How to be Intermittenly Not Unhappy

I was going to join the crowd and title this "How to Be Happy," but I just couldn't. That implies Happy all the Time!!!
It implies ~

"Fun fun fun till her daddy took the T-bird away". Life does take things away. The line in the Five Remembrances gets it: "All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change." (The whole chant is at the bottom of this blog.) Fun is especially ephemeral. Every series has a finale, and sometimes it's a great disappointment.

The alternative is to invest yourself in the world. I thought I'd suggest one way to do that: Listen to someone else.

I don't mean listen the way therapists do, with intent to help you change. Don't do that. You don't know what someone else needs. And definitely don't listen the way most people do, thinking of the next thing they will say, even downright impatient. Just pay attention to that other person.

You can briefly take in yourself at the same time. Your self might be cringing before someone else's misery or bored with their same old story. Maybe at some later time you should examine that cringing or boredom that is taking the space where there could be compassion. Meanwhile, why not let them talk - they must have a reason for repeating that story - and just really listen, look. You can nod. You don't have to say anything. Or fix them. In fact, they'd probably pay you not to.

Listening to other people is actually a good way to chip away at our devotion to Wun, my term for our own constructed selves, that Wun who seeks everywhere for happiness when, in fact, the moment is right here.

Real Listening

 I just got off a video call with my new Zen Teacher - new to me; he's actually very experienced, started studying with Katagiri Roshi back in those hippie days when the only Teacher who didn't want to live in California was Katagiri.  Talks like this might be the best thing about Zen - at least with some teachers, you get to talk, real talk, and they listen. Really listen.

I've had many experiences by now with therapists and ministers whose job is to listen, who are paid to listen, but they can't do what an authentic Buddhist Teacher does.  They can't engage with you in the same way.  Good ones know how to settle into a listening mode and let the patient pour out their heart.  Generally, they want to shore you up a little, too.  Basically, you are their employer, and they want you to keep coming back.

Still, sometimes ministers and therapists do engage deeply, but that is still not Zen listening.  Zen Masters have spent decades seeing through their personal egos, learning to put their desires aside in the service of ritual, demanding retreat schedules, study, serious vows.  Their job is not to shore you up, but to encourage you to find your true self, which is not the self that drew up a bucket list.

I am coming up on the 16th anniversary of my surgery for breast cancer and my meditation practice.  That diagnosis led me to decide to begin meditating every day, and finding other ways to deal with my fear and the stress in my life. 

Most of that time my practice has been solitary.  But I have had the chance to work with three Teachers, the first two during the years when I could go on retreat, now a web-based Teacher.  It's in the private interviews with them, phone calls, emails, ongoing relationships, that I've been able to drop off some of the barnacles that made my shell feel really heavy. 

Zen is a rigorous path, distinguished by the policy that there is no charge for the teaching - you give what you want in gratitude - and by the insistence that you do the work.  They don't give you what you want, a dose of bliss, maybe Dad's approval, maybe an A in koan-busting.  Their job is to help you stay on your  path.  A big piece of how they do that is the spacious welcome of just looking at you, listening to you, being interested not in your bullshit or persona or gift to the building fund, but the you that is unique on this swiftly tilting planet, and the you that is true self, all of us.

Meanwhile, their authentic listening and caring gives you a model for how you could act with other people.  And being really seen and heard is fundamentally affirming and encouraging.  I don't care who you are, everyone needs a good tummy rub once in a while. Don't let them kid you.

No, he won't bite.  Probably.

In Praise of Doing Not Much

Something I saw at a glance recently was this question:

Are you proactive or reactive?

I know, right away you thought, like me, That's the fallacy of false alternatives.  Because there are many other ways to be. You can just be -
active
the way children dance when they feel like it, or practice falling down or doing handstands.

Or - 
inactive
Resting, say.  Dawdling.  It's not a crime.

But maybe the best is not to be this way or that way, just sit there and

~ Be ~

Being is, I think,
receptive
Listening, taking in what's there.  You can do this sitting in meditation or at a party - there are never enough good listeners at any gathering.  That's my experience, anyway. 

How to Get Found when You're Lost

Deep Valley, Guo XI

                        Lost

                             David Wagoner

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

from Collected Poems 1956-1976 © Indiana University Press.