Life After Death

Excellent visit Thursday with a learned breast specialist.  Entirely reassured.  (If you are on Facebook, there's somewhat more on my Page there.)  This is not cancer.  Dazed and confused.  Sleeping happily.

Before the appointment we had a great expensive lunch (they make their own ginger ale!) and Tom drove along the lake, and I took this picture of a sizable boulder by the side of the road.  Kind of looks like it's been in a few collisions, like me.

Together, Tom and I wrote this haiku -

ancient stone
names of lovers
inscribed in fading paint

So blown away by being alive - having (maybe, of course) more life ahead, and noticing the attempts by my conditioned self to get me back in the living grave we call a rut.  Now I have to catch up on all the things you have to do if you're going to stay alive - went to the health club, the grocery store . . . collapsed.  It's been a long hard year, so far.  Maybe I've used up my trouble quotient for 2013.  I wish.

Last night, browsing around on Wild Fox Zen, I happened on this poem, translated by the poet Robert Bly.  It reminded me of a time years ago when we left a great party with people playing bluegrass in a packed living room, a warm and inviting house, and no alcohol or smoking, a definite bonus.  When we stepped outside, pow, cool night air, a sky full of stars.  I said to Tom, "This is what a good death would be like - you leave a great party and step out into the stars." But actually dying, when I thought it was approaching me and remembered the deaths of people I loved, actually dying is not a party.

This poem reminded me of that experience, how hard it can be to let go of this body's life, then how wonderful the lonely empty could be.  I have my own poems that I regretted never publishing when I realized I might not have time.

I've been astonished how many poems came to my mind and came my way that showed deep understanding of life.  However, and I don't know anything about Bly, many wonderful writers and artists have not had happy lives - many are bipolar, whence cometh the creativity, but which is hard to live with and, in my lifetime, has not been treated appropriately.  You can get the idea of the wonderful, you can render it in art, but bipolar experiences and emotions are acute, and learning to live with these realities is another thing entirely.  The only significant help I've had has been from Zen masters.

The Silence Afterward
                       Rolf Jacobsen

Try to be done now

with deliberately provocative actions and sales

   statistics,

brunches and gas ovens,

be done with fashion shows and horoscopes,

military parades, architectural contests,

and the rows of triple traffic lights.

come through all that and be through

with getting ready for parties and eight possibilities

   of winning on the numbers,

cost of living indexes and stock market analyses,

because it is too late,

it is way too late,

get through with and come home

to the silence afterwards

that meets you like warm blood hitting your

   forehead

and like thunder on the way

and the sound of great clocks striking

that make the eardrums quiver,

because words don’t exist any longer,

there are no more words,

from now on all talk will take place

with the voices stones and trees have.

- – -

The silence that lives in the grass

on the underside of every blade

and in the blue space between the stones.

The silence

that follows the shots and birdsong.

The silence 

that pulls a blanket over the dead body

and waits in the stair until every one is gone.

The silence

that lies like a small bird between your hands,

the only friend you have.

~~~~~~~~

I have personal experiences and reasons to trust that in the end, the Absolute is our friend.  After all, it's your own Mom.

Sick, and Tired of it, With Comments on the Spiritual Path

I was reminded this morning of what took me from trying out all kinds of Buddhist practice to focusing on Zen - I met a Teacher.  Then I met another one.

Both these men, Daniel Terragno and Ama Samy, come to Grailville in Ohio once a year from far places to hold retreats, and snagged me on my very first retreats.  I've also met another Zen Teacher, James Ford, a unique Unitarian minister, and corresponded with a few others.  Now I am gratefully undertaking to practice "distantly" with Dosho Port of Wild Fox Zen, who is extending himself to work with us solitary and destitute types via internet methods. 

Every single one of these people has treated me with the attention you would give to the most important person on earth.  Their attitude is not just about the calmness and general slowing-down that we gradually learn through zazen.  It's about the practice of open-heartedness.  You can think of it as treating everything and every little yellow buttercup as sacred.  Or you can think of it as kindness.

I thought about this watching one of Dosho Roshi's videos this morning, in which he explains the above.  It is not at all abstract to me.  I have been so ill for so long here (see previous posts), and it is frustrating to wait for phone calls from the nurse, the doctor, home health.  It is easy to get resentful of friends who are too busy to offer some homemade soup (see cartoon above).  It is easy to feel entitled to inflict on others the occasional crankiness natural to this situation.

That crankiness comes from animal nature, perhaps, but the Eight-fold Path asks me to refrain from expressing it in harmful ways.  And it reminds me that I am actually not the center of other people's universe.  Jeez.  That I am no more sacred than everyone else.  That we are all seeking happiness.  Even poor Tardar Sauce (above), the cat who looked grumpy from birth.  And maybe was and is, I don't know.  I love him (her?) anyway.

More Cool Boredom

This is a video in which not much happens - just two "natural enemies" hanging out. It epitomizes the kind of day I've been happy to have: cool boredom. I see I blogged about this last Tuesday.  So I suppose I don't have much conceptual to say.

I started my day - or did I end yesterday? - enjoying the smell of clary sage, which is supposed to be "balancing."  I doubt that that alone can cool a bipolar down in August, but what do I know?  It's a nice smell, unusual, hard to categorize, but a little piney.  Wikipedia says it "has a lengthy history as a medicinal herb, and is currently grown for its essential oil."  My oils are mostly Aura Cacia, which is sold in the sweet hippie-spiritual shop in our neighborhood called Pearls of Wisdom.  Descriptions of this herb's medical use go back to the 4th century BCE. 

Pearls is a great place to buy things like an endless-knot pendant or a votive candle holder carved out of rose quartz (which is believed to aid in kidney problems).  Quartz has a measurable vibration.  Just saying.  And I do have such a candle-holder, a gift from Tom one birthday.  He is a scientist, majored in physics, so he understands what a huge amount we don't know in this universe.  Don't Know is also a Zen concept, and that reminds me of a charming story I read recently in another blog, Wild Fox Zen.

Reminds me of a story James Ford told me which I see will be in his new book due out in September, If You’re Lucky, Your Heart Will Break: Field Notes From A Zen Life.
Way back in the late ’60′s he was given zazen instructions at San Francisco Zen Center and then brought into the zendo to sit. Then …
“…I was ushered into an interview with a senior priest. Dainin Katagiri Roshi, then called by the title sensei, was on duty. I made the bows as I was instructed and sat awkwardly before him.
He asked how long I’d been sitting.
I estimated three, maybe five minutes.
He said, “Good. Keep that mind.’”

There is a point there that Zen students know - as we ripen in meditation practice, we develop what Joko Beck called "tricks" for amusing ourselves or evading aspects of our reality that are trying to catch up with us.  In Zen, we are reminded to approach not only meditation, but every moment, as if we'd never been there before, never done that before.*

Back to my day.  I sat over the Thursday NY Times with Tom - my favorite paper of the week.  I clucked over the follies in the Style section, and Tom told me about the craziness in the Home section.  Ate a good breakfast, cereal, walnuts (for Omega-3), dried cranberries and organic milk.  Did my stretches and meditated.  Did weekly pill box which took a long time, but that was okay.  No rush.  Air quality is bad today, and so are molds in the air, and I don't have to go anywhere, so I'm not.  I'd have to wear a surgical mask if I did; the immunosuppressants have made my allergies terrible.  Made tuna salad for lunch, with cucumbers cut up in it (they are cooling). Made tuna melts in the toaster-oven.

And so on.  That kind of day.  Not manic, not depressed, just a nice cool day appreciating our air-conditioned and filtered air, our shade, and especially, being retired.

* If I had never seen this computer screen before, I'd be flabbergasted.