On August 4th, I published the first in a series of excerpts from Ocean of Insight–a spiritual-action-memoir in the works. Here is the third installment from chapter one. Again, I invite the writer in you to comment.

This excerpt continues to explore the chapter’s theme of fear. But here, the story takes a turn toward Buddhist teachings and I discover a tool for calming terror.

Don’t hesitate to let me know what you think. Thx–H

Resting in bed with eyes closed and Dave on watch, I feel the ship’s untamed motion from a new vantage. Sloshing reverberates inside the hull with the acoustics of a cello. I scan my body to find out how it feels when I’m deeply frightened: steel-tight shoulders, twitchy fingers, rapid and shallow breaths, queasiness, aching temples, and a tickling unsteadiness in the back of my knees. I extend compassion toward myself because I was raised on land and in a field of safety and opportunity. I do not know how to be—what to do—in this circumstance.

 

“Have you scared yourself yet?” our boat broker Tom Harney from Jordan Yachts asked when we crossed paths in Florida after months of sailing a while back.

 

“No, not really,” I remarked. Dave concurred.  “We’ve gotten into some pickles but we’ve gotten ourselves out of them,” I boast.

 

“Well then you haven’t been sailing yet. You haven’t really been sailing until you’ve been really scared.”

 

I guess tonight—more than a year into our six-year adventure on Wild Hair—is my first real sail. I laugh. Sailing is horrible.

 

Opening my eyes, I gaze straight up through the hatch to the ship’s anchor light atop the mast. The beacon scratches rhythmically against the stars of Orion’s belt. How is it, I wonder, that the mast doesn’t knock the sash from Orion’s hips? I smile again and imagine the hunter’s pants dropping around his ankles and consider what new stars would shine with Orion’s anatomy revealed? Breathing in and out I am slightly soothed. Fingertips take comfort stroking the cotton bedspread at my sides.

 

My mind floats to a story the Buddha once told. A young girl ran from a pair of snarling tigers through the forest. She fled for her life but stopped short at the edge of a steep cliff. There, with the thud of cat’s paws approaching from behind, she climbed over the edge to dangle from a broken tree branch. The tigers caught up and paced above her head at the cliff’s edge. In an unfortunate turn, three more tigers arrived to circle below her perch; they too were ravenous.  The girl could not climb up; she could not drop down. But beside her she saw a single strawberry growing through a crack in the cliff. It was plump, ruby red. What did she do? The girl ate the strawberry in full mindfulness of the beauty and safety of the present moment.

 

Tonight, the story of tigers rings of spiritual discipline and a determination to experience the richness of life in this moment while living in the company of fear. Dave and I are still safe. The boat is sound. We can act. Something significant shifts in my middle; a pressure lightens.

 

Just then Dave bursts through the door. “Heather, get up. We’re moving, now. The wind shifted north and we’re not holding.”

 

Above deck, Dave shines the spotlight through the gale. Rocks leap from darkness, growling and snapping in a hungry lather like tigers.