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.

What I learned from this illness

cat demonstrating yin yoga twist

So it was last Thursday night, just a week ago, that this UTI set in rather ferociously.  Why? after an interlude of four wonderful infection-free months.  First of all, you never know, as I think it says in the subtitle to this blog.  Still, you can usually find a couple of things you did wrong, which is a kind of comfort, as in, I won't do that again, so that won't happen again.  Well . . .

But my transplant nurse actually said to me, in a non-Western-medical moment, "And don't skip your meditation anymore."  Aha.  I had told her I knew a couple of reasons I became susceptible to this lousy e-coli (which is always lurking in waiting, that's the bad news) - it could be summarized as overactive, overstressed by visiting a very sick friend - and too busy to meditate.  For two days straight.  I don't know what made me such a blithe spirit, but it won't happen again.

It happened that the same day Harvard Health News (a nice website) sent me a list of stress relievers.  Here they are -

• Get enough sleep. Lack of sound sleep can affect your mood, mental alertness, energy level, and physical health.
• Exercise. Physical activity alleviates stress and reduces your risk of becoming depressed — and it is good for your all-around health.
• Learn relaxation techniques. Meditation, progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery, deep breathing exercises, and yoga are mainstays of stress relief. Your local hospital or community center may offer meditation or yoga classes, or you can learn about these techniques from books or videos.
• Learn time-management skills. These skills can help you juggle work and family demands.
• Confront stressful situations head-on. Don’t let stressful situations fester. Hold family problem-solving sessions and use negotiation skills at work.
• Nurture yourself. Treat yourself to a massage. Truly savor an experience: eat slowly, focusing on each bite of that orange, or soak up the warm rays of the sun or the scent of blooming flowers during a walk outdoors. Take a nap. Enjoy the sounds of music you find calming.

It's kind of wonderful that the scientific minds have become convinced of the value of spiritual practices; and almost amusing that they describe them as "relaxation techniques."  And almost discouraging.  You don't see prayer included in that list - it would obviously seem to demean that practice.  On the other hand, it was by emphasizing secular, physical benefits of meditation that Jon Kabat-Zinn has taught the medical profession to see it as something other than snake oil.  Sleep well.

How to search for work

Update:  Not feeling well this morning, after a busy week, maybe too stressed - I think I am getting another UTI, waiting for callback from nurse.  You know. Otherwise, physical stamina improving, pain under control, trouble getting to sleep at night, generally happy.  Not much energy to write.
~~~~~~~~~~
But this very good advice came my way this morning because I subscribe to Ocean of Dharma (a site about Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's work).  I know many people are looking for work.  For the fortunate rest of us, I suppose it would also apply to other things we undertake.  There is a way that it is about not being guided solely by ambition or concepts. One of my Zen teachers, Daniel Terragno, often said to me, in response to my koan work, "Too conceptual."  Often enough that it stuck.  Have a nice weekend, everyone.

You can plan everything, if you plan in accordance with your present state. You don’t plan something in terms of what you would like to be. No one can do that. You can only plan based on what you are now. Now you need a job, therefore you are working on finding one. The real way of being without aim or object is dealing with the present situation, the completely present situation. The more you are realistic about the present situation—how much money you need, what kind of job you are capable of doing, what state of health you are in—the better your chances when you look for a job. If a person is off the track of relating with the present moment, consumed with what might be, then quite likely her job search would be disastrous.  [from Work, Sex, Money by Chogyam Trungpa.]

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]

Awakening Grandmother's Heart

click to see it on Amazon

Wrote to Rev. James Ford with a trivial question and got a nice reply.  Simply attentive.  Pausing to ask how I am. I'd doubt that he remembers me, having met once years ago. But he invites e-mail and responds to it as if each one of us is important. The Teachers I have met are so kind it makes me want to be like them, to have that quality.

It tickled me last night to find a Sweeping Zen tee-shirt online - it's pretty, too.  Yo, I thought, I could make a DG t-shirt.  It could be about Grandmother's Heart:  "Grandma Loves You" or, for the little ones,  "Grandma loves me."  Or among the flowers on the front, an arrow pointing to a soft, plushy heart, and the words, "Grandmother's Heart." This was what Dogen cautioned his dharma heir to cultivate. Here's a good koan: What is that heart?

Or come up with a picture of a Grandmother Buddha. I don't see her sitting meditating, more like stirring something in a mixing bowl with a wooden spoon, wearing a homemade half-apron, a kitchen window behind her. All relics of old times, things that are gone - cooking from scratch for love; wooden spoons; half-aprons; family loyalty; Grandma's that are there for the kids and grandkids, not out reinventing themselves, running marathons and seeing the world. And it implies something we surely don't have in this culture, respect for elders. No, our elders are seen as a tax burden.

I don't think this society ever had much respect for the old, sick, different - it was grabbed and founded by people who were all for themselves, who left family and culture behind. It remains all about individual happiness. Somewhere I read recently that this is the American pathology, and we don't benefit from imitating the family-leaving that traditional Japanese Zen was about. That enabled people to break away from a rigid culture. Americans need enabled to break away from our restless, driven selves.

So it's me, like the American I am, trying to figure out how to change the biggest BS (see yesterday's post) of all, the ethic of individual gratification, the glorification of greed and attainment. It is this attitude that allows the greedy to tear violently through the world exploiting the poor, making money on war, weapons, illegal drugs. Think about it.  Maybe the tee-shirt should say "It's not all about me."

Or maybe just "Be kind." I'd like to recommend a book called Awakening Kindness.   Khechong tells of a young couple who each morning hold hands and, looking into each other's eyes, say his mantra:  "May all be kind to each other."  There's a simple, intimate practice anyone can do.

Sitting like a frog

Being, like a frog.  Being like a frog today, in fact.  Except a frog doesn't have to worry about the kitchen floor and go get a blood draw and order calcium online.

Recently read where some Teacher reminded us how special it is to be the only creature that can build a relatively safe, comfortable shelter from the weather.  Though even at this moment one thinks of the tornadoes that have barely missed us lately, of how Hurricane Ike sent high winds all the way to Ohio, and big trees fell in our neighborhood, where we are fortunate to have big trees, and we were out of power for seven days, and everything in the freezer and refrigerator finally went bad, though I did manage to give some chicken nuggets to Barb.

Yes, that's this beautiful mind today, open.  Big day yesterday, drove to Amish country to visit with Tom's folks and Uncle Ted, had an excellent lunch, a wonderful time.  Today, I am tired, a frog without the energy to stick my tongue out and catch a fly.

Trungpa's advice to just sit was exactly the advice of Suzuki Roshi, I remember - and it was Suzuki who told his students to just sit like a frog.  I didn't "get it" as well as I do now that I am reading it in Trungpa Rinpoche's book The Path is the Goal: A Basic Handook of Buddhist Meditation.  Whew, long title.  The idea is that the path is not a journey.  The goal is not to become a perfect human being.  Not to move along the path and get somewhere so you can be a student of a higher order.  The only goal is to get on the * path.  Just get both feet on it, take one step.  No, maybe it's just sit down on it.  That's all.  No going forward. It is a wonderful thing to hit this guy at this stage in my practice. He illuminates everything from another direction at a time when I have learned too many ways to occupy my mind while in meditation.

Ah yes, I am loosened up and happy today by a wonderful day with family yesterday, all that riding through gorgeous green landscapes unmarred by big farm machines. At the produce stand, there was a team of horses waiting.  An Amish man was showing a non-Amish neighbor the hoe he just bought - handmade.  Hand riveted.

But back to sitting, I mean, meditation.  Trungpa very emphatically wants us to begin practice at the very beginning, to sit down and do nothing.  Don't focus on a candle flame or your breath or your mantra or a visualization.  You begin at the very beginning by sitting down like a tired old frog on a lily pad on a hot day, not even waiting for a fly.  We humans call it "wasting time." Letting time go by, empty.


Furthermore, he maintains that there is no verb form for meditation in his tradition.  No such word as "meditating" in Sanskrit.  It is a noun.  You be in meditation.  You don't do it.  So think of it as a nice sort of closet of cool light you step into, sit down, and don't even wait.

Anyway, I felt quite odd today after doing my meditation, oh no, not doing it, just sitting there.  It was quite different for me.  I came out of it still feeling froggy or foggy, not having any idea what to do next.  Okay, got dressed.  Have to go do labs.  I don't do them, I submit to them.  I sit like a frog and people put big needles in me and take my blood away.  Like six vials every two weeks to make sure I'm as healthy as I look. And don't even give me a * cookie.  That's life post-transplant.

Assignment: see color

Green

Green autofixed

Green J's fix

After several weeks of thinking about it, I bought myself Contemplative Photography. Why was I reluctant? I don't know. I have been leafing around in it (sorry, pun) and caught the first assignment - Color. It's like any kind of awareness until you are a Buddha, perhaps, and have no lapses - now wait, I think that's wrong - I am told we lapsed beings are Buddhas, though we are cautioned to try a little harder, nevertheless.

My life: I have only 10 more minutes here, and was just interrupted by a much desired phone call from my transplant nurse-coordinator, Joanie. The dr. wants to raise my Norvasc - I had sent her another fax with a week's blood pressure readings that showed it is still too high for someone whose parents both died from stroke. This concern got moved recently from cardiologist to tx kidney doc, for the kidney plays a part in controlling your BP.  The new one doesn't seem to have caught on.

Back to the more spiritual. Creating art.  Catching photos with the 5-pixel camera on my phone, which turn out pretty nice, especially in outdoor light  The top photo above was my spontaneous catch this morning - I was amazed to see the backs of the leaves were really that light, and stuck with that amazement long enough to take one picture.

Below that, the auto-fix available on Pikasa's editing program.  As soon as I saw it I knew why most photos on the internet look somehow alike.  The program has been tapped to make them conform to a formula.

Below that, the result after I played with it awhile. The more I did, the less I liked it, and I don't like it now.  I tried cropping it different ways - nothing pleased me.  I still prefer the original, the point-and-shoot.  I told Tom I am going to invent The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Visuals.  See it, stay with that- don't mess it up with conceptualizing-, and click.  One take.  The book calls it three stages: the flash of perception, visual discernment, forming the equivalent (or taking the picture). It's just like washing lettuce or talking to a friend - be aware, stay aware, stay aware again.  It's what we practice doing when we meditate. That's why we call it practice.

Seeds sprout

Yesterday a reader asked me how I arrived at faith.  I think he is referring to faith in the path of Buddhist practice, faith that it would help me.  I believe I learned that respect from the example of one woman, a neighbor named Gini Whiting, who is no longer alive in that form, but is in my mind.

She was a meditator, and this was in the 1950's, when Buddhism was just coming alive in America, and that on the coasts, not in the midwest. So it was remarkable. I imagine she could have learned meditation when she had tuberculosis; before antibiotics you took a long, quiet rest to get over it.

She was a soft-voiced woman with a quiet presence, a stillness, and she was very good to me, and was markedly different than any other adult I ever saw.

But in the course of my life I've known other people who seemed contented, happy, who enjoyed life in a quiet way.  One couple was Christian, and had been missionaries. Another man, George, brought yoga to Lancaster, Ohio in the early 1970's, and led us through meditation at the end of each class. It was wonderful. Sometimes I still hear him say softly, "It feels good to relax."  He was living entirely a yogic life, and took me to a vegetarian restaurant here in Columbus, Seva, now sadly long gone, to show me how delicious meat-free food could be. And since then, of course, I've met and worked with realized Zen teachers.  One meeting with some of these people and you think, They've got something I want.

So I experientially gained faith that spiritual practice could cut my suffering, even give me peace. In fact, I tried to establish a meditation practice, as I knew it, two or three times in my life, but had no spiritual friend to help me know what to do and keep at it. Those efforts discouraged me until I was found to have breast cancer. Then I must have remembered Gini and George and Bill and Ruth, and thought, maybe what they do could help. It was the only thing I could think of.

As for faith in a belief system . . . I entered this as someone who had long ago been disappointed by the Christian God. Everything I believe about life and the workings of the universe I have affirmed with my own experience.  It just happens to coincide with the dharma. 

[image: our front lawn with tiny new oak trees, result of last fall's huge acorn crop.]

A Householder's Practice

This morning I am on Poop Patrol, again.  Tashi has finished her doses of deworming and her antibiotic, and I need to take in another sample for fecal float, to make sure she is well.  That means I have a timer beside me to remind me to check her box every 30 minutes.  If a visual check shows disturbance of the neatly raked surface (my little Zen garden), then I have to put on mask and gloves, as I am immune-suppressed since my kidney transplant.

Zen teachers say a lot about shit (the word they use), at least compared to ministers I have known.  It is a vehicle for getting germs out of the body, so we should be cautious around it; but it is essential to life.  Believe me, I know, for as my kidney function declined over the years, constipation became a constant problem.  If your body can't get rid of waste, you are done for.  So.

It's not that I am repulsed by what the Vet calls feces, but I find it distasteful, despite all these years of tending cats.  Practice, as I get it, means we recognize that distaste, not grasp it and make a big deal, but not try to suppress it, either. This certainly is not practice as in sitting sesshin on a retreat all day.  But even in a monastery, someone has to clean the toilets. Personally, I think it should be the Abbot.  In a business, the CEO.

Okay.  Thirteen minutes to do my body practice before the next litterbox check.  I am thinking "real practice" is exactly this.
~~~~~~~~~
Later.
I ended up with only half an hour to do my bodywork and meditation, because the Poop Patrol was successful.  So it was stop everything for both me and Tom, pack that up, get dressed, put the poor cat in her carrier - her paws needed trimmed, too - and off to the Vet.  (It turned out the fecal float and stain were negative.  So we will start adjusting her diet - bland food - to see if that helps.)

Something about writing on this subject this morning made my whole day nothing but practice.  Not the easy kind, either.  If I were to write about it and explain all the occasions when I had to step back, breathe, divert the energy or anger, or step quite away from a problem, or discipline myself strongly to get my weekly pills  done, honestly, it would make a book, and I am not Virginia Woolf.  Just what Buddhists call a householder, as opposed to a monk.  I am grateful to John Tarrant for writing about practice in the lay life.  And here it is.   And here is a paragraph of it:

I think of the old story of the warrior who did zazen with such energy that all the mice in the house grew still until he had finished. His wife remarked on this and he said, "Well, this won't do, I'll have to try harder." His zazen deepened and soon, as he sat, the mice came out and played all over him, completely unafraid.

[Zen Cat image from Northern Sun]

Trying something

From Chogyam Trungpa's The Path is the Goal -instructions for beginning meditation:

So you keep just on the verge of your technique, with just 25 percent of your attention.  Another 25 percent is relaxing, a further 25 percent relates to making friends with oneself, and the last 25 percent connects with expectation - your mind is open to the possibility of something happening during this practice session.  The whole thing is synchronized completely.

Earlier he has said that we just "put 25% of our attention on the breathing or walking. The rest of our mental activities should be let loose, left open."  Reminds me of Suzuki talking about letting your cows have a wide field to roam. 

One of the important things I learned from Daniel Terragno was to just try things.  You don't have to make a big lifetime decision, even if you are, if you know what I mean.  Experiment.  See what works. I note that this attitude gives a certain release from craving to make it work, whatever it is  You don't have to make something work if it doesn't work. You can try something else.

As for this, I've practiced in the Japanese Zen tradition for many years, and it works for me, and has not stopped being good.  Now I feel like the Tibetan has something to offer.  We shall see.
[image: the endless knot, a Tibetan symbol]

Don't get carried away

I am so enjoying my e-mails from 108 Zen books, the sense of human contact with someone whose voice is pleasing and whose practice is serious. It makes me think again about what I can do with this blog.

- I like to report what's happening with me, how practice is helping me, because I think that might motivate someone else; but it feels like bragging.

- I could talk about exactly what is my practice now, as Genju does.

[Right now I could and will go take today's first dose of immunosuppressants. A little break.  Then I will meditate, because this morning routine is my current focus in the ongoing project of Forming Good Habits.  A discipline, you could say.  It is one place my foolishly expensive Droid is doing its job, sending me an alarm every five minutes until I turn it off.  Bought it on impulse, but it helps to control mine.]

Back, just for a moment - the electricians haven't called yet.  Today we are having a major upgrade done to bring the house up to code, and the obvious result of that is near-panic on both our parts, for we love our computers.  So I'll try to get in a word about the current practice.

Long-time readers know I had lost my practice, you might say, when I was so ill last year.  It hasn't been easy to get back in the habit, which is simple:  10-15 minutes of body work, 20 minutes of meditation. Part of my problem is my enthusiasm/creativity/impulses - all these are on a spectrum, I guess, of mental/emotional energy.  This energy has come back since the transplant, taking me to a place I had almost forgotten.  What was happening to me in the morning was I'd make that first cup of coffee, sit down at the computer, get "carried away," as my Teacher puts it, as in "Experience everything, but don't get carried away."  That sounds simple, but it's a koan I carry, and has surprising depth.

I decided that to get my practice back I would vow to make that first cup of coffee, do whatever I wished while I drank it, no more than half an hour, then sit . . . Whoops, the electricians are here.  More later.

Getting through a busy week

Monday.  This morning when I looked at the kitchen calendar I had the thought, I just have to get through this week. Every day a medical thing to do, sometimes two: PT, labs, acupuncture, dr. appt, fill weekly pill case.  Really, only one is arduous - trying to get my Procrit out of the inevitably screwed-up Curascript (Express Scripts special pharmacy).  I will try to meditate while on hold, focus on practicing kindness while talking to people.  The only real problem with it is that I think they shouldn't be this way.  They are badly run, inefficient, but that's just a fact.

Also today, call Joanie, my new tx nurse, and see what we have to do next to schedule the surgery - bilateral nephrectomy - getting both native kidneys out.  It took two months to get the required cystoscopy.  Now what?  Thinking of it, I find I tense my jaws a little.  It will have to be in OSU, where transplant docs are right there if anything goes wrong.  Earlier in life I would have been continuously strung up, a subconscious thought, I just have to get through the surgery. I would have been anxiously holding the possible future tight. Relax. Close eyes, take one deep breath and exhale all the way.  Sit and rest at the bottom of the breath.

Back to the calender.  I thought, I don't have to get through this week - I don't have to get through this day - I am just here now.

I left a window open in my study, and when I opened the door a few minutes ago, it smelled wonderful, cool and fresh.  The drooping branches of the old cedar outside my window have fresh green tips.  Like the leaves on the old oaks, they seem fluffy with new life. The honeysuckle is blooming.  A twig bounces.  A drop of rain.

The koan of your life

I’ve always liked the opening to “I’ve grown accustomed to her face” in My Fair Lady. Rex Harrison put a wide range of feeling into the repetition of one word:
    Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn!
Discovery, frustration, wonder, emphasis.  And in the next line, acceptance.  There it is - something has interfered with his life plan.

I know how that feels.  Just now a torn fingernail on my right thumb stopped my loftier purposes cold.  Unhappily, it tore into the nail bed a little and raised blood.  This is the arm that has had a dangerous skin infection called cellulitis (means “dangerous skin infection”) from just this sort of little injury.  To make a loooong story short, I did bring an antibiotic and two alcohol pads.  I recall standing at the linen closet drawer looking at a box of bandages and deciding not to take them.  Why not? I was taking everything else I owned, except lightweight socks and robe and a writing pad.

Here’s why Tom and I make such a good couple - he had a pocket First Aid kit.  I am creamed and bandaged without driving into town for drugstore supplies.  And as for my crazed packing, in a while I will stop at the van and dig out my emergency medications bag and take a Levaquin, for luck.  The rest of this healing is up to me, stay rested and unstressed, keep the hand clean and dry.

I digress, in a way, but in a way I don’t.  This little intrusion of the body’s imperative needs is also reality, is what we have to deal with constantly in our lives.  So this event is related on a deep level to what Ama Samy calls “the koan of your life.”  I’ve been sitting with mine - how to best use my gift [cautious word choice there] for writing.  As I thought about this during the morning’s early sits, I realized that not only do I have to choose what to work on - roughly, there is creating and finishing and getting the work out - I have a whole lazy life to deal with.  I need a schedule such as we have here, and three good meals a day, which I have to fix.  I run the domestic-aesthetic part of our home.

This year I am not resisting the schedule, at last, but experiencing the sense of freedom within not constantly making choices.  I had a lot to get over there, and maybe I needed years of indulging my creativity before I could fence it in a bit.  Before that there were decades in which my expectations and beliefs had me fenced in, unable to tap the creative well at all. You look back and say, Well, that was my path.  I have another path today - or no path in a way, just this openness.