January Light

by Diane Morrow

I like a good Christmas tree.  But I also like that moment, after the tree has been stripped and carried away from its place in front of the window - that moment when light floods back into the room.  January light.  It touches the dust on the tables.  It casts shapes on the oak floor.  There may be scratches and flaws in that floor.  (There are)  But the light is kind to them.  The light reveals the imperfections.  But at the same time the light is neither strong nor harsh; there is this softening.

For me, Pema Chodron’s voice is like that light.  It is so kind.  In my favorite recording of her voice - a recording of her and Alice Walker in conversation at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre in San Francisco - she speaks about the ways in which we try to be perfect, and how we keep coming up against our own imperfections and then getting stuck there.  She speaks of maitri, the Sanskrit word for loving-kindness or compassion and she suggests that we turn this maitri, first, toward our own flawed selves.

Pema Chodron is the first American woman to receive ordination as a priest in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.  She is now director of Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia.  I know, from a visit to her website, that until May of this year (2007) she is on retreat.  A silent retreat?  I’m not sure.  But I like to think that perhaps she is somewhere in the silence of January now, soaking it in.

Several years ago now, on two different occasions, first with my family, and then alone, I attended a brief retreat with Tibetan monks and nuns, and I learned that as part of their training each had done a full year of silent retreat.  I remember having a sense, talking to one nun in particular, that the year had changed her - that she had more space and silence inside her because of it.  I suspect this space and silence has something to do with engendering compassion.

After I made my first retreat with the Tibetan Buddhists I dreamed that I went back to the retreat center and I found myself in a room and one wall was lined with shelves and on the shelves were rows and rows of bells.  When I returned for the second retreat I told one of the nuns about the dream.  She told me that a bell in their tradition symbolizes compassion.  They had a tiny gift shop at the retreat center, no larger than a closet.  I bought one of their bells that weekend.  It sits now in our living room.  And for me, the bell’s symbolism fits well with a notion I have of compassion being revealed in a particular tone, a particular resonance - like the clear note of that bell.  You can hear that note in certain voices.  I’ve heard it, over the years, in many voices.  I hear it in Pema Chodron’s voice - that note of compassion.  It sees the flaws and blemishes but at the same time it is so kind toward them.  Like January light.

Diane Morrow is a writer and a physician in mind/body medicine who lives in North Carolina with her family.  She has a particular interest in connections between writing and healing and can be contacted through her website, OneYearofWritingandHealing.com