Making Do With Less

I first heard the term "paperless kitchen" more than ten years ago. My friend, who was in Simple Living, had committed to that. The thing she did was pick up lots and lots of paper napkins anytime she got fast food.  It intrigued me, how she confused "paperless" with "paying for paper." Kind of like when you quit smoking and then borrow cigarettes from everyone else. It's not about not buying paper; it's about not using it.

Recently it occurred to me out of nowhere that going paperless in my kitchen was a good idea, that my paper towels were made from trees, trees which, if let to live would be forests cleaning the air. My daughter is studying forestry; that makes me think about these things.

I had plenty of rags, so I put them in a pretty bowl by the kitchen sink where the paper towels used to sit.  I was surprised how annoying it was at first. It highlighted the fact that any habit change is difficult, the older the habit, the harder.  I'd been grabbing a paper towel for decades. Now I had to pick the right size rag, and discard the yucky ones and hang the other ones to dry before they go down the chute. Eventually I had to wash them in with the other towels. All this is not work, but it was irritating at first. Change is.

There is a fallacy American advertising pounds on in these end times in which a great many women work and then come home and do everything at home.  The fallacy is that you can buy something that will redeem this life by saving "precious seconds," something like one-swipe mascara (I'm not making this up). Every one of these solutions adds to the landfill. Don't believe them. You don't have a life by saving seconds. What people do with extra seconds is watch more TV.

Like everything else I discover, I'm a late adopter. Lots of people are already into this paperless thing. Here's a nice article, for instance. Obviously, if you work at it, your rags can even be pretty. You can even buy rags (a thought that astonishes me) from a website called, you guessed it, Paperless Kitchen. Their rags are sort of sturdier paper towels made from sustainable plant cellulose and, importantly, are new. It seems to me this is not a very ecological solution.  New rags involve growing and harvesting those plants, manufacturing them, transporting them, which wears down the highways and pollutes the air.  Like that.

As we say in Zen, pay attention.

Practice, practice

Eating
At lunch I was trying to finish one bite before loading my fork with the next bite, when I realized I was trying.  As soon as I smiled at that (I am trying to stop trying so hard) I knew where it came from.  My first retreat.  It was led by a student I’ll call Andrew who was in love with the forms and rituals of the Japanese tradition.  He terrified us with rules.

I can hear him now, saying “Keep your eyes on your own plate.  Don’t look around to see how others are doing.”  I was failing there today, looking at this person and that, catching my mind making little judgements like All that jewelry on retreat, or Seems like she’s on some strange diet. She’s a fire person, Irish blue eyes.  Catching my mind always thinking.

As for the food, I was enjoying the seitan with pineapple and rice, emerald-green broccoli, fresh young salad, a piece of cake with lots of icing.  But I was eating my peculiar way, not the slow. careful way, finishing each bite before spearing the next one.  Enjoying the food.  Wondering how we can be expected to spear rice.  No chopsticks here, nor is Andrew, and neither is my father, who always found something wrong with me (“You’re dead,” I tell his ghost, “so go away.”) Just eating and not reading, an effort in itself.  I must say, the problem is not with Zen - it is with me.  I am human.

Working
In Japanese work practice is called samu.  I signed up to break garlic bulbs into cloves for planting.  They grow a lot of garlic at Grailville.  Found my way to a spot at the crowded picnic table next to a woman who was very fast end efficient.  Right away I was aware of my hands, which have become clumsy with invisible arthritris.  I am also really slow to figure things out since my kidney function dropped below 10%.  But to look at me, you wouldn’t know these things.

The woman picked out a tool for me, so I got defensive, mindfully. I hate it when people tell me what to do, doesn’t everyone?  Judging from my experience with housekeepers and painters, etc, yes, everyone thinks they know how to do some dumb thing like break up garlic.  Moreover, I love to figure out new things, which I did, and became more proficient.

She never did correct me, but I was relieved when she left.  This freed me up to really enjoy the beautiful garlic, and begin collecting garlic bits for a photograph, maybe to draw.  It’s me, I noticed mindfully, turning everything into art, always making something.  An insight, of sorts. 

A note on one-pronged practice

This morning I woke up at 5:00, as I do once in a while. Getting my annual mammogram today. Thirteen years since I had breast cancer. They have been difficult years but I'm so glad I had them.

Meanwhile, the year's brightest moon is dropping through the bare branches of the oaks. I have never seen it move so fast - you can almost see it moving. But I am not a good moon watcher unless I'm on retreat, where there is so little stimulation that the sky becomes enough, becomes fascinating when you get a break and get to see it.

Yesterday after church my older friend Nancy and I shared a hug, as we do, and talked a little about what's going on in our lives. I reminded her how we used to enjoy meditating together years ago in a little group, nothing special. She told me she doesn't meditate now, meaning sit, but tries to be totally aware as she does her t'ai chi in the morning. I remarked that that's a form of meditation, and I said, an afterthought, "Anyway, what really matters is what you do when you're not meditating."

She was struck by that, and so was I, the statement coming out in that good space you can be in after church. It laid it out for me in plain talk, what the bodhissatva vow is all about, what we mean by being on the Buddha way. We don't vow to meditate all day - meditation is only one of the steps on the eightfold path. I recalled an incident in one of Bernie Glassman's books, where the sangha goes to meditate in an abandoned schoolyard, then gets to work cutting down weeds. He says something like "Meditation is a luxury, I could do it all day. But there's work to be done."

Here and there I've written about how I came to Buddhism privately, through books and tapes. Later, I found group practice on retreats with a sangha that emphasized form in imitation of the Japanese tradition. Ritual, severity, discipline seemed to be everything. I was challenged and fascinated by the wierdness, frankly, and learned how to do things right, but I also rebelled against the militarism, heirarchy, and violence. This teacher's use of the stick ultimately drove me away.

I tried hard but couldn't reconcile it with the ideal of kindness I believe is fundamental to Buddhism and Christianity, the religions I have practiced in my life. I couldn't reconcile it with the feminist ideals of cooperation and respect. And, like many women who were abused as girls, I could not be comfortable with the ideal of obedience expressed in full prostrations to the teacher as I entered and left dokusan, and more generally, with the many stories in this tradition of rudeness and violence as a teaching method. I am far from alone in this. I know there are wonderful women offering retreats in gentler styles.

This is a big subject, and a fundamental question for each individual: How do we practice the Buddha Way? Is it "just sitting"?

I hope that just sitting naturally improves people, which is the theory behind a one-pronged practice. I hope sitting builds awareness "off the cushion," and that helps us to be kind as we cut through our dualism, but I have seen it to not come true. Being A Student of Zen can so easily be used to feel superior to all those non-meditators out there that I have started making a point of not making a point of it, if you know what I mean. The far enemy of regular practice is arrogance, the near enemy smugness. Something like that.

It is so easy to fall off the path! For years I have yearned for a Teacher to locate here in central Ohio, and begin to build a sangha in which we could work together on some meaningful service. The events in Haiti unfolding in the news night after night make me yearn for involvement in a Buddhist organization with open hands, with a mission beyond . . . just beyond.