introduced them one to another. Find the wise ones in your life. Listen to them. Let yourself rest in their arms. You know who they are.

When I sat at the base of Grandmother tree I remembered to breathe deeper. She holds and supports all the other living beings with her steady tree presence. She supports all of them, without discrimination. Ceiba taught me to send my roots deep down like she does to gain more stability, peace and ease. I can still do it here and now, even though I am no longer in the Amazon jungle. You can too. You can send your roots deep into the earth.

“*Cieba taught me to send my roots deep down like she does to gain more stability, peace and ease”*

In the United States, the cultural belief your worth depends on what you do is deep. Get off your butt and do something, damn it! What have you done lately for peace, for justice, for your kid, or your job? But when I come back home to myself, I hear the message of Grandmother tree. ‘Being is medicine.’ Being stable, being loving, being kind…being wise. Being present. I don’t know her age but my guess is Grandmother tree is thousands of years old. This awareness makes me smile. As human beings, many have forgotten the ways of harmony. My tree here has told me patience is a super power. It’s a super power I am still cultivating as a human being that wants things now-now-now. I want peace, justice and all species honored and respected as sacred now-now-now!

Like millions of others worldwide who witnessed over 1200 Israelis and foreign citizens killed by horrific violence on October 7 in the year 2023, my heart broke and body froze. Flooded with memories of people I had met decades earlier on two separate Compassionate Listening delegations to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza; I had to come back and hold myself tenderly. Vivian Silver, a Canadian peace activist I met on one of those delegations was killed that day. Many innocents were killed on that day and tens of thousands have been killed in the spirit of retribution and revenge since then. Some hostages abducted that day still languish in Gaza.

Like I go to tree for refuge, I went to a Palestinian Sufi on October 8, 2023. He was a bright shining light emanating love far and wide when I met him in his home in the West Bank so many years ago. He transitioned since then but I still cried out to him, “What do I DO now?!!”

“Clean your heart of hatred,” his answer came swiftly. Now two years later, after more than 65,000 Palestinians have been killed, all of the universities in Gaza have been destroyed by U.S. bombs and countless children systematically starved and displaced…the same message came through again. “Clean your heart of hatred.” Make yourself into a light house that can shine brightly on all without exception. Clean. Clean deeply those hidden corners of prejudice, of rage, wrong perceptions. Let them melt into wisdom, compassion and Divine love that sees through different eyes. Decades ago, this same Sufi sat in my living room in Portland and shook his fist in the air, “I cannot hate anyone! I shine the love of God on all people, like the sun shines on all.” These memories are like seeds from so many great beings that I have met in this lifetime. They are buried in the garden of my heart.

Begin at home, my dear. My home is near a National Park called Fort Ord. I have collected a planter pot full of bullets which could easily have been a barrel full of bullets on my walks. Years ago people trained to kill ‘the enemy’ on Fort Ord in the midst of tree friends, the coyote and the hawk. The bullets from those days are strewn everywhere, I see them on every walk. I have made peace with the bullets on the land. They remind me that war is impermanent. Even as my country still exports more war in the form of bullets, bombs and weapons…I can walk in peace. I choose peace. The choice is mine at any moment.

“*Don’t wait until there’s peace out there to have joy in here….*“

Today, October 8, 2025 it is enough to clean my home and to clean my heart. To clean the windows through which I see the world. The best way to honor those people who have been standing for peace and being peace in the darkest places lifetime after life time is to kiss the earth with my feet as I too walk in peace. To clean the corners of my heart with kindness and patience, to clean the corners of my home. As I walk and clean and breathe deeper today why not invite in joy. Don’t wait until there’s peace out there to have joy in here…it’s now or never.

Start Here…

When I get a wee bit overwhelmed with the outer world, I can always come home to Shadow. There she is, right in front of me. Sometimes she’s off to my side. Sometimes she hangs out behind me. Sometimes I forget she is even there. When I do see her, it makes for fun photography. The rocks bathed in Shadow, the blessing stick points out above her head due south, she invites me to recognize her presence. When the world is upside down, inside out and feeling a tad bleak ‘out there’ I come home to her. I meet her where she is now.

What is in my heart is in the world and what is in the world, is in my heart. Start here, my dear. Find courage to do that Shadow dance of awakening. First call back the heart parts, those pieces that have flown off either in tantrums of anger or dispersion from the never ending S.O.S coming from children in Gaza. You know the ones, buried beneath the rubble that no one wants to actually see or talk about. My getting buried there with them, will not help them. Breathe those pieces back home through the crown of my head into the trunk of my abdomen then down through my feet into this beautiful Mother Earth. Call all your pieces back from those heart breaks of your life. Everyone has their own unique heartbreak right now. Empaths beware, scattering your sensitive selves all over the planet may deplete your energy and focus.

There comes a time when it is impossible to ignore Shadow. Turning left, turning right, I can see her in her full might. “People Suck!” she declares. “They lie, they cheat, they bomb, they beat…over and over and over again!” “What are you going to do about it?!!” she demands, stomping her foot. Well, I have written all the people ‘out there.’ Many, many, times. You know the ones, the ones who are ‘the other.’ The ones who choose war as a path to peace.

It is easy not to see, just like Shadow sometimes trails behind, that this war is also inside of me. In this very moment, I am not being bombed or starved. My house still stands. My food is in the refrigerator. But I’ve starved my love of humanity and bombed others with opinions of how they and I ‘should be.’ So when I find myself really at a loss of what to do, I embrace Shadow and begin anew. Starting over with my Self, starting over with the two legged species. Calming that little child who has been running wild with pain inside. I hold her gently and draw her in. “I know your rage comes from love, together let us find a way back to that safe place within.”

*“They lie, they cheat, they bomb, they beat…”*

Preventing people entry with a Muslim ban, pushing people out with Immigrants are dangerous jam…is not different than preventing people entry to my own heart with No People Allowed here; my heart’s door slammed shut. Got racism? I got something Biggerly at times, all two legged style discrimination. Can I smile to that part of me and say, ‘Yes, I see you once again dear. Come close and I will take good care of you. I will not banish you or ignore you or punish you; I will tenderly transform you into a voice and heart of love.’ I know it starts here.

What’s Mine to Do?

*“…how do you discern what’s yours to do and what’s not yours to do?”*

Do you ever notice the stories that can ramble through your head day or night? Or am I the only one who has the occasional monologue that comments, criticizes or fears? It, my mind, has its’ stories and sometimes those stories get mistaken for The Truth. I”m not the only one that does that because right now there are wars and inhumane acts on a grand scale happening because some folks in power have mistaken their stories for The Truth. Speaking of truth, this is a good time to develop a strong internal Bullshit detector. I’d say keep that sucker on 24/7 now. Internally and externally.

Back to what’s mine to do…in a time when there are S.O.S. calls from the earth, Gaza/West Bank, people in the United States being dehumanized, marginalized and abducted and countless other calls that others hear…how do you discern what’s yours and what’s not yours to do? I’m in that inquiry and per usual I’m sharing this blog with whoever cares to read it…to expand the inquiry. Maybe there are other inquiring heart/minds out there!

Sometimes old B.S. can stand in the way of what there is for me to do. One thing for sure, look for what brings light to my eyes and expands my heart. Not to mistake that with always feeling like showing up, that five year old version of me (you) may not always want to show up for anything other than ice cream, a puppy and a nap. At times the old B.S. (belief system) isn’t even mine. I may need to look way back in the ancestral tree to see what is driving how I be. Some of it is mine now, for sure. They inter are, this internal wiring of the human machine. Part of it is out there, and part of it is in here.

“*Of course she was a writer and an artist and a healer.”*

“I couldn’t possibly support myself doing what I love….just look, I’ve tried.” Now that belief may not get said out loud in the light of day, that would be embarrassing. But somewhere it’s lurking in the background. “Look at all of those times you tried and failed…save your money honey…don’t become a bag lady. Just stay practical!” My mom wanted to be a writer all of her life. Of course she was a writer and an artist and a healer. She just didn’t get published. She worked three part time jobs teaching English as a second language to people who loved and adored her. She did that so she would have time to write. Versus a full time job. It’s interesting. When I dive deeper there is a little girl standing in the corner wailing, “But I can’t do it!” Maybe she is five. That’s my little girl by the way, not my mom. But the “I can’t” probably belongs to both of our generations and who knows how many more. This is where the internal bullshit detector comes in handy.

I think it is a critical skill set to be able to call BS on your very own self. OR my very own self. I can take that little five year old wailing ‘I can’t’ by the hand and walk her over to the mirror. “We are in this together and together we can…” Be sure and smile to that little kiddo, no shaming, no blaming. She or He is just working on an old outdated program. The program that so many humanoids are running inside of that says they need to stay safe and secure. ‘So don’t try again, it’s better to be half dead,’ that program will tell you.

To come home to what’s mine to do, I’ve got to go pretty deep into the inner wiring of beliefs to see what has blocked it in the past. Not to make some kind of drama about it, just bring curiosity to it. Shine light. I can re-frame it, rename it and suddenly change it. Instead of ‘blocked’ maybe it was just not ripe yet. Maybe, just maybe it was still in gestation. We are the story tellers, the dream weavers, the healers, so how to be mindful of making stories that empower me or we?

The White Wolf is asking you to feed it stories of courage, love and beauty. It wants to feel the goodness of humanity. Then there is the news. You know the news…if it bleeds it leads. There is a lot of bleeding right now and I”m not making light of that. I’m just reminding myself to feed that little kiddo stories of love, compassion and courage. So I don’t get lost in war and dehumanization. The war outside or the war inside. There would not be war outside if there was not war inside.

Right now I would say what’s mine to do is to accept the world as it is in this moment (doesn’t mean I have to like it all). At the same time, taking an audacious stand for harmony between all species and for future generations to thrive on a planet that they hold sacred and care for. I’d say play big. No more of this do I have enough money for the water bill this month. I mean, I do have to pay the water bill. Oh dang, I have to pay the rent too…let’s not get side tracked.

I have implanted in my brain the time I was sitting on the stairs with my 23 year old house mate, Munteha. We were in a deep conversation. I was a coach in landmark education programs helping people live lives they love, she was taking landmark training and was a Portland State student in International Relations. We were talking about ways of being. Actually, role playing ways of being is more like it. “You are ignorant and I must teach you!” She scolded me with an icy glare. “Don’t you know about the Japanese internment camps?” she pressed. (I actually didn’t then even though I was older than her.) “Trish-they are bulldozing people’s homes in Palestine! Imagine, it’s your home, then it’s rubble. Where does your family go?” My friend and then housemate is Arab American. She had already experienced discrimination in school. I on the other hand was white and clueless. Okay, so this is called her….Self Righteous Indignation mode. Do we all have that one? (I do!) Like WTF is wrong with you? Munteha was also the one who inspired me to go from absolutely clueless and disinterested to a person who participated on two separate Compassionate Listening Delegations bearing witness in Israel and Palestine with both Israelis and Palestinians; listening to their heart stories. That’s 25 years ago.

*“When I see that **Self Righteous Indignation** is creeping in, stay humble.”*

Stay humble my dear. There was a time when I didn’t know and didn’t care much about Israel and Palestine and had a full life outside all of that. When I see that Self Righteous Indignation is creeping in, stay humble. Back to what is mine to do? Play with the transformation of human consciousness in ways that bring more harmony between people, animals, plants and the earth herself. The rage that comes through from Self Righteous Indignation usually is covering up pain, grief, helplessness, desperation and urgency. You could also call that love. Whether it is about climate change, or war, or you name it. These are intense times, softening my gaze and coming with an open heart takes diligence. I see the discrimination within me towards the species that has caused so much harm to so many others, including millions of children. Disheartening isn’t a strong enough word. But mulching that manure and sprinkling it on flower beds is the practice. The old program belief, “People really suck,” is not likely to make me a whole lot of friends. Not human ones, anyways.

Not going to be very effective in the transformation game if I”m coming at it from Self Righteous Indignation or People Suck mode. Bottom line we all want the same things. We want to love and be loved, we want to be happy and healthy and yes we want to be safe. By the way part of transforming consciousness is having more than just me playing this game of looking for old B.S. and being willing to let it go for something that is more life giving.

Think about snake. People have stories about snake that they are evil or the enemy but my story about snake is they know how to shed their skin all at once. It is effortless and natural because it no longer serves them. They outgrow the old skin and slide out of it. We could all learn from snake right now. Shadow work is coming back inside to see those hidden beliefs that it is time to shed. Then being willing to do do.

“*Shadow work is coming back inside to see those hidden beliefs it is time to shed.”*

Sieze the day/night your very own self and grab a piece of paper, a pen and go within. What are your long held…maybe even cherished beliefs that you intuitively know don’t serve you any more? Write them down. It doesn’t mandate that you let them go, but just shining a light on the old programming will shift it. Who knows, maybe you will effortlessly shed those old beliefs.

Stopping, Calming, Resting

Do you ever feel like a Doo Doo? I mean, that the more you do; the more you’re worth and the less you do…well go to the corner and stand with a dunce cap on your head. Punishment for not doing enough. “Be Still and Know” isn’t just a slogan for consumer merchandise. There is value in resting, value in calming our overstimulated nerves. I received Thich Nhat Hanh’s dharma talk about stopping, calming, and resting as a basic part of maintaining both physical and mental health decades ago. And yet, I still forget. He said we are addicted to running. Running after something out there. Stop running. Stopping the machine of doing, machinery of running after something vague out there in the distant future is not how I’ve been trained in this culture. Just the opposite.

I often still admonish myself when I feel tired. “Again?” Suck it up girl! Get busy! Be productive! Don’t be a lazy a**. But there is another voice, and I feel the call to stop, calm and rest. First I had to remember…it’s okay to stop, to calm, to rest. Just like I had to remember today is 9/11/2024. It doesn’t make me a bad person to stop doing. Remember wisdom, the quieter voice.

I was in New York bearing witness soon after the towers fell in 2001. I saw piles of ash that had the building, the people from the building and pictures of their loved ones from their desks in the ash. The piles of ash were as tall as me. I was with friends and we went to do ceremony, as an offering. That was 23 years ago, and so many more dead since then from wars.

Part of stopping is permission to remember, or re-member. Soon after the 9/11 attack a small group of family members of those who were killed in the twin towers banned together to form, “Not in Our Name.” They could hear the drum beat of a military response and the possibility of war was close at hand. These people who had lost their beloved ones did not want more people killed, they did not want to act out of revenge and have their loved ones used as an excuse to start war. That organization’s message did not make the headlines, but as a peace activist I heard them. What made headlines was false claims of weapons of mass destruction being in Iraq. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

Stopping, calming, and resting. We are all cells in the body of humanity, so being a healthy cell does not just benefit myself. Being a healthy cell benefits those around me, those in my circles and family. Likewise…being a burnt out crispy one that is bitter, reactive or angry does not only impact me. That has a negative ripple on others, as well. It takes courage to go in a different direction than our collective programming, yet that is the invitation here. There is an opportunity to consciously plant seeds to a new dream from the ashes of the old. Rather than living on auto pilot.

Another teaching I received from Thay (what Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh is called by his students) is to ask yourself, ‘are you sure?‘ Rather than assume my view is the Right view, the truth, or reality; have the humility to question myself. In 2001 there was the shock of being attacked on U.S. soil, and asking, ‘are you sure?’ was not a priority for the government. The press didn’t really inspect the claims of weapons of mass destruction to make sure they were valid and it was embedded into collective consciousness. Even though it was a lie. That made bombing Iraq the next U.S. government’s step in what was named, the ‘Shock and Awe’ campaign ordered by then President Bush. The urge to hit back is so ingrain in humanity, but where does that lead us? Again, Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11.

As we know, the war didn’t stop in Iraq. It went on to Afghanistan, and for over a decade our country sent troops to fight terrorism in Afghanistan. Soldiers traumatized by war would return and then be sent again to fight again on another deployment and be traumatized more. All the while people in Iraq and Afghanistan were being killed, traumatized, and bombed.

Yet, here in the United States…there was no sign of war. No one was bombing us, no troops were on the ground in our towns and cities. Our hospitals were not being bombed, our wedding parties were not being bombed, our schools were not being bombed by a foreign military. So it was easy for many in the United States to go about the daily routine, not paying attention to wars or even notice they exist. That is only if you don’t have a family member deployed…a military family faced the effects of war every day. These wars started because 2,997 American citizens died when airplanes hijacked by terrorists flew into the twin towers causing them to collapse in New York on 9/11/2001. Many of the first responders I talked with at the time, also got sick later from what they inhaled working on the site of the fallen towers. Today is a good day to stop and honor all those who have suffered from 9/11 and it’s rippling waves of violence.

*I trust waves of peace to ripple out from my home today.*

Breathing in all of that heart ache, and breathing out compassion, I come back to stopping. Stop, calm, rest. I see the connections between different nation’s reaction to trauma, whether it is the United States from 9/11 or it is Israel and the military weapons of the United States from 10/7. Even seeing that takes wisdom, stamina and courage. I can’t stop the momentum ‘out there’, but I can come back and take care of what is in here, inside my own heart, inside my home. I can calm the strong emotions and take care of them like good friends. Rather than make myself into a battle field…one side condemning and blaming, the other hiding and running. I can calm the voice of judgement or scorn. Wars would not happen out there if they were not first happening in the hearts of humans. I am a cell in the body of humanity, the healthier I am, the more it benefits everyone. Connecting dots from the macro to the micro quickly and easily is one of my gifts and I know to share what I see. Then it is to shift to what I want to see from heart vision. I’m not the only one, millions of visionaries around the world are sowing the seeds of a new dream of a world we would want our children to inherit. I know that to my core. I can rest easy, and replenish my energy and hope. I know the wisdom of stopping, calming and resting will lead to deep insight. Doing comes from being. So especially on this day it’s enough to be peaceful, calm and grateful. I trust waves of peace to ripple out from my home today as my dog gently snores at my feet. All is well.