Real Practice

I am seriously having great doubt about the Zen path for about the hundredth time.

The other night I went to a local sangha I sit with occasionally. The room that serves as the zendo was set up as usual with 10-15 cushion sets, for people to sit on the floor, and four chairs for us sick, elderly, or just incompetent. I don't remember now whether every chair was occupied.  But the setup makes it clear that sitting on cushions is a sign of belonging.  A young man came in near the bell and sat down on the cushions beside me. It is not done to talk once you're in the zendo, shoes off, and I have no idea whether he talked to anyone before he entered, or had been there before.

But it was easy to see that he was acutely uncomfortable, trying to find some position he could sustain.  If you do not grow up sitting on floors, it can be quite difficult to learn how to.  In my own life, I got help from a kind yoga teacher with my posture and my pain issues.  I've always liked to get A's, and I persisted, and I did sit on a cushion for maybe ten years, until I had an ankle problem that ruled it out (and might have been brought on by all those years of half-lotus position, now that I think about it).

After about ten minutes, the guy next to me got up and quietly left. I did not get up and follow him. I hate this. It's not me.  But I was quite depressed that evening, not thinking well at all.

You do not have to sit in lotus position to gain wisdom or "attain enlightenment."  Fortunately for me, I began meditating on my own, sitting comfortably in my brown leather recliner, recovering from surgery. Sitting in that same chair two years later, after my second retreat, I had a great awakening experience. My spine was not erect at the time and I was not sitting motionless. I tell this only to point out that you can have realizations without tormenting your body. 

I empathize with that guy.  I, too, went to the only Zen group in town when I was first practicing, and felt the need for other people to support me.  I, too, tried to sit on the damn floor, since no chairs were provided there, and, using considerable willpower, adjusted my posture only a couple of times during that first excruciatingly long sit. After that, while others walked kinhin, the leader drew me aside and talked to me about how I was disturbing others by moving, and went and found a chair in another room and put me in it, all by myself like the dunce of the class. I am still embarrassed at the memory. But it happens that I'm stubborn about not letting the bastards get me down, and I persisted in my practice.

People don't come to Zen - or yoga, or church - on a whim. We are looking for something; we are in need.  But the way imitation-Japanese Zen valorizes sitting on the floor and enduring pain (and sleep deprivation) , if you can't do it, you don't belong.  Nothing could make that any clearer than all those cushions and no chairs. And no welcoming.

I had a similar experience with yoga, once. There were just six of us in that class, arrayed in a single line in the long room before the teacher.  Three of us could do almost nothing that teacher did, though this was billed as a Beginner's class. She never offered one hint of what you could do if you were not able to balance on one hand and one foot for minutes on end.  It's the same delusion:  that It is attained by physical forms.  I didn't go back, if you're wondering.

This. Is. Elitism. It is reinforced by the idea that a Zendo is a sort of tabernacle you enter barefoot and silent.  It is there in the persistent grave problem of sexual scandals in Zen, which has caused some hurt feelings online recently.  Teachers are glorified by the aura of holiness around dharma transmission, students are attracted to the power (just as they are to politicians), the teachers have sex with confused students.  Often, it turns out, with many of them. 

Special-endurance Zen is a masculinist tradition whose paramilitary rituals play to testoserone.  It is fed in this culture by the failures of the nuclear family, by the American craving to succeed, to be special. It is supported by teachers who write and talk about how important it is for you to have a special understanding born of mystical insight.  They don't talk nearly as much about simple everyday kindness.  They chant hymns to Kanzeon (Kuan Yin), but are not trained in compassion. Koan study throws fuel on the flame of striving. Robes, hitting with sticks, still worse.

I don't know whether the man who sat next to me so briefly the other night had ever attended that group before, or ever will again, or where he went when he left.  I hope it wasn't to a bar.  In the discussion of generosity afterward, no one talked about the generosity of heart that should mean you set up plenty of chairs so that every visitor can find a comfortable seat.  The compassion that should mean you welcome every person who comes in the door.

In that other Zen group, whose karma lingers on, I overheard one of the regulars tell another about his visit to one of the big East Coast Zen Centers.  I've visited there.  There were a lot of Lexuses and BMWs in the parking lot.  This guy, who was married with children, said, "Wouldn't it be wonderful to go there for a three-month retreat and "really practice?" I kept walking, thinking They don't get it. 

Leaving Zen Mountain

I was just looking over a recent post about goals and time management--- I titled it "A useless post" with some irony, because it basically discouraged endeavor---though that is a very useful counterpoint to The American Way of Striving.  But I do try, as I come out of the hardest year of my life and awaken to the 10,000 things that need done around here.

First, a progress report.  Some scarves handled, though there is more to be done, and you can't see the dresser top yet.  Got the kitchen cleaned, though it must have made me uncomfortable, because I immediately strewed things all over the counters again. (A happy marriage is one in which you basically agree on the level of housekeeping.)  We became greener by mixing our own general cleaning spray from white vinegar and a few drops of dish detergent - saved a lot of money, reused the spray bottle, which would probably last seventy millenia in the Pacific Garbage Patch.  And I am using my right hand more all the time.  Today I was able to put a compression sleeve on, and thank God I didn't get cellulitis in this whole thing.  Bladder infection conquered, though I will spare you the descriptive details. Even had a couple of good nights' sleep.

Voted yesterday---we have "early" voting in Ohio; like absentee voting, but in person.  I tell you, I feel good when I vote.  It's a mess, our government, but it's our mess.  Don't think I didn't think about the Arab Spring, and all the people in this world who will lay down their lives for a chance to have a say in their government.

Seems my mind is available now for higher things.  And we went to the Unitarian church we belong to last night for a presentation by a Sufi teacher and scholar, Neil Douglas-Klotz.  This was my introduction to this mystical element in Islam, unless you count the movie Meetings with Remarkable Men, a great documentary which you can watch free here.  (This is a slow-moving film, but toward the end there is a section of Gurdjieff Dancers that is breath-taking.)  I also know one of his senior students, Elizabeth Reed, a well-known psychotherapist and spiritual leader here in Columbus.

Neil's approach is that of a scholar, a linguist, opening out the meaning of Jesus' words as they would have been spoken in Aramaic.  Awesome.  He is also a teacher and practitioner, and led us in two Aramaic chants; they call these "body prayers."  I was just seeing the end of my longtime Zen path, a sense that it had become dry for me - and more disappointment in practitioners and teachers.  I was aware of the empty space this was leaving, but I know that when something leaves your life, something else will come in out of the darkness, and I was waiting.  Here it was.

For years now the machismo of the Japanese tradition has bothered me.  Example: recently we watched a film on Dogen, an important Zen mystic and teacher.  It showed the monks meditating as Dogen died.  When he did die, seated upright among them, one wailed "Master!" and the leader shouted "Continue!" meaning shut up, swallow that grief, meditate.  Can't go there, folks. Do not see grief as an illusion or grasping.  Can't stand it when people are hit by the teacher's big stick. Can't go with meditating 14 hours a day, welcoming pain, keeping my eyes on the ground when the cherry trees are in bloom. I think it's wrong.

It's taken me a while to catch up to myself on this.  It's been a couple of years, 4, 5? since my last poetry chapbook was published, Leaving Zen Mountain.  The title poem had been inspired by a visit to a very formal (as in form-is-all) Zen center and monastery, where I was taken aback by the levels of heirarchy expressed in robes, and the cold and unwelcoming approach to visitors.  So as usual, I'm the last one to read my own story.

Unreasonable expectations

I usually like my mailings from Tricycle, but this morning Matthieu Ricard struck me the wrong way. He wrote -

Anyone who enjoys inner peace is no more broken by failure than he is inflated by success. He is able to fully live his experiences in the context of a vast and profound serenity, since he understands that experiences are ephemeral and that it is useless to cling to them. There will be no “hard fall” when things turn bad and he is confronted with adversity. He does not sink into depression, since his happiness rests on a solid foundation.

Well, that's not me.

This came on the heels of a bad night, wide awake and depressed at 5:00 a.m.  My first thought was, Easy to say when you are a monk who lives in the mountains of Tibet. My life is more complicated.  Then I remembered that he has done a good deal of traveling in support of his books, a form of teaching, though he prefers to be at home.  I also remember an American teacher, John Tarrant, who lives as a householder and presents himself as constantly happy, undisturbed even when visiting a friend who is dying.  It is an ideal in Zen and perhaps in Buddhism in general - an undisturbed equanimity and inner sunshine. Enlightenment.

Well, that's not me.  I am emotional and responsive.  I feel intensely, given to rapture and bursts of tears.  As our old cat Sherlock used to say, "That's the kind of cat I am."  I am that, along with being naturally creative and nurturing.  This maybe is the answer to the first koan a teacher gave me, "Who is that one?" meaning, Who are you?  I am embodied and sensitive.

From what I read about the brain and gender, maybe these qualities are just being feminine.  This is about the thousandth time I've been driven to think about the masculinity of Zen, specifically, the tradition I've practiced in, Japanese Zen.  Yes, it teaches the Bodhissatva ideal, to serve all beings.  This emphasis appears much more in books than on retreats, where it is common to treat retreatants really badly in the paramilitary Japanese tradition, depriving us of sleep, hitting us with sticks, allowing no personal time.  On the one hand, this is the tradition that has come my way here in the American midwest, where there is a shortage of authentic teachers.  On the other hand, I have been attracted to Japanese Zen, fascinated in the beginning (Are they serious!?) 

So many of us pick the religious practice that serves our trip, or make it serve our trip.  This is easily seen in yoga classes where people vye to "do the pose perfectly," seeing it as accomplishment rather than a spiritual practice. My trip was trying too hard, trying to be perfect, believing I could be, believing that out there if I did practice hard enough was exactly that perfect happiness Ricard describes.  And not so incidentally, I would rise above my reaction to people using the noun "men." to mean "people", which dates from a time when only men were considered human.  A time when it was believed that one could achieve enlightenment only "in a male body."

Well, if I had much more access to a teacher, she might have helped me unlearn all that.  In fact, I am being helped right now by James Baraz book Awakening Joy.  Maybe joy is an easier thing to aim for than happiness.

But I am who I am.  Yesterday's labs showed I am still anemic, hemoglobin under 10, despite 40,000 units of EPO, enough to help you win the Tour de France. That accounts in part for the slow depression I have been in; you are not just what you think. 

I gave myself another shot yesterday; it will take a while.  Meanwhile I have to confront the dread special pharmacy that handles this very expensive drug, which requires refrigeration all along the way.  It can take weeks to unravel their Byzantine structures and get a refill. On the happiness side, I am glad to have the drug, and the double insurance (earned through working dull, meaningless jobs) that pays for it. 

Maybe more important to my happiness, this live transplant thing has been dragging along for over two months now, and still no answer as to whether the donor qualifies.  This has given me ample time to think about all the things that can go wrong, and how they can go wrong any time - before the transplant, at the moment of surgery, the next day, refusal of the kidney to take, any day in the years after.  I wouldn't do it, except that dialysis is the only option.  Hard, very hard to feel lucky that you have these options.  It's there, but today I just feel discouraged. Well, I'm almost 68, and all these years of work have changed me in some ways, but not perfected me.  My new motto, related to this, and Baraz' book, is Don't try so hard. Maybe that's a form of enlightenment, to relax.

[image:  Oak twig and shadow, Jeanne Desy]