Everything Is A Circle And A Cycle.

A Life Update: Suffering, Zen Buddhism and Coming Full Circle. Also, My Substack Turns One Today!!!

Open Heart Surgery is a newsletter devoted to exploring metamorphosis, unravelling, questioning and healing. I write essays and poems in service to personal and collective liberation - the personal, political, social, cultural and spiritual realms are all present here. This is a space for divergent thinking and open hearts.

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Kia ora my friends,

Today, I am celebrating many things. Firstly, as Angie McMahon sings - just making it through. Survival is a fine thing to celebrate (I once said). Earth is brutal. And, I am in awe of the beauty and bounty that life is providing me these days, after a passage that I thought might kill me. Suffering is a teacher, the Buddha and probably every other wise one once said (I am paraphrasing). The other side of rock rock bottom is actually, quite glorious. Even the mundane is glorious. Especially the mundane. The absence of pain and suffering (physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually) becomes something to be grateful for. (Not waking up severely depressed and chronically fatigued 24/7!!!) Even as wars rage on.

Joy as a resource within us must be cultivated - how else do we survive these times?!

I know, you don’t have to look far to see the pain on this earth. If you’re here, reading my newsletter/publication, I am sure you are a sensitive soul too. I often say it’s hard to be human. Perhaps the only people who would disagree are those who have never experienced a debilitating illness, depression, heartbreak or the loss of someone they love. But at least one of those is unavoidable. Death comes for us all. Speaking of which, at the start of this year, I wrote a few poems on death, after some rather intense dreams. I will publish soon.

Back to our topic - celebration.

- 35mm film by moi of the lovely Sam on the coast of Ōtautahi, Christchurch, Aotearoa, on a Southern road trip circa summer 2022.

This year, I am actively turning toward my joy for healing, as if my life depends on it. It actually does. Joy is the healer I need. And I am practicing joy like a devout religion. Joy and appreciation! These days I am living right now - my sick self six months ago could not have foreseen, would not have believed, if I am honest. My journal entries of that era are dark places. For over a year, I honestly could not see beyond suffering and despair and illness. That, my friends, is called being down and under - you are miles away from the land of the healthy, living people. Few will understand - unless they have visited their own trenches of rock rock bottom. It is a harrowing, isolating, hellish place.

But I tell you, the darkness still teaches me most of what I know and call wisdom. I often think of Rainer Maria Rilke’s gorgeous poem, You Darkness. It was read just the other day here, where I am staying, by a Buddhist nun. Have I piqued your curiosity? More on that, soon. A few days ago, a friend from overseas messaged me, expressing that she was heartbroken, and well, down and under. She told me she was surfing around, trying to catch a wave of joy, but failing to find it, or feel it. She was worried that she had lost her ability to create her own joy, or to tap into her own joy.

“Do you think emotional pain, heartbreak can kill that in you?” she asked me.

That message broke my heart.

She asked me if I had found a way - back to joy. I told her the only thing I know on the matter: the only way out is through. This friend is a beautiful soul with a gigantic heart. I can imagine how painful it would be to feel that giant heart broken. When I think of her, I feel her warmth and kindness. The world can be harshest on the most sensitive, empathetic, and kind souls. I told her she is courageous to be so open and loving in the first place - to risk being wounded. I did my best to send her all the compassion I could through the airwaves of a voice note, which is not quite a hug but trumps the coldness of a text.

I’m not sharing this to venerate myself. It just made me reflect further on the nature of pain and how it can transform us if we choose to drink it without becoming bitter, if we choose to let it soften us and make us kinder and more empathetic. We all have some hard edges somewhere because, at some point, we learnt to defend ourselves in order to survive.

I responded differently to how I would have in my earlier twenties, that I know. The very last thing I wanted to do was to make her pain wrong or bad or like something that needed to be swept away. I inwardly cringe at those in the personal development world who insist we can beat or will ourselves into happiness. Perhaps I am just too soft of a human for that, but I also believe that it is the opposite. Our culture doesn’t have much of a relationship to surrender. I say that as a programmed overachiever, A Type, who is still unlearning my tendencies to rush, please and constantly be productive, monitoring myself like a fucking drill sergeant.

My point here is - I don’t think we get to decide how long our pain stays, sometimes, just like our grief or even our anger. The work is learning how to be with it. Without bypassing our pain. If we do bypass our pain, we miss the teaching, we don’t alchemise it, or we project it onto others. This is the story of humanity. I ain’t saying it’s easy work. But the alternative is a superficial life, where, to quote Kahlil Gibran, we shall live in a “seasonless world”, where we “shall laugh, but not all of (our) laughter, and weep, but not all of (our) tears.” I didn’t come here for that. Did you?

For me, reading Rainer Maria Rilke and other wise poets and mystics who have transformed their sorrow and despair into beauty, wisdom, and gold was a medicine in those dark times. I take this medicine often. I know I will need it again, I know that it will be a lifeline when I am next amid sorrow.

“You must not be frightened if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud-shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet, (1929).

For Rilke, sorrow or suffering is fundamental to our growth, transformation and deeper spiritual life. The work is being with it, staying with it whilst holding some curiousity as to what it could be illuminating, healing or changing within us. (Which I will be the first to admit - is very difficult when we are drowning). Similarly, Rumi speaks of this notion in his famous poem, The Guesthouse.

“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet, (1929).

- 35mm film of Emma doing my hand-poked snake tattoo, around this time, three years ago. Her work is exquisite, I recommend if you are in Aotearoa.

The Buddha spoke to this exact concept, too - with the idea of “no lotus, no mud”, as uttered by the wise Zen Master, poet and Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who has become a teacher of mine recently. He has even written a book of that same title, now on my ever-expanding reading list (the man authored over a hundred books, I mean?!)

For context - because I love oversharing (hence the name of my Substack) - I am staying and volunteering in the most beautiful mindfulness centre here in Aotearoa, diving into the world of Zen and Thich Nhat Hanh’s beautiful teachings. It feels nothing short of potentially life-changing. No, this time is life-changing. This isn’t my first plunge into Buddhist teachings or philosophy - I have been a dedicated yoga student for about a decade (the Buddha was certainly a yogi and came from a Vedic path). But it is a lovely introduction into practicing and living Zen Buddhism. I appreciate the simplicity and the lack of dogma. But more to come on all this later.

I am keeping a journal. I am bursting to share so much with you. I am writing poems. I am learning how to not live my life in a fucking rush, simply put. I am leaning into sangha, community. I am practicing more silence than my verbose ass has ever practiced (no, I have not done a Vipassana, or a 10 day silent retreat, nor do I feel called to do so, yet. It is on my radar though). I am practicing mindfulness, simply put. I am appreciating the compassion and wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings. I am curious as to how I integrate this wonderful experience afterward, but I am practicing staying in the present like never before.

BUT THE THING I AM CELEBRATING TODAY, after the Lunar new year, and right before the Leo full moon - is that my Substack turns ONE today! I remember one year ago, on February 11th 2024, the terror I felt before publishing my very first Substack essay. That nobody would read, that nobody cared, that it was cringe and silly and self-absorbed… the silly narratives were endless. With the fierce support of a few best friends however, I got over myself and did the thing. And well, here I am, one year later, grateful to my past self and her god damn audacity. This is just the beginning.

I am actually living out a dream right now. I am writing regularly, I am being read, and this month, I am living in this sanctuary of peace, surrounded by forest, with a garden that looks like it is the Garden of Eden reincarnate. I am practicing meditation daily in a community (it is so much easier to rise at 6 am before dawn to meditate for 45-60 minutes with others than by yourself, fyi), we cook and eat delicious organic, vegetarian food, with vegetables and fruits fresh from the garden, the “work” is mindful cooking, cleaning and gardening and I am just so happy to be here. (I am currently volunteering). I will share more words and photos in time.

I am so joyful when I remember where I have come from and how much of a blessing my returning energy is, and my joy and my peace. A brutal passage of suffering taught me again, for the 100th time, what not to take for granted (health, first, energy, capacity for joy, peace, etc). In essence, I feel like new depths for joy have been carved out of me, shaped by the knife of sorrow - echoing the heart of one of my favourite poems, On Joy and Sorrow by Kahlil Gibran. The core of Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings (if I should be so bold as to attempt to paraphrase a Zen Master) seems to be this: wake up and smell the roses. (This video is well worth watching).

As well as all the pain and the suffering and the wars and genocides and fresh horrors that we hear about, LIFE IS STILL BEAUTIFUL. And we all have more than enough favourable conditions to be happy right now. As in, with our next deep breath. Reading this would probably trigger my very depressed and ill past self. And for anyone in their own trenches reading this, I am sending you compassion. Hang in there, brave one. This too shall pass, I promise.

I am not sure that I would have felt like it was possible for me to just wake up and be happy and smell the roses and count my blessings and be grateful for my breath in the most brutal points of my breakdown year of illness and in other burnouts and depressions that I have experienced. Life didn’t feel like a blessing in that space; it felt like a curse. I don’t know if I was in a place, biologically, where meditation could have saved me, and herbal teas, etc (although I love holistic practices). I had to break down completely. And it hurt like hell. And there are many paths I took to be here now, some of which I thought I would never try - like medication and eating meat again (gasp! for my righteous early twenties self, who was vegetarian/largely vegan for a decade since leaving home and extremely anti-pharma).

Guess what? Suffering also humbles you. Some of the decisions I made, counter to my past principles, were life-saving. I now have a more open mind regarding how nuanced and individual each of our paths to healing and wholeness is. I feel a lot less righteous than I used to be. My therapist recently put it into words: when we reach a point where we no longer wish to be alive, all our attachments are severed. Yet, on the other side of that abyss, a true rebirth awaits. I want to write an essay about this - mindful of how delicate the subject matter is. But I believe that rock bottom can be a threshold, a springboard into something new. That is rebirth. It must be. From that depth, resilience is not only discovered but forged. True resilience.

I do think there is an art to suffering, which Thich Nhat Hanh also speaks to. Perhaps that is an essay for another day. I have many more poems coming, both original and from wonderful masters, which I hope offer nourishment and healing for your spirit, as they have mine.

As always, thank you for being here, for reading me. If any of this resonates or touches you, let me know in the comments.

- 35mm film by moi, circa 2021.

With care,

Lau x