The Great Way is not difficult, they say

Jizo in the moment when fall meets winter

To repeat what I said to myself a moment ago, "I'm just so old . . . " The rest of the sentence was "and tired," but I was too tired to bother saying it.

I have another UTI.  So, what's ahead for this?  Drinking a glass of water every hour, taking d-Mannose and cranberry, trying to get my Vata-Pitta constitution in balance with the right foods and balancing tea.  Will take a urine sample to the lab this afternoon.  If this doesn't go away or gets worse, then I'm in for intramuscular shots and lots of uproar arranging them.  Oww!

How does this fit in with the Zen poem, Trust in Mind? you're wondering.  Hahaha as we say on Facebook (at least I do still have a sense of humor).  That poem probably didn't occur to anyone, but I've been thinking about it often since I got a calligraphy by Nonin Chowaney of that famous first line:

The Great Way is without difficulty; just avoid picking and choosing.

Digging down in Google I unearthed a 1993 talk by the poet/Zen master John Tarrant on this subject.  I love Tarrant's writing.  Here is a piece of it.

"The Great way is not difficult. It just avoids picking and
choosing." There is a Taoist flavor to this saying. The sense
of following the water path through life. The water if it runs
into a stone, it just makes its way around. The water is clear
and has no attachments which is why we have a little bowl of
water on the altar. Chao-chou has brought up this saying
which he was very fond of and he often liked to bring it up.
And then he said that as soon as we speak, that is picking and
choosing. If we are clear, we hang onto the clarity. This old
student doesn't even hang onto that. Do you still hang onto
anything, or not? So we could say that the greatest method of
meditation is that whatever comes up,just don't cling to it.
Whatever comes up, let it go. If you can do this, you'll find
the way home very quickly. But it's hard. Things stick to you.

What sticks to me seems to be that I don't want to be sick.  Don't want!

Or maybe what sticks to me is that I don't like my aversion to sickness.  I desire not to be caught in these desires to be able to do things. . . . the kind of roundabout a Zen student easily gets into.  It is better to think this way, however, than to keep hammering in your desires and claiming that it's not fair.

I had a perhaps disconnected thought this morning:  I should take a year off and not be serious about anything.  Maybe that is a good idea.  A lighter touch.  A year off.  Dust things, feed my houseplants, play with my photos, arrange flowers. (That's a gladiolia in the Ikebana arrangement below, from another summer.  I like arranging flowers.  It's so useless.)

Sometimes you need to get a grip and do your work, sometimes you need to relax your grip.  There is this from Tarrant's talk, too ~

 So when you meet an obstacle, it is good to remember the Great Way is not difficult, it just avoids picking and choosing.

Maybe avoid so much talking in my mind.  As the poem says, "as soon as we speak, that is picking and choosing."  I'll close with the closing of his talk.  He's talking at a sesshin, about meditation and what comes to the mind, but it can apply to meeting even this old body, to working on accepting every Mu that comes your way.  It has to be fine with you that you're working on it.

Please continue in this way. Trust your own sincerity. You have
begun to gather some attention in your zazen. Do not be too
concerned about what comes to meet you. Just love your walking
and love the path and become one with it over and over again.
That will be enough.

When I'll Be Happy

You know:
When I graduate.
     When I get a better job.
When I find true love (or true sex).
When this move is over.

Of course, none of these joys last very long.  Actually, I did bask in happiness for about ten days after we moved to this house.  What a horrific move it was, 10,000 pounds from two stories and a basement, and Tom couldn't help with any of it, partly because he couldn't do stairs, partly because he's a man.  But we got moved in, staged the old house, sold it, and then - his polio doctor told him he was never going back to work.  Post-polio syndrome advancing.

There went that.  Now I had a man around the house   all   day   long.  And a morbidly depressed one at that.

But that was ten years ago and we adjusted to that and found other Big Problems to ruin our lives.

Today though, the weather is beautiful and I wasn't noticing myself brooding on a Big Huge Overwhelming Problem.  Instead I noticed myself criticizing myself in pretty much my father's tone, "Shut your mouth, you'll let the flies in." Something like that.  So maybe I had allergies as a kid, too.  Today the pollen was getting to me and my slender aristocratic nose was having a hard time streaming air, I guess.  I kept finding myself semi-mouth breathing. Ah jeez.

But that was only the beginning.  Then there was how fat I've gotten (30 lbs. over my high-school weight), and how lazy too, really not active enough in everybody else's opinion, and how I forgot what I came here for, and oh, the mess in the front closet and the kitchen floor and . . . I began to ask myself, When will I be happy with myself?


Actually, on a good day I am basically happy with my privileged first-world life and myself, though little things like that intrude.  Go back under the bed, monster.  On a bad day (which today was not) the self-criticism really flows.  I'm more aware of it now than ever, as I've been working with a book that had me look harder at how I do that.  This is much like Zen - dark enlightenment, it's sometimes called.  This is the part about spiritual practice and personal growth that nobody tells you about, and nobody likes.

So bringing this out into the light, I thought, I'll be happy with myself - that is, I'll be perfect - when I meditate twice every day, clean out the frig, hang up all my clothes, oh, the kitchen floor, get my manuscripts out and published, iron that scarf....

In short, I had a to-do list headed by
Lose 10 lbs.!  Maybe 20!
With at least 100 other things on it.
And that's how women are.

I haven't even touched on the faults other people probably think I have, which I am blithely unaware of.*  So that at least is something to like about myself, that little streak of ignorant bliss.
~~~~~~~~~~~
* The old prescriptive grammar said, "Never use a preposition to end a sentence with"** but I have a PhD in English, and a rebellious streak, AND I'm not paid for this, so I write what I want.
** I know - I'm joking.

Lapcat Meditation

Like so many people, I have felt a current of sadness braiding through my day about the death of Robin Williams, which may have been suicide.  We've probably all known someone who committed suicide. The true saying is, It's a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Despair does lift eventually, if you stick around.

Scott [Robinson] Columbus 

Tonight my mind went to a friend who did not kill himself, but died of a massive heart attack at age 49 at a moment when he was in love and loving life.  Just like that.

Scott was in meditation groups with me about ten or twelve years ago.  Like many people with difficult moodswings, he searched for a spiritual practice.  He called me once to talk about his difficulty with sitting meditation. Sitting meditation can be the wrong thing for someone with major depression.  Today I would suggest listening to, becoming, and making music, letting it move your body, being music, but I didn't know that then.  Scott loved his cat, Bartholowmeow.  So I suggested lapcat meditation.  He knew immediately what I meant.

I found myself doing it tonight with Tashi.  I don't hold her on my lap as much as I'd like to because I'm dreadfully allergic to her.  But once in a while she requests it by tentatively coming up on the table or my lap and putting a paw on my shoulder.  She is always polite, looks to see what I think.  I usually let her come up, and then get her down from shoulder to lap.  Later I will take off the clothes she touched and put them in the dryer on air for half an hour, or just wash them.  Also wash face and hands, and do a nasal rinse.  Love is complicated.

We had a very pleasant sit tonight, her on my lap with one hand supporting her underneath and the other stroking her.  The kitchen was getting dim in the twilight, no TV or radio on, the windows closed, only the sound of a train at the Cooke Road crossing.  After a bit I realized I could feel the rise and fall of her breathing in my hands. When I paid closer attention I detected the pulse of her heart as it took the oxygen from her lungs and infused it into her blood, then sent that blood out to the body.

Once during our thirteen years with Sherlock he happened to lie against me in such a way that I felt vividly the entire action of his little heart, all that fast, muscular pumping. It had the effect of filling me with awe at the intricacy of this living thing. So did his death, years later, also on my lap. Rest in peace, loved ones.

Sherlock

Reverence and Otherwise

In the morning my thoughts float around in their zigzag way, and sometimes one lands on my hand. Today it was this:

All my deploring of things people do and the way things are has not helped matters.

This was triggered by morning coffee music with Pete Seeger, which was "Down by the Riverside." The thing about him, he meant it.

Ain't gonna study war no more,
Ain't gonna study war no more...

Now, the illustrious Pete, may his good work never end, meant it, he was against war and tirelessly sang and spoke about it.  And we still have war, don't we.  Oh yes, the bad bad karma of tribalism playing out in unfunny boy games in the Middle East.  God bless them, why don't they just give up their claims on a piece of earth and try to sneak into America like everyone else?

But one thing Pete did accomplish was give people, including me, a way to be in harmony together with our beliefs.  We all sang Guantanamero along with him, rocking a bit from side to side.  We all felt the sadness of the eternal cycle of unnecessary pain, flowers gone to young girls gone to soldiers gone to graveyards.  Gone to flowers.  The community we formed singing was a good thing, an excellent thing. I don't get to feel that much, other than in my women's meditation group, where the warm energy far from war goes round and round.

Last night Tom and I went out for ice cream, like our parents before us, though ice cream has changed since chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry.  Believe me, their toes would curl in alarm at the price of Jeni's Salty Caramel.

We got to talking a little about how as children we occasionally felt something in church I describe as shared reverence. I remember that especially on Easter morning and Christmas Eve.  Now I appreciate the sense of new clothes and spring hats - and white gloves on the ladies, back then - as a way of washing ourselves clean, resurrecting.

Tom went to a small-town Methodist church, and I went to a liberal Congregational church, but they had in common a shared acceptance of the Christian tradition.  In both churches there were those who got that it was not about the tribalism of Are you saved? but about love and unity. Certain stories were emphasized, like the parable of The Good Samaritan. It makes you sad to compare that with what is happening now on the Gaza strip.

I have had many good experiences in my Unitarian church, but have never felt that reverence in these 30-some years, despite our minister's many sermons on love.  I think this is because a percentage of the members there hate the very ideas of belief and mystery.  Atheists have long been vocal in the denomination. In my church, every summer we have a lay service by the Atheists and Skeptics, who affirm their belief only in what can be shown by science, which they revere more than I, who have been the victim of it.  In this service someone may talk about the mystery of life, but it is a head trip, not a spiritual practice, and does not go toward love and compassion. They would snort at the "notion" that Something loves us, and all is well.  They discard mysticism with the term "woo-woo."

I was recently told my group is woo-woo, O-kay, but I, too, have trouble with All shall be well when I watch the evening news.  Still, I enjoy experiencing the mystery and elegance of this great junkheap, even as I deplore the things men do.  For example, I am closely watching our tomato crop, pictured in its entirety here.

And, by way of the miraculous, I figured out how to download photos from my phone to my evil new computer, and then upload them.

It's a Long, Long Trail: Some Thoughts on Spiritual Practice

This is a popular quote, and there are a lot of images of it on Google.  I like this one, which shows a woman who is experiencing some "negative" emotion.  Negative emotions are those the culture doesn't want women to have, like being royally pissed off.  Men are allowed to have those; in fact, they're the hallmark of a Real Man, the kind who beats his wife, then apologizes abjectly, blubbering, drunk, of course, then beats her again and again and so on until something gets her to a safe house.  It should be called Rage Disorder, but the women could not get that into the DSM-IV.  There's a whole book about that.

Or maybe she's experiencing the astonishment of realizing what she's been put through because she was born with a vagina.  Not leaving out you men; there are victims among you, too.  But in my category - intractable PTSD caused by childhood sexual-and-emotional abuse, it seems that more of the victims are women. This is usually not diagnosed.  Instead, the locked-off pain manifests as chronic depression or bipolar disorder or fibromyalgia or underachievement, or all of these with anorexia and psychosomatic ailments thrown in.  Don't leave out the alcoholism.  Girls Wine and Whine.  And then, Smile!  There are no effective medications for any of these effects of abuse.  How could there be?

Here's the truth that pisses me off: the quote is true.  Reality is sometimes hard to face.  That would be why a lot of people don't.

What you think when you start meditating is that it will cure you, relieve your stress, make you happy, and also nice.  Yes, it does allow a space for healing, it will relieve stress for a while, maybe even for a few hours afterward.  But that just gives you fresh eyes on your condition, your life.  After a while, little unwelcome insights will start creeping into the meditation itself, Yow!  The mind clamps down on that, and the meditation becomes boring.  You get restless.  You think, This isn't doing a thing for me.  You decide to try something else.

The road to realization is less traveled for a damn good reason, in other words.  There are passages on the Way that are subject to avalanches of unwelcome memories, tears, rage.  Most people - even those who've had a chance to work with  genuine teachers - quit the Buddha way.  From where I live, it looks like half the Buddhist Teachers in America are in California, but you wouldn't believe how many unenlightened people are lying around beached out there.  People with opportunity.  Some of them - most of them, I bet - tried meditation.  My (estranged) sister once told me she went to hear Thich Nhat Hahn.  Shrug.  "It didn't do anything for me."  Well, neither did the desert in bloom (a wonderful metaphor and fact.)


If you are practicing outside an authentic system, if you don't have a teacher who's actually walked the whole damn path, you haven't got a chance.  Facing life will scare you to look for another self-styled Life Coach or Guru, another cheery book, another sweet quote, a great new recipe, oh, of course, new shoes! - in short, another way to escape reality.  That's the road more taken.

You wouldn't believe how I had to search to find a version of this as I remembered it.  Thank you, Kenneth Moody-Arndt.   I especially like this verse:
You must go and stand your trials.
You have to stand them by yourself.

What to do when you just can't meditate

Can't, won't, don't want to, whatever.  Seriously, I did enjoy watching this amazing invitation to a mixture of overwhelming self-pity and glee.

You didn't watch it, did you? Five minutes is more time than I am usually willing to give a video these days, and I understand that's now normal.

But if you did, it might destress you some.  That won't last.  I liked it and laughed at the sheer joy of surfing, but I had to think, I so wish I'd done that shit when my bones were good.  Latest bone scan showed severe osteoarthritis with high risk of fracture.  I'm supposed to see a specialist.  Yet another specialist.
 
I am in what I was trained to think of as a "bad" mood, i.e., one that made my parents uncomfortable.  Can't you ever smile?  On the other hand, if I was smiling, my father was likely to say gruffly, What're you smiling about?  My mother always tried to get me to ignore him by saying to me, Oh, grow up.  Just the kind of thing that makes you want to sing the Peter Pan theme song,  "I won't grow up."  You do see from this, perhaps, that I was not a popular item in the house I grew up in.

Why don't I blog more often these days?  Well, yes, I'm sick 50% of the time with a weird cycling depression no doctor so far has any explanation for.  There's that.  Should I waste a couple of hours on a good day writing this?  What's in it for me?  And same with my status updates on my Facebook page.  It does not grow because why?  Because the people who subscribe FOR FREE don't share anything, and rarely comment.  Why?  Because they got it free, and don't value it.  Just hit "like" and move on.  Same reason you readers don't bother to comment or write to me.

But see, I'm no fun.  As a blogger I'm nowhere, since I'm not hysterically dramatic in recovery famous holding contests, and blablabla.  I'm not selling fun.  All I have is reality, and that's never been big.

I've been doing a little Naikan lately - GIYA - and it has made me notice what I give and what I receive.  I give have given used to give to this blog, over 1000 published posts, and people think it is quite sufficient to mention to me or Tom in passing that they love my blog and follow it religiously.  But they don't write to me to ask why I'm not publishing, do they?

I should have been an electrician.  That's all.  Do something concrete, important, and well-paid.  This contemplative English major writer introvert thing - the only way it pays is if you write a book about it. That's hard to do if you're depressed.

Anyway guys, I have an excuse.  I'm sick right now with an internal infection in addition to my usual pain in multiple places.  On an antibiotic, which seems to maybe be doing the job, but will fuck up my digestive system for weeks, despite my good probiotic.  Maybe I'm just cranky, the way kids get when they're getting better.  Maybe I'll be back some day radiating cheer and joy and stuff.  We'll see.

Died and Gone to Heaven, Metaphorically speaking

Your brain on Buddha

I feel like I just won the lottery - got a long-awaited call from my nephrologist that I can very slowly ramp down on one of the immunosuppressents I take to keep my donated kidney from being rejected by an alert immune system.  Why would you want to go down on these lifesaving drugs?  Because they suppress your immune system.

Take last night - I was suddenly stricken with Herpes on my lips - cold sores to you - so suddenly that it scared me.  I felt unwell, and the whole left side of my face felt irritated and involved, including that eye.  My eyes are one of my favorite organs.

A whole lot of people have had cold sores and harbor the herpes virus forever in their bodies, but it is dangerous to the elderly and to the immunesuppressed.  I happened to have a doctor appointment today, so I mentioned it and he looked at it and talked to me about it.  It looks okay, and he didn't prescribe an anti-viral, but I should call immediately if this infection gets worse. . . .

This is why it is said a transplant is a treatment for kidney failure, not a cure.  So, you know, you do what you have to to stay alive, but you don't always enjoy it.  Even if you meditate.  Zen is not about eternal bliss, but about being fully alive.

I always like to post pictures, but you sure don't want to see pictures of cold sores, or if you do, GIY.  Above, one of these pictures intended to make you want to meditate.  Perhaps I should note that my kidney was given to me by a woman I hardly knew, who had sat with our Zen group one night when I was doing orientation.  That's quite an outcome of being in a meditation group.  Unusually good karma, indeed.

And that makes me want to post a favorite puppy-dog picture, which I may well have posted before.  So here:

 

May you have some good luck today, too.

Things Change (Constantly)

"Things change" was a constant theme of Suzuki Roshi, and impermanence is a fundamental understanding in Buddhism.  Phenomena (everything we think of as real) are constantly arising and decaying, so pay attention.  Along that line, isn't it curious how some people stick like velcro to themselves and their beliefs?  Mostly people who are good at distracting themselves from their suffering, I think.  Often people don't adopt meditation seriously until overwhelmed by suffering.  It seems much the same to me as "hitting bottom" in an addiction.  

Among the principles of Assertiveness Training I once taught in the heyday of feminism, was the right to change your mind.  Not that we should enshrine our tendency to ADD and flutterby everything, but we should pay attention to new information, like, the love of your life has been having sex with the babysitter. Things change, new information, you change.  Old age is a stream of things like this.  You start having stress fractures in your feet; throw away high heels, move into well-fitting athletic shoes.  Surprising how difficult it can be when you are attached to some dumb red shoes or husband or other delusion.

Since I put out word that I was offering a course in Zen (see previous post), I've talked to a number of people and decided to offer instead a sitting group for women only.  Someday I might write about what happens in mixed-gender peer groups or discussions, and how radically women's lives differ from men's, but you could google it yourself.

The description of the sitting group follows this pleasing short video in which Sylvia Boorstein introduces lovingkindness meditation, which I plan to introduce in the group.


~ Women’s Meditation Group ~

Contemporary  Zen  strays  by  struggling  to  get  away  from  the  heart's innermost request - to realize the same heart as Buddha. Our problem is not that we aspire too much, but that we aspire too little, and aim for selfcentered wisdom and compassion rather than the full-blown real deal. ~ Dosho Port

Since I announced a course called The Zen Way to a Balanced Life, I’ve learned that only women were interested  (which is interesting), and that almost everyone has schedule conflicts this time of year.

Bowing to reality - which is basic to Zen, when you think about it - I’ve decided to change my offering to an open sitting group for women only. It will meet every Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30.  Come if you can.  No registration is required, and there will be no charge.

Each meeting will include
~ seated meditation in the Zen style (zazen) - in chairs ~ tea and a check-in
~ a talk on the whole-hearted way of Zen
~  time to creatively explore how we can live our own lives more deeply.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to write or call.  Otherwise, just show up.  If you’d like a personal orientation to zazen before you come, call me to set up a time. We will start promptly, so plan to arrive ten minutes early.  The door will be unlocked; if you are late, enter quietly and find a seat.  You may leave your shoes in the front hall.

We will begin with a focus on setting up a daily sitting practice, and on kindness, the first of The Four Boundless Qualities of the Mind.  There is a good introduction to these qualities at this link:  http://www.gratefulness.org/readings/jh_boundless.htm
~~~~~~~~~~
Jeanne Desy began practicing meditation when she had breast cancer in 1997, and has led meditation groups and workshops since.  She has studied with Ama Samy and Daniel Terragno, and is a student of Dosho Port.

Sun and shadow

Life certainly is, isn't it?  Tashi, now, is alert for the sunshine, and enjoys it fully.  I've had to work at being that smart in my animal body.

I do credit what happiness I have to many buddhas and bodhissatvas along the way - the helping hand you sometimes get in unlikely places.  But most of all, I have to credit my practice - and the teachers who have nudged me along the Zen path.  It is said that "A Zen student must go straight on a narrow mountain road that has 99 curves."  And curve balls, too.

The course description below nods to major things I've learned as I stumbled on.  As it implies, the practice goes far beyond meditation to pervade our daily life.
If you live in the Columbus area, you can still register for this fall session through Friday at 7 pm.
(As for the way this messed up the formatting on the flier - I give. I'm a writer, not a graphic artist.)
~~~~~~~~

The Zen Way to a Balanced Life
A four-week course in establishing a daily life practice.

11:00 - 12:30 Saturdays
November 2, 9, 16, 23.
Columbus, Ohio

Meditation is widely prescribed now for stess relief. However, it was not developed in as a sort
of mental backrub, but as an element of a wholehearted life.

Everyone is invited, regardless of experience in meditation. This course will ground you in both
walking and sitting meditation (zazen) as they have been practiced in the Japanese Zen tradition
since the 12th century. It will also touch on the principles for living deeply that are sometimes
called The Boundless Qualities of our minds, with emphasis on equanimity. Zazen and these
principles are compatible with every religion and belief system.

Each session will also include chi gong techniques for awareness and relaxation, suggestions for
nourishing our own basic goodness, a brief creative exercise, and opportunities for sharing. We
will touch down on —

Setting up a daily meditation practice

Managing your life and time

Relieving stress and depression with gratitude

Finding meaning in creative giving

The course will meet in my home in Clintonville. The cost is $60, payable in advance by check or
Paypal, $50 for students and seniors. To learn more or to register, e-mail Jeanne at
jdesy@zencat.com or call 263-9275.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Contemporary Zen strays by struggling to get away from the heart's
innermost request - to realize the same heart as Buddha. Our problem is not
that we aspire too much, but that we aspire too little, and aim for selfcentered
wisdom and compassion rather than the full-blown real deal.
~ Dosho Port
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jeanne Desy began practicing meditation for healing when she had breast cancer in 1997, and
has led meditation groups and workshops since. She earned a PhD in literary theory at Ohio
State in 1995, and has taught literature and writing at several Ohio colleges. Her fiction and
poetry have won Ohio Arts Council awards. Her story, “The Princess Who Stood on Her Own
Two Feet,” is taught around the world as a feminist fairy tale.

Good News Never Hurts

The video - it just puts me in good spirits to see an old guy up there with his grandson, still making music.  In fact, the existence of Pete Seeger cheers me up.

I thought you'd like to know the followup to my last post.  If you're new to this blog, maybe you should scroll down and read that first.

Okay, welcome back.

Not long after I put up the previous post, the Good Doctor did call.  I call him a Good Doctor because -
(a) he did call, and
(b) he started by explaining why it took him this long to call and apologizing.  A doctor who apologizes for your wait.  On Facebook, I'd punctuate that like this.

Here are the notes I typed into my computer as we talked, though it hurts my poor cervical spine (neck) to do things like that.  I need to have Tom find that clunky shoulder rest I used to have on the phone, when I used a landline more.  You can be sure he will have saved it, and be able to stick his hand into a heap and pull it out.  That's the difference between us.  Two differences, actually.
1.  I occasionally throw something out or donate it.
2.  What I didn't get rid of, I can't find.
So, my notes:

he began with apologizing for taking so long, and explaining that he’d been trying to get hold of the radiologist, and finally did
neck pain is from narrowing of neck, like stenosis
there may be some leakage of spinal fluid around T8, but it would cause headaches standing that go away when you lie down (so be aware if that begins).  Or it could be a glitch with the test.  (Idiots would not strap me down, and I moved a couple of times just a little. Plus, do I ever really get still?)
B12 normal
TSA a bit elevated, but thyroid fine
so go ahead and schedule the PT, and they will tell me what I need to use to walk safely
I had a stunning release of anxiety, and did the hokey pokey, holding on to things.

Thus you can see I am downright optimistic, though that is probably temporary.  Still, it is an upside to bipolar disorder that we delightful, fun, creative people need to remember when we don't feel fun or creative, and perhaps are not acting as delightful as usual:  our moods change.  Everything does.

You know, a great many American women describe themselves as depressed.  My crazy friends and I agree, people who have never been disabled by depression have no idea how bad it can be.  My Buddhist friends and I suspect that most of what passes for chronic depression is actually the dissatisfaction that comes with human life, especially in developed countries today, where people have too much time to think:  the craving to Be Somebody you're not, to have More Love than you're getting from your kids, your family, the opposite sex, your boss, etc; to not age, and certainly not die.  And there are the miscellaneous delusions, such as the well-established belief that wine really isn't alcohol because it's made from a plant.  (I had to tell the woman who told me that, so is vodka.  So is bourbon.  Etc. Somehow, we don't get together anymore.)

But life does have its rough spots, and sickness, aging, and death are big ones.  Next thing you know, you're learning to meditate lying on your back in bed with a tiny heated pillow under your neck.  I may well be the world's foremost Zen expert in that particular unconventional posture. 

What Rescue Workers Know and Women Don't

Sundays, I like to go to church.  There isn't an American Zen center in my city, but I wouldn't leave my church if there was; I've been a member there for thirty years, and they've helped me through sickness and loss. I've gotten to know a lot of nice people there. I ran into three (3!) of them at my local library today, perhaps because we were all not at the OSU football game.

Maybe my long tenure there has meant I feel free to misbehave.  Often, the music and the sermon inspire me to write a poem quietly, on paper with a pen, not on my iPad.  If that bothers someone, they should sit with that, as we say in Zen, meaning, they should meditate on, What's my problem, anyway?

But last Sunday I was inspired not to poetry, but to some notes on self-compassion. What, have compassion for yourself?  You're a woman. Who has time?  Exactly.

Who has time to meditate, for example, to name the overall best way of taking care of yourself by reducing your stress.  I once heard a self-styled spiritual person say that.  Really? I thought thoughtfully.  But she worked, and had a family.  And after all, meditation - time to accomplish nothing at all in a certain way - is a luxury for those who don't have to work all their waking hours.

As I thought about self-compassion, and taking better care of This Wun, I remembered the fireman [sic] I once was doomed to work with; we co-edited a manual for fire fighters.  We'd have gotten along better if I'd said to him early on, "Look Ron - you know how to fight fires.  I don't tell you how to fight fires.  I am a language person.  I know how to edit.  Let me do my job."  In part, I kept silence out of a not-unreasonable fear of macho guys with big chips on their big shoulders.

From working with that book I learned the first rule of fire-fighting, whether you're a smoke jumper or a small-town volunteer:
       Save yourself first.
A rescue worker is a very important part of any community, as communities are places where people live in shelters, and shelters are important to animals.  So, you know those adorable pictures of a firefighter streaked with smoke, lovingly holding a tiny kitten?  If he or she* endangered their life to save that kitten, they will get chewed out mercilessly by the captain, and by Ron.  Because a trained rescue worker is more valuable than the idiot who started that fire by smoking in bed.  That's how Ron explained it to me, in more colorful language.  It's expensive to train a rescue worker and it can take years before you tame down their hero fantasies and they become good team players.  So Ron said.   

Women of the world - whether you fight fires or a harassing boss, are a mother or a daughter, a politician or a postal clerk - you are important, too.  Yes, even though you don't have a penis.  This is still news to many people.  Change comes slowly.  The general culture keeps subtly putting women "in their place" even if your parents were liberated and you are, too.  The comic strips are full of jokes about women working two jobs, the paying job, and that second shift they work when they come home and take care of a family.  But it really isn't funny.

When you fail to take care of your own needs - and who am I to suggest daily meditation? I'm not your mom - you are spending the vital chi you were born with.  It is exhaustible. 

I think that the reason most people stop meditation practice is that their truth is threatening to break through the boredom.  It does do that, and when it does it's a good thing to be working with an authentic Teacher.  Be prepared.  As my favorite author, Terry Pratchett, has written, "one edition of the Ankh-Morpork Times says on the masthead, 'The truth will make you fret.' (Other editions assert, 'The truth will make you free,' and 'The truth will make you Fred.')  There is debate about who first added an estimable second clause to that famous sentence, maybe Dead President James Garfield, who is not credited in this pretty poster -

Some prefer Gloria Steinem's version.
~~~~
* Rescue Workers have to wear so much gear, and lift so much weight that few women can qualify or, indeed, have dared to aspire to the job.

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.

Bad Habits and Dangerous Undandering

Of course, nobody decides to start a meditation practice without a reason, but it usually isn't compelling enough to keep us going.  It takes a lot of effort and self-discipline.  And we run into difficulties that are the standard and predictable landscape of a spiritual quest . . .

Why do I think this is out west? Maybe it's the bullet holes.

but that defeat people who don't have solid relationships with a real teacher and sitting group.

Even when teachers are available, records show that most people drop away from practice when it starts to get difficult or boring, and it does both.  I only mean to say, if you're not committed to a practice, you've got a lot of company.  On the other hand, the day does come when you wish you'd been practicing all these years. 

On still another hand, so to speak, practice does not make perfect.  You may practice for years and years and still find yourself shaking your head at some mindless moment.  There are big ones, like the time not long ago when I fell off a step stool and got a concussion and a compression fracture in my spine.  Then there are the little ones.  You can make an endless stream of those without trying.  I made two little ones so far today, and it's just noon.

1.  I injured my lower back and set up my sciatica giving the cat her daily dander treatment.

2.  Thinking morosely how I injured my lower back, I went to take a Tylenol from my pillcase, but instead took my 2:00 pm immune-suppressants two hours early, which they really caution against. 

Allow me to explain.

What do you mean, your table?

When I ramped up my own practice a couple of months ago, I did become more aware.  One day, petting Tashi, I  realized that I was deathly allergic to her.  Maybe her soft blue-gray coat, with its fine, tiny undercoat, is a special offender in this regard.  Tashi is a shelter cat, but much the type of the Russian Blue (see left).  The darn immune-suppressants have let my allergies go wild.  So it's been deep cleaning around here, and also spraying the carpet with special pet-allergy stuff, and wiping down the poor cat every day with other stuff that controls her dander, and does help.

This morning I had experimentally driven my little car around the block, as the doctor advised, and was pleased that it didn't hurt my back.  Maybe I felt big and strong as a result, because then I did the undandering of Tashi alone.  This means wiping down pretty much all her surface with a paper towel moistened with the stuff.  She does not like this, though she does not hate it, so she tried to squirm  away, but I held her and finished the job.  When I straightened up, uh-oh.  Pain across the lower back, and that sciatica in the right leg.  Just another case of live and learn.

And in that interesting way things do, one mistake led to another.  I always take my Rapamune when I open the noon pillcase, which is usually at 2:00, after my phone alarm reminds me.  I didn't mean to take it at noon, but did, by habit.  Habit is sometimes my friend (I scrape the catbox every night) and sometimes my enemy.  Awareness is the opposite of habit, now that I think about it.  But aware or not, sometimes you misjudge things, and there goes your back.

It pleased me no end to learn a while back that Zen has a term for living your life as a continuous series of mistakes.  (You can read a little about it here.)  Shoshaku jushaku.  Actually, that will happen unless you're in a very tidy rut.  When I saw that term I thought, If I ever get to go through the process whereby you are given a Buddhist name, this might well be it.

Dallying on the Sabbath

If you feel like dallying, here's a most relaxing folk song from my childhood.  According to a commentor, the singer is Elizabeth Guest from a CD of lullabies titled "Sleep, Baby, Sleep."  Ahh.  What I need to listen to at bedtime, since I am having the insomnia problems typical of the elderly, compounded by the insomnia that is common to the bipolar mind.

I'd like to teach the world . . . wait - that reminds me of another song.  I found a beautiful rendition on YouTube with no ads on it.

Ahh.  Naturally stoned.

I wish I could teach the world to go back to something that was a given in American culture when I was a girl, in the days before the Baby Boom upset the applecart - honoring the sabbath day.  In Ohio, which was uniformally either Christian or Don't Care back then, the sabbath meant Sunday, a day to restore yourself spiritually and physically.  A day of rest.  Almost nothing was open on Sunday but the churches.  You know what? - it didn't hurt anyone.  It meant that one day a week the alcoholics had no bars to hang out in.  Maybe church hurt some people; or maybe that was really a family dysfunction that church got blamed  for. 

It was true that in the fifties the middle-class housewife often felt obliged to put forward a big meal, a nice Sunday dinner, maybe complete with her own always from-scratch cinnamon rolls or chocolate layer cake.  But after the meal, and the dishes done, even the women got time off.  You know what people did on nice days when I was a girl?  Packed food from home to picnic in the park.  Or took a drive in the country.

What do we have now, sixty years later?  Everyone working at WalofEvilMart with no benefits or pension in order to serve those who don't have to work Sunday and are running around buying stuff and eating mediocre (or worse) food out and trolling the malls and watching expensive shoot-em-up movies.  Then those people work all week to pay for that stuff, and child care.

The learned articles about why this developed nation has such poor health statistics often talk about the toll  stress takes on people.  What do all those hardworking people do to reduce stress?  Spend money they don't have (that is, use credit cards) on pedicures, massages, trips to Disneyland, cruises, more eating out, and expensive clothes to wear to hot yoga.  As for Western medicine, in desperation it has co-opted meditation, stripped it of ethics and mythological depth, and teaches it as Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction. It costs a lot to go to the retreats at which you can get certified to teach that.

A little aside here.  A couple of years ago I applied to teach meditation in the educational arm of a local big hospital system.  My interview ended with the director telling me that of course, I couldn't in any way talk about religion.  I thought that over and called later to withdraw my application. There are already enough people teaching practices stripped of the religion that devised them.

 Oh well. It's up to each of us to save ourselves.  I was going to conclude with a photo of Tashi demonstrating what she knows about lowering stress, but my photos are ultraslow to upload.  All of America seems to be on the internet on this beautiful spring day.

Morning Coffee With Grandma: What is Zen?

7:00 Quietly awakened by morning light.  Roll over, sigh happily - nothing scheduled this morning. close eyes.
8:20  Wake up again. (In Zen this is called gradual awakening.  I've always believed in it.)
8:45  Pulling the compression sleeve on my lymphedemic arm, I accidentally sock my jaw.
9:00  Take vitals. I am alive. I thought so.
9:05  Get on Vine of Obstacles, read Forum, answer another student with a post that includes one of the few things I know for sure - you have to have a semi run into your house before you will start to meditate.  Then, if you're a woman, it's going to take twice the effort, because you've been trained to take care of everyone else, and don't get above yourself.  I don't have to go into a tirade about how Oprah and the other marketers make a lot of money by convincing you that what you need is a $100 haircut and a pedicure.  Most of us eventually figure out that that doesn't work.  Also, an old saying in feminism is "To get anywhere a woman has to be twice as good as a man.  Fortunately, that's not hard."

Actually, on one of my early Zen retreats I was walking down the residence hall when I saw that someone else had left her door open.  There, neatly laid out on her dresser, were four pairs of earrings. I thought, being new to all this, "Are these people Zen?"  Some of the women wore full makeup every day, too.  It turned out that -
(a)  Most were Catholic, drawn to this retreat because it was at Grailville and was led by a Jesuit Priest/Zen Master.  And -
(b)  Zen is not about what you wear.
(c)  Not everyone gets that.  When I went to a "real" Zen retreat, the other students all wore black and did NOT wear earrings or makeup or ever look up at the flowering trees.  Was that Zen? Now I was confused.

9:30  Done with coffee.  Time to put the post-it sign on my study door and do my practice.  Not that sitting down to meditate is the practice.  The practice is . . . umm . . .Well, sit down, shut up, and pay attention is fundamental.  But the "pay attention" part is supposed to keep going.  Pay attention all day long, every moment, every step.  That's the practice, as I understand it now.
~~~~~

In case you didn't recognize her above, here's a more usual view of the beautiful Pema Chodron, who got liberated and then got liberated.

One more thing:  I'm thinking I ought to call this blog The Dally Grandma.  Any opinions?

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

The Only Good Doctor is a Compassionate Doctor

It seems my last post made it clear how I've been suffering with my bipolar disorder, compounded by the death of a friend and a funeral that did me - and another friend - more harm than good.  I heard from several compassionate readers.  (I want to include here a painting I did Sunday night that vividly illustrates the high and low, but technology is defeating me.  Maybe tomorrow.)

The background:  the last time I saw my trusted psychiatrist he told me he couldn't do squat for me.  (You can read the post I wrote then here.)  Nothing.  He suggested meditation, which showed me that he hasn't heard a thing I said, or if he did, didn't write it down, or if he did, didn't take time to look at my file.  I told him I've been meditating since I had cancer in 1997.  That's not the kind of thing they think matters.  I was wrong to like him as much as I did.  I'm sure you should never trust a doctor who always runs on time.  We don't need clockwork doctors.

The whole problem with a teaching/research hospital is that the doctors who survive there are the kind who want to do research and pontificate in classrooms.  These jobs use areas in the brain (and ego) that have little to do, I am sorry to say, with humanity or compassion.  OSU is infamous around here for its unfriendliness, but we experienced similar contempt when we visited the Cleveland Clinic a couple of years ago.  I suspect teaching hospitals are like this unless a considerable effort has been made to be friendly.

The whole idea of doctors doing research and teaching hospitals nests in the whole idea of Western Medicine, which I am beginning to call a Parliament of Clowns (or choose your obscenity).  Here is a neat illustration that I pulled off the internet comparing Western Mechanical-Man medicine to traditional Chinese medicine, which views the body as a garden:

(It's fun to blow this up, print it, and color it.)  It is very Western to think with the left-brain, to respect advances in technology, to believe that enough money and knowledge will cure you - and that's how all the big hospitals advertise, too.  They are cutting-edge, they save kids with weird cancers.

The brand of Western Medicine I have been unfortunate enough to live through, which misdiagnosed me for three years (I almost died of suicide), then ruined my kidneys with lithium, then charged me $200,000 for a transplant, and then didn't  give a damn what happened to me after that - is actually American medicine.  I hear things are better in European countries.  American medicine is profoundly influenced by the American Dream, the get-rich get-status gunplay frontier attitude on which this country was founded by a bunch of  fortune-hunters and misfits (and a few good men).

At present we have a medical profession run by rich old white guys and the occasional Queen Bee, too many of whom went into it for money and status.  Too few went into it out of compassion, out of a desire to relieve suffering and heal the world.  (And I do know those doctors exist.)  People who want to help others often go toward the helping professions, ministry, nursing, teaching, massage, alternative healing modes.  Who can afford med school, anyway, but the sons (and, recently, daughters of the rich?  And who can endure the brutal frat-boy hazing system of internship and residency, which is not nearly as much fun as Grey's Anatomy makes it look.

What do you do when a system is broken at its very foundation?  Anyone can tell you it's going to be a long long uphill climb of the Sisyphus kind.  Nevertheless, we should try.  Here are my suggestions:

1.  Medical schools should begin screening with psychological tests all applicants who look smart and diligent enough to be admitted.  Test for this:  compassion.  Test for what we call people skills.  That shouldn't be too hard.  Further, interview selected candidates.
2.  We patients should begin interviewing and evaluating our doctors.  What is their spiritual practice?  Why did they go into medicine, why this field?  What do they do when they don't know what to do for a patient?  (Throw her out in the snow?)
3.  We should all begin asking ourselves what each of us can do to bring attention to this awful mess, how we could suggest corrective measures.  (Don't overlook the ability now to rate doctors on internet sites.)
4.  You should print out this post and send it to your doctor.  Or former doctor.

I myself intend to write that doctor a letter, striving for compassionate communication, explaining to him how this has affected me.  Try to show him that it was appalling to dump me - a known suicide risk - out here without any help in coping with this dangerous mental illness.  I want to suggest he consider going into administration full-time.  He's already rising in that department and told me he likes it.  He likes being busy. 

I may also write to Les Wexner, a local rich man who has given OSU so much money that his name is now part of the name of the OSU Medical Center.  I don't need to mention the bad doctor's name; the point is not to punish an individual who thinks he means well.  The point is to examine the very premise of the place.  If anyone is in a position to set a few balls rolling and shake things up, it's Les.  As I think about it, such a letter sounds to me like skillful means, one of those Buddhist concepts.

I won't have time to do this today.  I highly doubt I will be able to do it tomorrow.  It's been day UP/day down since I went off Seroquel, and that would make tomorrow a down day.  Those days it's a real struggle to get dressed, to drink my water take my pills on time and eat halfway right.  To somehow distract and amuse myself during the endless blank painful hours of a day like that.  To fall asleep.  But maybe the day after that.  After all, I have taken the Bodhissatva vow, to save all beings.  You have to keep working at it from wherever you are.