In Praise of Doing Not Much

Something I saw at a glance recently was this question:

Are you proactive or reactive?

I know, right away you thought, like me, That's the fallacy of false alternatives.  Because there are many other ways to be. You can just be -
active
the way children dance when they feel like it, or practice falling down or doing handstands.

Or - 
inactive
Resting, say.  Dawdling.  It's not a crime.

But maybe the best is not to be this way or that way, just sit there and

~ Be ~

Being is, I think,
receptive
Listening, taking in what's there.  You can do this sitting in meditation or at a party - there are never enough good listeners at any gathering.  That's my experience, anyway. 

The Perfect Woman

There once was a bar in Columbus with a sign like this; maybe it's still there.  It hasn't been long ago that I drove past it and wondered why no feminists have ever defaced it.  After all, it means to depict the perfect woman in the context of thinking that women talk too much. 

I don't think that's just a cute joke.  I don't think it's merely about talk, but about a woman's place, a kind of systematic demeaning of women that is fundamental in patriarchal cultures, that is, pretty much all human societies.  Without going into the complex historical reasons for this, I will note that in the animal kingdom, sheer size and strength win.  And we are animals.  But we are also human beings and can do better than that. 

In patriarchy, women are silenced.  Are supposed to quietly serve men.  Are not supposed to have opinions. Can women think?  Should we?  What are we entitled to think about?  Should we have opinions?  Make waves, get equal pay?  Patriarchy knows the answers.

What is the opposite of the silent perfect woman serving a man?  Perhaps it is a gentle, loving man who is in no way aggressive.  What would he look like?  Not a castrati, I don't even want to think about depicting that.  I have never seen a pub sign like the above that would show a man mutilated in such a way as to make him a woman's ideal, and don't want to.  So how would I depict him?

Maybe he would look like this.....

Jesus as the good shepherd.  Maternal, long lovely hair, wearing a dress.  Okay, gown.
Or maybe the perfect man looks like this.....

The Dalai Lama. I could not quickly find a full-length portrait of him, but as you know, he too wears a dress.  Alright, gown.

As for a depiction of a perfect woman, I like the ideal of Kuan Yin, Kanzeon, Green Tara in various branches of Buddhism - the buddha of compassion. We ourselves have a statue of Jizo in our little Zen garden, who I believe is sometimes male, sometimes female, a quiet little patron saint of travelers and lost children.  Here she is, in fall color.  She wears a robe and carries a staff with little rings that jingle quietly as she walks, to let animals know she is coming and means no harm.

This is a personal issue for me, this thing about strict gender definition.  I wish I'd been taught that it was okay for a girl to be smart, to think.  I had to fight my way through a thicket of thorns on that, and to my surprise, sometimes I still do.

Real, Simple

Extravagant birthday lunch

I had a certain amount of working up to yesterday's birthday, because I am a ten-fingered creature, and educated in base-ten math.  Therefore it seemed important to turn 70.  After some thought I knew I wanted to retire - but from what?  I haven't worked for money for years. I don't do much.  I spend a surprising amount of time staying alive.

I think what I experienced Monday was part of this.  I dug into making some chicken and noodles with this natural chicken Tom had pointed out in the grocery store.  I was sorry now that I bought it and had to cook it.  Such thoughts I had as I cut up onion and carrot!  They surprised me.  They were my mother's thoughts.  Usually I am tormented by my father's criticism.  But this was her grumble. 

It was part of the terrain of the kitchen, where she spent most of her time making a lot of noise with pots and pans in invariably gray dishwater.  Her central statement was, "I'm nothing but a goddamn _____ around here," using a highly offensive term that meant to her worthless slave.  Observing this going on in my mind, I got worried about negative energy going into my cooking.  But, somewhat to my surprise, the dish turned out to be a pleasure.  You could tell it was home cooking. 

So then, Wednesday I woke up pleased to know it was my birthday, and some nice things were planned in my collage group, and lunch with Tom.  And in the general midst of that mood, I thought, "I want to live in a beautiful house."  It was a rather quiet thought, but it was my thought.

I do live in a beautiful house.  The point was not to own some different house; it was that I had shifted my relationship to how I live just a step.  I had stepped out of the heavy chains of my mother's belief that the house had to be immaculate, because.......it just did.  Because that was right. And it was evidence of a woman's value. Instead, I know what I like.  How I like to live.

I felt a little fresh air with this small realization.  It is said in Zen that if you keep practicing, you know things for yourself.  Sounds simple, but it seems to take a lot of work to get simple.  And here, just posted today, is a quote from a discourse by Bodhidharma, translated by Red Pine.  It seems weirdly auspicious to me that it was just posted today, as if to supply my need.  (But I know better.)

The Way is basically perfect. It doesn’t require perfecting. The Way has not form or sound. It’s subtle and hard to perceive. It’s like when you drink water. You know how hot or cold it is. 

If that isn't spiritual enough for you, I can't help it.

How I spent a Beautiful Sunday

What I did yesterday (not in chronological order) -

dreamed in color

wrote a not-feelgood poem about my upcoming 70th birthday

answered an e-mail requesting wisdom without pretending to wisdom

posted a sharp, bitter retort to a racist Facebook posting by a relative, immediately deleted it on the principle that you will always regret making someone hate you, double that if it's a relative

threw a whole bunch of clothes on the guest bed, stating that I hate my entire fall-winter wardrobe, all these ugly colors

did not go to church picnic, full of resentment at the allergies that made my ear ache all day from just driving home from church with the windows up. But I'm in a nonpartying mood these days. I feel like the lone wolf in a world full of packs that are running about doing something that doesn't look like fun to me.  [probably should delete this]

the cat ran under my descending foot, got stepped on, screamed and ran away for an hour.  Apologies meant nothing to her, but the passage of time cured her.

contemplated driving to Indiana to go to an L. L. Bean store and pick out some pretty flannel shirts

asked aloud, "How am I going to amuse myself until I die?"

[deleted something here]

discovered an interesting writer, filled an hour studying "dead reckoning," a term likely to end up in a poem.  No experience is useless to an artist.

said to self all Zen-like, Don't resist the depression.  Just watch it.  Just feel it. 

shared the video above about a nasty old man who actually got a citation for harassing bicyclists - they filmed him.  I bet he told the police he was proud of it. [deleted some stuff here]

meditated.  Curiously, I am not so depressed when meditating; it cuts down the thought traffic, which is largely the problem.

And.....we went to see a fairly bad movie, unless you like Men in Black.  But the end takes it to Cape Canaveral, and Tom really enjoys all that space stuff.  Moreover, afterward we ran into one of my favorite families in the world and I got a lovely hug from one of the boys.  There are hugs, like you have to give at funerals, and then there are just hugs from the heart.
~
p.s.  I learned that Right Speech is almost entirely a matter of not saying things.  Delete. Undo.

I saw this amazing thing

The above photo is of the catacombs in Paris, always a tourist attraction, I understand.  I learned recently that flash photography was invented in order to photograph this dark tunnel. This is not your blinged-up  Halloween.

There is a lot written about the moment of your own death.  Buddhists desire to be lucid and conscious of entering the great light.  But we have a chance to practice confronting death numerous times in our lives - the deaths of others.  I think that's what bothered me about the most recent funeral: everyone quickly pulled down the iron shield.  There is a way to use Christianity to step away from this material world of loss and into talk of heaven and how special we are, the ones who believe the right thing. And the preacher used that to the fullest.

But the real magic trick was what the family did, elevating Dad (I wish I could artistically show the aura around that honorific that I heard in people's voices) to this wonderful fun person.  Erasing 95% of his personality and 99% of the truth of his life, the mundane, the sad, his frustrations, his limits, the long, sad decay of his body and mind.  Firmly putting in a beautiful walnut box with a brass plaque not only our personal loss and sadness, but also the fact that we, too, will die.

A death ought to leave us feeling like we are in the funhouse, the part where you're suddenly in the dark and the wooden walkway keeps shifting under your feet.  Death is sobering.  And people don't like it.  I've seen many people jump right over that initial moment of tears and start writing the fiction and planning the big party.  What a mess.

Awareness makes death hard for me to take.  At the same time, I know that Buddhism has it right:  life is  dukkha, life is hard.  Unsatisfying.  The very nature of life is constant change, and change means loss as well as gain.  You will lose people you love, and you will lose your own life in the end. Figure that out and maybe you'll stop spending every fourth Saturday in the beauty salon getting artificial.  Don't figure it out, and you will feel dissatisfied at the very moments of life that "ought to" be gratifying, the Thanksgiving meal, the wedding, the birth.

Change is hard, is both death and birth.  Birth - awareness - is hard, painful and messy.  Sometimes I wish I could give it up.  That makes me think of another of my favorite poems about the difficulty of giving up magic and theatre and pleasure, and acknowledging reality.  "Journey of the Magi" was written by a devout Christian, T. S. Eliot.  You can both listen to and read it here.

How to Perform a Funeral

Resurrection lily

I opened this blog this morning because I had something to say that was urgent enough to interrupt my preparations for a shower. It was this: I've been to four funerals in the past two months, and I've seen more than one pattern.  One of them is that people collude to talk about what an ornery prankster cute person someone was.  And I didn't recognize that person at all.  It seems to be about not wanting to tell the truth about someone who was hard to love and unsatisfying.  Maybe not wanting to see that reality.  When there are lots of conflicted feelings, the past gets remodeled.  (But isn't that how people are, anyway?)

I have a sincere request: don't do that to me when I die. I have no idea whether an "I" will be left, and if so, whether I will be around to know what you do, or care.  But I'd just like to think that this wish of mine will be respected. I am a real person. If you can't say something authentic about me, just sit there and say nothing. That will do. Don't invent some lovable eccentric (notice how I am leaving out cuss words here). Don't invent me after I am dead. 

In line with that general idea of acknowledging the real life and death of a person, here is a wonderful poem that I remembered as we drove home yesterday from the funeral for Tom's father.  I read it aloud to Tom and we both felt grounded at last. Williams was a physician, so he got to see plenty of phony covered-up plastic smiles and talk about heaven and love and faith, and weird distortions of the past, enough to make him write this.  There is only one thing I have faith in - I, too, will die.  I don't know when.  I told Tom to begin my own memorial service with this.

                 Tract
                      by William Carlos Williams

I will teach you my townspeople
how to perform a funeral
for you have it over a troop
of artists—
unless one should scour the world—
you have the ground sense necessary.

See! the hearse leads.
I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ's sake not black—
nor white either — and not polished!
Let it be weathered—like a farm wagon—
with gilt wheels (this could be
applied fresh at small expense)
or no wheels at all:
a rough dray to drag over the ground.

Knock the glass out!
My God—glass, my townspeople!
For what purpose? Is it for the dead
to look out or for us to see
the flowers or the lack of them—
or what?
To keep the rain and snow from him?
He will have a heavier rain soon:
pebbles and dirt and what not.
Let there be no glass—
and no upholstery, phew!
and no little brass rollers
and small easy wheels on the bottom—
my townspeople, what are you thinking of?
A rough plain hearse then
with gilt wheels and no top at all.
On this the coffin lies
by its own weight.

No wreathes please—
especially no hot house flowers.
Some common memento is better,
something he prized and is known by:
his old clothes—a few books perhaps—
God knows what! You realize
how we are about these things
my townspeople—
something will be found—anything
even flowers if he had come to that.
So much for the hearse.

For heaven's sake though see to the driver!
Take off the silk hat! In fact
that's no place at all for him—
up there unceremoniously
dragging our friend out to his own dignity!
Bring him down—bring him down!
Low and inconspicuous! I'd not have him ride
on the wagon at all—damn him!—
the undertaker's understrapper!
Let him hold the reins
and walk at the side
and inconspicuously too!

Then briefly as to yourselves:
Walk behind—as they do in France,
seventh class, or if you ride
Hell take curtains! Go with some show
of inconvenience; sit openly—
to the weather as to grief.
Or do you think you can shut grief in?
What—from us? We who have perhaps
nothing to lose? Share with us
share with us—it will be money
in your pockets.
Go now
I think you are ready.

Into the Dragon's Jaws

One, seven, three, five—
Nothing to rely on in this or any world;
Nighttime falls and the water is flooded with moonlight.
Here in the Dragon’s jaws:
Many exquisite jewels.
~Setcho Juken (980—1052)

I was looking for the Year of the Dragon stamp from the US post office and discovered a world of charming stamps.  These are Vietnamese - I didn't know there was a year of the cat.  There is a legend that the cat was the only animal that refused to honor the Buddha ( I wouldn't be surprised), and I thought it didn't have a place in Eastern astrology.

Anyway, the poem.

I woke up to a hard day, getting ready for a funeral.  I have become attached to the many things that make me comfortable, so I think, Don't forget the heating pad! (which I use on my back twice a day).  I remember times throughout my life of sitting in funeral homes, everyone determined to "be strong" and show no grief because now his suffering is over and he's with the Lord.  That kind of thing.  Long before I got on a path to awakening, I felt surely that was not right.  I suppose I was picking up on the contained grief.  And, to be truthful, these long hours of doing nothing, not grieving, were very boring to me, and I hate to be bored.  Maybe I can pick up on it now as the "cool boredom" Chogyam Trungpa writes about, just be there as if in meditation, just sit there.

I wonder what jewels there are in this nighttime of a great loss, in the very Dragon's jaws.  I can't help it, that makes me imagine a dragon wearing grillz.  I can't find an image of that, so here is my favorite dragon, Skosh, who has befriended an artist I know. It wouldn't surprise me if he had grillz.

[Thanks to the How To Be Sick website for the poem.]

Letting Things Change

the most fun thing I photographed all  week

This morning I woke up miserable - many pains and bad dreams/memories of a bad time in my life that I survived only through luck. I tried ducking back in bed, warming up, but it didn't work, so I got up, dazedly drank some coffee, and stretched and meditated. Sigh. This is the fibromyalgia at work, caused by major weather systems and the change of seasons. As if it's not bad enough to be bipolar.

One thing I have learned by experience is that I am not so depressed when I am meditating. I think that's partly because I am working, concentrating on following my breath, turning down the volume on unhappy thoughts. Also, when I meditate I intend to be receptive to space and the universe, a sort of listening similar to contemplative prayer.

But after that I was a mess again. Had to ask Tom for advice on which sweater to wear (he chose orange), spent ten or fifteen minutes putting a necklace on, partly the clumsiness of arthritic hands, partly the brain fog, a feature of fibromyalgia. It depresses normal (non-bipolar) people. And I think I'm over-medicated now as well; we'll see where this mood goes. But got dressed, got to church - on time! It was a beautiful sunny fall day.

At the door I met Catherine, a woman I know largely through Facebook. She is someone I feel warmly toward, because a while back she offered to tie-dye some of my boring white socks after I posted how frustrating it is to look for socks when you have large feet. I was on the tall side earlier in life, 5'8", though I am compressing now, and my feet have spread with age to size 11 1/2 narrow. I don't mind having big feet anymore, as I have figured out what feet are for, and am glad to be walking on them, but I can hardly find shoes that big, and no pretty socks.

Catherine stopped and said she wanted to tell me she reads my blog, and Thank you for sharing. Ahh. I was still cold, but I felt warmth in my center. And I felt somewhat enlightened by her comment; I realized my identity a little better, that I see this blog as an extended circle of friends.

I was still morbidly depressed. The sermon was interesting, and during it I wrote a poem that touched down on the memory of that very bad time in my life I had dreamed of. I wondered whether this was a significant date - I am sensitive to birth and death dates, sometimes unconsciously. And indeed, my mother's birthday was September 17, tomorrow. I don't remember her death date consciously; it was also in the fall. And here we are in this parade of deaths, our friends Teena and Greg, and now Tom's father, whose service is next Wednesday. Travel with our array of health problems can be an ordeal. Add to it all that grief.

After the service we came home and Tom cooked sausages and whole-grain waffles with maple syrup, and as I ate my mood moved up, who knows why.  I have never enjoyed a meal more. It inspired me to clean up the kitchen and put together a casserole for tonight. Cooking has become a sometime thing for me, and I welcome the times when I feel like doing it.

The thing I know now about pain and depression is that these things, too, change, and change faster if you don't grasp ideas that now your day is ruined, or your week.  Or that it's not fair - that was part of Mark's point today - it's not about fair. If you make a point of staying open to the moment, the whole world around you is changing, full of potential. This understanding is one of the teachings that makes Buddhism a religion, distinct from meditation for your health or to improve your business decisions.

[The image is the canopy for a fairy-tale like little bed in one of the Sunday school rooms in our church. Creative dance was held in that room yesterday.]

How we Grow (Old)

The women in my art group and I agree that the reason we grow wiser with age is that you get lots of learning opportunities.  You fall down and break something and get to experience disability and chronic pain.  Your vacation plans fall apart when a quietly ailing parent begins to refuse food. I think that whenever one of these moments arrives, you decide whether to be with the truth of it or to work harder to maintain your illusions about yourself. 

I think the best thing I've learned yet is to keep letting things go. You can think of meditation as practice in that:

inhale deeply
exhale, let it all go
rest at the bottom of the breath

But this is easy compared to the things you have to let go of in life practice.  Name one.  Okay.  Travel.  Uh-oh.  Should have gone to Paris when I could.  Definitely.

But losing that came later.  Earlier came - you know - losing youth.  Maybe not at 30, maybe it was at 40.  Women worry about losing our figure; men about losing hair.  But also a certain sense that you can roam, can change your whole life, do great things.  That there is lots of space, lots of time.
~~~~
I was moving slowly with writing this when Tom came into my study with his phone, his sister on the phone, his father died at 6:00 this morning.  This is after months of slow, inevitable decline; we have been waiting, especially this last week, when he began refusing his medicines.  He was almost 93 years old.

Then it became clear to me what I wanted to say about old age.  We have a chance to learn that a great deal of life is not in our control.  Life is not us moving around, deciding our future; the world keeps moving big blocks around that affect us and change our lives. Sickness, our own, others.  The inevitable aging of every part of our bodies.  Death, sudden or slow, of people who matter to us.  And we cannot escape this. Time once more for The Five Remembrances, which are posted at the bottom of this blog.

Being Kind

I find myself on this catlove or lovecat theme just now.  A sort of spring fever brought on by the sudden entrance of fall weather, clear and cool.  I enjoyed this video, brought my way on Facebook by Barb Taylor, and thought, Wow, how we need to ask what our children need, our spouses.  And what we need.  It's sort of simple awareness, but then, awareness is not necessarily common. 

Some Zen people I know have been trading fervent opinions about the precepts.  One is a fundamentalist of sorts, who sees things in black and white.  You see that in converts sometimes.

But really, if you are trying to figure out how to act with reference to rules, you can get very confused.  For instance, if it's Not Killing and you believe that killing sensate beings for food is wrong, you may run into the fact that wheat harvested by machine kills all sorts of small lives who make their home in that field.  (If you want to build your compassion for field mice, I recommend one of my favorite books, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.)  I think I plucked the example of animals killed in a harvest from the writings of Bernie Glassman.

Sometimes I feel that my long journey with Buddhism and lots of thought has led me back around to the simplicity of the amazing Christian commandment:  Love one another.  Although I practice lovingkindness meditation, metta, I don't love everyone, so I vow instead to be kind.  The Dalai Lama has expressed it eloquently: "Try to be nice."

Kindness is a heart move.  When I pay attention to that vow it seems to mean that I do and say less and pay attention more. I don't bounce right in knowing what someone needs.  Sometimes I don't know and can't  "figure out" the kind thing to do.  For instance, what do you say to a friend whose drinking seems to be messing up his life?  I still don't know.  Backing up to think about it, I wonder, What would I want someone to do if it were me?  Now that sounds like the Golden Rule.  I can't help it.

Memo to the Cat

Above - a major dose of lovecat meditation, Maru on a shelf doing nothing

My creativity these days is lending itself to poetry, I am very glad to say, including the major task of cleaning all the art supplies off the work table so I can strew poetry all over it.  But I roamed back in my files and found this, obviously written at a time when my almost limitless patience with the cat must have worn thin.  It does have a rather unfinished feel to it, for which I apologize.  Suggestions for an ending are welcome.

Memo to the Cat

The fact that I walked from my study into the living room does not mean you get treats, even though it is true that I passed physically through Treat Zone.

Meowing loudly, monotonously, repetitively will never break my spirit.

There actually is such a thing as enough petting.

It costs well over a thousand dollars to reupholster the sofa, whereas cats are cheap. 

I moved your chair back where it’s supposed to be, okay.  I’m sorry I moved it.  I wanted to put the printer where it is more convenient for me.  How selfish of me.  I need to remember that I only work here, and you are the Queen.

Love the Place You're In

I picked this up from Brain Pickings, which commented "This charming animated adaptation was young illustrator Adam Winnik’s graduation thesis project — enjoy."  So here's the animation itself, and two interesting sites. 

Fall is here in Ohio, crisp cool air - it is as if the climate took a deep breath and relaxed.

Wasting Time

These days I am back to reading Dogen, and getting it a little more.  He is the foremost poet-teacher of Zen, and has to be understood in the way you understand a poem - you experience it, let it soak in.  I like to read a few lines and be stopped to stay with something.  This morning it was this, from Actualizing the Fundamental Point, or Genjo Koan.

Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide.  The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water.

There are many beautiful pictures online of the world reflecting in a drop of water.  But what I thought of as I read this was one of my favorite poems, in which the great light and life in everything is reflected in distant cowbells, in dried horse manure and the empty house, in the predator/prey world of the hawk. James Wright experienced a beauty much larger than our usual confined definition of "beautiful" and also the urgency of being awake. How when we are operating in a daze of desires and duties, we are not really alive.  When we are awake and alive, the moon is reflected even in us, and no moment is wasted.

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
                           by James Wright
 

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,   

Asleep on the black trunk,

Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.   

Down the ravine behind the empty house,   

The cowbells follow one another   

Into the distances of the afternoon.   

To my right,

In a field of sunlight between two pines,   

The droppings of last year’s horses   

Blaze up into golden stones.

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.   

A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.

I have wasted my life.

[Click here for a link to the brief Wikipedia entry on Wright, which points to his most popular poems.]

Today's Spiritual Practice.

How easy it is to want the clean and pretty, to think that is spirituality. 

I was having my coffee, getting ready to close my door, open Dogen and intake a few paragraphs of Genjo Koan, then do stretches and meditate.  Thinking about when I can have time for poetry today, since it seems to be a good day.  Then Tashi came in talking to me.

So I got up and checked her box.  Diarrhea again.  Cleaned the box, washed my hands, went to kitchen, got out the diarrhea medicine the Vet gave us day before yesterday.  Tom held her, and I got 1 cc of the gel into her mouth.  Down she went, sat licking her chops.  I put the medicine on the counter and thought, There.  Now I can go back to my spiritual life.  It is making me smile to write this.

[image: Tashi on kitchen table, special effect]

The Stranger in our Midst

It is interesting to me to see people in Zen quarters talking about a problem we have talked about in my Unitarian Universalist church: We are so white here! Why do we have just a sprinkling of African-Americans and other people of color? A friend of mine has the answer: A black woman  wouldn't dream of coming to a church where people wear shorts and flip-flops on Sunday morning. Actually, that is a kernal of a truth recognized in the book "Crowns," which is largely photographs of beautiful black women in distinguished hats.

The truth is that all institutions are based in specific cultures.  And there are always plenty of opportunities to welcome whoever walks in the door, even if every last visitor is the same skin color as you.  I am wide awake lately to the fact that people who, ah, seem different, who might be mentally ill, are routinely avoided.

Think Jamie Holmes, Colorado shooting suspect.  Just today the Houston Chronicle published a short article to the effect that teachers at both the U of Alabama and Iowa had recommended against admitting him.  Here's someone who was obviously smart, but too....strange....and that was in 2011, before he died his hair.  Anyway, he was Not My Problem.  Just don't admit him.

I think it may be a primal instinct to avoid people with a strange energy or aura or body odor or manner, however you want to think about the differences in people.  I imagine I had it too before bipolar disorder burned down my life in my mid-thirties.  Now I'm sort of the other way, to tell the truth - attracted to other people who have been broken.  The saying is, that crack is where the light can come in.

 This has brought me to a sad memory.  Some years ago I took off driving one morning, just east.  I can't describe what I had gone through with my family, but it was at a crisis, and people I tried to talk to about it weren't interested.  I liked to drive; it calmed me down.  You can kid yourself that you're in control.  I found myself near a town where there is a noted Zen center so I bought a local map and found it.  I'm not going to name the place because, I don't know, what good would that do?

I asked to talk to a teacher.  The woman who was at the desk and phone was very sympathetic; I remember she gave me an apple, and went off to talk to a teacher.  She came back looking embarrassed to say that the teachers were involved in a retreat, and could talk to me a week from Tuesday.  Something like that.

I suppose now that someone in charge was trying to deliver a big Zen message.  I got it, the kind of message that was, the kind of awakening they were selling.  That experience was part of what drove me to reject the puritanical high-attainment kind of Zen I was seeing in a local sangha, where people were unkind to newcomers who disturbed the peace of the sit.

All these years later, I still think it was unkind. At that time, I thought, they probably get a lot of crazy people.  Walking away, I noted all the Lexuses in the parking lot. I thought, They probably think they are training the leaders of tomorrow.

This Very Day

Google could have done better for Labor Day than post a little American flag on its home page.  Labor Day was not created to honor this country.  It was meant to honor those who do the hard basic work that supports our comfortable lifestyle - who mine the coal that fuels the electric plant, drive the garbage truck, clean the toilets at J. C. Penney's, operate the crane in the mill.

Labor Day was gained in the "antiAmerican activities" of defying the rich who were then exploiting the working class in this country, and now exploit them in Asia (think Steve Jobs).  It got us the 40-hour work week and the weekend, and some employer benefits for full-time workers, though the wealthy get around the intent of the law by not employing people full-time (think WalMart).  It got us minimum wage, a good thing, though pathetically inadequate.

Near my hometown, Youngstown, Ohio, men were shot and killed by the thugs of the wealthy men who owned everything. And still do.  Now, some of the working class have been convinced to vote for tax breaks for the wealthy.  In our schools, we fight over whether to teach evolution or creationism.  How about teaching people how to think about being exploited and oppressed by the wealthy owners?  How about teaching the history of the people's battle for a living wage?  How about teaching people how many  small businesses fail. How unfettered capitalism benefits the very few and deals out bad cards for the many.

Like every national holiday, Labor Day has been turned into a secular feast day on which people try strenuously to have fun, eat, drink, go to festivals, buy stuff.  How soon we forget.  How easily we are manipulated by advertising and our delusions.

Instead of that little American flag, Google could have put up the poster above, which was made by the US Department of Labor in 2010.  It honors the woman Theodore Roosevelt called "the most dangerous woman in America."  The words on that poster were hers.  Fight for the living.  Put yourself on the line. That was her spiritual practice.

The performance/song below features Utah Phillips and Ani deFranco.

Is Suffering Really Optional?

Ai Weiwei, who is not crazy.

It's a Buddhist proverb often quoted: 

Pain is inevitable;
Suffering is optional.

And often I restrain myself from commenting, for I know people mean well, and want to be happy, and I know that's what the Four Noble Truths seem to say.  But I am not much of a respecter of authority.  I go on my experience this life, which is also a fundamental premise of my church, UU, and of Buddhism, at least of the freelance American Zen I practice: be a lamp unto yourself.

And I have bipolar disorder; used to say "I AM+ manic-depressive."  This has changed, in a move to get mental illnesses accepted as illnesses, and I respect that.  But the fact is, I AM bipolar.  I swing from hypomanic to depressive, with symptoms normal healthy people never have in their whole lives. It's very much me.  It informs my creativity and empathy and spirituality and sense of humor, and rules my calender.  Sometimes it terrorizes me and ruins my sleep and causes physical pain and rips up relationships irretrievably (though not relationships worth saving).  For decades, I took many many medications that helped me "pass" - until they destroyed my kidneys.  (Warning: whoever you are, when you get your annual physical, get copies of your own labs and do enough research to understand the state of your health. Don't let your doctor make the decisions.)

I do thank Sylvia Boorstein, one of whose early books I reread recently, in which she takes care to say that she has not "solved" all her suffering, not yet anyway.  But that her practice has helped her soften, restrain herself at times, maybe get over things with more ease.  Yes, me too.  She allows that is possible for a normal human to achieve that advanced enlightenment; she just doesn't know anyone who has - and she knows all the big people. 

If it is possible at all, if that's what enlightenment means, maybe it's possible for a bipolar.  And if I get there, if I find out how to not suffer during these painful, disabling hours, sometimes months, I will certainly share the news.  (Practice has helped me considerably, and I share thoughts on that from time to time here, too.)

Meanwhile, everyone should chill out on this positive thinking trip.  Accept that you have pain and  sadness and disappointment.  Sometimes things get you down.  Have some chocolate and take it easy on yourself; don't expect to defeat all your conditioning and your ancient twisted karma and be smooth and clear and grateful for every f------- painful person and moment in your life.  Some days nothing helps.  That's* the truth.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ Bipolars LIKE all caps.
* Bipolars really like italics.

p.s.  My Spellcheck thinks bipolars is not a word.  That's not stigma, though. Just software.
p.p.s.  There is an asteroid named after Ai Weiwei, whose art and life support human rights in the face of frightening oppression.

In Memory of a Great Oak

It is right and proper that a great many people are mourning the untimely death of Greg Houston, one of the kindest and most generous people I have known.  He died in a one-vehicle crash last Monday morning, and a whole church is mourning him; his memorial service will be tomorrow at 1:00.  I believe there are plans to plant an oak tree on the grounds of the church in his memory.  It was Tom who said, "if Teena was a wildflower, Greg was an oak."

It almost seemed wrong that Tom and I, and many others, are mourning Greg so when we were not family members or even best friends.  Just - friends with someone we all knew was an unusually good man.  But I remembered some lines of poetry, as I often do when a death is hard to bear, and was able to find the poem.  I am reprinting it here.  It was this poem's last lines that consoled me, how it says we have the right to grieve a death however much we do, even if it's "just" a student or a pet, even if we have "no rights in this matter."  The poem, written in 1953, brings to life a girl who may be otherwise little remembered.  This is one of the things art can do.

Elegy for Jane

(My student, thrown by a horse)

                  by Theodore Roethke

I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;
And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;
And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her,
And she balanced in the delight of her thought, A wren, happy, tail into the wind,
Her song trembling the twigs and small branches.
The shade sang with her;
The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing,
And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose.

Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth,
Even a father could not find her:
Scraping her cheek against straw,
Stirring the clearest water.

My sparrow, you are not here,
Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow.
The sides of wet stones cannot console me,
Nor the moss, wound with the last light.

If only I could nudge you from this sleep,
My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon.
Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:
I, with no rights in this matter,
Neither father nor lover.

[The image above is a Zen garden in the Bloedel Reserve, built on the site of the swimming pool in which the poet Roethke suffered a heart attack and died in 1963, at age 55.  I understand this garden is open to the public, but Roethke is not memorialized there by any sign.  I didn't remember this when I went looking for this poem, but Roethke - like so many great artists - was bipolar, which was called manic-depressive back then. Lithium was not yet used as a treatment in this country, and it would be decades before less dangerous treatments were developed. Bipolar disorder is still not curable.]