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Peony Blossom
Garden @ Midcoast Friends Meeting; Damariscotta, Maine
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The most secure place to hide a treasure of gold
is in some desolate, unnoticed place.
Why would anyone hide treasure
in plain sight?
And so it is said,
"Joy is hidden beneath sorrow."
*"The Hiding Place." Trans., Kabir Halminski. In Rumi. The Pocket Rumi. Ed., Kabir Helminski.
* * *
When a youth, I was taught the shortest verse in the Christian Bible - "Bible" meant King James Version. The verse is, "Jesus wept" (Gospel of John 11.35; KJV). Jesus is informed his friend Lazarus died. He weeps and proceeds to the tomb and Mary and Martha, Lazarus' sisters. Jesus was close friends with the three. The Gospel shows him dining in their home. Another Gospel verse shows Jesus weeping, while he is led into Jerusalem before his crucifixion. In the Gospel of Luke 19.41, he looks at her and speaks of the dark days ahead for the city and her citizens. Outside the Gospels, the writer of Hebrews says he prayed with "loud cries and tears" (15.7, NRSV).
Being raised a "Bible-believing" Christian, this tender side of Jesus was rarely spoken of. Yet, these references show us a man receptive to feeling suffering. They show us that compassion entails the potential to union with the pain of the other and oneself.
* * *
Tender: from Latin tarunah, "soft, delicate; of tender age, youthful." Akin to Armenian t'arm, "young, fresh, green."
* * *
Listening to music, I began weeping. After the weeping ended, it started again. I recalled it was many months since having what many call a good cry. Something within found a way out after being hidden in the shadows, unable to find its escape. I could not identify why the crying happened, though I had several seasons of deeply-felt angst over the months prior. I seemed to have lost a sense of inner rootage, of being home wherever I was - my island of peace and belonging. I felt like I was floating nameless and faceless, while others moved about me, seemingly belonging and befriended. The music aided this tenderness to escape the body into the air about me.
* * *
A spiritual path and practices like meditation can introduce us to our innate tenderness. When we begin to practice silence, we might be surprised at how tenderness has been silenced by busyness, clinging to belief, entertainment, or trying to fix others.
* * *
During this same time as the outpouring of tears above, a fellow spiritual practitioner spoke with me with a gladsome face. He told of how he was awakened to the need to welcome suffering. He had spent many years trying to avoid it, even after devotedly practicing his spiritual path. He was relieved to stop running and invite himself to feel the pain.
Possibly, he looks so joyful, for when we welcome tenderness to feel suffering, we open ourselves to the sensation of joy and all the pleasant feelings, too. Tenderness means we feel the opposites - "pleasant" and "unpleasant." Yet, with tenderheartedness, compassion can arise not fitting in the opposites "feels good" and "feels not-good." The heart is not able to be described in terms of psychology. Compassion is not a feeling but includes feeling.
* * *
We can try to use our spiritual practice to shield ourselves from pain. And whatever we hide behind is usually something we identify as good. We can hide our pain and its tenderness by prayer as easily as a bottle of alcohol, sex, or gambling. We can use a church or zendo as a hideaway as easily as a bar or the beds of an assortment of sexual partners. It is the same denial, the same fear of the soft spot within us. We may reach a point, sadly, where we no longer feel any tenderness, we have so long silenced it.
* * *
Meditation provides us a connection to the basic spaciousness in which all things live, arise, and return. Realizing the spaciousness, we sense some avoidance of a sensation in us soft, vulnerable, and alive. Some light comes into the closed room, maybe after we open the blinds a little over one window. This welcome warmth feels good, we see better and feel more vibrant and uplifted, but we get a hint of some deep, pervasive, and anonymous sadness. We cannot clarify where the sensation comes from. Stillness has a way of opening windows. The Light throws its light on all sorts of feelings. They are hidden no more.
Alongside the sadness, we might sense a newfound joy. This joy is subtle but very real – more real than anything we have known as happiness. This joy surprises us. The realness of it might intimidate us. And how do quiet bliss and subtle sadness live side-by-side in the body?
* * *
Buddhist teacher, Pema Chōdrōn, speaks of tenderness as our "soft spot" (The Wisdom of No Escape). "Tender spot" is another descriptive way of speaking of this place in us. This sensation is a gentle, non-aggressive, non-violent place in us.
Picture yourself with no sense of physical feeling. You have a cut on your foot. You are walking about, blood gushing out, but have no receptivity to pain. Contrast this to having the faculty of sensation. That same cut would lead you to limp. You would try to reduce or eliminate pressure on that foot. You would proceed to tend to the wound. You might have to quit using that foot for a time, for it to heal.
Likewise, we find that we are awakened to what I call our innate vulnerability. It is as though a vulnerability plant grows out of muddy, dark water. Our meditation is like casting some warm sunshine on that place, and the plant extends upward into the spaciousness. We do not pull the plant upward, the plant does that naturally. With that, we are sensitized to the basic, natural place of sadness and tenderness we share with other creatures. This rawness accompanies awakening to basic humanness. We feel the joy and sadness of being a creature among other creatures.
The Christian Bible provides a striking reference to the shared tenderness of all Nature. Romans 8.22 reads, "For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time" (CEV). The writer says other beings than humans have the capacity to suffer, so to be tender. Our tenderness is not merely a human grace.
* * *
Compassion connotes a shift from my to our. Our soft spot is that of others. This transition aids us in releasing our view that this suffering is my suffering. When you feel your suffering, can you let it open to be our suffering? If you do, this does not mean denying the immediacy of the suffering. It places it in a larger context. In this, we acknowledge our interbeing with all beings. The suffering transforms, even if it does not decrease, for it is no longer owned as separate by a separate self.
* * *
A like experience of weeping as the one shared above happened to me on a retreat. I was a pastor and attended evening worship with other pastors and denominational leaders. We would end the meeting with a time of invite to an altar for prayer. One night I decided to go forth, kneel, and pray. Upon getting on my knees, I was surprised by an uprush of uncontrolled wailing. I was shocked by what was happening. Yet, I did not try to block it. As it continued, a close friend knelt beside me, held me, and spoke words of comfort to me. I had no idea why this was occurring and, to this day, have no explanation of why it happened at that time and place.
* * *
I am still learning to sit with the soft spot. I am learning to feel what I was afraid to feel. That is, to feel the deep, subtle sense of ache. I am learning not to own it as my own. Like my Buddhist friend, I am learning to welcome suffering - that of others and myself - as a friend, not an enemy.
* * *
Can we allow space for the wisdom arising from the soft spot. If we sit with it, we may begin to hear the message it brings to us. Yet, sitting with the tenderness can itself be a gift - one I give to others in sharing this one life with them. This offering may be the pathway to healing. So, sometimes, stillness teaches us just being with the ache is an act of compassion. Yes, silence invites us to relax into our soft spot and trust it is present not to harm us but to teach and heal us.
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*©Brian K. Wilcox, 2022.
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox, and title and place of photograph.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
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