Backyard Dharma

To see me today, you'd never think I was capable of producing a blood-curdling scream first thing this morning. I even surprised myself.

Here's what happened. I woke up and let the dogs out into the yard. After doing their business, they both disappeared into the chest-high weeds for a few minutes. Neither dog likes to be in high weeds, so I wondered what they'd found. I was thinking cat poop. After several minutes, Lotus came running to the door, proudly carrying what she'd found. I thought it was a deflated basketball and bent forward to get a better look. That's when I screamed. It was a huge turtle.

In case it isn't clear at this point, to say that I'm afraid of turtles would be a ridiculous understatement. What I've got is a full-blown, sweaty-palmed, run-away-crying phobia, not some little Oh-I-just-don't-fancy-turtles thing.

I called my landlady upstairs and begged her to come take it away. She sent her teenage son, who showed up wearing neon pink dishwashing gloves and a look of complete terror on his face. I tried to be the adult and stay calm. Tried. He couldn't bring himself to pick it up, so I suggested he scoop it onto the snow shovel and carry it to the pond around the corner.

I had already done some mantra for the turtle and played Jetsunma's "Prayer to Be Reborn in Dewachen." So, despite being scared into his shell by two big dogs, carried in the mouth of one of them and set down in front of a screaming nun, this turtle actually had a pretty good day.

I, on the other hand, was emotionally spent. My body just can't sustain an adrenaline push like that without going awry. To see if I could stop the biochemical cascade before I crashed completely, I decided to meditate. This was a good decision. It's incredible to watch your mind when it's relatively calm-- thoughts continually arising, the mind wandering, and engaging in conversations, shopping and to-do lists. But it's really something to watch your mind when it's completely stirred up. It was like a cafeteria food-fight in there. There was fear, judgment about fear, anger, judgment about anger, sadness, remorse, guilt, curiosity and every other emotion possible, all battling with each other, shouting each other down, each one arising immediately on the heels of another. Some thoughts were connected to prior ones, and some just came out of nowhere.

I found myself constantly replaying the whole scene from the yard, like a printing press that keeps spitting out copies of the same story. It wasn't just the storyline, of course, but each emotion was reproduced as well, along with a corresponding physical reaction. After awhile, the story began to lose its grip on me. A little. Enough so that I became more of an observer of the rising and falling emotions.

I decided to contemplate the object of my fear-- the turtle. My fear of it is my fear. Someone who loves turtles would have reacted totally differently-- their heart instantly opening with love and compassion for the turtle, the way I would if Lotus had brought me a puppy instead. Other people are pretty neutral towards turtles, and might have gone on with their day without giving it another thought. So clearly there was nothing innately fear-producing about the turtle. It was just "turtle."

This helped me relax a little. I decided to take things one step further and see if I could dissolve my conceptual boundary that says "I am me, and turtle is other." This was pretty tough. I didn't make much progress-- maybe just punched some microscopic holes in it. My fear just had too much of a stranglehold over my mind to do much. I gave it a good try and let myself rest. It is a pretty tall order.

At the end, I contemplated where it had all come from. None of it-- the turtle, the scream, the meditation and contemplations-- was what I expected this morning. Certainly neither the turtle nor the dogs expected it. All that karma ripening for the four of us as swiftly and unpredictably as lightning in the sky. Incredible.

It took me awhile to find the courage to put the dogs out again. Both were repeatedly drawn back to where they found the turtle. They retraced the steps over and over. They'd pick up its scent, and I could see excitement rise in them. Then confusion, finding nothing there. Attachment that held them there. Desire, when something else caught their attention. Then the scent once again, leading them back into the loop. As animals, they have no way out of it. Their instincts and senses trap them, and they are incapable of observing their own minds.

Because of the large deck overhanging, the yard is the only thing I can see when I look outside. When I first moved here from the spaciousness of northern Arizona, this fact almost undid me. But now this little yard of mine is proving to be quite the arena for Dharma practice. In it are hopes and fears, beginnings and endings, mysteries and plainness, dramas and meditations. And every bit of it a perfect display of my own mind.