The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

As you probably saw in the Tier1 email, we are continuing to discuss Rumi’s Guest House poem after last Sunday’s Labwork meeting.

Since a couple of folks in the room had deaths in the family, the concepts of change and loss and continuing to love were a part of the studio Labwork conversation, and therefore I wove it into the meditation too.

Here’s the original poem that I was referencing:

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

by Jalaluddin Rumi

from Rumi: Selected Poems, trans Coleman Barks with John Moynce, A. J. Arberry, Reynold Nicholson (Penguin Books, 2004)

When the conversation has been death, or change, and the fears that come with that, I’ve heard some folks get very heavy in their approach to the traditional Buddhist definitions of impermanence. There can even be a fatalistic tone to these conversations that I find unhelpful for my own practice.

It was from the Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh that I learned to have a lighter relationship with it. Rather than focusing on the word impermanence, he coined a related phrase: interbeing.

The term interbeing gives me more of a sense of movement through time and space. It can include relationships that weave into the past with the recently dead, and ancestors. The relationships can also weave into the future with those to come, those for whom I will be an ancestor.

A couple of members were considering creating ancestor altars during October as a way to