The Koan of My Life

I may have just realized the koan of my life - at least, my life just now:

Can you be depressed without blaming yourself? 

I know, this is not the major conundrum of the average life, though severe depression can hit anyone.  But it is for those of us who are bipolar or chronically depressed, or subject to the lows of illness, such as migraines or chronic pain- so as I think about it, a lot of us have this problem.

There could be other approaches for me, such as really thinking about the classic koan, "What was your original face before your mother and father were born?"  That points me to the highly hereditary nature of the kind of brain I have, which is called an illness or disorder.  Dis-order seems to fit pretty well.

If you start thinking how your parents were made by their culture and the events of their lives, you get insight into how they made you.  If I really sink into all that, and understand that this is how I was made before I had anything to say about it, that can solve the riddle above.  It is not my fault that I experience long periodic depressions.  I don't choose to feel like that.

And actually, that kind of penetration into the issue suggests to me that my habit of self-blame was also conditioned into me.  Therefore -

It doesn't make sense to blame yourself for your self-blame. 

But it is perfectly logical that you do that.  Of course you do.  You were conditioned to blame yourself.  So don't blame yourself for blaming yourself.  But obviously you have to blame yourself, because it is perfectly logical that, given your heredity and conditioning, you will do that. 

You have to love it.

There is something profound here that I won't attempt to explain any further.  But on a lighter note, it reminds me of the value of lightening up.  Though I don't know if you can do that by force of will . . . 

[image: tree peonies as van Gogh might have seen them in his worst mood]

Dancing in the Hurricane

It is a lot harder to be bipolar than the rest of the world knows.  The excessive emotions.  The changes in moods and cognition from beatific calm to bleak despair that accompany them.  I've thought about it a lot, and I think the rules don't apply to us - I mean the spiritual rules, promises of religions - that if we live well and practice, we can be filled with joy and contentment day to day. We don't get to have that or a steady-state calm.  Our lives are different in kind from normal life.  It is somewhat like living in Haiti and being periodically swept by hurricanes.

The psychiatric establishment sees as its job to keep us so dulled with medication that we don't bother anyone.  Parents and siblings typically blame us, scapegoat us, abuse us, abandon us.  Spouses think we could do better if we'd try.  By the way, that's what Vincent van Gogh's parents thought.  (And, why did he have to waste so much paint?!)

You have no idea how hard we try.  You have no idea how much effort we exert to keep from expressing the anger that can gust in.  To pretend to enjoy a dull gathering.  You have no idea how hard it is to be together with other people and be overwhelmed by irritable depression, and have to get out of there.  It sounds autistic, doesn't it?  Maybe it is.  None of these categories are clear-cut.

I try to protect myself, but I got on Facebook a little while ago, and it wasn't my fault that I stumbled over a post by a usually lovely Buddhist friend.  It showed a poster that said, Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain.  Ah, life as a Gene Kelley movie.  So nice.  I loved that scene, myself.  Those musicals were the movies of my youth.  They were poor preparation for reality, but hey.

And since I once did have a more normal mind - my bipolar didn't come out to stay until I was in my early  thirties - I know how good life can be, how smooth.  I know that "normal" people who are not subject to the rapid or months-long extreme moods have to work on themselves, too. You have disappointments and losses too, you have illnesses (of course, so do we, on top of bipolar).  You cry and mope, you get fired, you have horrible bad hair days (me too).  Your family is dysfunctional, you assure me (but you should have seen mine!).  Nevertheless, you danced in that rain.  During the worst moments.  Pardon me while I grind my teeth.

But suppose that's the truth of your life; if it is, I can feel sympathetic joy, if not downright awe.  I am glad you have such fortune neurochemistry that you can feel basically happy in the face of life's ups and downs.  Of course, the scene above is about being in love and dancing in the steady, even rain of a soundstage.  Not about losing your job and having your roommate steal your laptop and your boyfriend.

Okay.  Here's my challenge, fortunate one:  Dance in a hurricane.  In 150 mph winds, when tin roofs and semi-trailers are gyrating through the air around you, driving straws into telephone poles like nails.  That's the dancing we are asked to do when someone who isn't comfortable around depression says, "Buck up!"

Do it.  And don't forget to videotape it.  It'll go viral for sure.

[Above: self-portrait of a profoundly spiritual and eccentric bipolar who couldn't hold a job, and was a grave disappointment to his parents all his life. From Wikipedia.]

Pain and Suffering

(Newser) – The FDA today mandated urgent “black box” warning labels on Cipro and other antibiotics of the powerful flouroquinolone family of drugs. The antibiotics carry a risk of tendinitis and tendon rupture, which could leave patients severely disabled, the AP reports. Particularly vulnerable are those over 60 and patients who have undergone heart, lung, or kidney transplants. 

That would be me.

I might have written already that I have another UTI.  This one is responsive only to one oral drug, Cipro, which is much safer than putting a PICC in again for an IV drug. I really hate to take Cipro, which can weaken tendons.  I had it over Christmas 2010, and we suspect it is responsible for my torn rotator cuffs - one side effect is on tendons.  I really hope my Achilles tendons don't tear.  Cipro is a very big drug, and there have been attempts to lower its use.

The nurse who called about it suggested I call my transplant doctor to see whether they wanted to adjust the dose of my cyclosporine (Neoral).  So I called the transplant nurse.  She called me back to say that they don't like to be adjusting it all the time, they don't worry about it as much as the outside doctors do.

Thank to the internet, I learned that Cipro tends to elevate the levels of Neoral in your blood.  And the light dawned.  I have this big, stuffy achy head.  Eyelids more swollen.  A sense of looking at the world through confusion.  Just like post-transplant, when they had me on 150 mg a day. After they lowered it to 125 mg, then to 100 mg, I felt better.  Not terrific, but relieved of some of those symptoms of Neoral.

But here we are again.  The Cipro is for only a week, we hope.  But you know, a lot about all this is not fun.  Still hurting from the shingles that appeared in February.  Awaiting double nephrectomy May 9 and hoping it will put a stop to these UTIs, and the e-coli that are having so much fun in there evolving into strains that no antibiotic can touch.  I picture them having big festivals to celebrate their success. 

I don't think this is "complaining" on my part, though my parents certainly would have called it that.  And there's an excess of Think Positive out there, especially on Facebook. But I'm just getting used to the Lyrica, for post-shingles pain, and it's not certain that it's helping with that. Meanwhile, I am a walking compendium of side effects.


Damn it.  I get tired of this stuff.  But our task is to not let it ruin our lives.  The promise of Buddhism is that you can minimize these kinds of suffering.  Or, let me say, fear, pain, inconvenience - they don't have to be suffering.  They don't have to ruin your day when the honeysuckle are blooming right outside your study window.  And it's time to meditate.

Painting Like Van Gogh

Vincent's Room at Arles

You don't have to. That's what I realized last night. I don't have to paint like Van Gogh; I don't have to paint at all.

Now, for some time I have been interested in learning to paint with oils, and knew I needed to learn a lot about this difficult art, not just muddle around in it.  I can go to the local university, OSU, and sit in on classes free, but the huge campus is hard for me to navigate, parking is horrible, and so on.  Tom suggested I could look at course syllabi online and at least find what books are used.  So I did.

And that laid out for me just how hard it is to learn to paint in oils.  It looked daunting.  And - as you know - I am almost 70 and have limited energy and a small tremor.  And my right (dominant) arm still hurts every day because when I fell down last September I not only broke a bone, but damaged the rotator cuff.  I do know a painter can fit herself out with assistive devices, like Chuck Close.

However, I told Tom, "It looks hard."

He said, "You don't have to do that.  You could just do art appreciation."

Sometimes it is very powerful when someone reminds you that you don't have to do something.  I felt my relief in my body.  I thought, I don't have to accomplish anything anymore.  I think this is realistic. And it was also true when I was fifty.  I wish I'd known.

It is realistic to remember that we are very small, and we don't have to be big, we don't have to be driven like poor Van Gogh, whose life was so hard that I have had to stop reading the biography right now.  We can just be ourselves.  We can be devoted to being.  We can just enjoy the acid green spring leaves against the French blue sky.  In our daily lives we always have opportunities to do simple acts of kindness, like listening, or bringing Grandma some chocolate (thank you again, Don), or answering an e-mail with care, or being patient with your very old neighbor when she is locked out of the house.  Things like that relieve the suffering we humans are prone to.

I do enjoy photography every day.  That doesn't mean I have to buy a really good camera.  Or even edit what I do.  I just came across the above.  I don't know what the shadow is, but I have figured out what it is a picture of.  Anyone?

Medicating Van Gogh

I am making my way slowly through the massive (900 page) new biography of Vincent Van Gogh, which begins with a chapter about his mother - who didn't like him from the beginning, it seems, and persisted in disapproving of him and his art long after he was dead and his paintings were critically acclaimed and wildly popular.  The biographers have framed this book with that relationship, in other words.  They see his life as being one of desperately trying to Be Someone his parents could approve of.  I see that.  I tend to frame it just a little differently, as a man desperately fighting himself, his true self and his vision.

He went through intensely religious periods in his life, and tried to study for the ministry, to be like his father, but just couldn't make it.  At the point where I am in the book, 200 pages in, he has been increasingly envisioning It:  the divine essence, which he could see in everything, including the starry night.  And shoes. Below is one of many pictures he painted of shoes, which are discussed in this article in Harper's, if you're interested. There you can also see this picture large enough to enjoy the brush strokes.

Van Gogh's mother was thirty when she married, and first gave birth to a stillborn son, who was named Vincent Van Gogh and buried with a headstone.  Exactly one year later she gave birth to Vincent - think about it - getting pregnant three months after the labor and death, and gave him the same name.  He was a scruffy looking child from the beginning, with rough red hair.  But there was much more to her dislike of him than that.  He was odd; he just didn't fit in anywhere, school or work.  Weird folk, take heart.

His father, a Protestant minister, didn't prize him either, but I gather there is evidence that it was his mother's love he so craved. She represented Home, the insular parsonage, in which he never felt at home, so he carried a great nostalgia for it.  I am now reading about his early twenties; he is abusing himself with fasting, not bathing because soap is a sinful luxury, and going barefoot in winter. He is drawing more.  And painting pictures in words, in his copious letters to his brother, Theo.

Here's the interesting thing I keep thinking about:  Vincent suffered greatly from this rejection, and his temperamental inability to fit in anywhere.  Wanting to be like his father he descended into fierce religious studies.  He washed out of school, and began to experience the divine, to see and paint it - which he called It - in everything in an absolutely unique (insane) style.

And he would not have been that person if his mother had loved him.  (There's a whole backstory about her sad life, by the way, and the important influence of Dutch culture and politics.)  It seems to be his suffering from that profound wound that motivated his art.  People love and live with prints of his paintings who know nothing about art. I think we feel or intuit that visionary mind, that saw the divine in a sunflower and a star, and a pair of shoes.

So was that good or bad, that miserable childhood?  Were those descents into hellish depression and mania  and psychosis necessary to produce this art that brings a drop of spiritual insight into many lives? 

Thinking about all this I was quite struck recently when a friend posted a bit of psych nurse humor that said, "You can't fix stupidity - but you can sedate it."  Of course, madness has nothing to do with stupidity.  But it spoke to me, as a bipolar who had long hospitalizions in the hands of psych nurses. Scrolling through Facebook I sometimes hit on a land mine like that.  I didn't comment, but I thought, Just make sure you're not sedating Van Gogh.

How to Meditate on Being Strong

Kitchen window in the morning

Wednesday:
Recently I found myself thinking with great interest about human development.  Here's as far as I got.

1. We are born knowing when we are hungry or tired or in pain.  This moment is pure and individual.
2.  We are conditioned by the culture, usually our parents.  That is, we are trained in the many rules of the culture around us to conform to acceptable social behavior.  This is by and large anti-individual, and involves stifling many impulses and thoughts.
3.  In most cases, we accept conditioning and learn to behave according to the rules.

And if you stop there, you have a life I can begin to imagine, because I tried to be exactly what I was supposed to be when I was in my twenties.  I felt a strong injunction against even imagining a different world.  Then along came movies like "The Godfather," which said you could question patriarchy and its power and its demands on you.  "The Graduate," which made fun of adults like my parents, or portrayed them as pathetic creatures.  In other words, the sixties kept saying to me that there was a much bigger world out there.

What do you do when you feel the invitation to think for yourself?  The flowchart diverges here.
Yes - explore reality
No - stay in the box
~~~~~~~~
Thursday morning:  That was the extent of my thinking on that subject yesterday.  But this morning it didn't take long reading my inbox to come across something I wanted to reply to.  People on the transplant email list are writing about arthritis pain because we are limited in the medications we can use with the immunosuppressants.  One man, who is a pillar of strength kind of guy, mentions that he hates taking pain medication.

Oh, wait! I thought.  You need to work with that.

That's a Zen sort of thing to say.  A teacher might say that, maybe has said it to me, with a gentle smile.  He would probably choose less aggressive language, like You might want to work with that.  I'd take it to mean that I should "hold" that question as I sit.  This is different than working with your left brain analytically.  So I need to describe something I've been wanting to share.

When I meditate, I get in a balanced posture, relax, and let my mind relax and stop being busy.  To do that, I put my mind on my breath.  In, out.  I like to always relax after the outbreath.  Don't hold the inbreath, let the outbreath go all the way. That turns my attention away from my busy mind.

Now I do something I learned from Chogyam Trungpa.  His student, Pema Chodron teaches this too - "flash on space."  It means, let your mind realize the vastness of the sky, of all space, how there is space around you.  And let that space be open, realize that any moment anything can come in.

What will happen sometimes is that I see that something is a solid, fixed idea in my mind, that it was planted there by my mother or the culture I grew up in.  If your mother was German (mine was half-), it might be an idea of "being strong."  Or having a clear mind, being smart and on top of things.  And that's one more example of imposing ideas on yourself.

When I was pregnant, a long long time ago, I declared that I did not want anaesthetic during labor. It must have been those ideas about being strong and in control.  And oh, I can take pain, I thought.  Pain, that's nothing, it's all in your mind.  Well, I found out.

And over the years more events have eroded my resistance to being comforted by medication.  The torn rotator cuff last year.  The shingles this year.  For both, I used oxycodone, in part because there are a lot of pain meds a transplant patient can't take, like NSAIDs.  It fogs one's mind and lowers motivation - I've probably complained of that here.  I was very attached to the clarity of my mind.  Oh well.

Every doctor warns you that shingles (a form of herpes) might not go away when the rash does.  It's called "post-herpetic pain."  But, thanks to another guy on that same list, I heard about Lyrica, developed specifically for this kind of weird neurological pain - the virus down there playing in your nerve endings.  So yesterday I saw my doctor to ask him about that.  Because I don't like to take more oxycodone than I have to.  And the Lidoderm patch at night is great, but you can't wear it 24 hours.

And Lo, he thought that could help, and gave me the prescription to start on it (you start slowly).  And I must say, I relaxed and had a good night's sleep. 

What is my point?  Don't be a slave to your parents' role model or what society says you ought to be like.  Only you can live your life; only you can determine what you need.  So it seems to fit with the unfinished post from yesterday about questioning our conditioning.  As for "work with that" in meditation - if I remain still and open, a realization can pop in.  Maybe, This pain is too much stress.  Or, It isn't that important to have a mind like a steel trap.  Or, I really don't want to be the Godfather.

Stress and the poor little cat

Tashi explores the consolations of Art

I would like to announce that I don't hate anybody.  Depending on my general state, sometimes people say things that gives me a hit of anger where I don't need it, in my stomach, but I don't hate them.  Or any politician, including the ones my friends hate.  Or, I should say, my acquaintances, because I am just not comfortable with people who hate-talk, even if it's ritualized.

And if I did hate somebody (it would probably be someone on Facebook who is desperately urging me to think positively) I would not announce it on the internet. And not even on Facebook, which is why I erased this, which began as a status, and put it here on my blog.  If you don't like it, you don't have to come back.  Facebook, that's trickier.  Sometimes you have no idea the crap that's in some people until there you are, and unfriending might be noticed and create hard feelings.

We are having a hard time lately in my house, with major health worry, facing another surgery, and major psychological stress in Tom's family, which means in Tom, which means in me and the poor cat.  She keeps coming around going Ip?  Ip? and looking at me searchingly. Even when the doors to the basement and screened porch are open for her to go freely mousing and patrolling.

You feel rotten when you realize how your emotional energies affect a poor little cat.  I told Tom, Tashi is the symptom bearer.  He thought that made an odd image, as if the cat was proceeding ahead in our march, a flag tied to her tail. That's a picture you will have to imagine.

But it does make me stop and think how a rude word, a snap of irritation or anger, a proud statement of hatred affect me - and her.  All of us.

Coping

Saved again by art, at least a little, for a moment.  I had gone to YouTube looking for the original of Henri, the existentialist cat, as the sequel is now going around on Facebook.  But this came up, Henri Matisse, in his old age, still doing art the way he could.  And this lovely quote from Matisse was there:

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

And we are having such grave concerns around here, I keep erasing Facebook entries just in time, and not posting things I've started. We are waiting to hear the scheduled date for surgery to remove my native kidneys.  That's enough on this for now.  Here is the original Henri -

Change, change, what else is new?

Tashi watching out for change

This has been a really tough, emotional week, starting last Thursday with having to call the squad for Tom's father, and now all the things that can arise with elderly parents have arisen, so Tom and his siblings are putting many hours into working the problems.

This morning we finally met with the kidney surgeon, the same guy who took a kidney from my donor, Laurie Brown, and with whom we met last year.  This year we were ready to tell him to schedule the removal of my native kidneys.  A big decision.  It might stop these increasingly dangerous UTIs; there's no way to be sure.  But it is sure that well-evolved e-coli kills people every day - bacteria that are outstripping our ability to invent antibiotics. And don't ask - we've done everything, talked to everyone from ID to our private kidney doc and our transplant center kidney doc and our family doc, done scans, and this is what it comes to.  Taking a chance.  If you follow this blog you know I've had something like 15 UTIs in 16 months.

I knew I was anxious about this meeting when I had acid reflux last night, then when I woke up at 5:00 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep.  Yet I was surprised to find myself exhaling as we walked out of the transplant center.  A lot.  And then, in a comic touch, burping several times; apparently my stomach was holding its breath too.  I still feel good, almost high with relief.

Who did I tell? Maybe yesterday I talked a little with my physical therapist about this, and said, "I've been sick most of the time since 2005," and felt tears well up.  It's true.  And I had to laugh this morning when the nurse asked me the various screening questions they do before the doctor comes in:  "Are you in any pain today?"  Well, the usual, left ankle, right rotator cuff, flare-up of the sciatic nerve.  Nothing significant to them, as long as my abdomen feels good.

Change, change.  It's really weird to be a carbon-based life form.  It could be good to be silicon-based next time, or a tree, or a river, the kind made of water.

Death is Nature's Way of Telling You to Slow Down

Here I am, wondering whether to call the kidney doctor and let him know about this breakout of cold sores, which Mayo Clinic says can be serious in immune-suppressed people.  But I've had this before since the transplant.  Maybe see how the day goes.  It is uncomfortable and my nostril is affected on that side, and it isn't responding to l-Lysine the way it usually does.  Boy, I would hate to have the shingles flare back up.

Stress.  It elevates cortisol in your body, which then gets sort of exhausted and isn't available to fight infections. Ayurvedic medicine understands this as excess Pitta, which is, roughly, heat or fire unbalanced in your constitution.  I am a Pitta-Vata, an air person whose fire gets aggravated by lots of change.  I also "have" fibromyalgia, which you can feel respond to the kind of big weather change we've been getting, from way too hot to freeze warnings.  And too bright. Here's an old picture of me in the blue sunglasses I like to wear when it's like this.  I have a better haircut now, except that I need a haircut and my beloved hairdresser is on vacation.  Stress

Right away I found this online -

Reduce Pitta-aggravating foods such as sour tasting foods, pungent spices and nuts.
Eat lots of sweet juicy fruits--they are both cooling and cleansing.
Soak a handful of raisins in water overnight. Drain and eat them the next morning. 

I don't mind that. I remember now that I have a recipe for balancing tea, must do that, too.  In fact, I have two Ayurveda cookbooks.  What I have already done was the six healing breaths I got years ago from yoga teacher Kit Spahr - the link is both to the description of how to do this sound-breath exercise, which is derived from Taoist practice and to her blog.  I wish I could do yoga with her now, but I am just barely able to get up off the floor these days, and have a bad knee, ankle, sciatic thing - enjoy yoga while you can.  I still do stretches though, and I learned to relax. Usually.

Nothing for relaxing like sitting meditation, resting in the breath.  Did that, too.  Otherwise, I get it, I need to slow down and stay cool.

You don't want to know all about the stress, do you?  It has to do with aging parents suddenly in crisis in more than one way.  Even poor Tashi is feeling it, so I really must calm down. They say it's the natural way, first the parents get old and die, then the children get old and die.  It's still hard, and a real challenge to practice.

A Word of Caution

Never forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren't any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn't be here in the first place. [Buckminster Fuller]

I confess that I pulled these two sentences out of a paragraph clearly intended to be motivational, about how one person can change the world.  My take on that is, Yes, but a lot of the time that's not such a good thing.

Maybe I'm down on this kind of thing because it's one of those times when it's all I can do to live my own life, and not doing real well at that either.  For instance, getting to exercise or getting to the eyeglass place to order some needed new glasses.  Or . . . you get the idea.  I don't need anyone telling me to change the world. Usually, when someone does tell me that, they want my money.

As for the above, I think that first sentence is a good one.  But don't get above yourself thinking about your uniqueness.  Every maple leaf on a tree is unique, different than any other.  You don't need a magnifying glass to see it.  We cat lovers know that every cat is unique and irreplaceable, though also catlike and not doglike.

The second sentence?  ridiculous.  I was not put on this earth to be born in September of 1942 because the world needed another crazy artist (it does make me laugh to call myself that, so indulge me); I was born because my father came home on leave in December 1941.  Did they intend to make a baby?  I never asked.  But I know this - if they had an intention, it was to have a boy.  Furthermore, I don't think God or a conscious manipulative universe sent him home on leave and made them be careless or set out to make a baby.  Do you think it works like that?  Really?

For me, after a few minutes on Facebook I feel most or all of us would do better to stop getting motivated to do great things and have some humility - to compare ourselves, say, to blades of grass.  But we are blades that can jump up and down and shout, Look at me, look what I can do!  That seems to get many people in a whole lot of trouble.  I don't follow celebrity overdoses too closely, but they stream past me on the evening news.  In the world of popular music, death from wanting to be spectacular is common.  Uppers so you can give a pow concert; downers so you can sleep.  I wish I could have said to Michael Jackson (for example), Really, you and your performances don't matter that much.  Relax.

There are some things worth dying for, but being wonderful is not one of them.

(If you want to be wonderful, you could try to paint like this guy Charles Demuth. Though he didn't get there by trying to paint like anyone else, now that I think about it.)

Why They Call It Practice

Saturday evening
Struck anew by the realization that living my daily life I don't have to be caught in my circling mind trails.  Just return to my breath.  Of course that's how you meditate - you realize your mind is wandering, go back to focusing on your breath or counting your breaths.  But the point is not to do that; the point is, you are practicing for life off the cushion.  So, in life you are brushing your teeth and you think, Tomorrow I will probably see So-and-so and if she says . . . and anger arises, and off you are, lost in thoughts about something that happened last week, and something that could happen in the future, none of which is here in the bathroom with you.  You don't have to follow that line of thought.  You can return to brushing your teeth. That's the point of the whole thing - getting to be here. And you don't get there by thinking about being mindful.

So what we do when we meditate is train.  We train like athletes or musicians to notice what we do and think and feel, to direct our own actions or thoughts.  And our minds have been out of our control most of our lives, so . . . it takes a while.
~~~~~~~~
Sunday morning - Doing lapcat meditation (a fundamental practice in the Lineage of Sherlock), I searched for a video I could watch at the same time, and found this clip of Nyogen Yeo Roshi.

I liked his way of talking about being trapped in this skinbag.  Now I have to go get my skinbag dressed for church.

I know, it's not a chocolate rabbit.  I hope you got one.

The Quiet Life

Peaceful in body, peaceful in speech,
The bhikkhu peaceful and well-concentrated
Who has rejected the world's bait
Is called "one at peace."
-The Buddha, Dhammapada 378


Sokei-An Shigetsu Sasaki, from a lecture in 1954:

PERHAPS YOU CANNOT imagine such a practice as that which has been current among my people. In China or Japan, monasteries are built on a mountaintop or on the edge of a cliff. From there you can see a thousand miles before your eyes. In winter, when the valley is covered with snow, you feel you are in a world of silver. No color is before your eyes. In the valley it is so quiet. In the daytime when the monks are meditating, if there is any sound in the temple it will be only that of a mouse or a rat.
 
These monks are not retiring from the world; they are trying to find quietude in their minds. This state is longed for by oriental students. They try frantically to find it. Occasionally they renounce their home, or separate from wife and children to pass their lives in such a quiet place. You could not dream of men like this until you meet them. They value highly their quiet way of life. They cannot see the value of the life we are in daily contact with, our present civilization, where men hold a cigar in the right hand and a glass of whiskey in the left hand, listen to music, watch dancing, and eat delicious food. We might say that these are the two extremes of human life.

Perhaps you will ask, what value is there in that quiet and aloof way of life? The monks would ask the same question of you. What value is there in passing your nights in a nightclub?


Reprinted in Tricycle from First Zen Institute of America

[posted especially for my friend, Don Brewer, who has the courage to try it]

Are You Too Sensitive?

Sometimes art is all that saves us

Not feeling so good yesterday, I browsed around some scientific studies, as if to assure myself that I have an excuse for being depressed. I found, or rediscovered, that bipolar brains have thirty percent more monoamines, which produce "dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine. . . the altered brain chemistry due to the excess monoamine cells may directly impact the patients' cognitive and social function." These monoamines send signals between brain cells, or neurons and are involved in mood regulation, stress responses, pleasure, reward, and cognitive functions like concentration, attention, and executive functions. (link here)  Okay, so it's been really hard to get organized.

Then there was this:  "Bipolar disorder . . . is characterized by pathophysiological changes to the visceromotor network, disrupting the regulation of endocrine and autonomic responses to stress, and hence emotion and behavior." (link here)  Yes. So, a while back I got so irritated by a friend that I practically yelled at her. I'm sorry, and I apologized.  Even if I couldn't help it, I'm sorry when I'm rude and impatient.

But - here's something you already know - some people are never sorry for being rude.  I was raised by a couple of them, and I was trained to excuse anything the head alcoholic did or said to me, and he was constantly abusive.  He didn't mean it.  His back hurts.  He has a headache.  He had a hard day at work.  And my favorite, You're too sensitive.  You don't get to do things over, but if I could, I'd tell my mother, "No, I'm not.  He's too insensitive."  But when I was a kid, I didn't have the voice.

Sometimes I catch myself putting up with crap, to be frank, from the kind of friends who sometimes look like frenemies. I was trained, it was my habit, to find excuses for rude, thoughtless people. I was surrounded by them as the scapegoat in a very sick family.  And I want to say, when I had to work with people like that, I got along.  But in my social life, I don't have to. Putting up with their crap may in fact qualify as "idiot compassion," a term that refers, roughly, to enabling people in their stupid or dangerous behavior.

Thoughtless people often build a persona that helps other people excuse them.  (And many people like to have "an alcoholic" around, someone worse than them.)  I have known people who got away with murder because they had a stammer or chronic depression or a visible handicap. My dear, wise neighbor, Marge Endter, now deceased, once told me about such a person, "He trades on that."  Bingo.

I notice that I don't go through these things with people who are on a path, who have a spiritual practice.  Practice makes us more sensitive to the effect we may have on others, and the world.  And the religions I'm familiar with make a point of compassion, or giving, or love.  The Buddhists I know may have their issues, don't we all? but they believe in being kind.  They aspire or vow to be kind.  They write whole books about it. I have one.  And since I do, I will try to be kind in gently letting some people out of my life.  Because, actually, I'm too sensitive to be around them. 

Life is not fair, but you knew that

Well, I thought I would comment on how my Spring form-new-habits project is going. 

Getting back into meditating every morning has been easier than I expected. It reminded me of the power a habit has, which is why I never smoke "just one" cigarette.  (Quit in 1988, and it wasn't easy.)

Hanging up my clothes at night - pretty good. I've tended to forget, maybe even get into bed and then see them draped over the hamper, waiting to be hung up, and say Uh-oh.  Last night I had a lapse, a sort of binge of not hanging up clothes.  I'd had one of those really bad days, from start to finish, and was feeling a little wild at bedtime, but I'm glad to say, got to sleep.

So, about that day.  I had signed up several weeks ago for a two-hour workshop on decorating eggs Ukranian style, taught by a church friend.  Right away I was in trouble, because I had to get up with an alarm clock at 8:00 to leave the house by 9:15.  I don't really know what I did in that time, coffee, dress, eat an energy bar, take a million pills, but I didn't meditate.

Pysanky is an intricate, beautiful traditional art - you can see examples here.  That's what the instructor's eggs were like. We were warned that our first eggs weren't going to look like that.  Actually, the people around me at the table were absorbed in doing some nice-looking things, and nobody else wanted to ever leave, I guess.  But I learned something:  I have a tremor.

It's just a small tremor.  I'd noticed that my handwriting isn't pretty, a bit jerky, but thought it was arthritis, because my hands do hurt when I write a few sentences.  No, it is enough of a tremor to make drawing with hot wax on a curved surface impossible.  So my two attempts came out like this -

 That stick is what you use to do this - the blackened head is copper, you hold it in your candle flame, stab stab your beeswax, draw.  Then you do a resist process, like batik.  You note that the egg on the left is signed and dated by me, as suggested, so future generations would know who did it. Yes, that says 2012.  See what I mean?  The egg on the right is broken because as I was working on it after the first dye, I dropped it.  This happens.

The photographers among you may notice that I have messed with these photos, since I have the use of special effects with Picasa just for two more weeks (an editor that came with my phone).  In other words, I made them look as good as I could.

The farther you get from these eggs, the better they look, so here.

The teacher is very experienced, and complimented the beautiful russet I got on the left-hand egg by following a pale yellow dye with brown.  That egg  was actually covered with horrible scrawls - here you see the bottom, its best view.  And the mottled effect of the pink, which happened because I didn't prepare the eggs with vinegar the night before, as suggested, though not required.

I think I sound light-hearted about this, but I did not feel that way when I left the workshop - first one to leave, too. I just felt down. I was thinking some good thoughts, how I've been satisfying myself artistically with photography and collage, how good this is, because I don't know now whether I can paint or draw. I am usually steady enough with the camera, and collage is forgiving.  But I had a new fact about my body, and it's likely it's a side effect of the Rapamune I take - these immunosuppressants have big side effects.  Nobody takes them unless they have to.

Just two days before this, I got a diagnosis of chronic gout in my left big toe, which hurts right now. It always hurts, and the more I walk, the worse it feels.  I feel like I should get a break, one new ailment a week.  But it doesn't work that way, does it?

And that's why I didn't hang up my clothes last night. 

Of course I feel better today, loved church, cried during the anthem, wrote a poem about all this.  And did meditate before I went.