Like water to a duck?

Recently one of my students commented that Kiwis survive winter in Christchurch because of a healthy amount of hardy stoicism. A few hours later, I was sitting at YaYa with a fellow US expat who groaned as she exclaimed, "I wish I were a duck". Hmmmm...there IS a connection here!

During the past week of unrelenting rain and frigid temperatures, my friend had envied the ability of Christchurch bird life to frolic, eat, swim, and go about their daily business while seemingly unfazed by the heavy weather. There's a famous phrase I'm recalling..."Like water off a duck's back"? That night I looked up the definition of stoicism, finding "indifference to pleasure and pain". Reading that I wondered... does being "stoic" imply an inability to experience the difference between the two or that a choice is made to view both from the same/equal perspective? Perhaps two sides of the same coin?

Sensing positive material here, the Sanskrit word MAITRI floated out of my mental yoga glossary. Often translated as "friendliness", Pema Chodron (an American Buddhist nun and one of my favorite spiritual writers) describes MAITRI as, "complete acceptance of ourselves [and the environment around us]...a simple direct relationship with the way things actually are." The cultivation of MAITRI or friendliness is key staying present to where we actually are, in each particular moment.

Our culture has a very low tolerance for discomfort. We turn on, switch off, and tune out with any number of technological aids to avoid pain, cold, boredom, vulnerability, and loneliness. On the yoga mat, practicing MAITRI involves learning how to stay with physical sensation and stay within the free movement of breath as we skillfully play our edge. We have the option to blast past our capacity, shrink from possibility, OR explore the area where our past experience meets a new horizon. When we cultivate an attitude of "friendliness" toward our body, our thoughts, and our environment, nothing that emerges is the enemy. We practice remaining open and receptive to whatever the moment brings.

Pema writes that the practice of MAITRI is "coming back to the immediacy of experience...By simply STAYING, we relax more and more into the open dimension of our being." Off our yoga mat, we practice "staying" when we can remain open and soft at our center even while the world around is shifting and changing--workplace chaos, screaming children, difficult relationships, and yes--even the enduring rain and bone chilling cold of July in Christchurch.

While the water may not so easily "run off our backs", we CAN practice accessing the same quality of acceptance, receptivity, AND endurance of the moment as our friendly local ducks. No matter what the weather or life throws at us!