No heat or cold?

I just found my way once again to a fine discussion of a classic koan by Barry Magid.  That's him to the left.  Doesn't he look nice?

The koan is called "Tozan's No Heat or Cold."  How I know I've read this before is that my browser shows I've been here.  I still don't get it.  I mean, I still find myself thinking at times, Let me out of here!  I haven't mastered umm....what have I not mastered?  Well, sometimes I can't find my center.  Sometimes I'm stuck with bad loud music or  paranoid people or weird convoluted bureaucracies and I begin to make me feel overwhelmed.  I don't like it.  I want out of this too-bright mental state.

I won't use a specific example drawn from my long day today, on the off chance that someone who made me feel like that would read this and recognize themselves.

And now it's time for me to head into my bedtime routine and let this sit overnight.
~~~~~~~~~
It's morning, and I reread the case, and I got it again.  Here's a quote from it that I put in my journal:

Where is this Oneness that everybody's always talking about, anyway? And Tozan tells him it right here, right in the midst of the heat and the cold - not somewhere else, not in some "higher" state he's got to reach. To be completely, unself-consciously cold, cold without any thought of escape or how well I'm handling being cold or anything, just [shivering] COLD - right there is no separation, no self. 

It always seems to be the same answer, just be here. Today I am in a much cooler place.  A day to do laundry.  To throw myself 100% into doing the laundry.  I can do that.

Life in the Real World

I was enchanted to read a description recently of our local metaphysical expo:

It is a place where love and light fill every crevice and then spill over the top into the real world.

Actually, what more needs to be said?  One could just rest in that image.  But it did get me thinking about that term, "the real world."

There were years when I'd go on the AMA Samy retreat at Grailville and experience it as a place of love and serenity.  Arriving home after all the goodbyes had been said, I'd feel my responsibilities descend on me like big gray backpacks full of cement.  The world I lived in was populated by difficult people and too many things to do (that is, things I thought I had to do).  My need for creative time always felt squeezed.  Play time, forget it. These problems stood waiting for me like a home invader behind the kitchen door.

Here I am using that interesting word again:  problem.  It seemed clear at those times that the sunny silence of retreat was time spent with the absolute, and real life was a mess. 

Depends on what you mean by a mess.  Yes, much of life, lots of it, is out of your control, and some of it involves conflicts.  People let you down or undermine you, other people don't return calls, important meetings are cancelled, you fall and your life is changed.  You are an organic life form that ages, gets sick, dies, and so does everyone else. So does the siding on the house.  Everything keeps changing out there.  The sunflowers from the wedding die.

But the digital pictures survives - above is one from Cassie's wedding - as do the memories. And there are many opportunities here for connecting, receiving with gratitude, giving.  I have faith in the possibility of a life in which love overflows.

I am remembering a line from Robert Frost's Birches , which is, now that I think about it, about this - bliss, grief, nirvana, samsara.

Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.

The Problem of Aging

Escaping the frame

I was struck by this thought yesterday, and rushed to put it in a box on this blog:

 Being old is not necessarily a problem.  

It wasn't actually that striking, more like interesting in a quiet way.  So I've been thinking about problems in general and aging in particular.

Aging, being old, is a fact, a condition created by a series of experiences, of changes.  Problems themselves do not exist in reality.  The word problem is abstract, a concept in my head tied up with a judgement that it is difficult and I don't like it.  These thoughts made me remember Joan Halifax's story about when Issan was dying, and she was crying at his bedside.  He said to her, "That isn't necessary, you know."  He was a Zen master (so is she), so I thought seriously about that.  Not necessary to be sorry your friend is dying?  How about yourself - does your death have to be a problem?  Is sickness necessarily a problem?  Is pain?

Using the word problem is a way of framing a large issue.  You could say the real problem is not aging, but that we resist its reality instead of  flowing with it.  It's like "difficult emotions" in that way.

Framing a couple of issues

It's funny how we welcome risk and surprise when we pay for it.  People go to theme parks, travel uncomfortably on planes and go more uncomfortably through airports, which have become fun houses, delays popping up like monsters in the corner.  We deliberately meet fear on roller coasters, we pay to be thrown around on those teacup rides. But when life throws us around, we hate it.

These thoughts must be growing out of my current interest in softening to difficult feelings (discussed a little in the previous post).  My own "difficult" feelings arise when I don't like what's happening.  Depression. Pain.  People who don't do what they said they would (had to throw in something trivial). 

I couldn't explain why, but this is making me visualize making a not-too complicated mandala.  Reds for desire.  Some black strokes for judgement.  Here and there beautiful greens, restful lavender......What would be at its center?  Maybe a nice peaceful white, or a blue sky with puffy high clouds passing over.  Maybe some glitter.  

Softening Around the Pleasure

Today is rest and recovery for me after yesterday's eye exam, which involved three different kinds of drops and bright lights.  This doesn't give me migraines, but I felt the chemical disruption the rest of the day, a certain confusion, a bad stomach.  I could see the yellow stain from the drops still coming out of my eyes onto tissues in the evening.  All this reminded me that I am seventy.

So does my slow arising most mornings, certainly this one.  I slept until my phone alarm nagged me to take my 9:30 a.m. immunosuppressants.  It was past 11:00 when I finished morning things like nasal rinse and practice and made myself the perfect breakfast.  Perfect for this moment.

Supremely digestible Malt-o-Meal with a little butter from our friend, the cow, some Ghiradelli chocolate chips, a few walnuts and maple syrup.  Ah.  Really, it was lovely.  And the sun was out.

I've kept working with the ideas of Phillip Moffitt on handling difficult emotions (a video I posted a while back).  In his book, Emotional Chaos to Clarity, he talks about "softening around the feeling."  I responded to this body-centered metaphor.  Years ago my yoga teacher, Kit Spahr, talked to us about softening around around any specific physical pain that arises when holding a yin yoga pose, and that's worked for me often. It is a way of not slamming the door on the pain, or on fear or sadness, whatever you want to flee. 

This can be hard to do.  So Moffitt makes the interesting suggestion that you can practice softening by softening around pleasant emotions.  I did this as I ate this morning, staying with the pleasure of and gratitude for this just-right breakfast so it quietly expanded and filled me.

I am glad to report that the minor infarction in my left eye had healed.  It didn't have to go that way.  So I am especially appreciating my eyes, being alive and well today, too.

[image: redbud seedpods in May on the ravine.  These colors please me.]

Winter Bloom

Today I am over the cold and most of the symptoms; not anxious, though I have the usual problems I am sometimes anxious about; and neither high nor low.  I feel balanced.  Not blissed, but happy in a quiet, contented way.  I thought readers might like to hear from me in that mood now and then.

It does seem that an occasional day of feeling balanced and at peace with life is nothing to remark on, but I guess it is for me.  Or has been for quite a while - but who knows what tomorrow will bring?  Meanwhile, art is more fun than words, so I will conclude by posting photos of some of the things I'm grateful for these days.

Tashi luminous in morning sun

 

Mums Tom picked up grocery shopping last week, in a vase that was a housewarming gift from Marie

Rules in the Sunday School room we do creative movement in

.  I count myself among the Nice tigers.

Watercolor sunset tonight after Art Journaling

Winter bloom (red-orange) on a tree in the church courtyard

Deep Thoughts on a Difficult Feeling

The difficult emotion I felt recently was vindictiveness. There must be a lot of it around, because the internet has lots of quotes like these, posted by people who understand karma exists, but have missed out on the rest of the message of Buddhism.

But it’s my own problem I’m thinking about just now, because one effect of Zen on me has been that I catch myself when I have mean thoughts.

Whenever I desire to "get" someone or "show them" or "pay them back" it seems to involve the ideas in my mind about how they should treat or respect me, that and pain.  More generally, aggression is aroused by threats to my Self - ego, me, protecting this Wun rather than considering the other’s situation and the entire context.

It may be a natural, or animal, reaction, to lash back if you feel hurt or threatened - the cat does.  And to want to feel part of your Tribe, to be equal, to be respected.  To be fully human is to be able to delay that lashing back and meditate on your difficult feeling.  There are great ethical reasons to delay acting in anger, and good personal reasons.  All forms of anger, including grudges, are painful to feel and hard on the body.  Sometimes don't realize that, and feel strengthened by the adrenalin.  In the military, the hatred of soldiers training for combat is deliberately whipped up; somehow adrenalin is courage.

Once I saw my mother feeling vindictive, and believing she was entitled to seek revenge.   

That story was so sad.  It was St. Patrick’s Day, the alcoholic's very favorite day of the year, and we all went to the local Irish club, Sons of Herman, to which Aunt Eileen belonged.  I can still envision her in a charming native costume she'd bought in Ireland, a green embroidered pinafore over a white puff-sleeved peasant blouse.  She was on the petite side and wore it very well.  She could do a little soft-shoe, too.

My father may have come from work, since he was in his suit and tie, all that.  Maybe he didn’t want to be there at all, and felt he had to be.  Or maybe he was just in one of his black moods.  He kept his fedora on, a childish gesture of sullenness; that simply was not done in those days.  This  was in the sixties, which were still the fifties in Akron, Ohio.

With that hat on, my father invited me to dance.  I hated having him dance me - he was a strong, contemptuous lead, held me too close and exuded too much testoserone.  He probably danced with Eileen, and the other women, her sister and sister-in-law.  But he refused to dance with my mother when she asked him outright.

Above, a popular quote.

A few days later Eileen was over visiting with my mother, and they were talking in the kitchen.  From another room I heard my mother say, “He’ll see if I dance with him.”  Of course dance has always been about sex.  Boy, was she mad.  I cringed at it.

He should not have done that.  It hurt her, and it shamed her.  That’s all you need to do to foster vindictiveness, right? 

Now, and this is important, vindictiveness involves aggression, which is considered in Buddhism to be one of the Three Poisons:  greed, hatred, delusion.  There is also a way it involves greed, my mother's enormous need for reassurance, and also delusion.  She never quite gave up her delusion that my father would love her better.  Abusive men can be very charming and sweet at times, and in a dry country, a teaspoon of water tastes like nectar.  Such men get women to stay with them by sweetness and apology.  Then, make-up sex.

And eventually he must have brought my mother around.  She wanted to love him with all her heart and soul, him above everyone, maybe even her children. She believed in eternal love and My Man.  But  maybe it scarred her a little, one more little scar on her vulnerable heart.  Hearts are made of flesh.  They can be damaged.
 
Who did I feel vindictive toward recently, enough so to write this?  I think I won’t put that out there to live eternally in the cloud.  Just meditate on it, perhaps.  Or maybe I just did......
And below, a nice summary of how Buddhism sees karma.  It's not about how we feel, but how we act.

[bonus:  Here is an interesting link to an informal discussion of karma in which many people have no trouble talking about their vindictiveness.]

Getting Through a Bad Day

It's very curious to me how little professional information there is on living with bipolar disorder.  That may be because chemical treatment was embraced so enthusiastically last century.  Also because psychiatrists are first M.D.s, and Western medicine is simply not holistic.  It embraces a very limited "science" which is constantly proven wrong (e.g. mice are not much like people, see today's NY Times). But I digress.

As that digression suggests, I'm writing on a good day.  Perhaps because of going off the Seroquel, and  perhaps because it's February, I am back into that peculiar schedule of good day/bad day.  Having exhausted the resources of Google, I've come up with a plan for tomorrow, which may well be a bad day made worse by this cold (4th day) and even worse by Tom going out of town all day.  If I don't leave the house I might not see another human face all day.  

The only useful idea I was reminded of as I researched managing bipolar was the idea of putting a certain scheduling and regularity in the day.  I knew this experientially, and am pleased that it's now recognized as a form of therapy, interpersonal and social rhythm therapy (IPSRT).  Here is a quote from an article in Psych Central: 

Social rhythm focuses on developing and maintaining regular routines. Research has shown that “disturbances in circadian biology are associated with bipolar disorder,” but “there are social cues that can help entrain one’s underlying biological rhythms,” Dr. [Holly] Swartz said. Such social cues include keeping a consistent schedule of sleeping, eating and other daily activities.

Add to that getting dressed with shoes on and coming out of that dark room, which are things they make you do in psych wards.  So I have scheduled my day tomorrow.  Unless the weather is awful, I'll even leave the house to go to the library, a nice low-stress place where I might get to smile at someone.

The single most important thing on my schedule, though is . . . I know, you guessed:  my practice.  I have learned that unless I'm physically very ill and fatigued, I can do my morning spiritual practice.  Interestingly, that is the least depressed half-hour of a bad day.  I suppose that's because I'm focused on what I'm doing and not indulging in the dark thoughts or clinging to the pains and other unpleasant sensations.  

My practice has two parts, bodywork and sitting meditation, and I've spent many years learning how to do both of these in a way that works best for me.  I'll discuss what I do in future posts.  Here I'll say, my habit is to do it after my morning coffee but before breakfast.  It is very easy to form bad habits, and hard to form good ones, but a good habit has a lot of encouragement power.  It's like, I don't feel like it, but this is what I do.

And this . . .

. . . is what I do on a good day.  You are looking at the large mirror that covers one small wall in my bathroom.  You see the toilet reflected in it - see what I mean?  Those colorful stick-on Glitterpuff flowers are something I picked up on sale a while back (I sometimes get high, shopping) and sort of hid from Tom, as they looked garish when I got them home.  But then you find yourself in just the right mood one day.  (And if he's noticed them, he hasn't said anything yet.)  I must say, good day or bad, they make me smile.  Color therapy.  I'm serious about that.

I Really Am Bipolar

I have been officially bipolar since 1978, when I was correctly diagnosed after three years of hell.  First they got me settled down with lithium and stellazine, and I don't know what else; then someone confirmed the diagnosis; you are bipolar when your condition stabilizes on lithium.  I was so relieved that I immediately accepted the diagnosis.  From there on I let psychiatrists push psychotropics on me to such a degree that I lived like a sane person, got jobs, got into a good marriage, went to grad school and got a PhD, and realized that being a college professor was not a dream, but a nightmare.  My life felt tinted gray, but they weren't the worst years of my life.

But I digress.  That's one feature of hypermania.

Still, after all these years I don't think I quite realized what it meant to be stuck with bipolar.  This truth has been forcing its way in since that meeting last Tuesday in which the shrink he said he couldn't do a thing for me.  At the moment, I am sleeping okay.  The moodswings are another story.  The regular cycling of up/down days that Seroquel had damped has returned.

Meanwhile, life goes on.  On the heels of Tom's last fall, we are in the process of figuring out when and how to move to the retirement home we like.  At first we thought I would go there into a one-bedroom, where I might have a stress-free life while Tom stayed in the house and got some things done (and didn't fall down again).  But our financial counselor nixed that - just too expensive month by month.  By that time, though, I had chosen the colors for my beautiful little one bedroom.  (They paint for you.)  And just last week I got to see them on the walls.  Here is the living room -

 I chose those colors from a favorite still life with apples.  The windowsill is not purple, but brown, and the coral is really that bright.  It seems much brighter than it did on an apple and a little paint sample.  The yellow is pretty yellow, too.  I wanted the living room to be warm and stimulating. 

Above is a view of the living room from the bedroom.  Fortunately, I was inspired to choose the bedroom colors by a serene mountain scene.  That's a kind of French blue, not too vibrant, and the window wall is the faintest blush pink.  Actually, this room is a little bright too, in daylight, but feels overall serene and pretty.

The bathroom turned out perfect though.  The aqua is well-represented in the photo to the right.  I might go for that in the next place.

Here's my point:  When the admissions officer opened the door to that warm, really warm coral and yellow, I thought, "You can tell these colors were ordered by a manic."  It was one of those small experiences that keep coming along; some people call that gradual enlightenment.

As realizations do, that truth has been soaking in.  When I feel real good, confident, joyful, that can be hypermania.  It can lead to poor decisions.  I have been revisiting memories of extravagant purchases, of spontaneous travel.  And from the depressed side I remember raising my voice at someone who was just trying to help, and saying too much in another situation.  These things are called "inappropriate behavior" in the psych wards.

 I really am bipolar.

I really am stuck with this self and its chemical swings. Whether bipolar is a disorder or a chronic illness it's hard to live with.  And I think it's true, there's no mood-stabilizer I can take.  So I need to take seriously the problem of life style, how to live well enough on up days and down days.  Getting through hypermania has challenges, but is somehow more manageable than depression.  And a depression is probably coming tomorrow.  We'll see. Sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha.

Staying Out of the Rain

Video:  Random International, Rain Room, 2012.  Here is Artfinder's description:

The Barbican Centre's 'Rain Room' offers us the chance to stand beneath a man-made raincloud, bucketing it down in true British style. The twist? 3D sensors controlling the valves ensure that, even after being engulfed in the 100 metre square torrent, visitors emerge bone dry.

Better, I think, than being engulfed in flames [link here to another post].

And - this is art.  Not life.  I like a lot of things about art, like color and rhythm.  And that it takes me closer to the heart of life; and that it is not life.  If I wanted reality, I'd stay in it.  Life is a mess.  Dukkha is the broad, resonant Buddhist term for the way life is generally painful, unsatisfactory, uncertain.  In life you don't know when you're going to be swiped by a semi and sent hurtling to another world without a chance to say goodbye.  As a Buddhist, I don't need art to remind me of things like that, to float sharks in tanks of formaldehyde.  I know the sharks are there. 

Along these lines, I have been enjoying some short videos by Phillip Moffitt, a Spirit Rock teacher.  So here is one of them well worth watching if you ever have emotions you don't care for.

The Raveled Sleeve of Me

A raveled sleeve

I think the saying is, "Act in haste; repent at leisure."  That's why sometimes I write something and let it sit overnight before I go back to it and post it, or don't.  So here I am writing in the small hours (almost 10 pm) when usually I am religiously observing my getting-read-for-bed routine in hopes that doing it right will help me go to sleep.  I keep doing this because it doesn't work.

And that takes me to my subject, which is my shrink.  Whose job is to help me sleep, which has been difficult since the 1000 mg of steroids at my kidney transplant.  You read that right.  That's what they do. Those steroids tripped switches in my brain that have not stopped making sleep difficult, and incidentally, put my moods into rhythmic ups and downs, but that's okay because I don't have a gun.  Your mental/emotional pain doesn't concern anybody until you get your hands on an assault rifle.

But I digress.  I meant to start like this:  My psychiatrist has multiple personality disorder.  One personality says, "Don't worry, we'll find something that works.  We have dozens of options.  Literally, dozens."  That was Very Nice Shrink Personality #1 of a month ago.

But today, what looked like the same guy said, "This is it.  This is the best we can do," and then started to lecture moi, moi on sleep hygiene, as if I got to be 70 without knowing a damn thing. Of course I'm used to this.  Still, it enhanced the depression I came in with.  He suggested meditation.  Gosh, doesn't it shine out from me?  (And I've mentioned it more than once before.) 

This "best we can do" is melatonin and Ativan, which aren't working very well.  Seroquel (a neuroleptic with a side effect of drowsiness) did work fairly well, but it had to go when I started twitching.  Bad side effect, tardive dyskinesia.  So I ramped down off that, painfully, and the twitches aren't gone, but have diminished.  Actually, now maybe it's my trigger finger twitching.  Just kidding.

I myself had done a little research before I went in, and found out things like No Trazadone if you have ever had arrythmia (I have).  Klonopin has a long half-life that leaves you STOOPID, like Seroquel.  No anti-convulsants: Tegretol gave me acute pancreatitis a couple of years ago.  So I had come in with nothing to suggest.  I suspect the shrink had also done some research on interactions with the medications I take for the health of my body since his last optimistic statements, because he was firm about this.  He has no other chemical answers.

He wondered if perhaps some counseling would help.  I sighed deeply as a parade of therapies passed through my mind, and said something like, "I've done a lot of that."

"Would you consider counseling?"  (See, that would let him feel he was Doing Something.)

"I guess," I said, sounding a lot like a teenager to myself.

I wish the good doctor had moved into Personality #3, the one that would say, "I'm sorry.  I wish I had a better solution."  Empathy.  How feminine. 

But he stuck to lecture mode.  Old people, he said, don't sleep that well anyway, so 5 or 6 hours a night is probably just fine.  I am not making this up.

Listen, I would hardly ever see a doctor of any kind if it was in my power to prescribe for myself.  But I can't.  Here we are, in a new millenium, when you carry a computer in your pocket.  It can whistle Dixie, play Words, send a video of a revolution around the world.  It can do anything but put me to sleep now that modern medicine gave me insomnia.  I wish Steve Jobs had put his brilliant mind to work on that.
~~~~~~~
[The image above is from this post in a charming anonymous blog titled Academic Cog. What I like most about this blog is that I'm no longer in that writer's shoes. BTW, wouldn't you think there would be lots of pix of raveled sleeves on the internet?  What's wrong with people?]

Is Art Necessary?

A while ago I was telling Tom how much work cooking is - it took me half an hour to put together the base for a pork roast:  sauerkraut, raisins, apple slices. Then I remembered how struck I was by the beauty of the apples, and the shadows the bright overhead track lights threw on the counter, and I thought, when apples are so beautiful, why do we bother doing art?  So I'd reached for my camera.





Of course, my little Samsung phone camera does much more than I ever could do with film, including this kind of shot, which is negative......





and then the Picasa editing system auto-fixed the shot that had been a little under-exposed......

I had to laugh.  No wonder it took me half an hour to slice a couple of apples. 

And I had to laugh again when I realized that even as I questioned the necessity of art, I had paused to do art then and there, not having time (or expertise) to paint a still life.  Was this exploration of the beauty of apples needed?  Obviously, if you were really hungry you'd eat the damn apple.  But if you do have the luxuries of food and shelter and time to regard an apple and record its beauty, then your pleasure has been magnified.  Then too, there's something grounding and relaxing in appreciating what is right in front of you. It felt like time out for meditation. And I think that's all useful.