Mental Yoga: Thathaasthu

by Nina

So she came down from the tree.... by Marc Chagall*

I’m stressed out this morning because early this morning a whole bunch of people from the city were outside my house arguing about our street tree. It’s a huge, beautiful old camphor tree with enormous roots that have for the third time ruined the sidewalk, wrecked our sewers, and are destroying our walkway as they inch their way toward the foundation of our house. The city took out the sidewalk on Monday, so now everyone was looking at the tree roots trying to figure out what to do. The city department and the contractor repairing the sidewalk think the tree is very dangerous and should be taken down—that’s a bit scary. The city’s arborists think the tree is worth preserving at any cost—I get that—but this means shaving down the trees roots and removing some of them in order to put a level sidewalk on top of them, and they claim there are no risks to be concerned about (though shaving the roots will result in some dead branches). And unfortunately we ourselves have no say whatsoever in the matter, even though the city is charging us to repair the damage that the tree did to the sidewalk—yes, really. My long time next-door neighbors are having the same problems with their street tree, and in their case the roots are destroying their water line, which needs to be replaced before the sidewalk can be repaired. 

It looks like what is going to happen is they are going to try shaving the roots of our tree and then re-evaluate after that. Weirdly the thing that really upset me is something that didn’t happen. The contractor told me that one plan the arborists had was to move the sidewalk onto our property to make more room for the street tree, while destroying part of our beautiful front garden. Are they even allowed to do that?  Whoa, even though they decided not to go for that plan, it’s making me angry that they were even thinking about it and talking about it behind my back! 

After that great start to my day, I came back to sit at my desk and work on the blog, not having any idea of what I was going to write about. Meanwhile, they’re now attacking my neighbor’s tree and making a lot of noise—and, oh, now the doorbell is ringing again! You know what it is time for? A little mental yoga. So—hahaha—I actually started reading some of my old posts to remind myself of how just pausing to notice your own thoughts can be helpful in quieting your mind.

I’ve written about samskaras, or patterns of reactivity, several times, including Meditation and Brain Strength, A Pathway in the Mind, and Changing the Brain’s Stressful Habits.  So first, I’ll take a moment to notice how upset I am at not having control over a decision that affects my life and my pocketbook as well as my confusion about being told completely contradictory things by various experts. I’ve registered my concerns, the decision has been made by the powers that be, and there is nothing more I can do. Yoga teacher and therapist Stephen Cope believes that with tapas, which he defines as “the energy of restraint,” we can start to avoid some of our harmful patterns of reactivity or samskaras. So for now, I’m going to try to just let it all go. Furthermore, can I just laugh about how upset I got over something that DIDN’T EVEN HAPPEN? 

But now the noise! It’s especially irritating hearing it when I’m already stressed out and I’m supposed to be writing a post this morning and don’t even have a topic yet! But I am quickly reminded of Ram’s post Achieving Stillness in Turbulent Times, in which he wrote about how his grandfather taught him to meditate in a train station. He concluded by saying:

"The goal of meditation is to be at ease, relaxed and at peace with our surroundings. It is important to not resist the disturbing/distracting influence that comes in the way of your meditation practice (in your case traffic or the cold environment). So do not try to ignore the influence or to block it out, for if you try, you will only meet with stiffer resistance, ending in frustration. Instead, simply let it be (“thathaasthu” in Sanskrit) and continue with your meditation. Everything is a part of meditation, all the influences including the noise, the thoughts, the emotions, and the resistance from the mind. Treat everything that arises in meditation the same way—let it be and just be there!"

Well, if Ram can meditate in train station, I can write a blog post with people arguing outside and making the kind of invasive noise that only large machines are capable of (thank you, Ram, for teaching me so much). And since my neighbors have no water, I’ll bring them a pitcher of drinking water and offer them the use of my bathroom for the day. 

Thathaasthu.

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