Life on the Other Shore

That it feels different here on this shore than you thought it would does not negate the enormity of the distance you traversed and the strength it took you to do it.  from Dear Sugar, May 17, 2012

Go ahead and read the letter and Cheryl Strayed's answer, which includes the above sentence.  Then come back here.

Now.  I want to talk about enlightenment, something the legitimate Teachers seldom do, because they want you to stop striving to reach it.  Over and over we chant in the Heart Sutra, "no attainment, nothing to attain."  But we don't believe it.  We believe there is something far better than human life that we can achieve if we just hold the pose, so to speak.  And the desire for Shangri-La can motivate us to practice.  

As Dear Sugar says so eloquently, 

We want to believe that on the other side of whatever crap we had to swim away from there’s a crap-free beach where we can lounge in the sun at last. Free and at peace.

She goes on to assure Haunted that many things in his life attest to the fact that he is on the other shore. And I agree.  But . . .

But, boy, there's a lot of crap on this beach, too.  Insects eating up beautiful plants, for example.  Well, the insect likes it.  Needs it.

There are still bugs in Haunted's life, which is why he is writing to an advice columnist.  He's sober and has a good relationship in his life and still doesn't feel good a lot of the time.  He isn't perfect yet.

And that's where an advice columnist can't help you the way an authentic spiritual teacher can.  A pat on the back from Sugar, a hug from a therapist, a gold star, the Nobel Prize, these things elevate your serotonin and dopamine for a while, but not for long.  What a Teacher can do is remind you of The Path.  It is a path of vows and practice that is not particularly about looking for personal happiness, and that promises not perfection but authenticity.  This is true of every path, but here is where I move toward the path I know best, Zen.  This path emphasizes awareness, and growing awareness can be like awakening from a fall off a cliff in a full body cast:  ouch, this hurts, ow, that hurts too!  my toe!!

In other words, awake is the opposite of anesthetized.  It means experiencing new and different kinds of pain, though perhaps less dramatically, not for quite so long.

This is generally a well-kept secret of Zen though Dainin Katagiri was heard to mutter, "You don't know what suffering is until you get enlightened."  I have been quoting that these days as I go through the preliminaries to cataract surgery.

I winced as I wrote that.  I am really afraid of this, and I know it.  Through many years of practice I have awakened to my body -  the part below my neck - and my body flutters with anxiety about letting someone cut my eyes.  Twenty years ago I would have responded to my deep fear with an unrelenting headache and irritable bowel syndrome. And, I suppose, irritable and distracted me.

Is now better than then?  Yes, it is.  My earlier self would have been mindlessly spreading unhappiness wherever I walked, building bad karma that would be flung back in my face.  To return to the metaphor, there is a lot of crap on this beach despite years of practice, but I'm not kicking it at other people.  And I also feel the suns of the Heavenly Abodes and the rhythm of the waves.  And I know crap when I see it, and can sometimes walk around it if I stick to the path.

Or sit down and put on my hip boots.  Not a bad metaphor for the dharma, which reminds us of reality - human life entails suffering.  This is it.  It's okay.

Who is the Enemy?

Above, the Dalai Lama talks about what is a fundamental goal of every religion - that we learn to love and serve others by becoming less obsessed with our desires and preferences.  That command over our own thoughts and actions is the road to being happier more of the time, suffering less, and causing less suffering.

It is not at all about becoming Nobody.  On the contrary, realized people always have a large energy field, or presence.  It is about becoming who we really are, not who we were told to be.  Insofar as we practice "self-denial" we are giving up our pleasures or desires.  We are denying our addictions and distractions, our delusions - relinquishing them - and becoming more fully human - the women and men we actually want to be.

Appreciating the Least Thing

Impatiens self-seeded by my sidewalk

The moon is serenely shining up in the sky, and she is alone in all the heavens and on the entire earth; but when she mirrors herself in the brilliant whiteness of the evening dews which appear like glittering pearls broadcast upon the earth from the hand of a fairy,--how wondrously numerous her images! And is not every one of them complete in its own fashion? This is the way in which an enlightened mind contemplates God and the world.  God is immanent in the world and not outside of it; therefore, when we comprehend the secret of the "little flower in the crannied wall," we know the reason of this universe.
Soyen Shaku
Zen for Americans

The above is a description of the panentheism of Shin, a Buddhist sect that incorporates features of Shinto, an ancient Japanese nature religion in whose internet  manifestation I've been wandering this morning.  There I found the amulets below, which you can buy to protect your pet.  The love of our animal companions has become obvious with social media, which sometimes seem dominated by pictures of cats.  (Guilty as charged.)  My own UU church has a group devoted to compassion for animals; many American Buddhists don't eat meat out of that compassion, following the precept to do no harm.  I notice that many of the same people campaigning for mercy to animals are also involved with recycling, reuse, and sharing.

 It is also interesting to me that amulets are traditionally returned after a year to the temple, to be burned in a ritual way, part of the respect for all phenomena that also causes the temple to sell recycle bags.

There seems to me to be lots of room in this country for a religion that supports the love of nature.  In fact, the warming of our climate, finally agreed upon by every major scientific group, is telling us we need to cherish nature much more than we do, and stop cutting down trees to manufacture disposable (paper) towels.  When I was a girl, they didn't exist.  My mother used rags, like everyone else, made from worn-out clothes and linens not good enough to go in a quilt.

We are meant to extend the same kind of caring to ourselves, as well.  Americans - overworked, badly fed, sick from spending our whole lives sitting - have a special need to adopt self-care in the face of commercial interests that want you to think a powerful new car or great vacation or ED pill or new shoes or bacon pretzel burger or more money or winning the game will make you happy.  Not so.  Not for long. 

An alternative to the dissatisfied consumer life is the poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson referred to above:

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

To entirely understand a flower, root and all, qualifies as an epiphany, or awakening, if you like.  It's a grander awakening to understand ourselves the very same way.  For this, you have the serious practice of zazen.
~~~~~~~~~~
p.s.  Or course, I always notice when the word "man" is used to mean "humankind," which would include the, uh, fair sex, woman.  This dates from times when women indeed had no civil rights, and were seen as sexual objects and helpmeets.  I didn't have a chance to talk with Lord Tennyson about this. 

Inside My Bipolar Week

At the beginning of this month I vowed to change my life, starting with working harder on my mind. Is it working? Maybe. I am keeping on with it. That's what I can say. Waking up is so hard to do, from one standpoint. Easy from another: All you have to do is follow own breath in...out...rest.  For even the few seconds of one complete breath you are turning away from your itches and wallows and, as the Buddha said, "when you forget yourself, you are free." Unfortunately, it isn't as easy as one breath; if it were, everyone would be enlightened.

In the mess of my last five years of sick and sicker, I thought the first thing to get in place was my practice. I have been reliably doing my morning practice for some time now, and added an evening sit with Tom. He and I are each in a conflagration of problems with difficult people in our lives, and meditating together helps us get to the evening practice. Part of what you are practice when you sit zazen is putting your gnawing problems aside. The problems are still in motion, reality is gnawing at everyone involved and changing them, and you get off the carousel for awhile.

My biggest problem this past year has been my mood swings.  They have been dramatic, and the psychiatrist washed his hands of me, afraid to try any other chemicals.  So I've been trying to get a handle on them myself.  Recently I was looking at TCM and hypothesized that I might be expending a lot of energy/dopamine on a good day, talkinglaughingcookingmakingartgeneratingideas, so that the next day I am naturally exhausted (from the Latin, emptied out, drained).  So I set out to curb my enthusiasms, to move more quietly through  high-energy days. Impulse control. This was hard the first day, but is getting easier with practice.  Sitting still and poised, no matter how you feel, is central to zazen, and maybe to equanimity.

Yesterday seemed to be somewhat better, as bad days go. I didn't cry or carry on angrily at anyone. I got a couple of important practical things done by following my day's to-do list strictly in priority.  I still went semi-comatose around 4:00 pm, despite an infusion of energy from a visit from Chris, and a few minutes enjoying the garden with her. I was sad that I can't work in the gardens myself anymore, but happy to have her help getting the peonies under control.

I talked too much visiting with Chris. I keep doing that. Right speech-and-listening is a lifetime project. In fact, it's singled out on the Eightfold Path.

Chris is a kind person, and tolerated me well. We couldn't hug because she was covered in allergens. That's another thing I accomplished yesterday; I made an appointment with a local acupuncturist my grandson found for me, who has special training in allergy.

There's much more to a week, of course, but I'll close with touching down on my sleep and lack of it. Last night I felt clammy and discouraged, and couldn't fall asleep until after midnight.  Then I awoke at the traditional time for insomniacs, 3:00 am.  However, I remembered the intention I set before I went to bed, to light some incense and meditate if that happened, and I did.

Meditating by candlelight in a dark house in the middle of the night is pleasant, quiet and easy. It is not yet full Pink Moon, but getting closer. The moon is always full, of course. "Full moon" means only that we can see it all from where we stand.

Pink Moon phlox

Waking Up All Over Again

Wheat Field, Vincent van Gogh

I have learned that waking up to reality means waking up over and over - these can be called realizations as opposed to more mystical epiphanies.  You realize something.  Then years later you realize it a little better, more deeply.  This is about one that took me fifteen years.  Therein lies a tale.

It is the story of when I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997 - a diagnosis that put me into the second half of my life in an instant.  By that I mean that all six urgent imperative things on that day's to-do list crumbled to dust.  Goals, dramas, everything - my God, you mean I could die?  Let me emphasize that:
  I could die?
What, at 53? 

I had no symptoms, no family history.  The growth was found on a routine annual mammogram that I'd put off for six months because, you know, I hate mammograms.  They hurt.  The small but mighty growth was already invasive.  The surgeon told me that by the time a lump was noticeable, it would have metastasized everywhere in my body.  I am alive today only because I had a privileged life that took good health insurance for granted, and I was raised to be a dutiful person.

My body will die.  You may think you know that, whatever age you are, but what I've learned is that most people don't, really.  They can live to be 90 and get mad that they're dying.  Astonished that their 80-year-old mother dies.  I knew a woman of around age 50 who died of a heart attack in the recovery room after an elective surgery, but was revived.  I visited her in the hospital and she was so delighted and relieved to be alive.  She was in a weekly group I was in, so I saw her bright eyes glaze over as the weeks went by until she was her old self again, overscheduled, on yet another fad diet. Sleepwalking.

After my own surgery I went for radiation therapy five days a week, all by my brave little self.  It was wretched.  They strap you down, they shut a big lead door.  You have never been more alone in your life. 

I was so anxious that through all those treatments I recited the 23rd psalm over and over to myself in my mind.  I belonged to a Unitarian church, and it had been decades since I would have called myself a Christian, but I had not rejected the good parts. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.......That's what came to me.  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.  He leadeth me beside the still waters.  He restoreth my soul.

Water Lilies, Claude Monet

 I often waited for my treatment in a tiny waiting room, shivering in my hospital gown, with a cheerful African-American woman named Mary whose kids had bought her a beautiful yellow satin pajama top because none of the gowns were big enough for her.  She wore a pendant with a portrait of the pretty Caucasian Jesus of my Sunday School posters. Maybe that had inspired me.

One day we were talking aimlessly and she said, "At first I thought, Why me?  Then one day I realized, Why not me?"  I took that in, but I knew I didn't quite get it, though "Why me?" had not been one of my own thoughts. I don't know if I had thoughts, or just panic.

Here's what I think now:  "Why me?" comes from being located in our small individual self.  It's easy to see that you have friends whose lifestyles are way worse than yours, and you eat right, and yet you're the one who got hepatitis - it isn't fair.  In some subtle way, we believe things should be fair.

I don't know what made me think of this recently, but when I did I said to Tom, "Oh.  I get it. Why not me? comes from realizing our oneness."  Buddhist talk, meaning that the larger point of view understands our common humanity and mortality.  Everything and everyone's going to die - why would I be the exception to that?  Everyone's subject to accidents, why would I not be? 

If the idea gives you the shivers, The Five Remembrances are printed at the bottom of this blog.  This traditional Buddhist chant has helped me get used to the idea.  Well, somewhat.

The Practice You Need

Collage August 26, 2012

My goodness, here it is Sunday and I haven't posted here since Tuesday.  You don't even want to know why, the chaos around here.  It's a new day, and I have awakened with optimism.  For a long time I have seen Sunday as a free day, a sort of sabbath to rest from the things I feel responsible for, not even demanding of myself that I meditate or exercise, though I do have to follow my elaborate pill schedule and drink enough water and brush and floss and wear my compression sleeve and leg things and shoes with insoles.......Yes.  And glasses and hearing aids.  Just to stay alive. It's not easy being me.  However, Sunday is my day off from all the rest of the catastrophe.  As much as is practical.

A while back a reader asked me to write about my practice.  I'm wary of being specific about it, because my practice suits me in my circumstance and this body, and after this many years along the Buddhist path.  So for now, to start with, I want to more generally talk about what I think that path is - in other words, the overview of the practice.

Based on the prescription attributed to the Buddha that is called "the Noble Eightfold Path," I have three goals:

understand reality deeply
be fully present
behave

Zen compels me to point out that I can't fully explain what I mean in words.  Furthermore, these three aspects of the path aren't separate. If you are entirely present and aware in a situation, that means you understand its nature, and the large nature of all reality, our interconnection, karma; and that means you will  try not to do harm by your speech and actions. These actually all point toward one goal, to practice being awake.

So maybe this is the point to use the word "enlightenment."  When I started on this path, that's what I wanted, and I understood it as a condition of no more suffering.  Of being relaxed and clear and free of stress and all those negative emotions like fear and anger, transcending pain.  I was suffering a lot then so I worked very hard, and after a while had a grand spiritual experience.  But the bliss and ease it rolled in with was eroded by the drip . drip . drip . of  life. I had a lot to learn about my own behavior, how I thought and what I did that made me suffer more than necessary.  I also had to learn that I was not going to be entirely free of suffering, that no one is.  If you read the Buddha's story/myth, he continued to suffer, too.

That learning came about through "spiritual practice," and I have done many kinds, through which I have chipped away at  my delusions and inched toward clear seeing and doing less harm.  I think I'll stop here for now.  It is Sunday, and I want to make it to coffee hour at church.  One of the things I've learned is that you have to have a community in which you feel valued and which shares your values.
~~~~~
p.s.  Had a delightful lunch after church with good friends and getting to know each other better.  But Panera's charges a bit much for a bowl of soup.  And you don't want to know how many calories are in a pastry.  Really.

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. 

Vaughan Bites the Lime

Henri Matisse, Still Life With Oranges (and maybe a lime)

The false self is the self of duality, the self of self-consciousness and limitation. Our true self is as wide open and unstructured as this very moment. Sesshin challenges us to experience this moment without limitation, without thinking good or evil, without thought of "how we are doing" or what we are accomplishing or failing to accomplish by our sitting. 
Barry Magid 

It's me, still working on that koan I discussed last time, which is working on me as I piece around in James Ford's The Book of Mu.  What I'm getting is that the point is just to be here experiencing reality.  You can get very fancy with koan work, but the point is almost laughably simple.  Just be open to reality.  A baby can do it. 

I wish I had managed to videotape our godson Vaughan one Sunday at brunch when he vigorously communicated his desire for a lime wedge on his Dad's plate.  He was under one year old, a dynamic, curious child.  His Dad gave it to him, he turned the lime around, quite a feat in little fingers, looking at it, squeezing it to see what it would do.  He touched his tongue to the skin.  Made the decision and bit down on that lime.  The expressions that played over his face were priceless, starting with shock and awe.  I can't describe that visible flow of direct experience.  Maybe you could try it yourself in front of a mirror.  I can't, I laugh just imagining it.

We get so fancy about life, how to live, and oh, how to fix ourselves.  People get very fancy about the Zen retreats mentioned in the quote, which are called "sesshin," and there can be a complex "etiquette" and rituals to follow.  The idea is that following all this encourages you to pay attention to your movements every moment, though it does seem easy to fall in love with all the theater of it and forget the point.

The goal is actually so simple:  just be here.  This moment.  Then keep doing that.  Being wide open.  Biting that lime.

Wasting Time

These days I am back to reading Dogen, and getting it a little more.  He is the foremost poet-teacher of Zen, and has to be understood in the way you understand a poem - you experience it, let it soak in.  I like to read a few lines and be stopped to stay with something.  This morning it was this, from Actualizing the Fundamental Point, or Genjo Koan.

Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide.  The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water.

There are many beautiful pictures online of the world reflecting in a drop of water.  But what I thought of as I read this was one of my favorite poems, in which the great light and life in everything is reflected in distant cowbells, in dried horse manure and the empty house, in the predator/prey world of the hawk. James Wright experienced a beauty much larger than our usual confined definition of "beautiful" and also the urgency of being awake. How when we are operating in a daze of desires and duties, we are not really alive.  When we are awake and alive, the moon is reflected even in us, and no moment is wasted.

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
                           by James Wright
 

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,   

Asleep on the black trunk,

Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.   

Down the ravine behind the empty house,   

The cowbells follow one another   

Into the distances of the afternoon.   

To my right,

In a field of sunlight between two pines,   

The droppings of last year’s horses   

Blaze up into golden stones.

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.   

A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.

I have wasted my life.

[Click here for a link to the brief Wikipedia entry on Wright, which points to his most popular poems.]

Enlightenment

Stella Doro lily doesn't know it's too late to bloom.  Note the sheltered ladybug.

Salvation, if we can talk about it at all, is the end of ambition, which is when you become completely one with your experience. Knowledge becomes one with wisdom, which is called buddhahood or the awakened state of mind. You realize that you never needed to make the journey at all . . .
Chogyam Trungpa, “The Human Realm,” in Transcending Madness: The Experience of the Six Bardos, page 258.

My main practice is Zen, but with an interest in other streams.  A year or so ago I bought "The Practice of Contemplative Photography," which includes some photographs by Trungpa Rinpoche, and that stimulated my interest in his work.  Like Shunryu Suzuki, he is more difficult to understand than his American followers, but worth the effort.

What these words remind me of is that I am perfectly what I am, what I was made to be by long and wide streams of karma, national, genetic, historical, environmental, and so on.  In Zen we talk about "the self," or "the conditioned self."  At one time I believed my task was to get rid of it.  I did, I believed that, because it was becoming clear to me that my histrionic hypersensitive over-responsible and bipolar self was the source of my suffering.  I remember Daniel Terragno asking me reasonably, "How could you do that?"  I thought we weren't communicating very well.

You cannot not be who you are. Your brain and your butt are the shape they are.  And you are okay.  But (as many teachers have added), you still need to work a little harder.  You may be OCD, but you can learn how to throw away a cereal box. You may be hypersensitive to criticism, but you can learn whose criticism to avoid or how to deflect it. It's bit by bit, inch by inch. There's always work to do

When I started a regular meditation practice, it was in a frenzy of fear that the cancer in my breast would kill me.  This was irrational; it had been discovered on a mammogram at stage one.  Nevertheless, I began doing a white light healing meditation you can find taught all over the world.  From there I somehow moved into just sitting following my breath, then a lot of other practices.  At this point in my life, I was also in torment with my alcoholic family, and they weren't the only people in my life driving me crazy.  That was how I saw life then: they drove me crazy.

There was some truth to that.  Some people are hard to take, and you should have a really good reason to spend time with them.  Over the next couple of years I was going to leave behind several people who just weren't good for me.  It was hard every single time.  Now I am amazed that I ever tolerated them.  But I didn't see the reality then.  My reality was governed by an idea that I should like everyone, tolerate rudeness, cultivate patience, and enjoy pool parties.  I mean, of course. 

You know what?  I like a genuine beach and a nice big body of water, as well as a creek and a waterfall.  I hate swimming pools, chlorine, cold water. It's a matter of personal preferences.  But I had to take swimming lessons and push push push myself to try and try harder - in the face of fibromyalgia pain - because, well, everyone said swimming was good for you.  And I thought I should learn to like it.  And certainly I had to go to my brother's pool parties because, well, he invited me.  Though another thing I really don't like is being around people who are devoting themselves to drinking all day.

One of the things Zen says is that when you are enlightened, you will taste a cup of tea and know for yourself whether the water is hot or cold.  It's a metaphor.  You learn you don't like Carol, and you're cold when you're cold, and hungry when you're hungry.  Other children of alcoholics may recognize the denial of ordinary needs that was enforced in my childhood.

I thought practice would teach me how to handle all the problems in my life back then. It has, including that some things can't be solved.  Also, I often see more clearly now where the problem lies, and how it can be handled.  This is hard for me to say, but there's actually nothing wrong with Carol, and I bet some people like her.  She is what she is.  I just - sorry, I just didn't like her.  And don't miss her.

In short, what I am gradually approaching with practice is not universal joy but being aware.  That includes, though it is not limited to, what you like and don't like, moment by moment.  It applies to many mundane things that can add up to STRESS.  It's very interesting how the little raft takes you far, but not where you thought it was going. 

[In looking up the hot and cold thing, I was led to a dharma talk I think must be by Shinge Roshi, for those who want to think more about this.]

The Zen of Not Sleeping Well

I can nap anywhere

Living without a conception of yourself - as it relates to your health and ability -

and also without ideas of how things ought to be, what you are entitled to

and not holding your plans and desires too tightly

and relinquishing your belief that you can, or could, control what happens to you (such as a good night's sleep)

but getting to notice that your stomach can't put away a certain family problem, and is reacting.  Strongly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
More thoughts this evening - I saw the same thing at the end of my mother's life - she clung more desperately to her delusions. About her husband, their history, herself, her kids, the bartender.  It's sad how much pain she caused, and how she suffered.

That's another thing to let go of, your anger when you see someone's stubborn delusions ripple out from them to cause pain to everyone caught in their wake.

So here is the thing - the search for enlightenment as bliss is the wrong emphasis.  We should be working and praying to get over our delusions.  To live in the world as it is.

(And in that world, sometimes you just don't sleep well, and that's a fact.) 

Against the subjunctive

Why do I have to write about important things?  (Are there such things?  How do you tell important from trivial?)  So I will write about a tee-shirt that has inspired me, but first I'm going to write about when Otto went to the zoo.  Age three.

At three, many children are still enlightened, and he was one of them.  One day Cassie and I took him to the Columbus Zoo, which is very nice indeed, though it has no jumping pigs.  I think, looking back, that he was finding it all very bright and confusing.  They live in the country and at that time had two St. Bernard dogs.  Was he supposed to be impressed by a mangy-looking wolf that just laid there in the shade?  But even little kids try to please you, and he trundled around with us.

When he got home, his Dad asked him, the way grown-ups do, "What did you see at the zoo?" Otto was glad to comply.

"There was this big pile of ketchup!" he said.

Unimpressed by a herd of flamingos, bored by the elephants, what he had seen that was memorable was in The Congo Room, one of their food pavilions.  It had a big ketchup dispenser, always a thrill for a little kid anyway, and a lot of ketchup had been allowed to drip down there and form a little mountain.  You never saw anything like it, and if you were a grownup, you didn't see it, not really.  But Otto did.  Strangest damn thing he ever saw. I hope he doesn't grow up to be a food engineer or stylist or something as a result.
~~~~
These marks ~ like this ~ are called tildes.  You don't care, I don't care, though having names for things is useful, or you end up having to say, I don't want the red stuff on my hot dog, I want the yellow stuff.  And (a conjunction, pretending that this sentence is related to the one before it) the following statement is in the subjunctive, because it indicates a condition contrary to fact:

If it were easy, everyone would do it.

Because see, it's not easy.  What's not?  Sometimes I think everything's not, so it is useful to remember that nothing matters.  Well, I saw the above  motto on a tee-shirt at the health club recently, and immediately wanted to buy Cassie one like that - she once looked terrific in a Nike shirt that said in huge letters -

This was before this was morphed and marketed to death, and it struck me as a pretty good principle in life.

Now.  Back to the first motto.  I wouldn't have said it that way.  I'd have said -

If it was easy, everyone would do it.

Wouldn't you?  Well, maybe not.  I live in Ohio, USA, and learned my English the rough-tumble way.

I see these niggling distinctions as basically serving to indicate subtle divisions of class; in other words, my dislike is political.  I was happy when I learned, in a linguistics class, mind you, that there are two approaches to grammar.  There's Prescriptive, the kind we were graded on, and Descriptive - that is grammar that describes the way people actually talk.  So if I were you (which I'm not, that's why I use the subjunctive there), I'd get the second tee-shirt.  When you wear it, you will find out which of the people around you is a member of the Secret Grammar Police.  Then you can avoid them.

What Oprah Doesn't Know

So was looking over a Nov. 2011 O magazine, a workbook on finding your bliss.  You did exercises and then looked to say what “type” you are, that is, what motivates you.  So, what you need in your work.

Five clusters were given, and as I read them and thought about my answers, none of them were about me.  But on the next page was one lonely left-over motivation - enlightenment.  Well, that’s a relief.  Surely that was me.  Though connection and reward and security matter to me, I want most to be my authentic self (or, for you Buddhists, my authentic changing self whose identity is never fixed).

And I think that all of us fundamentally want something we believe security or enlightenment will bring us: happiness.  That’s the flaw in Opah’s whole scheme - it doesn’t go down to the deep layer.  If we are not fundamentally contented and in touch with reality, nothing will make us happy.  If you want an example, look at the latest dead celebrity, or go back to Michael Jackson.  There is no such thing as enough achievement - external reward - if that really matters to you.
~~~~~~~
Health Update:
Monday I went up to my doctor and gave a urine sample.  If it shows too many bacteria, they send it out for sensitivity culture.  You’d think that would be back by Wednesday, but it was after hours Thursday when they called to say it’s a bad UTI and I need to go on an IV antibiotic.
 
So today the Home Health nurse came at 12:30 and made four (4) attempts to get an IV in my one poor skinny overworked arm (the other arm has lymphedema).  She got more and more distressed, but at 1:30 had to give up and make phone calls.  So the word came trickling back that I would have to be admitted to the hospital to have a PIC line put in, a sort of long, fancy IV that stays in place.  Not through the ER, I said.  No, no, we’ll have you admitted directly to the Med Ward.  We’ll call back. 

No call back yet.  I know the PIC team usually works until 5:00 and is in a very bad mood if they are kept over.  So, sigh.  And they just called.  And yes, I’ll be there.  And will have to add a photo to this later.
~~~~~~~~~~~

Update 11:00 pm
Admitted to hospital 4 pm.  Total confusion, what a mess.  Finally at 7pm. PICC inserted, X-ray comes back, it isn't right.  PICC re-inserted, X-ray says okay.  Home 9 pm beyond exhausted and hungry.  Enjoyed grilled cheese and tea and Lilyhammer.  11 pm, PICC bleeding.  Call the help line.  It's normal.  Go to bed.  That's good, because I did not have it in me to go back there.  Turns out you can have a PICC inserted outpatient; you make an appointment.  My doctor didn't know that.  This is so typical.  It's all too complicated and specialized, so nobody ever knows how the system works.  Not for the first time, I wish I was one of Queen Elizabeth's Corgis.  You bet they get good medical care.
Yeah yeah, accept reality.  But you don't have to like it.

There's more reality out there than you bargained for

I made a trivial mistake a while back of subscribing to a cooking magazine meant for another generation, for women who have fresh rosemary and currant jelly in their pantry, and who don't mind cooking and eating baby animals. (I just can't.)  Like every other magazine these days, it has an article about how meditation will help you continue to live an insanely ambitious, stressful life. Sigh.

So I turned to the Sunday paper and read there an advice column. The girl - okay, young woman - wanted to know if she should keep trying with her sincerely repentant boyfriend, The Cheater.  If she would ever learn to trust him.  The answer agreed with my understanding of reality: If you stick with him, understand that he will always have that trait. Ask yourself whether it's worth it anyway.

 The article mentioned that if you sit still and shut up and stop planning to make currant-glazed lamb chops with pistachio couscous for dinner, you will gain insight into your own mental patterns, and that will help you be less enslaved to them.  This is true, and it seems to be much emphasized in American Zen, as part of the search for happiness the Boomers ushered in.  Which has led me recently to study a book titled Ending the Search for Happiness by Zen psychiatrist Barry Magid.  What a relief!

Less talked about is that you will also begin to see the reality outside your mind. To see other people as they are, not through your filters and illusions.  That's awareness. The wisdom part is accepting that not only is the other person what he or she is, but that change, if it comes at all, will come slowly.  The very charm Confused Girl loves about the guy, that's something a lot of other girls respond to, too. I am not being facetious when I say that the only times I've seen important personality change in other people has been when they had a stroke, or a similarly dire stroke of reality.

I did adopt a new habit in one fell swoop, or swooping fall in early September, in which I broke my right arm, as I have complained about here, but not enough.  I began doing walking meditation every time I walk.  I don't mean just when I go for a walk or walk the track; I mean when I walk down the hall at home.  No dark hallways for me.  An example of how occasionally Life teaches you to watch your step.

Every Day is a Good Day

This talk by Rev. Nonin Chowaney is such a good explanation of how in the Buddha Way we work on accepting reality that I wanted to share it. The calligraphy is also by him; a similar one was a gift from Tom to me. More of his talks can be found here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A couple of years ago, it snowed in Omaha on April 29th. I had wanted to work in the garden that day and when I looked out the window, my heart sank.

Later, I walked downstairs and mentioned that it was snowing to Albert, one of our group. "Yes," he responded, "there's something quite beautiful about these late Spring snowstorms."

Indeed there is, if you can approach them with an open mind; if you approach them with complaint because there'll be no gardening, they can be a real pain.

Lama Govinda writes that, "All suffering arises from attitude. The world is neither good nor bad. It is solely our relationship to it which makes it either one or the other." Snow on April 29th, or any weather condition on any other day, for that matter, is neither good nor bad. Good and bad is a question of mental attitude.

Moment-by-moment, we create the world in the mind. We can look out and create a gloomy, depressing world on any day by the condition of mind we bring to it. A depressed mind can make a bright, sunshiny day black and dreary, and a contented mind can create heaven out of rain and storm.

I am reminded of the old Zen saying, "Every day is a good day." What determines this? The mind that dwells nowhere; the mind that accepts everything. This is nirvana.

Nirvana may be understood as the absence of greed, anger (or aversion), and delusion. In other words, it's a state of mind. If we can approach whatever life brings us with the mind free from greed, aversion, and delusion, or accept things as they are without grasping for more or turning away from what's there, we cultivate the mental state known as nirvana, quiescence, or, heart-mind at peace with what is.

This does not mean passivity. It does not mean that we lay back and not move. What it means is that we start from zero, from acceptance of our lives as they are, and move from there. In that way we are not kept from or hindered in our living by complaining, grousing, or blaming others for the conditions of our lives. Every moment, then, affords us the opportunity to practice awakening, nirvana, enlightenment. When we sit zazen, we cultivate this practice.

The instruction for zazen is to cultivate the mind that abides nowhere, the mind of non-attachment. We are to allow thoughts to come and go, to arise without denial or suppression and to pass away without clinging. Angry thoughts about the boss? Let them come and let them go. Contentment with a lover? Let it come and let it go. I can't garden because it's snowing? Let it come and let it go. This practice does not aim for any particular state of mind; it is in and of itself the awakened state; sometimes it is called "cultivating the natural condition of mind."

Buddha, the awakened one, taught the Way to end human dissatisfaction, and nothing more. He taught that the end to suffering is non-attachment, non-clinging. This is the practice of zazen. Gradually, we are able to also cultivate this practice when standing, walking, or lying down; our life itself is enlightenment.

A mind that can abide anywhere is always content, even when suffering greatly. This is liberation; suffering is gone through. We accept what comes, live it, and move on. In the words of Zen Master Bodhidharma: "When those who search for the Path encounter adversity, they should think to themselves, `In countless ages gone by, I've turned from the essential to the trivial and wandered through all manner of existence, often angry without cause and guilty of numberless transgressions. Now, though I do no wrong, I'm punished by my past. No one can foresee when an evil deed will bear its fruit. I accept it with an open heart and without complaint of injustice.'" The sutras say, `When you meet with adversity don't be upset, because it makes sense.' With such understanding you're in harmony with reason. And by suffering injustice you enter the Path.

When I was practicing at Tassajara monastery, I got sick with a sinus problem that kept reoccurring. Once during the training period that I was head monk, it came back and lingered for almost two weeks. I had a lot of responsibilities, but all I could do was lay in bed, and I'm afraid I didn't do a very good job of being sick; it was very hard.

One afternoon, I made myself a cup of tea and sat outside in the garden behind my cabin feeling sorry for myself, sneezing and blowing my nose, being miserable. I looked over toward the zendo where the late afternoon sun was glowing on the rocks. The flowers and shrubs were gleaming. In a moment, everything turned. It was incredibly beautiful. The world was a lovely place, no longer grim, dark, and heavy. Everything was all right, even though my nose was still clogged! Instead of a living hell, the world was the Lotus Land of beauty and purity.

This was an important experience for me. One moment, pain and suffering; the next, joy and relief. This all occurs in the mind; we create the world we live in. We sometimes cannot change the circumstances we live in, but we can always change our attitude. If we can learn to let go, it will change by itself.

As Lama Govinda said, "All suffering arises from attitude. The world is neither good nor bad. It is solely our relationship to it which makes it either one or the other." So, even if it's a bad day, "every day is a good day."

 

What practice is about

It is about awakening to the reality of your life, and the courage needed to live it, to really live it and not stand around procrastinating a million easy things and waiting for a poem to hit you.

It is about running through pain. I wrote this poem so many years ago I can't remember, and it just came back to me.


Running through Pain
My therapist dreams about shopping for tuna.
She wants me to take up running, to learn
to run from no one to nowhere, then
to run back home again.

Actually, Winning isn't Everything

Competition.  Many things speak to me these days about this culture of Me First, Me Win . . . so I assume it is an area of my perception I am opening to, uncovering the competitiveness of my own conditioned mind, which was largely unconscious for most of my life.  Women compete in shoes, their kids' accomplishments, their baking, on and on.  I've heard that men just can't stand to have an older car than their brother-in-law, but men are upfront about being competitive.

How it applies to Mimi Me just now?  I am in gear to apply for a local arts grant.  This grant is, of course, competitive, not just a lightning streak from the sky like every artist would like.  But you don't know how to pour effort into it.  You have no idea who the judges will be, and they've had some people whose judgement I personally did not respect after listening to them at the panel hearing.  It's always been three of them, say a slam poet with a high school education, a creative writing teacher/published poet, an academic teacher and critic.  (I need to remember to put in a certain poem I have that is spoken in a dub rhythm; a slam poet might like it.)  

Half my friends want to win this, since, I am happy to say, I hang around with a bad crowd.  We hate it. We sweat our entry and walk it in at the last minute.  Months later we crowd into the panel hearings and hear our work judged 1-1-1, "not competitive."  Ow!  It ruins your day.  At least one day.

And competition goes against my own appreciation of a life that is non-famous, humble, not striving, you know.  Wun slowly gets better this way with age and practice, not cleaning for company so much.  Because what you get to see as you gain awareness is that nothing external will make you happy.  One year I won one of these, got a letter, and I remember clearly that the joy lasted about an hour.  You can't go around in ecstasy.  Actually, that relates to the subject of my last post, enlightenment. 

Anyway, deadline coming, so I will sign off, and might post less until September.  (Did I say the grant involves a handsome amount of money?  That's another story.)  You can subscribe by e-mail over on the right if you want to know when I come out of it.

What Enlightenment is Not

There's a catchy title. And I should add some qualifier like, "In My Humble Opinion."  We used to use that a lot in the early days of the web, abbreviated IMHO.  Today, there is far too little humility on the web, wouldn't you say?  I digress.  It is one of the privileges of not being paid to do this.

When I first caught hold of Buddhism, which was more like being swallowed by a wondrous huge blue Buddha-cloud, I got very interested in "enlightenment," which I saw in my fertile mind's eye as a light-filled place, as a constant state of bliss and imperturbable calm.  This, I thought, was what the end of suffering would be like.  In my mind it would be something like eternal union with God.  God was someOne I had a fine relationship too as a young person for a while, until stern Christian definitions made that God untenable.  Still, I had my own idea, formed on early spiritual experiences, and that was where I wanted to reside, perhaps with mystics like Hildegarde.

My evolved idea of enlightenment is just now calling me to do my morning practice.  It is less like "practice" these days, and more like just being with myself for a while, not gaining, as the word "practice" suggests (see Practice makes perfect).  So more later.  Meanwhile, hey, I'll post this, because I may not get back to it for a while.  A cliffhanger.

How to Sell Yourself (Not)

Shelley tries so hard to - what? to be important, to be right, to be accepted, I think, and down underneath that, to be loved.  Down under that, to feel the relaxed security of "I'm okay."  I am inferring this from her strategy, which is to buttonhole a person, and tell her story, or push her opinions, which are more like resentments.  She asserts her Self. Part of her story is that her mother doesn't accept her sexual preference.  She is 50.  Her mother is 75. Her mother hasn't accepted her for two decades now.

You can tell from my description that standing on the table screaming "I'm important, I'm right, I'm okay, love me dammit" doesn't get her what she wants. In fact, I have to wonder at her mother's patience.

I suppose Shelley is blind to what she's doing.  There, an opening to talk about spiritual practice.  Awakening means opening your eyes to reality, that's all.  Sometimes great mystical experiences, some times small ones, some bliss, but the basic thing is becoming more and more aware, here.  That means conscious of your own actions. When you are awake, you know it when you are boring someone with your story and irritating them with your demands.  You see them, not just yourself.

Sounds simple, doesn't it?  And all you have to do to get there is just sit like a frog.  Sit still every day and let reality catch up with you.  In Shelley's case the reality seems to be that she feels terribly wrong, inadequate.  She has been fleeing that painful feeling for a long, long time, so I can imagine that once it knocked on the door she'd never meditate again.  That's what most people do.

Trying so hard to Be Someone, someone important, lovable, accepted, all right.  When Wun does that, she is acting, presenting, putting forth a false self - in Shelley's case, an inordinate amount of grooming, clothes, every item from earrings to shoes screaming for attention.  Somehow to my mind comes a picture of the musician, Amy Winehouse, a manufactured figure whose misery led to drugs and recently, death by overdose.  This kind of thing is downright common in the world of celebrity artists and performers who make a living selling themselves.  It turns out that all the adulation in the world is never enough, because what comes from outside can be taken away in a flash.

And I'm not saying you can learn to love yourself that directly, despite society's message that pampering yourself with a day at the spa will turn your life around.  In my experience, the great thing, the freedom, is in letting go of your self's yearning for a security that can never come from out there.  Turn your focus out away from how you feel, what you want.  Give something small to someone else. Think about what someone else needs.  Shut up and listen.  Sit like a frog and stop that infernal croaking.

I know what it is to feel like Shelley, so my heart goes out to her. I wish she would ask me how to get her mother to accept her.  I would say, "The question is, how can you learn to accept your mother?  How can you be kind to her?"  There's something a person can work on.

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]