Spiritual growth, Ow!

I know I'm stealing a cliche, but I can't help myself - Spiritual growth is not for sissies. It is hard. It means you give up mental stuff - and think how we sometimes balk at just giving up regular stuff, like our favorite flannel shirt, even though it is frayed, even torn. Spiritual growth comes from dancing with your demons, a metaphor I am drawn to, coming from a childhood informed by myth and fairy tales. Another way to put it is, you have to stop clinging to your illusions and delusions if you are to live comfortably in reality. That's the way the tradition I practice in sees it.

I think most people begin a meditation practice with the idea that it can bring peace of mind. (Here's an interesting side fact: one of the most effective psychotherapies, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, was created by Marsha Linehan, a very long-time meditator, and is based on techniques Zen teachers use.) Well, in the beginning meditation can feel very good; on one tape, Pema Chodron says there is a saying that spiritual practice begins in bliss and ends in bliss, but the road inbetween is hell. Teachers don't emphasize that, but try to inspire us to stay on the path by telling us how good life will be. Eventually. Keep sitting.

Yesterday I was on that craggy, dry, horrible part of the road. Depressed. I know better, but I tried to figure it out, and couldn't. Eventually - in the evening - I talked to Tom about how old I feel, how discouraging this foot thing is, and cried. This morning, the sun keeps coming out, making Ohio a worthwhile place to live, and I am singing little songs like - I'm not kidding - Three Little Birds. ("Don't worry 'bout a thing, 'cause every little thing gonna be alright.")

I can't seem to keep up with my health, and my fears about it. I can't seem to give up worrying about the next damn thing, knowing worry does no good. I push worry away, and it just goes underground. For instance, the transplant center called to make an appointment with the transplant surgeon in July, a routine re-evaluation. But what if I flunk? I just want a kidney, okay? Every time the phone rings it could be a kidney. . . next week I get full labs again, and I will hone in on that magic number, the GFR, the amount of your kidney function. Please don't fall. Please don't make me start thinking again about whether I will undertake dialysis again or just die. Always something to worry about.

I don't exactly worry about the damn feet, but they are absolutely handicapping. And as it is a temporary handicap, I am not set up with the kind of services you need, a housekeeper, transportation, an electric scooter. I rely on Tom too much. He is very supportive. Even so, it is a daily struggle. Cheery people want you to call it "a challenge," as if it were a Sudoku. I suppose on one level of abstraction, it is. One small life in the river of time, one blade of grass. Still, I am a sentient being and I feel pain as well as anxiety. Yesterday I absolutely couldn't get the new ankle support system comfortable. Then there was, and is, the pain in the hip from these major adjustments in footwear. Take tramadol or just Tylenol? I really should research tramadol . . .

I have been working with bone edema and ankle pain since January. Now I am out of the boot at last, but still wearing an air cast on the right foot, and a sort of little athletic supporter on the left ankle. They throw off the fit of all my shoes, and make my feet itch. Yesterday I got online and tried to find pretty all-cotton socks that would fit my big feet, and this was just one more source of pain - I could not find them in pretty colors. Big feet, you wear black or white. I know, there is an answer, dye them, paint them, sew beads on the cuffs. Sigh.

I need new orthotics the doctor said, but the physical therapist who specializes in that is on vacation, so I have to hobble around in the old ones for a couple more weeks. But that's okay, in a sense, because I'm not supposed to hobble, I am still supposed to stay off my feet. And not drive. Rest the ankles. I have thought of making a list of all the things you don't have to do when you're not supposed to stand or walk around, but the idea of trying to cheer myself up really did get me down.

So . . . yesterday all this was too much for me to really be with. The depression came up, a brown filter between me and all these frightening and frustrating realities. Today, much better. And a little closer to reality, more willing to follow doctor's orders, eat a good breakfast, write to a friend. Interested in life again.

Being depressed was a form of dancing with that particular foggy-brown demon, one I knew very well earlier in my life, one who used to come in and stay for months on end. Coming out of depression so quickly, I lay that down to continuing practice, meditating badly, reading dharma talks even as I grumbled. Maybe the most important thing was being being willing to let go of the resentment and depression, to be open to morning, to let my mood and attitude change and change again.
[the image: my current reading]

Love the monkey

I was sorry recently when our minister said in a sermon that he had tried meditation for six months, but "I couldn't stand that monkey mind." I was afraid this statement, backed by a minister's authority, might have the unhappy effect of assuring people that an unpleasant experience is enough reason to give up practice.

"Monkey mind" is a common metaphor in Buddhism - the mind as a nervous monkey, jumping from branch to branch, chattering and shrieking. No peace and quiet, not the bliss we are all hoping to find.

But the fact is, this is not just about mental activity. In itself, an active mind can be delightful. Sometimes we seek it out in scholarship and debate. Some people enjoy flashy movies with car chases and explosions and confusing plot twists, or concerts with smoke and mirrors and surprises in the aisles. The monkey mind people can't stand is something more than just excitement and sparking thoughts. And it is not Creative Monkey, brimming with ideas now that he has a little space to think, or Planning Monkey, who won't let go of the to-do list. It's worse. I'm talking about Obsessive Monkey. It's this one people can't stand. I know it intimately.

It got me right away on my first weekend retreat. Everything was wrong. The basement space we ended up in was ugly and crowded, not anyone's idea of a spiritual space, and smelled of mold. I am allergic to mold. It was hot, very hot and humid in that airless room, a thunderstorm in the offing. I was sweating. I hate to sweat. The chair I sat on was vinyl, and I was wearing shorts. Whenever I peeled my sticky, burning thighs off the chair and readjusted myself, the noise was loud. The leader cautioned me to stop doing that. I burned with embarrassment.

In a lengthy lecture on Zen etiquette, all new to me, we had been told we had to come to every sit, had to walk in a line to the dining hall holding our hands in a certain posture and looking down, and they were going to wake us up at 5:00 in the morning. I was too shy to ask if it could possibly be true there wasn't going to even be any coffee before the first sits. (Yes, it was true, proving to me that I could live through even the most extreme hardship.)

It was insane. I felt somewhat like I had been dropped into a really bad high school play written by someone with issues. And my body was giving me fits. I have fibromyalgia, and trying to sit up straight in that stupid vinyl kitchen chair made my back hurt all the way up to my neck. My head ached, my jaws ached, my shoulders seized up with pain. You weren't supposed to move, not that moving helped for very long.

I had been meditating for about two years at this time, but my method failed me now. I could only think of how incredibly miserable I was. Quickly these thoughts became an obsessive anxiety: I can't stand this heat I don't tolerate heat well Tom knows that could I get him to leave he won't leave tonight, he's like that, he always sticks things out maybe I can get him to see how much I'm suffering he could get a ride home with someone else maybe he would leave tomorrow, maybe at noon maybe we could compromise marriage is supposed to be about compromise. . . . Hot, it must be a hundred degrees in here, when is it going to storm, I can't stand this I can't stand another

Suddenly the teacher at the far end of the room shouted into the quiet, Sink into the heat! Everything in my mind crumbled and fell to the floor, as at the same time my stiff, suffering body relaxed and I exhaled. I felt -- well, there. Relaxed. I was just sitting in a chair, no longer resisting the discomfort with all my heart and soul. The monkey fell quiet.

From there on the retreat became a memorable experience, and I will always be grateful to that teacher, Daniel Terragno, for his kindness to a novice. By 9:00 Saturday night, the end of a full day of sitting, I felt clarity and peace. I recall going into our room and turning on the big floor fan, looking out the window at a field of golden grain gently waving in the twilight, and thinking I had never seen anything so beautiful. I was perfectly happy. When I told the teacher that the next morning, he smiled and said, "This too shall pass."

Thinking about this experience reminds me of the importance of having teachers whose job it is to help you cut through your stuff, to surprise you out of your obsession, to assure you your experience is normal and encourage you to stick with the ups and downs.

Lay people, even those who have teachers, meditate at home most of the time, where Obsession Monkey can catch us off guard. His chatter may be about some problem with another person, someone who hurt you, a painful memory, an anxiety, a symptom you're not attending to - in short, something you'd rather not think about. My experience is that I have to turn the volume down on the chatter and sit for just a moment with whatever feeling it is arousing. And then return to my breath. And return to my breath again. That doesn't mean I can ignore the issue.

When an obsession is loud and persistent, it's a psychological or life problem that we're being called to pay some attention to off the cushion. It isn't coming up for no reason, and it isn't irrelevant. It's coming up because meditation gives us the space, the occasion, to meet our real self. This is exactly the time not to quit practice.

In other words, love the monkey. That monkey mind is actually our friend. It is us, our own mind demanding we pay attention to our own reality. It is one of the ways a steady practice leads us toward a more peaceful and satisfying life.

Eating a Big Mac, for example

[Chad Foster, of North Huntingdon, Pa., gazes at the world's largest Big Mac sculpture (14 feet high, 12 feet wide), at the grand opening of the McDonald's Big Mac Museum Restaurant in North Huntingdon, Pa., on Wednesday, 2007. (AP Photo/McDonald's Corp., Henny Ray Abrams)]

It happened again today. I was in the shower thinking about the things I want to do today, matching them against my priorities, revising my mental schedule, when Lakein's Question came to mind:

What is the best use of my time right now?

The answer popped into my head: taking my shower. I could - just do what I was doing, take a shower. Instead, I was sending my thoughts out for a planning session. As I say, this is the second time this has happened in the last week, and it is happening the way Alan Lakein advised in his book: the answer popped spontaneously to mind, and I knew it was the right answer.

What a pleasure it is anyway - a hot shower with Caswell Massey rose soap, in your own comfortable bathroom, the electric heater turned on, the towels just the kind you like. Over and over, it's the same simple lesson - just be where you are, do what you are doing, do it all the way without sending some part of yourself somewhere else. So often that turns out to be enjoyable. In a way, it's the other face of something I write about more often, the need to let our demons in the door.

At one retreat, Daniel Terragno Roshi talked about this issue of holding parts of our experience at arm's length. "If you're going to make a mistake," he said, "do it. If you want a Big Mac and you decide to have one, enjoy it." Of course, we serious Zen students could be heard gasping in the noble silence. But here and there you could see a mischievous smile.

My personal demon

I tend to think of demons as looking like those little troll dolls that are having a really awful hair day. But this morning I saw this lying in one of Tom's boxes of stuff-that-might-come-in-handy-someday, and I knew right away that it would make an excellent demon.

I bought the little cat thing years ago as a Christmas ornament, delighted with features that my cell-cam can't capture: four tiny teeth, a red tongue, a nose, white-tipped paws. Those round black circles glued on it are supposed to represent a leopard's spots.

I have been annoyed by my demons lately, so I told Tom, "I should carry this thing with me everywhere I go for a week, the way they used to make high-school kids carry a sack of flour as if it were a baby." In the case of the programs for high-school kids, the point was to give them an idea of how burdensome a baby is, though the flour sacks didn't cry pointlessly, endlessly all night or throw up on you. I don't know whether the programs worked, but I thought this demon might remind me to have a sense of humor. Demons are really not so large.

This one is recumbent on the first collage I ever made, and the most enthusiastic. As you can see, the workshop gave me access to glitter glue, rubber stamps and gold (!) ink, and all manner of scrapbook findings. There is much more to the collage, which struck the other workshop participants dumb during show-and-tell. Compared to theirs, mine lacked theme, sentiment, and organization. It evidenced just how busy and eclectic my mind can be. As I tried to explain it, I felt a little bit like a kindergardener who doesn't know how you're supposed to draw houses. I don't know how I know how kindergardeners feel, because I didn't get to go to kindergarden and learn everything you're supposed to learn there. So I put the collage away. I only happened to pull it out today because I was looking for black paper to pose my little demon on.

I don't know. Maybe comparison is the demon. You can't compare your collage to anyone else's. Mine, for instance, has a feature I had forgotten about: the center is a sort of door the curious can lift to reveal a beautiful bouquet. It seems to me that this kind of raw creativity might qualify me as an outsider artist, at least.