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The Buddha tells us to "cultivate the body," but I abandoned my body like some discarded rag. I denied my pain and grief, denied the new limits of my body, pulled myself together, and coped. Coping "well" helped me to feel safe and in control at a time in my life when my physical condition was so terribly out of control. I pushed away the anger and fear that threatened the safety of my life. After a month, I began to crawl like a baby. Then, slowly, I learned to pull myself to my feet and, finally, took my first steps, stumbling across the eternity between the dresser and the door, then the door and the bookshelf, learning to use my eyes to keep my balance. But my feeling of isolation grew stronger. Friends tried to include me by speaking slowly, learning to finger spell. and filling me in on conversations, but anything beyond one-on-one conversations made me feel as if I were standing outside in the cold looking in with longing at a group gathered in warmth around a feast-laden table. It became clear that I needed to investigate my sense of separation and the suffering around it. As a sculptor doing my own work and teaching at the University of Michigan, I was well aware that while part of the work is creative, there are many hours of drudgery: polishing or filing huge pieces of bronze, for example. Before I became deaf, I used to play the radio in my studio during the "non-creative" times. Now there was only the echo of my own thoughts. I tried singing to myself, but that wore thin very quickly. Each day in the studio brought deeper discomfort and anger at feelings of boredom. I realized that I was losing a big chunk of each day by labeling it as "boring," but didn’t yet see that my need to be "entertained" was my way of trying to escape from the pain of my deafness. There was just deep anger. I was enraged by the deafness that deprived me of the means to make this work bearable by listening to music or connecting with others. While meditating, I made the decision to just watch the thoughts and emotions that came up during my work and see what I had been running from. Not diverting my attention while working was extremely hard and frustrating. I tried just focusing on the movement of my hand while filing a metal sculpture: up, down; up, down. But that just turned into a chant that was separate from the actual experience. On a walk in the woods with my then-11-month-old son strapped on my back, I realized that I was deaf here too, but there was no anger. My mind was very still when I walked, not asking for entertainment. I felt connected to the trees and the sky. There was nothing to push away, therefore I didn't need any diversion. Then I understood that while working on my sculpture, I was seeking diversion not from the boredom of the grinding but from the intensity of the anger and pain of my isolation. While working with the welding torch, I had to pay close attention so as not to burn myself. In that circular, rhythmic dance of the flame on the bronze, my breath was very present. There was joy in that work; it was effortless, and time flew by quickly. I tried bringing this kind of attention to the filing, just being present with the breath. I would watch my hands, not forcing them, just engaged in the same dance as with the torch. Finally I experienced something new: an almost intimate connection with the file and sculpture, a kind of lovemaking. It most definitely wasn’t boring! When I allowed myself to stay with the work, with my breath and my hands, my mind stopped trying to use thought to lead me to safety. Since I couldn't control my mind with conscious will, I couldn't keep myself safe and comfortable. I began to see that my deepest pain was not from what was happening or not happening in my life, but from my relationship with it. My pain was not from the deafness, but from how much I wanted to be rid of the deafness. My work had become a time of deep focus and peacefulness. At one level, my mind was jumping around, and at another level it was totally concentrated, just watching the jumping mind with much spaciousness and no obsession to control. Even "boredom" became interesting! My daylong practice had thus become to just breathe and create, breathe and file or weld, breathe and be. I spent hours every day in this way for over a decade. In those years, my meditation practice changed and deepened. The intensity of my suffering decreased, but it was still very much present. I had not yet really understood the nature of my suffering or healed my relationship with my deafness, my sense of separation, or my agony over my loneliness. Who was separate? Separate from what? How had I become ensnared in what my deepest meditations taught me was only an illusion? Gradually things came to a head. Increasingly, while trying to meditate I found that I couldn't sit still. I couldn't quiet my mind from its turmoil. My back, which had been hurting for weeks, ached horribly. My legs were cramped; my forehead itched; I was alternately freezing and sweating. But most of all I felt the weight of my loneliness. "Just sit and watch it all," I told myself gently. "Watch all the pain and anxiety and see where it's going. Watch yourself wanting so desperately for things to be different." The isolation became overwhelming. Searching for something that might help, I reached for the lines of the 23rd psalm: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil …" Into the space that I had opened through this small show of kindness to myself came the profound understanding: "You are never alone, but this is the isolation into which you've bound yourself." A voice inside of me asked, "When was the last time you felt like this? When do you last remember really needing this psalm?" With a rush, the answer and all the memories associated with it came back. I saw those first weeks of my illness when I felt so helpless and alone. I realized in that instant that in 16 years I had not cried once, not once, for my pain. I was enraged at my deafness, but had never allowed the pain into my heart. I simply buried it and met any feelings of self-pity with contempt. I saw that my deepest separation was from myself. When I understood this, I just sat there on the floor and cried and cried. I wept for the loss of my hearing; I wept for the loneliness; I wept for the fear; I wept for the one in a glass prison, seeing, but totally cut off from the world. The memory hurt, but not nearly as badly as the pain from burying it for all those years. I reached out to my ears, gently searching for the dead nerves. They seemed to ask me for forgiveness for failing me. I touched with love those ears that I've so often cursed. Then I reached out to myself, to the self I've so often criticized for feeling self-pity, for not trying harder. "Barbara, I forgive you," I whispered. "Barbara, I love you." Today I find that I am no longer "deaf"; I simply hear on a different level. I hear the silence! Yes, there’s still pain when my children laugh and I know I’ve missed the beauty of that sound. But there is no longer suffering. When the suffering melted away, I was able to open up to the gifts that the silence has brought me and others. The separation from myself was not caused by the deafness, but magnified by it. Because of that magnification, I was led to open to that which cried out to be healed. We all suffer this separation from ourselves to some degree. The healing of it in myself is offered with love toward the healing of separation in the world. Having taught meditation and dharma for over 15 years, I've found that my deafness has become a gift for others as well. My deafness invites people to experience different forms of communication, not just verbal. More than that, it makes people slow down and think about what they are going to say. As a result, people are more focused when they talk with me. There are other ways, some more subtle, in which silence has become a blessing, but perhaps the greatest one is that my deafness reminds me to keep my heart open to the 10,000 joys and sorrows of us all. Barbara Brodsky is the dharma and meditation teacher at Deep Spring Center, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She has been invited to lead numerous meditation retreats and workshops nationally and internationally. Barbara Brodsky will be in Seattle for the first time for a weekend meditation retreat November 16-18. For more information, contact Doron at (206) 523-0691 or <http://www.DeepSpring.org/>. |
In 1972, shortly
after the birth of my first child, a mysterious reaction cut
the blood supply to all the nerves in my inner ear that affect
hearing and balance. This loss has been my life’s greatest
burden and its greatest gift. Like a Zen koan, silence was my
riddle and I had to understand it by exploring its deepest roots.
For the first few weeks, all I could do was lie in bed with my
eyes closed, completely isolated. If I opened my eyes, the world
would swirl dizzily by my sickbed in nauseating spirals.