My wish

We just watched a documentary on TED conferences.  Speakers were asked to talk about their one wish that would change the world.  Since I was an educator, mine came to me like this -

Teach every child to meditate.

What can meditation do for children?  Help with impulse control, anger management, enduring pain, self-discipline, sleep, stress control, focus . . . put them in touch with who they really are.  Help them slow down and make choices thoughtfully.  Help them learn to listen (not just "listen to" adults) and see.  I don't think I could list all it has done for me, all of which ends up increasing well-being.  I believe the most important social benefit is the taming of personal and cultural violence. 

How could daily meditation become part of the public school curriculum?  Where can action on this begin?  How else can it be offered to children?

I would love to hear your ideas.

What is your true condition?

Joplin Missouri

Maybe you didn't live in Joplin, and maybe you aren't right now in Kansas City wondering what to do as five tornadoes head toward you . . . maybe you weren't flooded out by the Mississippi or the earthquake/tsunami that hit Japan . . .

Wherever you are, look around you at your stuff. It could all be gone tomorrow morning.  Or you could be gone, come to think of it.  Tom and I are fond of a passage from Rebel Buddha that consoled us when our beloved cat Sheba got sick and died within a few hours.

What will help you find your direction is to stop what you're doing and just look at your true condition in life.  When you do that, you either freak out or get your bearings pretty quickly.  And what is that true condition?  There are many types of suffering, but there's one that's worth contemplating above all others: nothing lasts.  Life is short, the clock never stops ticking, and the time of your death will be a surprise.

Sherlock the day before he died.

Suck it up?

Maybe my present moment is captured by this post, which I wrote to my transplant e-list in response to a woman who is being overwhelmed by caregiver duties.  That strikes right home for me, as you will see.  This is a value of our own hard times, mistakes, and failures - they are a chance for us to develop empathy for others who are going through the same thing.

Hi Lorene -
Yes, I have problems too.  A torn rotator cuff in my left shoulder, some pain in my right; back pain, a returned pain in my L hip, swelling and pain below my R ankle - it seems all of these are tendon problems.  So I am wondering about the 1000 mg of steroids I had at my surgery, and then the misprescribed Cipro 2 months later - both can cause weakness in tendons.

A lumbar MRI coming up next Tuesday evening.  Maybe the back pain is not only scoliosis, but also bone deterioration, not surprising in one with kidney failure.  Meanwhile, Vicodin increased to 4 a day, and some odd but not unprecedented moodswings.  Anyway, I got a big new moist heat pad, and I am sleeping well, I'll say that.

I do believe in accepting life, in trying to have equanimity.  But Lorene, sometimes it is hard.  You must watch your BP.  (Me too.)  When I was chief caregiver for my mother, and my daughter had just given birth and really needed help, I got so stressed I totaled my car and ended up stuck at home with a driving phobia for a while.  It was not much of a relief . . . Not driving again now, because I am so afraid of overstressing the right shoulder.  Sometimes it all piles up on you, I know.  I just wanted you to know that I will never criticize you for finding it overwhelming. 
Some days it is.
Love,
Jeanne

I responded partly because the men on the list tend to tell us to "suck it up."  Their way is to encourage people by telling how they can hogtie calves with two torn rotator cuffs, run marathons, and how a transplant is a wonderful chance at life compared to people born without legs or arms. Okay, one of those is an exaggeration, but not by much.

If we see masculinity/femininity as poles on either end of a spectrum, "Suck it up" is at the masculine end. It means override your feelings and do what you have to.  It is not the wrong thing to do, if that's what you have to do, for example, get up yet again and feed the baby.  But in my life I have often believed there were many, many things I had to do.  Just yesterday I was feeling unaccountably very tired, but had a PT appointment in the early afternoon, and thought I shouldn't cancel it.  So I went, hoping I would perk up.  I didn't.  I couldn't do the shoulder work, and had to end the session early.  In my opinion, it was a waste of time, and probably discouraging to the therapist.

Often you need to hear your feelings of overwhelm.  Often we need to back away and find some other direction on something that keeps on being overwhelming.  For instance, you just have to get some respite care, maybe, so you can take a good nap and catch up a bit on your sleep.  My experience with my mother (who died almost ten years ago) taught me not to keep doing something that is leaving me drained and depressed. I had to turn my mother's caregiving over to other family members.  Running my pretty little Acura into a new GMC Jimmy could have gotten me killed.  In fact, could have had something to do with my current back problems, now that I think of it.  I didn't see a doctor then - just went home and cried for days. Suck it up too hard on something too difficult, and you will total your car.

Getting through a busy week

Monday.  This morning when I looked at the kitchen calendar I had the thought, I just have to get through this week. Every day a medical thing to do, sometimes two: PT, labs, acupuncture, dr. appt, fill weekly pill case.  Really, only one is arduous - trying to get my Procrit out of the inevitably screwed-up Curascript (Express Scripts special pharmacy).  I will try to meditate while on hold, focus on practicing kindness while talking to people.  The only real problem with it is that I think they shouldn't be this way.  They are badly run, inefficient, but that's just a fact.

Also today, call Joanie, my new tx nurse, and see what we have to do next to schedule the surgery - bilateral nephrectomy - getting both native kidneys out.  It took two months to get the required cystoscopy.  Now what?  Thinking of it, I find I tense my jaws a little.  It will have to be in OSU, where transplant docs are right there if anything goes wrong.  Earlier in life I would have been continuously strung up, a subconscious thought, I just have to get through the surgery. I would have been anxiously holding the possible future tight. Relax. Close eyes, take one deep breath and exhale all the way.  Sit and rest at the bottom of the breath.

Back to the calender.  I thought, I don't have to get through this week - I don't have to get through this day - I am just here now.

I left a window open in my study, and when I opened the door a few minutes ago, it smelled wonderful, cool and fresh.  The drooping branches of the old cedar outside my window have fresh green tips.  Like the leaves on the old oaks, they seem fluffy with new life. The honeysuckle is blooming.  A twig bounces.  A drop of rain.

Pain Hurts

I am confounded right now by a cascade of problems with pain.  Not just a torn rotator cuff that looks like it would not be amenable to surgery, and besides, I have a more important surgery to do.  Back pain. Sudden physical limitations.  Limited use of left arm.  Limited ability to pick things up off the floor.

I was almost unable to get off the floor today when I lay down to meditate in the most painfree position, flat on my back. Driving hurts the shoulder.  Typing hurts the shoulder.  No wonder I'm depressed.  Here's from Wikipedia on the subject -

Experimental subjects challenged by acute pain and patients in chronic pain experience impairments in attention control, mental flexibility, problem solving, and information processing speed. Acute and chronic pain are also associated with increased depression, anxiety, fear, and anger.

So at least I'm normal.

And about pain medications . . . There is a whole raft of things I can't take as a kidney transplant patient.  No Nsaids, no fancy things like Celebrex.  No steroids since these problems seem to be weakened tendons.  I have opiates, limited Tylenol, limited Neurontin.  I am willing - grateful - to use things that help.  But I was still awakened early this morning by pain.  The more you hit pain with opiates, the wierder your mind feels.  I like a crisp, clean mind, able to perceive, to think.  This is a strong preference.

In my fashion I have done things I could think of to do about this.  Ordered a big moist heat pad for my back.  A hot or cold pad for my shoulder.  Figured out a way to wear a bra for a limited time without further hurting the shoulder.  That's progress.  Made an appt. with my wonderful acupuncturist, the doctor who brought me flowers in the hospital, he and his nurse.  All excellent things.  Oh, and joined a health board where a forum on pain looks promising.  Yes, and wrote my transplant e-list and figured out that my new hot flashes are probably caused by the Vicodin. None of these actions have lifted today's depression.  Which may in fact be caused by the Vicodin.

I certainly know more than I did about chronic pain and deep pain and disabling pain.  This is serious.  This is aging.  It happens to everyone who lives long enough.  I don't know any guidelines to offer other people.  I am walking in the dark, one step at a time.  And I guess all I have to offer today is my experience.  I could say some Buddhist things about it being an inevitable part of life.  I still don't like it.

Grandma's Beta Testing: Lean Pockets Whole-Grain

I have so many opinions, it seems like time to start writing down some of them.  I like the thought of commenting on the Bruce Willis movie I watched last night, the book I liked or put down in boredom, the horrible women's magazines in the mammogram waiting room at the James (maybe later), and the food I eat. And why not start today? I thought, as I contemplated writing a sarcastic letter to the Lean Pockets people.

I don't see much point in writing to them, though.  Packaged foods like this are not really food, but products, a product created with endless meetings and expensive market research, which is all about selling you on it, and they're not going to listen to me.  But you might be glad to know what you're actually getting when you buy Lean Pockets.  Whole-grain, to make you think it's healthy.

According to the label, the 250-calorie Lean Pocket I managed to eat at lunch today had 8(!) grams of fat, 38 grams of carbohydrates (!), of which 11 g were sugars, only 9 grams of protein, one small bite of broccoli, and no turkey.  I mean, I couldn't taste or see any turkey at all.

In other words, this is another product that is basically fat and carbs, the road to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.  It will not help you get your minimum protein for the day.  (There are calculators to figure your requirement online).  Since protein was one of the things that was restricted on the kidney diet, I counted grams for years.  For me, 45 grams a day is a minimum need.  That's 15 grams per meal. Today I had to finish my lunch with some nuts to make up for the lack.

So this was far from a complete lunch.  But it did give me some partially hydrogenated oils and palm oil to think about.  Not good.  And soy flour, which is not for me, as I once had breast cancer that was estrogen-receptive.And you don't need to hear all the strange non-foods that are in this.   Typing out the additives would make me dizzy.

I have an excuse for picking up this frozen dish on the fly yesterday, you know - but who needs to hear it?  There are good things to say about it, compared to fast foods, and their web site would be glad to tell you.  And who can criticize the makers of such delicious depravities as Butterfingers and DiGiorno's pizza?  They make lots of candy and pizzas, in fact - look up Nestle Brands if you want to see their sweep.  Then look them up on Wikipedia and think about the long-standing boycott of Nestle foods because of the infant formula controversy, rain-forest destruction, etc. They're hard to boycott, it's true - they're everywhere. In the world, and in the supermarket

Once again it turns out the personal is political, including what you personally put in your mouth. Sounds like an ethical matter, in the end, a matter of compassion for yourself and quite a few others. 

Why not leave well enough alone?

It's another old Grandma type saying that expressed a meaningful truth.  We are in an age where marketing is all about New! Improved! More+ Don't you wish people would stop improving things?

Not everything, of course. The computer is a great improvement over the Selectric, which improved the typewriter by making erasure easy, though much more expensive.  My ergonomic keyboard is a great improvement too, and probably prolonged the health of my shoulders for years.  Yes, and digital photography is much cheaper and more flexible than film; Photoshop on the other hand, desecrates far more often than it improves. And in the old days you didn't have to look at so many people's pretty bad pictures.

Just the other day Google improved itself on me in some invisible way, and the icon that takes me back to Home page moved to the other side of the screen, who can know why?  Maybe just so they could say it was new.  I found it, but the search annoyed me and broke my train of thought.  It's still not a habit, though, more mental work for an overtaxed brain.  My Thunderbird e-mail improved itself too, and now it plagues me with boxes that wants me to learn more about it.  What?  It sends email to and fro.  I can direct mail to various boxes.  I can send people my own bad pictures.  What more do I need?

We monkeys like new toys, or are we magpies? attracted by glittering items, regardless of their usefulness.  But get a Droid and, if you were born last century it will take you many, many hours of study to learn how to use the damn thing.  Don't drop it!  In olden days, you couldn't hurt a phone.  Ads for the telephone company played on that by showing a handsome dog with a handset in his mouth, cord broken.  The dog was grinning.  And you were never in danger of putting the phone through the washer and drier back when the only phone in the house was black, wired to the wall, and sat in the hall on a little phone table.

Of course, of course, I like many features of life now:  the self-defrosting freezer, tires that last, the motorized wheelchair, Vicodin.  This is just to say that change is not necessarily an improvement.  And more is not necessarily better.  That goes for our lives, too.  Most things have not improved my level of contentment.  
As for improved new new, I read recently in Chogyam Trungpa's Work, Sex, Money that there is an old Tibetan saying that it is better not to start something - but if you do, finish it.  So I am finished here for now.  Maybe I'll call a friend and talk, and not drive or mess with Angry Birds or dust my windowsills or anything else, just sit there comfortably talking, like we did in - you know what I'm going to say - in the old days.

Not making anything of it

Maybe I'm not blogging or writing much because it begins to seem like wasting time to keep twisting reality into words.  Thought of Nanchuan cuts the cat in two -

"If any of you can say a word of Zen, you will save the cat."

(I found myself on Google when I looked this up to get the quote right.  So there you are.  My words are eternal now, I'm afraid. Unless human-unkind destroys this lovely planet I am "in the cloud.")

Not that art and literature is worthless.  Oh, no.  I love beauty.  I love other people's art.  But my interest in photography is the same - I love to see good photos, but don't feel the urge, even need, to take them.  (Anyway, I've taken so many, and that goes for words too.)  My spiritual development right now seems to be about being in reality, letting it change and pass, not making something of it.  Just a thought.
~~~~~~
[Image, Baby Jesus, Nathan's mother's cat.  To think more about the koan, go to Nathan's blog, Dangerous Harvests.

Art is a spiritual practice

Chuck Close - The Atlantic

I just discovered the power of Chuck Close's work in a recent show at the Columbus Art Museum.  For those who make any kind of art or love art, this is fascinating.  Click on the above link and scroll down for a conversation with Paul Simon.  (You do have to put up with commercials, so much isn't free in this world.)

What makes you come alive?

The struggle for spiritual growth is the struggle to get out of the narrow box of our conditioning.  Last night I watched "The American Experience" on PBS about the paths that led Martin Luther King to intersect with James Earl Ray.  I lived through all those years, a young adult, and watching the documentary I remembered my life then, and saw how much the Civil Rights struggle influenced me. After King was shot, the adults in my very small circle stopped criticizing him, and a great silence fell, for it was clear we should be mourning this event.  I observed their unspoken shame.  I learned how much so many people admired him, what he meant as the point man in the Civil Rights movement.

This morning I heard from an old friend, a white southerner who goes to an African-American church.  He referred me to a Dr. Howard Thurman, who preceded King, who met Gandhi and advised many people in the Civil Rights movement.  Here is a bit from the Wikipedia summary on Dr. Thurman -

For some unexplained reason, the following quote by Dr. Howard Thurman is widely and incorrectly attributed on the Internet to one "Harold Thurman Whitman" (which is, in fact, a fictional name):

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

Thurman was a Christian minister, but it sounds Buddhist to me. (Also sounds like John F. Kennedy read it, doesn't it?)

So does Billy Joel in the above song, which gave me a group spiritual experience in around 1975, sitting around a table in a bar with other crazy people when it came on the radio. We all burst into song on the chorus.  We were all people struggling by now against the culture - one friend was gay.  It was 1975.

"Crazy" - coming alive to the truth that persists beneath the culture.  Sometimes it looks like delayed adolescence. The people around you aren't going to like it, the way people didn't like King's call for change.  A person who is alive ripples through the entire culture, the world.  I think of Shunryu Suzuki, the small, humble Zen teacher who seeded America with teachers.  Or think of King, whom I knew only on a television screen, whose marches I was too confined psychologically to think of joining.  But you do join the march of culture, you are changed by the songs you hear, really hear.