The Right Place

When I arrived at the conference I was in one of those “dream like” states Justin conjures to help us get into the right place to do our practice. I was so glad to literally be on the road again taking time for me to leave my home, family, students and friends and re-establish my relationship with TCC and the greater TCC community. It had been a while since I had done that – mostly because my ego had surreptitiously asserted itself once again and I felt “needed” back at home where I had a lot of “problems” (many of them not really my own). So I left my husband and friend who is fighting ovarian cancer, my lonely cat Cyrus (who had lost his brother the year before), my sisters and their families who seem to need me especially when I am in a high functioning state. And I got on the plane.

The first night we had a formal Japanese tea ceremony with a beautiful, serene Japanese woman who went through her practiced ritual to serve over 100 participants the most amazing green tea. It put my TCC practice to shame. I was bowled over by her timeless and a purposeless flow that seemed to create bountiful tea from the empty air and empty cups. Clearly she was a magician. What struck me on a personal level was that I am a practiced coffee drinker, and none of my early morning antics has anything special to show the world. Then, I realized that my husband, who had had three very challenging years, had recently begun to brew his own green tea each morning. His co-worker brings him the good stuff from China, and Peter boils his own water and then prepares the tea in a beautiful, white and green tea set my uncle had given us. Peter then sits on the sofa and goes into what could only be described by me as his meditation time (a rare thing in his world of midtown Manhattan finance).

The next pearl came when we looked at the amazing labyrinth one of our TCC teachers had created for us. A huge sea turtle beckoned us to enter and walk within its mysterious tan t’ien that floated a beautiful yin yang symbol. Now, I don’t like to feel that the universe is playing jokes on me, but I couldn’t help but reflect that my husband’s only real exercise since he has been ill is to go to his health club pool when empty and “play sea turtle.” For him, this means just being in the pool and feeling the joy of moving in the water like the wondrous sea turtle.