With a Little Help From My Friends

Here he is, the almost-indomitable Maru, given a box with compartments that are just too small for a well-built cat.  Even he needs consolation from his mom.  And as you'll see, she simplifies the problem for him - a good Mom eases your way in life - and there is a happy ending. 

While I wrote the above I was enjoying this music - seems so simple and bouncy now, but it didn't then.  And the boys look so innocent in a nice photo montage from the days when we were all way younger and  John was still alive.  A lot of optimism was still alive, and still is, you just have to look in the right places.

I hope you get to take a sabbath, a break from all your striving, today, and enjoy it.  If you have to work, don't work too hard.

10 Good Reasons to Practice Zen: #1

       Maru demonstrates things you can do in a bucket

Reason #1:  You will seldom be bored.

Today we ate lunch at the healthy-food cafe in our health club, partly because my doctor warned me that my cholesterol has inched up these last six months over that magic number, 200.  Furthermore, he explained, my "bad" cholesterol was up, too.  I did not feel I needed to confess about my primary addiction, Lay's potato chips and Heluva French Onion dip.  But it did make me rethink my cavalier attitude about that and bacon and cheese and eggs - you get the idea.  I will work on this; I hate the idea of a statin drug, not without reason.

A lot of people wanted today's hot lunch, a turkey Reuben (which ended up bearing no resemblance to a real Reuben, of course), so I waited in line to pay.  Right ahead of me was a fire-type woman who just could hardly stand the five-minute wait.  She bounced away to get napkin and fork, came back, and then was pretty much bouncing on her toes with impatience, like your teenage boy, though she was well into her fifties, I thought.

The cafe's credit card machine is old-fashioned, so a credit transaction takes oh, maybe two minutes start to finish.  As the woman waited for hers to process, she said to anyone, "This is so boring!  I am so bored!" 

Later I told Tom, "The thing about Zen is you are never bored standing in line."  Now, this is true, and it is also true for sincere practitioners of other disciplines, I imagine.  My tai chi teacher talked to us more than once about using time waiting in the checkout line to stand in wu wei, balance, and breathe.  What I was doing in this line was practicing being there.

That's actually what we do when we meditate:  we are practicing being with the reality of the present moment, which is to say, reality.  During the early years of Zen practice we are taught to follow our breath, in and out, a way of focusing on the basic mechanism of the body.  Later in Zen you can take up shikantaza, just sit there watching not only your breath but also your sensations and thoughts.  You have many profound thoughts, like Ring the damn bell! or Nobody ever died from not scratching an itch.  

Nevertheless, there are times in sitting meditation when you are bored.  I suspect many people give up meditation for exactly that reason.  We Americans are the worst, I imagine, so addicted to speed and exploration and entertainment and getting somewhere and having fun.  We actually list our desires, the things we want to see and do before we die, which is called "the bucket list" after some movie. 

Maybe because of these bad habits, one of our cultural icons is a man who built a little cabin in the woods and made a big point of simplifying his life.  Henry David Thoreau.  Google him and you get over 4 million results.  I'm happy to say Buddha gets even more.  He should - the Buddha didn't get bored and give it up after two years.

Seeing the Light

[video:  Maru sees the light.]

Understanding that we are fragile and our lives can be snatched from us any moment is a staple of Buddhist thought. Gaining that understanding is thought to be key to awakening; some monks meditate in cemetaries or worse, charnal grounds. (The link leads to an interesting Wikipedia article, but you probably don't want to know.)

During some Zen retreats a beautiful text may be intoned by a voice from the dark outside the zendo, encouraging us to to understand that the great matter is the fragility of our lives, and we should not waste one minute of our precious time on retreat.  Along this line, here's this from an article about one of the great Teachers who brought Zen to the West, and was known for a sense of humor.

Maezumi Roshi's style was warm, dynamic and direct. He lettered a sign on the zendo reading, "If you want to clarify the Great Matter of life and death you are welcome. Otherwise, better get out!"

 So I would have said I grasped this intellectually - but Zen is never satisfied with that.  Mind is only a piece of heart-mind.  And yesterday I got a body blow that took me deeper with it.

As you know if you follow this blog, we've been to four funerals in about three months - three friends, and Tom's father.  Two of these friends were way younger than me, and their deaths shocked a lot of people.

Another couple we know has had a string of frightening events.  In April the man had his first heart attack; last month the woman took a fall that fractured her pelvis, and means she is in chronic pain and has to use a walker; yesterday we learned that the man had fainted and hit his head, and is hospitalized. Why he fainted is still being investigated.  These are older (than me) people, entering their eighties but vigorous and engaged in life, who had already had to abandon a planned trip.

The woman leads the collage group I am in, and the way we work together in silence has led to a sense of intimacy in the group.  Maybe that was why the news hit me so hard.

The way it hit me was that my body feels soft, and it is as if I can see by x-ray vision my small bones and their significant deterioration. It's that sensation, and that enhanced perception of my fragility that has me reeling.  As much as I've been reminded of my age, as near as I've been to dying, first from cancer, then from kidney failure, I didn't feel it until now.  Or if I did, I'd forgotten.  Our bodies really are soft, our skin a very thin defense; we are constantly invaded by germs and viruses and cancer cells that would like to use us as a host. I knew that, but I didn't feel it.

So I find myself remembering that chant.  Here is one version. 

Let us be respectfully reminded:
Life and death are of supreme importance.
Time swiftly passes by, and with it our only chance;
each of us must strive to awaken.
Be aware! Do not squander your life.