Tsunamis In the House of Wholeness
Earlier this week, I was chatting on Twitter with my friends Susan Piver, Jen Louden and Mahala Mazerov about writing. We talked about writing that liberates rather than congeals. Writing as discovery and exploration, versus writing to confirm what we already know, or think we do.
And yet, the distinctions aren’t that neatly drawn. I write to find the radiance of truth, in myself as much as in whatever I’m writing about. I write to discover wholeness.
I may have to wriggle into the house of wholeness through a half-opened window. Or climb a nearby tree, crawl out on a limb, and fall through a hole in the roof.
Writing, for me, is exploration, curiosity and adventure. And sometimes, writing is breaking and entering, in pursuit of what I truly know but have yet to discover, or rediscover.
I burrow into my body for the stories in my blood and bones. And follow my breath to the threshold of my soul’s engagement with the world. Love connects me with all beings–with realities as distant as galaxies and as close as the pupil of my eye.
Writing is a place where my inner being breathes in and out with the rhythm of my world. It’s an encounter with self and otherness, and with the ever-evolving relationship between these two.
When I first sat down to write today, I felt that familiar longing to cross the bright courtyard of everyday reality; to emerge into the more complex radiance of the house of wholeness. There, in its darkened ballroom, truth revolves like a mirror ball, offering reflected shards of light to the walls, to the ceiling, to the corners of the dance-floor. Illuminating faces, bodies, hands, feet, hair. A musical chiaroscuro.
And now a memory blinks in and out. Fragments.
December 2004. I was visiting my sister in Bombay. The day after Christmas, while we were still asleep, a tsunami roared across the Indian Ocean devastating everything in its path.
Why this story? Why now, so many years later?
No matter. This is the story that wants to be told. I follow it through hallways and up winding staircases in the house of wholeness, and each sentence I write reveals only a sliver of it. In the next sentence, a different fragment flashes into view. The mirror ball turns and turns again. Offering a glimpse of this. A glimmer of that.
Experience only becomes coherent–a story, a narrative–in hindsight, when I’m sitting safely in my chair, choosing which story to tell. All the other stories–those that crowd around, clamoring to be heard, those that hover shyly in the shadows–are repressed, set adrift, until eventually they are lost or forgotten. So many stories forgotten.
What I understand now, nearly six years after the tsunami washed away all those lives, is this: The tsunami was an event, a violent, tragic event that took place primarily over the course of several hours on Boxing Day, 2004. But my experience of it unfolded over a much longer period of time; a slow, gradual understanding that could only emerge as my heart expanded and crumpled and bloomed open in a dance that continues today.
Here are some scenes that flash in the mirror ball of memory:
I had just come out of the shower and was towel-drying my hair at my sister Parvana’s home in Bombay. My scalp felt cool and tingly in the flow of air from the juddering air-conditioner.
Parvana hurried into my room with her quick, impatient stride. Without looking at me, she blurted: “Have you heard? There was a terrible earthquake in Indonesia this morning. A tsunami drowned hundreds of towns and villages. In South India too. No-one knows how many people died. It’s on the news. I’m going to phone my friends in the Maldives to see if they’re okay.”
Turning to go, she stumbled, and grabbed the door-frame to keep from falling.
Later that evening Parvana’s friends, Tanny and Nilu, came for dinner. Tanny was then an admiral in the Indian navy. He was in charge of naval rescue operations for South India and the Andaman and Nicobar islands.
All evening, while the rest of us picked at our food, and talked, and worried about what was happening out there in the tsunami-ravaged countries that ringed the Indian Ocean, Tanny was on his cell phone. Organizing relief supplies. Deploying rescue ships. And fielding phone calls from frantic parents.
Cabinet ministers, diplomats, billionaire businessmen–those who knew Tanny well enough to have his cell phone number–called and demanded that the navy send out ships to collect their children and bring them home. These young men and women had been vacationing at beach resorts, which may or may not have vanished under the sea.
Over the clink of silverware on dinner plates, we heard Tanny explain, over and over again, that the navy was needed elsewhere; that the young people would be rescued by plane and helicopter; that he would call the parents back as soon as he had any news. His voice was soft and deep, coaxing, reassuring.
Hours later he dropped into his seat at the dinner table, exhausted. His dinner, congealed on its plate, remained uneaten. Wrinkled eggplant slices. Grains of rice stiff and bristling. Wilted romaine lettuce.
Later still, that night, on the TV screen, the same few images played over and over. Great swells of brown and grey sea. Bits of timber and unidentifiable flotsam bobbing on the waves. People running, crying. Frantic men and women looking for family members.
And the death toll, printed on a banner that scrolled across the bottom of the screen. 2,500. 12,000. 45,000.
I didn’t sleep that night. Or for many nights after. And by then I was too exhausted to know what day it was. But I didn’t cry; I couldn’t take in a tragedy on this scale. My heart felt numb.
The Tuesday after Boxing Day, I took my sister, Nivi, and my 90-year-old aunt out for lunch at a Chinese restaurant in South Bombay. Halfway through lunch, Nivi looked worriedly at her watch. “I have to get home by two o’clock,” she said. “I have to change for a funeral at three.” She sighed. “If it were just a one-person funeral, I could wear what I’m wearing now. But it’s a five-person funeral so I have to change into a funeral sari.”
“Yes,” my aunt said. “Nivi’s poor neighbour. His brother and sister-in-law, and one of their twin boys, and his mother and sister–they all drowned in the tsunami. They brought the bodies home from Sri Lanka this morning. The other boy is still in hospital in a coma.”
I went into the Ladies’ Room, which smelled of disinfectant. No tears, but I retched up a mouthful of bile, and washed my face. This was closer to home; but still not close enough to break through the mushy crust of snow in my heart.
On the plane home from Hong Kong to Vancouver on New Year’s eve, an entire section of the South China Morning Post was devoted to the tsunami–one page per country. The death toll had risen to 160,000. More photos and stories. Interviews with survivors.
I tried to sleep on the plane, but my mind kept watch while my heart pounded painfully in my chest. I wondered if I was having a heart attack.
At last, at last I was home. Exhausted, wired, grateful, tremulous, I hugged my son James tightly. So tightly, for so long, that he finally kissed me on the top of my head and said, “It’s okay; I’m here.”
I thought: When did he become a man?
Days later, a wild, January snowstorm hit the west coast. The wind howled and rattled the windowpanes. The power went out. And stayed out for the next fourteen hours. The house grew bitterly cold.
Sick with the flu, I huddled under my down quilt. I couldn’t feel my nose or face. My ears burned. My head felt as though it needed to split open to relieve the roaring behind my eyes.
I phoned James at his dad’s house. Just to hear his voice. To reassure myself that he was still there, still okay. He was patient with me. I hung up the phone.
Then I curled into a ball on the couch and cried. For a long time, I cried. Snot ran down my nose. My heart was a hundred shards of glass.
I cried for children and men and women who were cold and hungry, homeless and terrified. For all those parents who didn’t know where their sons and daughters were. For our fragile, fragile lives.
It’s now a day and a night since I wrote this. And the question still hovers by my shoulder, insisting: Why this story? Why now, nearly six years later?
I don’t know. So I take the question by the hand, and together we set off to explore the house of wholeness.
The mirror ball in the ballroom is still turning, flashing its beacon through the house.
In its light, I see: Today’s tsunami is the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I’m not there, on those beaches, in those ocean currents, choking with the fish, drowning in oil with the sea-birds. I’m not there.
But that seascape is in me.
The Gulf, the pelicans, the dying fish live in the house of wholeness too.
This time, I’ve been given the gift of geography. This time, I sit here in my living room, feeling the salty breath of Nanoose Bay on my cheek through the open window.
And my living room, Nanoose Bay, the ocean breeze on my face–these are in the house of wholeness too.
Attuning to the Deva of the Bay of Mexico, I find myself in a great meeting room, where beings from many dimensions have gathered. There are Devas of healing here, and Devas of pelicans, seagulls, fishes and oceans. The Soul of Humanity strolls through the room, offering around a platter of food. It stops to hug a woman here, a fish-child there–to reassure the souls of those who are giving their love to heal and restore this wounded landscape, this bleeding, blackened sea.
The Sacred holds this gathering in the heart of the house of wholeness. It feels like we’re sitting in a giant lap–soft, deep, safe.
So much of my life, I have felt helpless before the tsunamis of trauma, pain and suffering in this world. Growing up in India, and being named for the first city on earth to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, I absorbed the suffering of the world into the cells of my body when I was just a baby.
My heart has been wounded and wounded again, until it’s learned the wisdom of sitting like a child in the lap of love, here in the house of wholeness.
When pain sears my heart, the fragrance of the Sacred fills my nostrils. In despair and in gratitude, my prayer remains the same: for blessing and healing for the earth, for love and wholeness for all beings everywhere.
That beautiful sea and coastline, black as a bruise. Those magnificent birds, built for air and flight, trapped by the gravity of oil on their wings. I’ve cried, and raged, and mourned their ravaging.
But each bead of blood in my heart knows wholeness too. I can no longer gather up the pain of the world and hold it inside my belly. It cannot be healed there–it can only damage that inner shoreline, bring death to that living sea. I am responsible for keeping my inner world healthy and whole. The quality of my presence–the peace or conflict in my heart–is what I bring to this gathering. How can I live outside the house of wholeness and join in the work of blessing?
It’s an exquisitely delicate relationship, this response of my heart to the need of the world. Because the moment I forget that the Sacred is in the world as well as in me, my little self sinks under the impossible weight of a million toxic oil spills.
Then I am no longer part of this gathering, a source of blessing and radiance, of healing and love. Instead, I stagger around blindly, stunned, bruised and bleeding. A casualty of violence, adding to the fear, the chaos and confusion around me.
The question that has me by the hand leads me to a quiet window seat overlooking the garden. Here in the house of wholeness, we curl up with our arms around each other, and turn our faces to the sun.
How about you? I’d love to hear about the different ways in which you explore your self and your relationship with the world. How do you enter the house of wholeness? Why do you write, or paint, or bake bread? What do you know?
Susan Piver, Mahala Mazerov and Jen Louden are writing on this topic too. Visit their blogs to join in the extended conversation.
My newsletter subscribers are the first to hear about upcoming classes and programs. From time to time, I also send them special invitations, gifts and offers that are exclusive to my list. To subscribe, please fill out the form below.
Follow me on Twitter
Friend me on Facebook
Get blog updates by email
Get blog updates by RSS
Contact me
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by HiroBoga, HiroBoga, HiroBoga, Janice Cartier, Janice Cartier and others. Janice Cartier said: RT @HiroBoga: New post: Tsunamis in the House of Wholeness http://bit.ly/ax1eyZ : Writing in community w/ @spiver, @jenlouden & @Luminou … [...]
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The comment’s server IP (74.112.128.46) doesn’t match the comment’s URL host IP (74.112.128.10) and so is spam.
[...] a kaleidoscopic view of this issue (storytelling vs truth telling), check them out. Hiro Boga: Tsunamis in the House of Wholeness Jennifer Louden: How to Be a Writer Who Loves the Gap Mahala Mazerov: When Stories [...]
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The comment’s server IP (72.52.197.150) doesn’t match the comment’s URL host IP (72.52.197.181) and so is spam.
Oh my what words can I bring to your beautiful sea, your house of wholeness? Gratitude is the word that comes to mine. Gratitude even as I squint and want to turn my head aside because I want the Sacred to not include Kali and oil spills and suffering. But it does. As always, you write like an angel, an angel who helps me see the truth.
Thank you, Jen. I’m grateful too, for all of it–Kali and Lakshmi, you and Mahala and Susan, this conversation that opens each of us to the heart of our world.
Much love to you,
Hiro
I’ve been in a state of fragility for 50 days now. I want my skin back. It’s like the state of the gulf has thrown in my path story after story of the fragility of life.
When this happens, I find ways to make tiny differences, hoping that the butterfly effect can take over, and make things better.
I visited the Pacific ocean and said that I was sorry for the pain we are causing her sister. She was resilient and said, “We are ever-changing and always staying the same. Don’t worry, little one.”
I made a commitment that none of the food I eat should cause suffering in the world.
I am hugging lots of people.
I enter the house of wholeness through Tikkun Olam.
Thank you, Bridget. Yes, Tikkun Olam…the narrow gate… It’s a good place to enter, when things are so painfully hard.
I love your commitment to heal and bless in small ways that bring to life the big qualities of wholeness, love and blessing.
What a beautiful post. Thank you so much, Hiro.
Thanks, Danielle, for showing up with your lovely presence.
Stunning…thank you, Hiro.
What I know, with every fibre of my being, is that there is so much more for me to know.
Oh, me too…so much more. Thanks, Tanya!
“The Sacred holds this gathering in the heart of the house of wholeness. It feels like we’re sitting in a giant lap–soft, deep, safe.”
I’ve just spent a few days with Amma, and this sentence reminds me of how I feel in her embrace.
Your words are not only beautiful and searing, they are laced with such depth of love, Hiro.
Thank you.
Thank you, Julie.
Love…
I am in a beyond words place at this moment, Hiro, and I know that, like you and the others… I will come back here in the days to come…
It is like you wrote (brilliantly)
“So I take the question by the hand, and together we set off to explore the house of wholeness.”
(Tears in my eyes…)
Happy exploring, Julie! Maybe we can all gather for tea in the garden of the house of wholeness soon. :-)
I took the pup for a walk yesterday and, as I tried to jump over a mud puddle, he stopped and pointed. What I hadn’t noticed until then was that here was a tiny robin standing with it’s feet in the mud. I couldn’t tell what was wrong, but we were so close and it hadn’t moved, so I thought maybe something was. I sent it love, and energy, and then we moved away. When we walked by a few minutes later, it was gone. But the feet in the mud made me think of the birds and the Gulf – and it was a good reminder to send my love there as well.
So much love in this post. I will come back again. Thank you.
Sometimes I think we miss so much because we aren’t eye-level to the ground–in more ways than one. Lovely that your puppy saw the bird, and you were then able to see it too.
Love, Hiro
Hi Hiro,
Magical thing the internet. You`ve become a very special part of my life for a couple of months now. For some reason, at that time I googled the word -healing- I think, and ended up here.
Your words have been medicine for my soul since then and a door to a world of other beautiful people like you that nourishe my soul on a daily basis.
I started writing and collaging out of necessity. Reading your post I realize that what I do is exactely that. I go deep within me and go inside my house of wholeness.
What a magical place to be, to understand, to let go, to reinvent myself over and over again and let all my selfs be.
Thank you and the internet gods for the conections
Thank you, Carolina. There are so many ways to enter into the house of wholeness. I’m glad you’ve found writing, collaging and community as doorways in.
Thank you for this story. It made me cry and remember where I was when this tragedy occurred and how my own plight at that time suddenly shrank into insignificance by the enormity of suffering for those involved. It put my life into persepctive and although it has been a difficult life I too see it as one that may in some way may help to heal the planet. Thank you for being so opeE and opening my heart too – we must never remove ourselves from suffering as it is what makes us human and compassionate!
Where were you when it happened, Gill?
Oh SO many thank yous Hiro..
For setting free the tears building inside me since noon, and reminding me to come back to the house of wholeness, and tend the inner shoreline.
It’s not just ok to be fragile, it’s essential .. and I really needed to hear that today.
Lindsay, *hugs*
I don’t have many words at the moment, but my heart wanted to express gratitude for your writing here today. I have a deep sense of love from all of what you’ve written, and my heart rests more easily in my own grief.
Mark, love to you, my heart-full friend.
Thank you Hiro.
For me, your words were such a poignant reminder that we must keep our internal shoreline “healthy and whole”. There is so much sadness in our world, but the most powerful things we can do is to radiate love, compassion and healing from our own clean and gleaming inner worlds. Which is HARD. Life is indeed a musical chiaroscuro – where the dark is as bewitching and hypnotic as the light. But this is a process worth living.
Much love for your beautiful, beautiful words.
Natalie
Natalie, this is a process worth living, indeed. In the house of wholeness, an open heart and a healthy shoreline live peacefully together. I’m grateful for all the ways in which you bring grace and beauty into the world.
Love, Hiro
Thank you for this. I have read and received it the same way it was written – with love and care.
Andrea
So, so beautiful. Thanks you for this post.
It’s been such a relief just talking about this and talking about my feelings with other people who are also talking about their feelings about this. Something terrible has happened and I can’t bear to think about it or to see another photograph. And yet, I feel it’s my duty to know the truth and to witness what’s happening. It’s hard to decide when to pull back and turn off the internet. I don’t want any of those guys to think people aren’t watching and reading and witnessing and waiting for the next chance change things. Reading this post has been a relief. Every time anyone acknowledges they’re upset, or gives me permission to take care of myself despite a completely depressing situation, it’s a relief. I can’t do anyone any good or make a contribution if I’m losing it myself. Every reminder helps. Thank you.
Kelly, it helps to remember together, for each of us to bear witness in community. Thanks for holding these conflicting feelings in your heart without flinching away from them.
Hiro,
I’m new to your blog,having been introduced to you by Laurie Foley in her blog post “We Don’t Need No Spirital Ganstas.” I had to comment on your post because it was just so beautifully written. You write in such amazing metaphor that lets your readers actually enter the space of your story and see for themselves the events and, especially the thoughts and emotions attached to them. I love amazing writing but I am nourished by writing that reaches to my very soul. Thank you.
Hiro,
You have moved me to tears. I am far from the tragedies but feeling connected through your writing. I feel vulnerable and hopeful at the same time, uncomfortable with the feeling, and knowing that I have to let that be.
In appreciation,
Sandi
Hello Hiro,
I’m so glad that others have been moved to write a comment upon this delicate piece of writing.It surely deserves a response.While I began with original intention my eye sweeps to the previous reply and the word “nourish”. Thank you. That was a delicious read.
Always,
eileen in Ireland
Thank you for again and again weaving us all back into “the house of wholeness.” It seems more and more clear that we’re not going to get through any other way. Time has passed for thinking we can take sides in dealing with reality, and we have been forced into that place of wholeness in relation to disaster – i.e. it’s affecting all of us whether we like it or not. Now it’s the poets like you who weave us also into a house of wholeness in our feelings, our hearts, our healing intentions. Your writing is a blessing!
This post sums up the way I feel when I worry about – well, Everything. Anything. Everyone.
It is incredibly beautiful to read and has completely soothed my heart and soul. Now I must remember to heal it instead of hold it.
SOMEONE gets it. I’m NOT crazy. I could have written these words but don’t yet have your clarity. But, I GET IT on a cellular level. It’s tough to explain.
Thank you and LOVE.
the exquisite and acute succinctness of your words are like an arrow to the soul. like an arrow one would watch in slow motion as the feathers quiver in flight, hurtling to find its destination. a destination, when found, that reveals the core of the essence of humanity.
thank you for sharing all that you share.
light and love to you.
I didn’t have much to say apart from – thank you for writing this. I enjoyed it and it was beautiful.
Wow–what a tragically beautiful and poignant post. My emotions were all over the place…you have an inherently sensitive and perceptive way of viewing and communicating pain and beauty.
Tonight I will say prayers for the victime of the Tsunami and oil spill.
May your House of Wholeness continue to nourish and comfort you.
Thank you Hiro.
Hello Hiro.
I came upon this post via Facebook sharing via Jonathan Fields and Danielle LaPorte.
I write to you as a survivor of the tsunami, and as someone who has been touched by your post for many reasons, but for two especially.
As a survivor, I absolutely cringe when the word “tsunami” is used in any other context than what the true meaning is, yet I am drawn to any reference I come across. It is almost a silent test that I and taking of a person’s character, for I don’t believe people have the right to use it in a flippant manner. You have not, and I thank you for that.
The other reason is that I was stopped in my tracks when I read your statement:
“Why this story? Why now, so many years later?”
That statement landed right in my gut because that is how I have felt for a long time. It took me 4 years to even begin to be able to tell my story, and I wondered – and still wonder – why now? Is is still relevant? Do people still care? Now I know they do, so thank you for that.
I will not blather on any more. If you have interest, I have blogged a bit on my experience if for no other reason than to help me get it out. To help me put it on paper so I know if was real. If you care to read it, you can find it here. http://afterthewaves.wordpress.com/.
Thank you for not forgetting.
Oh Hiro,
I am a new reader, having been directed here by Havi. You post brought up the lump of tears in my chest that has resided there ever since I was trapped in my classroom with 23 students nineteen years ago by a man shooting at kids and teachers in our building. Every so often the story comes up for me when I mean to write about something else. It seems to need to be told again and again.
As I search for my own House of Wholeness that is behind my numbness, I am reminded of the reason I sometimes am devoid of feelings. And of the importance of trusting the sometimes rocky process that will reopen them one day.
Thanks for you post. It was just what I needed today.
Lynn
speechless… moved by the beauty and intimacy of your words….
This is exactly what my heart has been trying to wrap itself around lately: how do I live joyfully amidst so much worldly pain?
What I hear you say is that taking in all that pain only hurts me, and that I can be a witness to it, but caring for myself is one of the most profound ways I can care for the House of Wholeness.
I’m at the beach today to celebrate my birthday. It’s beautiful and clear here on the west coast of North America. I feel blessed and fortunate – but anxious. Life is not a spectator sport. We really are called to wade in and swim with the fishes. If I wouldn’t be caught dead swimming in the Gulf these days, well then that’s something to think about.
I realize I want to know that I’m giving at least as much as I’m taking. Thanks so much for your magical story, Hiro. It is all connected. xo
I’ve also been trying to grapple with staying whole or rather returning to wholeness, while being in the world that is so full of suffering and damage.
I so like what you write about becoming overwhelmed with fear and helplessness, then becoming “part of the fear, chaos and confusion around me”. You question about entering the house of wholeness is one that I am maybe just beginning to explore now in my middle age. I think the answer is one that has been just beyond my reach most of my life and maybe for just that reason. I have allowed myself or perhaps knew no better than to give in to the helplessness and fear.
Thank you for this beautiful piece of writing that gives shape to all that so many of us are feeling and the struggle to be responsible for entering the house. I am reading writing like your’s, finding a community of like-minded people online, walking, meditating, looking outwards and inwards, sharing, reaching out instead of curling up, being kind to myself and others, forgiving myself and others.
So beautiful, so painful, so difficult to hear and see and bear such truth. Thank you for bringing me back to myself, which is Wholeness.
I’ve always written for myself because I had to. I want now to write for the world, for the healing beyond myself, but get bogged down feeling inadequate. You have reminded me just how irrelevant a feeling that is.
What a healing and wonderful post. Thank you.
I enter into the House of Wholeness in poetry, in attending to the world around me, in attending to the needs of my body, in the stillness of breath and, like you, in listening to the questions.
[...] is part of a blog flurry about writing with my friends Susan Piver, Hiro Boga, and Mahala Mazerov. Partake of their posts today [...]