Dim and Cool

August, high noon
In the month and hours of fire, how soothed I feel by coming into my study, where the accordian shades are drawn.   There are thunderstorms coming in; I knew that before I checked the forecast, because my hands have been aching - weather sets off my neuropathy - and now my arms and back are aching, which is fibromyalgia.  That makes me think the storms will be here before evening.  I'm sure my grandmothers' generation was attuned to this kind of effect, as in "The rain makes my rheumatiz act up."  But we have been so optimistic, dreamed that we are creatures of personal will who can control everything, reach every dream, solve our 83 problems through technology, and surely cure every illness and become immortal. 

The problem with sickness and death that is now being discussed at length as the baby boomers pass 60 (for instance, see the current New Yorker) has much to do with this fight, fight attitude.  We believe we must try to defeat the most hopeless illness, survive even multiple organ failure, endure everything that could conceivably give us more time.  Time for what?  Well, the article does talk about that, what people want at the end of life, and none of it can take place in the urgent care unit with a feeding tube, a colostomy demanding constant attention, heart failure, pancreatic cancer.  There is no peace of mind when you persist in fighting the huge army of the inevitable.  It seems to me that hospice care is far more likely to give that peace of mind, and the chance to say goodbye to those you love instead of stringing out the inevitable heavily sedated against in acute discomfort.  Well, I remind myself that I have little enough say about when and how I die.  Perhaps no say at all.  I think of Art Gish, whom I wrote about July 29.  Seventy years old, hoping to live another twenty, killed driving his tractor when it flipped over on him and caught on fire.  Just like that.  Thus.

Too much fire, aches and pains, dim and cool somehow led me to thinking of all that.  Now I'm going to lie down on my yoga mat in shavasana (corpse pose).  I am behind a closed door, protected from interruption by a Post-it on my door that says "Meditating."  Close eyes, relax, lie still and perhaps be rejuvenated enough to go out and get some groceries, or maybe not.  I think I'll recite the Five Remembrances first. (See bottom of this page.)
[And see the video in the post below if you want to relax, too, or at least smile.]

Sleepy Baby Monkey named Mercutio

Born Really Human

The original -

To be born as a human being is a glorious privilege. Man’s dignity consists in his capability to reason and think and to live up to the highest ideal of pure life, of calm thought, of wisdom without extraneous intervention. In the“Saimanna phala Sutta”Buddha says that man can enjoy in this life a glorious existence, a life of individual freedom, of fearlessness and compassionateness. This dignified ideal of manhood may be attained by the humblest, and this consummation raises him above wealth and royalty. “He that is compassionate and observes the law is my disciple,” says Buddha.
Anagarika Dhamapala, from an 1892 address to the World Parliament of Religions

As a student of the subtleties of language, I became interested in the way language expresses cultural assumptions when the feminist revolution of the early seventies came my way.  The special problem, in my eyes, was language that suggests men are the elevated and knowledgeable creature, that is, the really human, while women . . . well, women had their place.  This was true in 1892, when American women could not even vote. There is still a question that floats around in Buddhist places, Can a woman achieve enlightenment, or must one be born in a male body?  It bothered me for some time. 

Dharmapala was a follower of Madame Blavatsky, so it seems probable that he could see woman as an equally spiritual, intelligent being.  But in this talk, he used the language of his time, the language many people use today.  I think Tricycle was right to retain his usage in publishing this excerpt, in which he used the word man to stand in for human.  I honor the past, but that usage troubles me, for I see it as reinforcing the assumptions of patriarcy.  So I felt like rewriting this paragraph so it speaks to women, much as Elizabeth Cady Stanton was moved to rewrite the Bible when the King James version came out, right around the time of Dhamapala's talk.  This gives me a warm feeling, a sense that it speaks to me.

To be born as a woman is a glorious privilege. Woman’s dignity consists in her capability to reason and think and to live up to the highest ideal of pure life, of calm thought, of wisdom without extraneous intervention. In the“Saimanna phala Sutta”Buddha says that a woman can enjoy in this life a glorious existence, a life of individual freedom, of fearlessness and compassionateness. This dignified ideal of womanhood may be attained by the humblest, and this consummation raises her above wealth and royalty. “She that is compassionate and observes the law is my disciple,” says Buddha.

It is also possible to rewrite something like this to use the term human being rather than man.  I am not agitating to revise our Constitution, but I always wish it didn't begin - "all men are created equal," and I remember that back then, that reflected belief.
[image:  Mother Theresa]

Live and Death of a Bodhissatva

P

 Yesterday we lost a prominent peace activist, Art Gish (obituary here).  Tom and I saw him and his wife Peggy speak a year or two ago.  They were unforgettable.  An article by Art describing the event above, where he is standing down a tank in Hebron, gives a good idea of the courage in the face of death these two people have lived by.

The Gishes were on the Christian Peacemakers' team, yet something Peggy said at that talk struck me as perfectly Buddhist - in fact, as a Bodhissatva talking.  I asked her how she managed to find the courage to walk children to school past a phalanx of boy soldiers armed with automatic rifles.  She replied, "Every morning I pray to be animated by love.  The day doesn't go so well when I forget."