Author: Tracy Cochran

• The Dharma of Scrooge

  In dark times it can be a healing exercise to remember the stories of others who have gone through darkness and emerged into light. We don’t have to limit ourselves to spiritual figures–the Buddha alone in the forest, or Jesus wandering in the desert.  Allow yourself to remember beloved stories and characters from books and films. Consider, for example, the deep truth in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. In the course of one harrowing night of remembering, Scrooge moves from isolation to openness to life.

  Scrooge, as most of us know, is a miserable, isolated man, “self-contained and solitary as an oyster.” On Christmas Eve, he finds himself alone in a cold and gloomy house, dismissing the need we all have for warmth and human company as “humbug.” He falls asleep, thinking only of the work he has to do. Enter the ghost of Scrooge’s business partner Marley, wrapped in chains made of cashboxes, ledgers, the objects of his attention in life.

  “You are fettered,” says Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?”

  “I wear the chain I forged in life,” replies the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard.”

  Marley warns Scrooge that he is forging his own chain and that his will be even longer than his own. In Buddhism, the fetters are mental bonds, habits of thought that limit us. Meditative awareness allows us to bring an accepting, non-judging attention to all the ways we have learned to brace ourselves, seeing that these braces became postures and attitudes and finally beliefs about this. But Scrooge doesn’t see this and rushes to defend the way his old partner is braced and bound. He reminds his old partner that he was “always a good man of business.”

  “Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business.”

  We work so hard to stay alive, working things out so that we can be safe and happy. We strive to be somebody, to accomplish things. And yet our real business here on earth is being fully here.  We are made for presence, for compassion, for seeing and feeling and witnessing the life inside us and outside us. We are made for discovering our kinship with other beings. We are made to be kind.

  Marley moans and shakes his chains, terrifying Scrooge with the spectacle of spending a whole brief life like that, bound up in the deluded belief that he is separate little fortress in a cold and hostile world. By dawn, Scrooge remembers that he was once a child. He remembers that he will die one day. He can no longer be “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous.”

  At last Scrooge understands the preciousness of life.re

  “This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists and that it is built entirely out of attentiveness,” writes Mary Oliver.

  Before he leaves, Marley’s ghost leads Scrooge to an open window where he sees “the air full of phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went.” They missed their chance to be present, really and truly alive, body, heart, and mind!

  Scrooge wakes up on Christmas morning, realizing that it is not too late! May we, too, wake up knowing that kindness and generosity ate the way to be free.

  December 24, 2024

  ---

• Election Week as a Practice

  This is Election Week in the United States. All the feelings that many of us are feeling is actually a place of practice. The mother of all the thoughts and emotions that are bubbling up is anxious uncertainty. It feels as if we are waiting to cross a border.

  “Well, we’re nowhere now!” Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo said this to me as we sat in the nowhere land between Nepal and India. We had exited Nepal, but there was a problem with the distinguished nun’s visa for India, so we all sat together between countries for time–literally between two heavily guarded, bunker-like buildings. Wild dogs and soldiers with machine guns watched us, a group of Tibetan Buddhist nuns and American women wondering what would come next. 

  We were on a pilgrimage in Nepal and India, retracing the footsteps of the first Buddhist women. My group didn’t walk from Lumbini, Nepal, to Vaishali, India, as the earliest pilgrims did. But traveling hundreds of miles overland by bus  offered all kinds of lessons–among them the value of determination. To be determined, I learned, is not steely will but a softer, steadier state–a willingness to show up for what is happening even when it is confusing or difficult–a willingness to go on being.

  After some time and a tiny bit of yelling (great spiritual teachers do raise their voices–very mindfully of course) we did make it across the border into India. But while I sat in that no man’s land with Jetsunma and the dogs and the border guards and everyone else, I realized–yet again–that a great deal of our practice comes down to being with ourselves like a wonderful, loving friend–yes, like a Buddha. Our practice is not to repress anxiety, fear, anger, even downright panic but to meet it with wisdom and compassion.

  Whatever you are feeling right now, let it be acceptable, human, not something to flee or fix. Tak good actions. Meditate. Go for walks, practice yoga, clean your house, cook something. Be kind to your experience, and know that self-compassion is really important and leads to deeper truths.

  The night of the Buddha’s enlightenment lasted a long time. There was no single blinding flash of certainty that lit up the sky. There came a series of unfolding illuminations, a slow dawning of understanding. He came to understand the way our minds create a sense of self, and the law of karma. Ultimately, he came to see how our suffering is rooted in a sense of separation.

  This week, when you can,try to notice when the sense of separation seems particularly sharp. And notice that we can bring compassionate acceptance to this very state–and even a bit of lightness. Loving awareness doesn’t have to be serious. It can be the kind of friend we feel we shouldn’t be allowed to sit next to on solemn occasions–loving but also open to the absurdity of even the situation. Open to moments of joy.

  Notice that we can hang out together in no man’s land–and beyond.

  November 2, 2024

  news

  ---

• Interdependence Day

  Happy July! This is the month of Bastille Day in France. and July 4th here in the States. This seems the perfect time to take a moment to consider what it means to be free inside.
  
  “Do you think I am trying to weave a spell,” writes C.S. Lewis . “Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them.  And you and i have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil spell of worldliness….”
  
  Once a student confessed that she worried a little bit that I was casting a spell. She loved being guided in meditation. Being invited to soften and open into presence made her remember that she was so much more than a thought machine. She also loved hearing dharma talks. The big insights the Buddha made so much sense to her. But still, she worried that she was being lulled into a trance. Everything felt so relaxing and right and one day she and her fellow meditators would be led pied-piper style into a weird cult. 
  
  This student laughed as she described this fear, which passed as years went by and there was no creepy revelation. And yet this underlying anxiety draws out the reality in C. S Lewis’s statement. We are always being influenced by something. Whether we recognize it or not, we are in a trance–entranced by underlying beliefs, by the voices in our head. Our growth and awakening depends on finding good spells to help us break dark enchantments.
  
  One Independence Day,  my daughter, a few friends, and I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. We didn’t plan to do this. We were headed downtown to walk around revolutionary sites. But we happened to emerge from the subway right where the walkway to the bridge starts, and those iconic arches looming above us, just beckoned to us. Come across! Visit the Great Holy Land of Brooklyn.

  I used to call it that because my daughter mourned the loss of it so intensely when we moved to the suburbs when she was ten. For years, walking around Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill filled her with terrible nostalgia—a fierce longing for her what she regards to be her true home, the place of her happiest years. It was like taking a very old person back to the homeland they lost to war or pogrom. Fortunately, as the years passed and Brooklyn transformed, she began to experience Brooklyn with more equanimity, and focus more on the future.

  But even though Brooklyn (and both of us) had changed since we lived, my body knew the way through the brownstone streets, We remembered the old haunts–the bookstore, the little park with the dolphin statue, the cafe. We remembered them even when they weren’t there anymore. I felt the ghosts of old experiences, old hopes and dreams and disappointments.  
  
  My friend observed that my daughter and I seemed to be walking around Brooklyn in a trance of memory–reliving earlier times. This is a benevolent (if poignant) example of the way our brains are wired to repeat history. We don’t see things as they are. We see things through the net of our conditioning–our experiences, the beliefs and ideas that come to us from family and culture.
  
  There are ideas that come from another level of clarity and insight. In a sense, when we practice meditation and study the dharma, we are seeking a spell to awaken us from the dark enchantment of our conditioning. The Buddha taught that the heart of our suffering–the suffering under all our suffering–is the trance of separation. In my experience, it is this belief that fuels shame. We are ashamed by that which separates us from belonging to a greater whole. Our inner freedom comes as we learn to drop our stubborn belief in our independence and discover (or rediscover) our profound interdependence with others and we life.
  
  As we spend more time with ourselves, which is another way of thinking about practice, we may discover (or rediscover) feelings for the earth and the sun and the stars. We remember that we belong not just to families or even a species but to life itself.

  This month, can we reflect on what it could  mean to break out of the trance of our separation?  Can we look at practice and dharma as a way to dwell in a space larger than our usual trance allows because that is all too often what psychologist and dharma teacher Tara Brach calls a “trance of unworthiness.”
  
  This July, if you wish, dare to explore your interdependence. See if it doesn’t set you free. 
  

  …

  July 4, 2024

  Consciousness, Meditation, Mindfulness, spirituality, trance

  ---

• Healing Our Separation

  In the beginning, we were One. When we were born we were all part of the universe, like water and trees and passing storms. We were not unconscous but we were not yet aware that we were separate. This changed all too quickly.

  How old were you when you became aware that you were separate from the adults around you? I remember being three years old. I was outside in the backyard, engaged in a mighty struggle. A tricycle had tipped over and I was picking it up by the handlebars and seat and setting it right. This took strenghth and dexterity and determination! And I did it! I was also demonstrating to my twin brother that this feat could be done. My mother, who was standing nearby talking to another adult, turned and saw what I had accomplished. I fully expected to fully appreciate the effort and the feeling of accomplishment I was experiencing. I stood there in the grass on my own two sturdy little legs expecting her to beam with recognition…but to my horror she laughted at me!

  To be clear, she was laughing with affection. How cute I was, doing this little thing! But to me, it was a huge thing. In that moment, a knife dropped, severing the chord of perfect communion that had existed between us. She loved me and I felt connected to her, even in that shattering moment. But I suddenly realized that we were separate beings. It turned out that there was a very big difference between my consciousness–my feeling for my life– and her preception of me.

  Even in the best of cases, our mothers and the adults in our lives drive us out of the garden of oneness. We learn thanks to them and the culture at large to try to be special, to win their attention and approval. Or we try really hard to rebel.

  Our task on earth, the aim of our spiritual practices, is to heal our sense of separation, our haunted drive to be special or our rebellion against all that. We long to make our way back to the garden, before we ate of the tree of good and evil, me and them.

  How do we do this? It begins by allowing ourselves to be seen by loving attention.

  May is the month of Mother’s Day in the U.S. And it has become a tradition with me to remind us all that this beautiful practice is ultimately a way to offer ourselves the kind of unconditional, loving attention we longed to receive from our own flesh and blood mothers. Many of never had the experience of being completely seen–every part–and completely loved. This drives us towards religons and practices and all kinds of things. I recently saw a cartoon of a person staring into a completely empty refrigerator. The caption read: “What you seek is already inside you.”The good news is that this loving attenton is here to be found. And it begins with that deceptively simple movement of sitting down and being still, letting everything be just as it is.”When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me. Speaking words of wisdom, let it be. And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me. Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.”

  Paul McCartney wrote this famous song about his own mother Mary, who died when he was 14 years old. We know what we need in times of trouble. In our hours of darkness, in our times of broken- heartedness and difficulty, what most of us want the most is a caring presence. We do not want advice or a pep talk.  We want to be seen and heard and known. We want to be accepted as we really are,  including the parts of us that hold pain and anger and fear. 

  Some of us were fortunate enough to have had loving mothers who demonstrate this kind of calm caring. They may have been far from perfect most of the time. But sometimes, when the chips were down, they gave us that kind of compassion that is not separate from wisdom–that is pure loving attention. But many of us didn’t know this kind of loving, accepting awareness. We fret that we won’t be able to find it because it is so unknow.  The good news is that we can prectice right here and right now.

  “Darling, I am here for you.” The great Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn composed this “mantra of true presence.” Please consider saying this to yourself. Look in the mirror in the morning and say it. Say it late at night when you can’t sleep. Say it all the time. Offer yourself the gift of kind attention. Have the kind intention to let yourself be.

  “Darling, I know you are there and I am so happy.” This is another mantra from the Zen master. What a wonderful thing to hear! Some of the people claim to not like this phrase, preferring, “I’m here for you” or “I’m here for you, buddy” or something. But truthfully, we all want to be dear to someone and yes, even darling, and to have our mere presence make someone happy. And it turns out that we don’t have to pine and wait!  We can say this mantra anytime, and lots of times. And it may be that tiny moments of letting ourselves be, offering ourselves the reminder that we are wonderful just as we are, literally full of wonder, can change our lives.

  Let it be. Let the body be the body, just as you find it today. Let the feelings be the feelings. Let the thoughts be the thoughts. Let the world be the world.  If there is to be an answer or an insight, if there is to be healing of the heartbreak and soothing of the pain and trouble, it starts and ends here. We accept reality. And we dare to show ourselves just as we are to a greater, nonjudgmental attention. We know that we are lovable.

  Another mantra of true presence from Thich Nhat Hahn is: “Darling, I know you are suffering. That is why I am here for you.” The last and most challenging is: “Darling, I suffer. I am trying my best to practice. Please help me.” This is the most challenging, because it means admitting to a loved one that they are making you suffer.

  Undertaking this practice of offering ourselves a bit of kind, nonjudgmental attention, letting everything be just as it is, we may begin to glimpse what love could be. It just might be a force that allows an easing of fear, a little bit of luminous energy that allows us to see ourselves as a person of interest–not just in our best moments and manifestations but even when our internal wounded children rear their wild little heads–the whole of us, damaged and undamaged, conscious or lost in the past, all of us genuinely worthy of care and interest. As we work this way, welcoming ourselves into the light of our own kind attention, letting every part be, we discover that darkness and loneliness not deepest thing in us. Love is.

  Thank you for reading! And thank you for purchasing my book PRESENCE; THE ART OF BEING AT HOME IN YOURSELF at Amazon or other stores!

  May 11, 2024

  ---

• April Can Be Cruel

  “The trees are coming into leaf /Like something almost being said,” writes the poet Philip Larkin.

  It is spring here in the Northeastern United States. This change of season happens every year, yet every time it stirs up all kinds of attitudes and feelings. On a pretty day, walking outside can feel like walking into a big green, murmuring party. This can bring a twist of longing. We want to be part of the conversation but we can’t quite hear what is being said. We are delighted that winter has passed at last, and  that new life is bursting forth. This feels miraculous, every year. But we can also feel a little wistful, a little left out. Larkin’s poem continues: “The recent buds relax and spread,/Their greenness is a kind of grief.”

  Why grief? Spring brings a surge of hope and energy. But it is also a pretty flashy demonstration of impermanence. Life is beginning again, no matter what happened in your life last year. If you have experienced a big loss, this can be wrenching. Even if you, like me, just had a tough year, containing an array of challenges, we can meet spring feeling a little tentative about all this wild blooming. We want life to hold back just a little.

  “April is the cruelest month,” writes the poet T.S. Eliot. “Breeding lilacs out of the dead land.”

  On rainy days, we may feel sad and disappointed, wondering if maybe spring just isn’t what it used to be. 

  And yet, deep down, under these different mind states, there is an impulse to flow and change ourselves. 

  “To study the self is to forget the self,” taught the 13th Century Zen sage Dogen. To forget the self is to let go of our fixation on certain opinions and beliefs about ourselves. It means seeing everything that arises, feeling everything, not banishing what we deem to be bad or clinging to what we deem to be good. Forgetting the self means opening to our experience with honesty and with kindness–turning towards our experience as a loving witness instead of identifying with it. As we practice this, moment by moment, we discover that our so-called negative emotions and mind states are actually our life force, our creative force, our real wisdom and compassion.

  This spring, let us let ourselves begin afresh. Let us entertain the idea that under all our desire and longings, there is a wish to belong to life–to be part of the great green flourishing. This wish is as close to us as our beating heart.

  Why don’t I go ahead and invoke another great spring poem? “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower,” writes Dylan Thomas. “Drives my green age.”

  We share the life force with all beings that live. We wish to be part of life, to come out of separation and join in. And we wish to be aware. This is our practice, being with life in its unfolding. 

  As we do this, one moment at time, something slowly miraculous begins to happen. We stop clinging to the life force that flows through us as if it is strictly ours, as if we must affirm and protect it at all costs. Something deep inside begins to soften and open and unfurl like a seed becoming a shoot. We begin afresh. We bloom.

  https://rubinmuseum.org/events/event/presence-book-launch-with-tracy-cochran-04-19-2024

  April 7, 2024

  life, Love, mental-health, Spring, writing

  ---

• March Goes Out Like A Lamb

  In this part of the world, they say that March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb. This year this is true. There were high winds and power outages here yesterday, and that wild weather seemed to mirror the fear and uncertainty raging across the land. Nothing seems safe or certain any more. It is a time of extremes. It is a very good time to practice together.

  In that spirit, I interrupt the flow of this newsletter to ask you to please SAVE THE DATE! On Friday, April 19, there will be a mini-workshop and book signing for my forthcoming book Presence at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan. The event will be from 6-7:30 pm. A link will be sent out shortly. April 19! 6-7:30 pm! Please come!

  Also, please consider pre-ordering my book. I’m told that this is a very kind and helpful thing to do for a book, and I really appreciated it. Here is the Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Presence-Art-Being-Home-Yourself/dp/1645471802/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3M7CU8TH0SVN2&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DGSYxLTHGMNYVwz9ZHkbqRz1gV0Aps9Ist56dSzC5FnGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps._v-1-nDfIaH-7T0kclkQzRo_qPDbfIHw_2WCMebUIOk&dib_tag=se&keywords=tracy+cochran+presence&qid=1709575858&sprefix=%2Caps%2C81&sr=8-1
  
  This stormy month will definitely go out like a lamb in a symbolic way. March ends with Easter weekend. I love finding the resonance with holidays and our practice, and it feels right to begin with Good Friday. We can allow ourselves to be still and sink into the part of the earth we call the body, allowing ourselves to be in here without hope of escape. The great paradox is that we find our way to a new life when we stop striving for it.

  If you took a picture of a group of people meditating from the outside, it would look as if they were all shut down. Yet sitting there with eyes closed, turning our attention inward is not shutting down or dropping out but the opposite. We open up to life.

  In Pali, the language of the earliest Buddhist texts, “sati” or mindfulness literally means to remember the experience of the present moment.  Remembering our experience without any story attached can seem very unpromising. Being with sorrow or fear, without hope of release feels like sentencing ourselves to something very grim. And yet as we are willing to be with these feelings we discover that they are not solid things.
  
  It is only when we are willing to sit down with sorrow or hurt or disappointment or anger we discover that these states we dread contain surprises. Sorrow contains tenderness, and longing contains aspiration and courage, and so on. We may uncover and unexpected willingness–even a happy willingness–to be present here on earth. 

  The way to awaken from suffering is not up but down into embodied experience. Jesus taught his followers to be like children. The Buddha based his enlightenment on a memory from childhood.
  
  It is also very helpful to remember that, to quote Anne Lamotte, Easter seemed like a win for the Romans. The Buddha’s awakening also took place in midst of what seemed like complete failure. He gave up everything–wife and child and job and worldly status–to go off and attain the highest yogic states and then he gave that up! 

  The man who would be Buddha split off from his fellow ascetics, collapsing by a riverbank, broken and despairing. A young woman riding an ox observed him and took pity. In a spontaneous gesture of compassion, she offered him food. Touching food, especially from the hands of a woman, was forbidden to him as an ascetic. But he was outside all that now. He was a failure and therefore free. 

  When you are really, really hungry, taking food really feels like rebirth and renewal. It feels like deliverance from the wilderness. It feels like love. Once the man who would Wake Up ate and felt this delicious ease, there bubbled up a memory from childhood. The Buddha remembered being a young child, sitting alone under a tree, watching his father and the other men from the village plowing the fields in a spring festival. He pretended to be asleep, so his nannies (he was a prince so he had several) went off a little ways to watch the festivities.

  The Buddha remembered the wonderful feeling of being by himself in nature. He was alone yet not alone. He was secluded in the liberating way that children can be secluded. He was unselfconscious, realizing a deep communion with life. According to the myth, the child saw some insects whose homes were being torn up by the plowing.  His heart opened to them. Secluded yet deeply connected to life, at peace yet filled with compassion for life–this was the memory and the attitude the Buddha took under the Bodhi tree until he reached full awakening.

  It wasn’t an easy night, or a short one, heaven knows. The devil Mara came to him, tempting him and terrifying him. The Buddha reached down and touched the earth. There are many ways to understand this gesture. One that we might try is to remember our earliest experience, our innate childlike awareness.

  I remember being a child on one particular Good Friday.  It was a beautiful spring day, and I was lying outside in the grass, inside a circle of big purple and white lilac bushes. Who knows why but I was singing “Thumbelina,” a big hit of the time. I remember the warmth of the sun and the scent of lilacs and the beauty of the sky and the clouds and the budding trees that arched above me. I remember feeling suffused with a love of life and a sense of hope and possibility.

  My mother called me to come in the house and be still. In those days, there were particular hours in the afternoon for being still as a way of honoring the events of Good Friday–it was unseemly that I should be outside singing to the lilac bushes. Reluctantly, I went in and sat on the couch, not at all sure what I was actually supposed to be doing. My mother wasn’t much for explanations especially about religion. For her, it was a matter of decorum. She ordered me to sit down and stop talking and eventually understanding of some sort would come or the ime would be up, either way. In retrospect, this approach had a Zen-like simplicity: just sit. So I sat there, not-knowing, trying to conjure a sense of connection with this grave event from the distant past.

  I thought about what it would be like to be in such a terrible situation, abandoned, in pain, facing the darkness of the world. And then something extraordinary happened. Love and grace swooped in and everything shifted. I wasn’t sure if any of the things I was thinking about were correct. I just sat there being still, moving from resistance to wondering and after a while I was released.
  
  This month, if you wish, notice how life moves. Notice the truth of impermanence.

  March 4, 2024

  Buddha, Buddhism, Meditation, Mindfulness, spirituality

  ---