The extra baggage from the past is something we have to pay for, just as we have to pay for every extra kilo of baggage on a flight. Living in the moment is really the ultimate, and when we can get into the moment we can free ourselves from the burdens of the past.

Lama Surya Das
The Lightness of Being (an interview)

What counts

Buddhists talk about taking the Bodhissatva vow. It is a vow to stay on this earth through many lifetimes (and not go to nirvana) until all beings are saved. If you don’t believe in reincarnation, it makes sense to interpret it as a metaphor: a vow to stay in what Kierkegaard called “the finite,” the everyday world, and not relax in a bliss that is far removed from the world of creatures. The Zen metaphor for staying in a removed place of purity and calm is sitting on “the hundred-foot pole,” like a religious hermit, looking down on the marketplace from far away, not involved.

I remember exactly when I began to get that koan, “How do you get down from a hundred-foot pole?” I was at church, having coffee in Fellowship Hall and talking with a member of the Zen group I sometimes sat with at the time. He talked about a problem the group was having - I’ve forgotten now what it was. Suddenly I realized, I shouldn’t be talking about this - I should be in there helping. Then I thought, That’s what they mean about getting down off the hundred foot pole.

The pole is the state we bring back from a good retreat, the calm, removed state we mistake for “enlightenment” or “being saved.” I remember once telling another Teacher in great frustration, “I was enlightened, I had it, I know, but I keep losing it.”

He said with rare abruptness, “Enlightenment is not something you hold on to.” I suppose he explained it further in his talk that night. It was years before I got it, though, and that was from reading another teacher, Lama Surya Das - “There is no such thing as enlightenment - there is only enlightened activity.” Clearly, that activity must take place in this created world, our every-day every-moment life.

And further, it is action that counts - not mood or a state of being. Good intentions? The jury seems to be out on that. But when you look at it case by case it becomes clear that how we act is, after all, what counts. What happens in Vegas, whether it's adultery or losing the farm, doesn't really stay there, but makes its way out into the world, sometimes with sad consequences.

I always thought the idea in the song attached here (interpreted by Elvis with effortless beauty) was questionable. It made me think the songwriter cheated on his wife and neglected her - well, a singer on the road, you know, all the temptation - and what he did wasn't supposed to count because . . . well, because he maintains he was always thinking of her when he did it. As pretty as the song is, I kind of doubt that. In fact, I don't even like the idea. My reply, when I was a Christian, would have been, "Faith without works is dead." Another case where the religions seem to come into agreement.

Majoring in mystical experience

A friend asked me recently what I would major in if I were going to college today. I got as confused as I was back then. "Anthropology," I said. "No, art, visual art. No [thinking of the question, what would I choose for my life's work if I had it to do over again] oh, something in medicine. Meaningful hands-on work. Maybe being a doctor." I forgot to say, religion. Comparative religions.

Actually, I didn't get what I wanted from a course of that name when I took it in college, freshman year. The professor was from the philosophy department and didn't have any religion himself. I remember him, though not his name, and another student, a senior who intended to become a Christian minister, and tried never to argue with the teacher when invited. We were a very small class, just a few other students.

Our only textbook was a heavy hardback anthology of sacred texts from major religions, which I never opened once that class was over. It didn't even give us introductions to ground us in the context - that was the way academics thought then in the English department, too, in the grip of The New Criticism, which argued that all that mattered was the poem itself - that we should forget biography and history and the writer's culture. So we talked about the "ideas" of the religions, and their ethical codes, which are hard to pick out from the texts, I found.

And none of this touched me. I didn't know it, but I was there because I wanted to be touched. I wanted to hear not about ideas, but about practice - a word I did not then associate with religion. The only practices I knew of were distinctly Christian, though I had at least been exposed to a range of denominations. When I had practiced prayer and study, I did not think of them as helping my "spiritual growth" - an idea I was unfamiliar with. You were either A or B, in my understanding - a good Christian, trying with all your might, or a backslider. When I entered college, I was definitely the latter. But I was still interested.

In Comparative Religions, I wanted to hear much more than we did about prayer - which I hoped would lead me to mystical communion with the essential, the sacred or divine; though I don't recall now that it ever had. I'd had several mystical experiences in nature and in singing in groups - I think many people have - but I didn't know that was what they were called, and didn't talk about them. How could you? I know now that it is impossible to describe the mystical experience - I would find the best descriptions or evocations of it in poetry, especially that of Gerard Manley Hopkins. How strange it is to think back on my own time as a teacher of literature, that there must have been in my classes kids like I was, shy and silent, yearning for something of essence to be revealed here. You have no idea really what is behind those faces.

I knew teaching wasn't my right work, not that kind of teaching, and I am retired, with subscriptions to Netflix and The New Yorker - enough to keep an ordinary mortal satisfied. But I still wonder - what is my right work right now? (What should I major in?) I've been lucky to have illness cut me back from my enthusiastic pursuit of too many things. My energy is good mostly for sitting at this computer and writing. That is what I have devoted myself to every chance I got for most of my life. Since 1997 it's been mostly poetry, and I've been serious about it. So why is it even a question?

Well, because my father, who liked poetry, had contempt for it as a job - where's the money? That message comes at us from everywhere. "Ain't no money in poetry," as the song goes, not real money. And there really isn't in the serious practice of any art, leaving aside major self-promoters. The arts are a form of spiritual practice; they reach for experience in its essence. There has hardly ever been any money in that. As I remember the film, Brother Sun, Sister Moon, you need to keep away from the money. And to some degree, away from the culture.

I probably have, in the way that Poets have of not fitting in, even when we try. Looking back, if I had understood my yearnings and told my guidance counselor I wanted to be a mystic, I can't imagine what she would have suggested. Probably that I major in English.

That list of things to do

I know this isn't the first time I've written about that list. I hope my understanding of it is growing. Today it seems to me it ought to be titled, Things I'm not doing for some reason though I thought I should.

?Who are those two people arguing about the list, I could call them Knot and Shud. They both look like me, so why can't they get together? It's not for lack of the ability to impose iron discipline on myself. I have done that in the past. That's how you write a dissertation, how you endure pelvic exams. But more and more I don't like gritting my teeth. I wonder these days, what is your (my) reason for putting a particular thing off. Pro-crastinating, at which I am such a pro it just seems like ordinary life. Like that stuff on the shelves in the garage that your eye passes over, that you usually don't even see.

All this thinking must have to do with my recent study of talks and books that stress enlightened activity. Maybe all Teachers stress that, and I'm just getting it a little more clearly. Well, it is 8:45 a.m. and I hear Tom getting up. It is definitely time for me to meditate, or it will get lost in the day. I (all of me) will get lost in the day.

Spiritual growth, Ow!

I know I'm stealing a cliche, but I can't help myself - Spiritual growth is not for sissies. It is hard. It means you give up mental stuff - and think how we sometimes balk at just giving up regular stuff, like our favorite flannel shirt, even though it is frayed, even torn. Spiritual growth comes from dancing with your demons, a metaphor I am drawn to, coming from a childhood informed by myth and fairy tales. Another way to put it is, you have to stop clinging to your illusions and delusions if you are to live comfortably in reality. That's the way the tradition I practice in sees it.

I think most people begin a meditation practice with the idea that it can bring peace of mind. (Here's an interesting side fact: one of the most effective psychotherapies, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, was created by Marsha Linehan, a very long-time meditator, and is based on techniques Zen teachers use.) Well, in the beginning meditation can feel very good; on one tape, Pema Chodron says there is a saying that spiritual practice begins in bliss and ends in bliss, but the road inbetween is hell. Teachers don't emphasize that, but try to inspire us to stay on the path by telling us how good life will be. Eventually. Keep sitting.

Yesterday I was on that craggy, dry, horrible part of the road. Depressed. I know better, but I tried to figure it out, and couldn't. Eventually - in the evening - I talked to Tom about how old I feel, how discouraging this foot thing is, and cried. This morning, the sun keeps coming out, making Ohio a worthwhile place to live, and I am singing little songs like - I'm not kidding - Three Little Birds. ("Don't worry 'bout a thing, 'cause every little thing gonna be alright.")

I can't seem to keep up with my health, and my fears about it. I can't seem to give up worrying about the next damn thing, knowing worry does no good. I push worry away, and it just goes underground. For instance, the transplant center called to make an appointment with the transplant surgeon in July, a routine re-evaluation. But what if I flunk? I just want a kidney, okay? Every time the phone rings it could be a kidney. . . next week I get full labs again, and I will hone in on that magic number, the GFR, the amount of your kidney function. Please don't fall. Please don't make me start thinking again about whether I will undertake dialysis again or just die. Always something to worry about.

I don't exactly worry about the damn feet, but they are absolutely handicapping. And as it is a temporary handicap, I am not set up with the kind of services you need, a housekeeper, transportation, an electric scooter. I rely on Tom too much. He is very supportive. Even so, it is a daily struggle. Cheery people want you to call it "a challenge," as if it were a Sudoku. I suppose on one level of abstraction, it is. One small life in the river of time, one blade of grass. Still, I am a sentient being and I feel pain as well as anxiety. Yesterday I absolutely couldn't get the new ankle support system comfortable. Then there was, and is, the pain in the hip from these major adjustments in footwear. Take tramadol or just Tylenol? I really should research tramadol . . .

I have been working with bone edema and ankle pain since January. Now I am out of the boot at last, but still wearing an air cast on the right foot, and a sort of little athletic supporter on the left ankle. They throw off the fit of all my shoes, and make my feet itch. Yesterday I got online and tried to find pretty all-cotton socks that would fit my big feet, and this was just one more source of pain - I could not find them in pretty colors. Big feet, you wear black or white. I know, there is an answer, dye them, paint them, sew beads on the cuffs. Sigh.

I need new orthotics the doctor said, but the physical therapist who specializes in that is on vacation, so I have to hobble around in the old ones for a couple more weeks. But that's okay, in a sense, because I'm not supposed to hobble, I am still supposed to stay off my feet. And not drive. Rest the ankles. I have thought of making a list of all the things you don't have to do when you're not supposed to stand or walk around, but the idea of trying to cheer myself up really did get me down.

So . . . yesterday all this was too much for me to really be with. The depression came up, a brown filter between me and all these frightening and frustrating realities. Today, much better. And a little closer to reality, more willing to follow doctor's orders, eat a good breakfast, write to a friend. Interested in life again.

Being depressed was a form of dancing with that particular foggy-brown demon, one I knew very well earlier in my life, one who used to come in and stay for months on end. Coming out of depression so quickly, I lay that down to continuing practice, meditating badly, reading dharma talks even as I grumbled. Maybe the most important thing was being being willing to let go of the resentment and depression, to be open to morning, to let my mood and attitude change and change again.
[the image: my current reading]

So you want to slow down

Today we got the results from the voluminous neuropsychological testing I just undertook with a Dr. Rick Whately. Three sessions, over two hours each, my internist's idea after I told him I felt I'd lost a lot of memory.

It turns out I haven't, that all sorts of cognitive function are just fine, including a normal amount of forgetting names, that kind of thing that happens with time, even as most of us also put on a few pounds. The only thing that isn't great is the speed of my processing. I knew that. The tests confirm that my processing is slower than something, I'm not sure what - maybe than the average 30-year-old - but still above average for my age.

Sigh. On the other hand, slowing down some, is that so bad?

Remember how in the old economy we all talked about slowing down? In those frantic days of work-and-consume, a "slow food" movement even rose up, that valorizes foods made for quality, cooked with care, and enjoyed. And there are still lots of ads for spa treatments and massage, one-day yoga "retreats," things to help people "get out of the rat race" so they could get back on, refreshed. Ahh. So many of those busy busy people came to our meditation groups once or several times and then dropped out because they couldn't stand the way their minds raced when they sat still. We would try to say, "That is your mind. That's what it does all the time - you're just seeing it now. This practice is the answer, you just have to keep doing it." But spiritual practice is long-term, and though you might have some interesting breakthroughs, generally speaking, growth is slow. You have to kind of forget about making progress.

It turns out there is another way to slow down - get old. You can be disabled by many, many things, like Tom's post-polio syndrome, which came as a great surprise to us, or my declining kidney function - not predicted by my family history. I'm not talking about "staying young" by maintaining your looks with face lifts and belly-dancersise. Whatever you do like that, your body will still age. You will probably not beat your genetic endowment by very much; might not even make it anywhere near the age you feel entitled to, might not dodge cancer and diabetes and swine flu and accidents nearly that long.

But if you are lucky you will have at least a while to be old, like us, and able-bodied/able-minded enough to live independently. Even to keep driving, though a bit more slowly.

I started out to contemplate slowing down. What is it about, anyway, that frantic feeling? I remember it from my fifties, before I got cancer. What it was about for me was not working too hard, but doing the wrong things, expending my energy helter-skelter, giving my time to random responsibilities that stressed me and people who annoyed me. So often I felt, I don't have time to write.

So I knew what I wanted to do. I just didn't know I knew it. It's like all the teachers say, You already are a Buddha - your job is to realize it.

Here's a sentence from what I was reading this morning -

If we really look in our daily lives . . . I think we would be amazed at how little peace we have, how we are always plugged in, driven, compulsive, dependent, and ill at ease in ourselves.

I hate to end there, I could go further, to the part of the talk about how we can all be free, but I need to get in the kitchen. Tom and I are working on a tart for lunch, made with the rainbow chard we are getting from our CSA right now. We are using a pre-made pie crust, but it is still relatively slow food. Working in the kitchen with Tom is one of the things I enjoy now that I am finally slowed down.

What an orchid wants

The other morning I was sitting at the kitchen table when I saw Susan come up the walk carrying a beautiful big white orchid.

This unexpected gift has given me a pleasant feeling in the center of my body, a feeling that almost seems to be in the air I breathe in. It is very physical, not unlike the grief for Sherlock that arises when I come across a picture of him, or remember one of his ways. This is a more nourishing feeling, and I enjoy letting it linger.

I began to really stay with my feelings a while back, reading Lama Surya Das on handling anger over and over. His advice is to be the feeling, let it take you over. Don't follow the mind road, but just be with, the way we just sit with our breath when we meditate. In the talk I printed out, he says there are two kinds of difficult feeling, which I always think of in my grandson's terms, Want and Don't Want. Desire and aversion. This is something I want, this feeling of gratitude. It is not a preference generated by the brain, but a response from the body, where feelings reside.

And it led to a feeling/thought - how can I thank Susan? Before bed last night I wrote that question on top of my To-do list.

The next morning I knew the first thing was to figure out what the beautiful orchid needed. I had carefully placed it on the antique table in the living room, a few feet from a big west window, a natural place to show off something beautiful. But now I am reading about what an orchid likes - the environment it would naturally grow in. (That is giving me thoughts about the environment I can grow in, and what Tom needs, and Cassie, and Otto.)

I am vaguely aware that the facts about orchids are going into that stock of images and ideas in my mind, and may emerge some time in a poem . . . and I think about the studies that show tending a plant extends life for the elderly. Just tending a plant, knowing something needs your care or it will die. This is connection to living things outside ourselves, which I begin to think is the ultimate healer.

I used to fail with houseplants, buying things on impulse, because I liked them, then trying to give them enough light in a house where that was impossible, overwatering the poor things until they turned yellow and quit. I was very slow to learn how to be with a plant, not just get knowledge about it, but look at it, ask it what it needs. It's odd to think about it, but I am remembering that the houses I grew up in had no house plants. My mother liked to keep blinds, shutters, and drapes closed, claiming her windows were always dirty.

I learned a lot, I think, trying to grow African violets. I am amazed now that I ever thought I could make them grow (make them grow?) in a small dormer window that faced south - but that was all I had back then. I had six or seven violets, lovely variations. I studied them in library books (this was before the internet), labored over them, thrilled to get the least amount of bloom. I don't recall how and when they all died, but none of them came here in 2003. It's too bad; they would have liked this house.

After we moved here, I had an impulsive moment at the grocery store, and bought a perfectly ordinary purple African violet. Soon after, at Oakland Nursery, I found a ceramic pot made for violets. The plant sits in an unglazed pot that is suspended in a bowl of water, so it self-waters from the bottom, the way violets like. That and a big window where it gets southwest sun have been magic. The bloom is a spectacular purple nosegay. I do almost nothing for the plant, just provide the environment.

Orchids are even more particular than violets, desiring an environment like the tropical rain forest they come from, warmer in the daytime, cooler at night. This one wants a north window, which is a happy fact, since my study has one. And it would much prefer to be watered with rainwater. From beautifulorchids.com:

Rainwater, as it passes through the air, dissolves and absorbs many substances such as dust, pollen and other organic matter. This enriched rainwater contributes to the nourishment of the plant.

Doesn't this make you smile? I am already waiting for rain, connecting with the weather. I plan to collect it in a bucket on the patio, with a screen on top to prevent mosquitos from breeding. Susan cares deeply for the natural world, connects profoundly to the landscape. I am thinking that caring for this orchid, rainwater and all, is going to be a good way to remember her and express ongoing gratitude.

A minor event

A few days ago I got a request to co-lead a course this fall. Years ago, it's true, that sort of thing clenched me up. I was already doing too much, scattered all over the place, and it seemed I had to say No to someone twice a day, when saying No made me anxious. But then, I wanted to say yes to everything. Sometimes I did, and ended up having to cancel out. My life isn't like that anymore - an advantage of poor health - and the request felt like a compliment. I thought maybe I'd do it.

Then I remembered why I didn't want to. It has been impossible for as long as I can remember now to count on an hour a day of time/energy for my real work, my poetry. I am putting together a collection, and I'd like to get it out. I am pretty sure I'm not going to enjoy being posthumously published. Teaching this course would not only eat up an evening a week, it would take preparation, which takes more time. Time I want for my work.

There is some great mystical stuff in Zen about time and space. I have read it closely. It seems to imply that time is not real. I confess, it is for me, real as a puppy that has not been leash-trained. My control of it is uneasy at best. It keeps running along every day, downhill, and slips the leash to run out of sight when I turn my back.

If that metaphor makes you nervous, here's another: You get so many units of time at the start of the day. But with each passing minute, the units grow smaller and weaker, and more and more Things To Do appear on the scene, not your fault, and then your Special Forces Anti-To-Do Weapon seizes up and won't fire. It is like some horrible video game. You are almost relieved when you lose.

This afternoon I called the woman who asked me to do the course and explained to her, not feeling guilty, and we had a pleasant conversation. I got to know her a little better, and to admire her professionalism. When we hung up, I realized I felt warmed by this contact. Ten years ago the need to say No would have fretted me all morning and depleted my energy. It might seem like a small, ordinary thing to show for years of spiritual practice and therapy, certainly not a great mystical vision. But most joys are small and most days are ordinary.

[image: Gravity Probe B and space/time, courtesy of NASA]

Heaven is other people

I just finished a book called Healing Lazarus: A Buddhist's Journey from Near Death to New Life. The author, Lew Richmond, facilitates the Tricycle magazine blog on aging. This is not a cheery account, but an honest and open description of his slow, incomplete recovery from a brain infection, with its setbacks and slow time and even a mean nurse, but also with many caring healers. I flagged the page with this quote --

In his play No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre writes, "Hell is other people." But now I knew that this existential aphorism was not so, at least not for me. Other people are not hell, they are heaven, a heaven filled with gratitude for their presence and their care.

I read this not long after I had been to church last Sunday. We've been missing some Sundays since Sherlock died, depending on how bad I felt. After church, one woman after another came up to me and comforted me, and compassionately shared their own grief for lost pets. I don't remember ever feeling this kind of what we call "support" before. But it really felt exactly like support, like the church was a strong, resilient net underneath me, that would prevent me from falling too far.

Every grief touches down on our other griefs, they say, and I had plenty I hadn't cried hard about these last years. Yet I also grieved hard just because I miss Sherlock so. People talked to me about that, how empty the house is when they're gone. There is something unique about this grief, because our mutual love with an animal is so pure and simple and clear. Finally I am seeing that I can hold him in my heart and continue to love and miss him even as my life goes on.

It's been a month, and we have taken major healing steps - visited Cat Welfare, not once but three times, getting to know certain cats who respond to us, thinking and talking to the staff and volunteers about their personalities. Every time I go, I feel healed and filled up by the experience of being with cats. We're getting pretty fond of a large marmalade female named Ori, who is shy of the other cats and stays in her cage, but loves to be petted. Stroking her gives me something special, a sense of warmth in the solar plexus. She seems to be an earth cat, nothing like Sherlock in appearance or temperament; we decided that was a good thing. So we are thinking about this now, dreaming on it, getting ready.