This is Your Life

There's anxiety, and there's pain; then there's anxiety about pain, which more than doubles the pain.  By 9:00 last night the pain in my back and neck had gone up through my TMJ until the left side of my face hurt, and I had to do hot compresses.  Dammit.  Part of it was just too much sitting upright, the rest was the irrational anxiety about what the MRI will show and what comes next for this back injury.
This pain has been worse since the MRI of my upper back and neck Monday night.  And I am waiting, waiting for a call from the neurologist who ordered the test, and who will, I hope, suggest some way to cut back on the pain, which seems to be made worse by walking.  Now it's Friday, which means if I don't hear today I'll have to go through the weekend trying not to imagine the worst, which is, for me, being in a hospital.  After that dreadful night last December - and that was in one of our better hospitals - my tolerance of the constant abuses there has turned to something quite negative.  Like hate.

Furthermore, the fact that my fall in May was caused by Seroquel has amplified my distrust of the whole American medical system and led me to notice that there have been a lot of lawsuits about these drugs, and the movement disorder they cause that never goes away.  (It is called tardive dyskinesia.)

I don't like to be anxious or angry.  Don't Want! any of this.

Well, this kind of adversity is a common enough feature in the landscape of old age, but I like to think it isn't necessary to melt down over it.  My formal Zen study led me to find a post from a blog by Ben Howard that happens to help just a bit my perspective. The author refers to a passage in Dogen's Instructions to the Cook, which I decided to format as if it were a poem:

Do not get carried away,
by the sounds of spring, 
nor become heavy-hearted 
upon seeing the colors of fall. 
View the changes of the seasons as a whole, 
and weigh the relativeness of light and heavy 
from a broad perspective.

My first teacher, Ama Samy, said to me, at least once, "Experience everything, but don't get carried away."  He has a rich Hindi accent, so it sounded like "Don't get caddied away."  This is good advice for anyone with moodswings, or who golfs.  

More from Howard's blog:  "Commenting on this passage, the Soto master Kosho Uchiyama urges us “to be resolved that whatever we meet is our life,” and to “see the four seasons of favorable circumstances, adversity, despair, and exaltation all as the scenery of [our lives].” Oh yes. The default scenery, in fact, that the Buddha warned us about. Life is not that fabled isle of bliss they promised . . .

but more like this at times:

Heavy.  And that's just the way it is.  Everything broken, including the medical system and, maybe, the doctor's phone.

This is making me think it's time to publish a poem I wrote years ago after being forgotten in an exam room. Really.  (A nod of thanks to Ken Vail, who drove me to that doctor and waited patiently.)

                             Doctor
or, Jean-Paul Sartre in the Examining Room           
           
Here in a windowless room–this dying body–
naked beneath a paper towel,
waiting, waiting for Doctor to come and ask,
How are you?  Where do you hurt?
How long have you felt this way?
Doctor is busy, invisible accountants
issue denials of benefits,
nurses in running shoes flash smiles.

Doctor is here I think he is running late,
this will explain our policies.
You are responsible sorry
I know these rooms are cold
but Doctor wears a suit under his lab coat
we keep it comfortable for him
here, here is a paper blanket
sorry we have no tea, the pot is broken
no one has time, time . . .

Are you still here?
sorry the office is closed
the computer is down please call
tomorrow for an appointment we are
automated for your inconvenience
please hold please remain
on the line, your call is important to us
your call will be received in the order 
in which you enter your patient account number
date of birth and death, social
followed by the pound   invalid   invalid

Sorry, Doctor has no more appointments
this year.  Doctor is at a convention
and does not answer his page
someone
will try to get back to you
in the order your call
was tomorrow

Wait—we have just been informed
Doctor is no longer with us. 
Doctor is dead.
You are condemned to be free.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
p.s.  Put in one more call to the doctor just now.

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.]

Another unattractive day

Okay, I just try to be authentic.

Just interrupted by 2 people at the door.  Did not know them.  What did he want?  He kept saying meaningless things like did I know so and so down the street.  Finally something comes thru about inspecting foundations.  No, I said.  What?  No, and closed the door.  I'm sorry if I made his day worse.  I try to protect the world from me when I'm like this.  At times my anger comes up at old things, like the shrink who kept me on lithium even as it destroyed my kidneys, and I want to write a really angry letter.  When I feel better, I don't care, it's not what I want to be doing with a good hour.  The anger is not "real."  This is a chemical mess, or chaos in my neurochemistry.  Point is, you just get through this.

Saw pdoc today, this deep depression is news to both of us.  He does not want to put me on a new medication, obviously, I take 20 different things.  One is Seroquel at night, cools the mind, I can usually get to sleep.  We're going to try doubling the low dose.  The downside of this drug is that it has taken away most of my creativity.  But creativity is worthless if you're depressed, like sequined red shoes gathering dust on the closet floor.  It's a mood stabilizer too, he says.Call him in two weeks.  Gave me his direct line phone no.  I refrained from telling him my sports doc gave me his cell no.  There, a bit of humor.

Tomorrow, another dr.  Seem to have a new bladder infection.  That itself causes depression.  Stopped to fill scrip, killed my left shoulder, the other one, the one with a torn rotator cuff, lifting a half gallon of milk, which weighs 4 lbs.  Both sides hurt, I'm sure it's good news that I have oxycontin for it.  I am so depressed it does not make me happy.

A very depressing birthday visit from one of those people in my life.  It doesn't matter what I say, how light-hearted, any small talk, she can always incisively suggest what I should have done, The Answer.  I realize this is a virtually psychotic adaptation to life, people who honestly think there's always an answer,  things can be fixed.  As if I couldn't think of going to the hairdresser to get my hair washed, since it is so painful for me to do with the rotator cuff injury in the arm I can use.  As if I don't have a reason (a very painful neck) for not going to the hairdresser.  So let it go, she's like that.  But this is depression - it does not have perspective.  It can be obsessive.  It is your worst Monday morning.

Read something from a big wisdom blog on aging and snorted.  It is absolutely inevitable on these that people write in comments bragging about how f- happy they are.  And they're not old inside! And they love life.  And you can tell they think they deserve this, they think they earned it.

Okay, good news.  Tashi has recovered enough from our absence to come and ask for a cuddle twice, that's when she climbs up on my shoulder and lays across my heart, purring.  She likes it when I breathe on her head.  Above, an awfully good picture of her.

Oh, the phone.  I am not answering.

Notes on ego display

If I had a dog, I'd name her Karma, so I could enjoy scolding, "Bad Karma, bad."  (I have a weakness for bad puns, bad.)

Just thinking about that this morning as I scan my facebook, a way of having coffee with friends.  Here was a posting about someone who hurt my feelings recently, not on purpose, just doing his conditioned ego display. In his case it's correcting people, showing how much he knows.

Look at me!

His post this morning is about a minor health problem, a discomfort, and since it is morning and calm and my brain is not as busy yet as it will be, I heard myself think.  My self thought, Good.  This is not nice, and I wouldn't admit it to most people, because most people don't realize that they think things like that.  But I will so I can make some points about the whole thing.

First point:  it is not desirable to be glad someone hurts.  I must suppose I always knew that, but until I got going with spiritual practice and began to clear out my head, I didn't hear myself.  If I had, I might have thought it was good to enjoy someone else's pain; my (alcoholic) father did, out loud and at length.

My friend.  When he hurt me - however much he didn't mean to - he created bad karma: my anger toward him. Anger is in that balliwick we call "hatred," as in "Greed, hatred, and ignorance rise endlessly; I vow to abandon them."  This is one line of a central Buddhist chant, The Bodhissatva Vow.  And it says these three poisonous things rise in us endlessly; and we make a point of noticing them and leaving that neighborhood.

Of course, like my friend, you can make someone angry and not realize it.  Maybe you're fooling around playing Angry Birds on your cellphone in the grocery line and don't notice you should move forward and put your groceries on the conveyor belt.  Someone behind you who is in a big hurry and jealous of your cellphone is steaming.  Maybe rams her cart into your butt and glares.

Hopefully the karma won't be so bad that she follows you and rams your car, but things like that do happen, at least in mystery novels.  Point being, walk slowly and lightly, be aware, be kind, be careful, don't get too caught up in your own fun - it's easy to do harm.

Another point here: Wun is a human being made of all sorts of pixels of experience.  We can continually surprise ourselves.  A real person is not predictable, though a highly conditioned person can be.

My friend couldn't have predicted my reaction if he tried, and is not responsible for my reaction.  Unless you deliberately inflict pain, something direct like that, you are not causing someone else's reaction.  You happen to cause it.  I think this is a point psychologists make sometimes; you are not responsible for how someone else feels when they have what seems like an overblown emotional reaction.

At the same time, we can't utterly disown our impact on other people.  Or the earth.  Right?  That's why there are precepts about how we act in relationship, right speech, right action.  We are responsible for our intentions, for our actions.  We are supposed to intend no harm. You can relate this easily to The Golden Rule in its many forms found in religions all over the world.  My way of thinking about it is:  Be Kind.

So.  Sunday, and here's a sermon.  Now I'm going to church and not listen to another one.


[click here to go to the website that sells a poster of the image]

Beyond 'roid rage

I was twelve when I first read about this strange Eastern religion in which people cultivated detachment.  I didn't like the sound of that - cold, not human. Having emotions seemed to me the essence of personhood.  I came to know people, though, who were firmly attached to their anger, who defined themselves by their resentments.  How tiresome that is, how stuck.

And, in the wake of the massive doses of steroids I was given two months ago for my kidney transplant, I am keenly aware of how fast destructive emotion can arise out of the body's chemical uproar, and how hard it is to keep from venting it and letting it increase.  Insofar as I can do this, I owe it to years of meditation.  Sometimes people say meditation is useless, totally useless.  I can't agree.

Below, from Tricycle. The image is the Stroop test, explained in the article, where the speakers are also identified.

 Bennett Shapiro: Could attention training also help in dealing with destructive emotions?
Matthieu Ricard: Yes. In the same way we can learn to see only the colors of words and not their meanings, cultivating focused attention can help us become much quicker at recognizing what type of emotion is arising without being distracted by context or story line.
B. Alan Wallace: If, when anger or another afflictive emotion arises, you can say to yourself, “Never mind the object of my anger and the context; isn’t this interesting?” and investigate your own emotional state instead of merely reacting, you can also cultivate greater emotional balance and mental health.

Sunk cost

[image: calligraphy by Jakusho Kwong]

So here I am. I heard from several readers after my "Last Post" the other day. Husband Tom said the same thing to me hadv said - you can expand your idea of Dalai Grandma. And in a way I had, in posting my anger. As to knowing what I do here, I also see that Not Knowing, that's pretty Zen, after all.

Who are you today?

I don't know.

As Seung Sahn would say, "Good. Only keep that Don't Know mind."

I woke up today feeling better, ready to go to church. I'd been thinking of all the people I would miss in this community, of the fact that I've invested 25 years there. Economists call that "sunk cost." Traditional economics says your decision about future investment shouldn't have anything to do with past investment, but behavioral economics finds that it does. We are "loss averse," a term the Buddha would have smiled at, I think. There isn't much the dharma doesn't cover.

Nowhere do people act worse than in a spiritual community, I told Tom. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we monkeys are just bad in groups. A neighbor has a story about threatening to shoot out the tires on the truck of the tree guy working in the yard next door, culmination of a long, intricate feud. Meanness hurts worse in a religious setting, though, because we think that here, if anywhere, we are going to behave a little better than the chimpanzees. Okay, an ideal.

I had a rich mental life this morning. The very nice woman found me, pressed the Ziploc bag with the innocent, pretty Donate Life brochures in my hand, made such expressive hand and facial gestures that I really felt sorry for her. I knew my own face was showing some complex feelings.

She said, "I'm so sorry, there was no way . . ." No way to get past that difficult person, I thought. Someone on that committee who must hate me. I knew who that might be. But I am actually not sure who the core members are right now, or who was in that meeting.

Even as we were seated and the service began I found my eyes would light on someone and the words would leap energetically to my mind, Expletive you! My, I was aggressive. It was Expletive you for every one who was ever rude to me, maybe half a dozen people, little scenes popping up bright in memory. And expletive you, too! Funny, perhaps, in the recounting, but not fun really.

At the same time I was feeling a strong energy in the church, the good energy of hundreds of people, many of whom I've spent some time with over the years, of friends my heart leapt in gladness to see. Complex, good-hearted people, real solid people, face after face of men and women I trust and like, who would never have done this idiot thing. It was a special day, voting to affirm a new associate minister, and people were happy.

We read an affirmation by Dr. Martin Luther King about embodying peace. Music played, and I meditated a little, counting my outbreaths one through ten. Even the first breath surprised me with its depth. I lost track, started again. As we settled into the quiet time at the center of the service, I formed my hands in a mudra of intention, just the first two fingers touching the tip of the thumb, and thought, I want to be peaceful. I want to be peace. I could feel heat in my hands, and waves of peace came over me, and I simply calmed down.

Every meditator knows what it feels like to try really hard to meditate in a bad situation - I remember doing it one night, most of the night, in the ER with my mother, who'd had an anaphylactic reaction - and to have it not work the way you wish it would. This was an unusually powerful experience for me. It seemed to validate the years of investment in meditation. Mentally I thanked many teachers, who kept saying, each in their own way, "Keep sitting."

How the Chinese doctor sees it

"It" being the sort of chaos I'm experiencing - especially the frustrated anger that had me wide awake at 3 a.m.

It is absolutely not hard to find things to be frustrated about in my life. Kidney function significantly worse, despite a lot of efforts and expense - and suddenly, the imminent threat of dialysis. Still limping with pain in the left foot, yet still suffering moodswings caused by the corticosteroid shots that were supposed to fix that flareup. (Still getting used to having significant arthritis.) Still anemic, and without what I need to monitor my own hemaglobin and give myself EPO shots. Can't see kidney doctor for over two more weeks. Forgot to do my PT exercises last night until I was in bed.

And all this chronic illness, and Tom's, is mostly invisible, not dramatic; when I go to church, someone usually tells me "You're looking good." I don't argue with them. So the recycle piles up in the garage while I rest the foot, and my car hasn't been cleaned in a year. I used to be able to do these trivial things myself, but with a low red blood count and a uremic burden, running the Roomba is too much effort. I know people who are dying, and courageously, so I usually try not to whine.

It was the stubborn pain in the foot, coupled with my decision to refuse more corticosteroids, that got me to make an emergency appointment with my acupuncturist yesterday. Dr. Wang fit me in at 8:30 this morning, and I had it all aced, dressed, checkbook in purse, out to car at 8:00 a.m. - and my car wouldn't even turn over. The battery is only a month old, but the lights had been left on. My little Civic chimes to remind me to turn them off but, I told myself, it isn't idiot-proof. By then, I was focused on my goal, and didn't even bother to get mad, just got in the van and backed it out, chewing up the lawn the way I do. The driveway is narrow, the van is large, I do my best.

I had started my morning writing in my journal about how I don't like to be told to look on the bright side. I can stand it if people want to falsify their own feelings, but I hate it when they try to get me to do it. So I didn't try to generate any positive thoughts about running my car battery down, just focused on the task and drove to the doctor's office, not getting in a wreck.

He listened to my recital, asked a few questions, gently palpated the foot. Then he said, "Which problem is bothering you most?"

I surprised myself by saying, "The anger." It had trumped the foot as I lay awake in the night contemplating the meanness of the dialysis nurse in charge of my care last time. I should have called her up before the licensing board, but I didn't have the energy.

He nodded. "Then we will concentrate on that."

As he applied the alcohol and then the needles, I said, "But it's all one, isn't it?" The idea of a holistic self is foundational in Chinese medicine, which makes it so different from the Western medicine with its specialists in pieces and parts and chemicals that haven't been adequately studied.

"Yes," he said, speaking clearly, because I had, of course, forgotten my hearing aids. He went on. "Spring is the time of wood, and wood opens the Liver, where anger is stored. So it is very easy to get angry right now."

This clicked in place for me as an interested student of medical systems. I knew that Wood is the creative energy. And I had already written two poems that morning, literally woke up with one going in my head.

"Too much wood," I said. "Is the antidote metal?" Yes.

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is based on an elaborate theory of energies, and includes a theory of constitutions: we are made of combinations of five elements. Years ago I determined that I was a person who benefitted from the element metal when I felt scattered - which translates in daily life as structure, schedule, calm activities.

So here I am, much improved by the treatment and determined to make lists, meditate, and read unexciting things. It is working. I do not feel in nearly so much danger of sending out furious e-mails and initiating lawsuits. Though I like to think I might when I get organized.