Being Kind

I find myself on this catlove or lovecat theme just now.  A sort of spring fever brought on by the sudden entrance of fall weather, clear and cool.  I enjoyed this video, brought my way on Facebook by Barb Taylor, and thought, Wow, how we need to ask what our children need, our spouses.  And what we need.  It's sort of simple awareness, but then, awareness is not necessarily common. 

Some Zen people I know have been trading fervent opinions about the precepts.  One is a fundamentalist of sorts, who sees things in black and white.  You see that in converts sometimes.

But really, if you are trying to figure out how to act with reference to rules, you can get very confused.  For instance, if it's Not Killing and you believe that killing sensate beings for food is wrong, you may run into the fact that wheat harvested by machine kills all sorts of small lives who make their home in that field.  (If you want to build your compassion for field mice, I recommend one of my favorite books, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.)  I think I plucked the example of animals killed in a harvest from the writings of Bernie Glassman.

Sometimes I feel that my long journey with Buddhism and lots of thought has led me back around to the simplicity of the amazing Christian commandment:  Love one another.  Although I practice lovingkindness meditation, metta, I don't love everyone, so I vow instead to be kind.  The Dalai Lama has expressed it eloquently: "Try to be nice."

Kindness is a heart move.  When I pay attention to that vow it seems to mean that I do and say less and pay attention more. I don't bounce right in knowing what someone needs.  Sometimes I don't know and can't  "figure out" the kind thing to do.  For instance, what do you say to a friend whose drinking seems to be messing up his life?  I still don't know.  Backing up to think about it, I wonder, What would I want someone to do if it were me?  Now that sounds like the Golden Rule.  I can't help it.

Coming Out

Strawberries in their green hats

If you do not say 'good'
and you do not say 'not-good,'
then what is the nature of reality? 

I think I've written before about this koan, the first one I ever came across, not counting "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" since I didn't seriously see that as a koan until a few years ago.  The above question is in the little classic Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, which was the first such book I owned.  Maybe the first I ever saw.  I must have plucked it from a bookstore shelf because the word "Zen" signified to me a life of clean, orderly peace.  (Wrong again.)

You may react to it like I did - WTF?  Seriously, in that age before the internet and its acronyms, I wondered, But how can you not judge things and like things or dislike them?  Obviously, things are good or bad.  I wondered that every time I picked up that book and read it.  Maybe that means I was "carrying the koan," as they say; not trying to decipher it, not puzzling over it; just had it in there, not making sense.

I started to understand it when I began to do loving kindness meditation (metta), which is a structured kind of prayer or intention that includes "a neutral person."  Like many people, I discovered that I either liked or disliked practically everyone.  That slows you down, seeing that.   I was dividing the world as my alcoholic father taught me by example: either "he's okay," or "he's an a------."  I didn't think in those terms.  I just liked or disliked people, an in-law, the mail carrier, the checkout clerk.  I had to use strangers in that space.  That turned out well, but that's a story for another time.

Last Sunday morning, deeply depressed and distraught over the sparsely-attended funeral of a friend, I posted a post called "In Memory of a Wild Flower."  It ranged widely, blaming our minister, Mark, for not saying good things about her, for telling many things she had kept secret during her life; blaming others in the church who had not liked Teena or me or had let me down at one time; blaming her family for, it seemed then, not forgiving her even a little. I was ready never to go back to that church again.  I have taken this post down for now, and will repost it after I revise it in light of what has happened since.

What happened was that I heard first from Mark, and his long post was clearly compassionate.  I answered, he wrote back.  Then I ran into a woman I'd targeted in that post (though not by name), who must have heard about it, and put her arm around me and was so kind and reassuring that I burst into tears.  Meanwhile, I heard from friends who suffer as I do, some of them with serious diagnoses I had not known about, some telling me, "I'm not out of the closet on this," and thanking me for saying what they felt - that the mentally ill are stigmatized everywhere.  Thanking me for being out of the closet.  

At first, I also felt horrible, wished I hadn't posted it, wished I could have addressed the issues privately face to face. I should have known better.  But I was flailing around, drowning in hurt and outrage and, at the same time, the worst moodswings I've ever had.  Before long, though, I realized that the post had led to bonding with people whose stories I had not known, who carried around the same kind of hurt as me.  So it wasn't bad or good to have posted as I did. You can't say.

I don't regret this - displaying the kind of despair and fear we have to deal with, a depth of mental pain most people have never experienced.

I was circumspect about my bipolar disorder for decades, so I don't blame anyone for staying "in the closet."  It is analogous to the situation gays and lesbians faced last century.  But we mentally ill don't have a Stonewall Inn where we can gather, from which we could fight back and hold proud parades.  We are lonely, and we may not deal with aloneness as well as people who have not been broken.  We are paranoid because we were scapegoated or abandoned by our families.  Many of us are not able to work and not able to pass as "normal".  We may be disabled by our moods and the severe side effects of the drugs we have to take just to keep from committing suicide.  

We see stigma where it might not exist - but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  It does, and it is powerful, because we don't meet this society's definition of worthwhile (successful, achieving) people, and we can't always restrain our tears or anger, and we have a harder time than most people finding effective ways to stand up to the stigma.  I wonder whether this will ever be any different.

Below, the first photo of the Stonewall Riots, which were led by homeless youth that slept in a nearbye park. The Mattachine Society newsletter reported that the Inn was their only safe place, so of course they fought for it. Other than that, "they had nothing to lose."

NY Daily News, June 29, 1969 - the Stonewall Riots

 

 

 

 

 

A Love Story

I've been more aware of the power of love since I read that being in love creates oxytoxcin in the brain - that is the feel-good chemical that makes the sad and unsuspecting pay a lot for oxycodone on the streets.  That got me thinking about the Buddhist practice of metta, which involves Lovingkindness Meditation, a method or prayer or chant taught especially in America by Sharon Salzberg, though I know Pema Chodron teaches it in the Tibetan tradition, too.  Loving is a good way to do no harm.

American Street Cat was founded by a woman whose heart went out to the feral cats in her local colony in Brooklyn - her story is at the above link.  I don't live in New York City, you probably don't either, but it's a nice love story, an example of how our lives can form around some one we love.  Like me and many of my friends, she loves cats and didn't want to see them suffer.  She didn't invent Trap-Neuter-Release; Olwen Firestone, a lovely woman at my church who lives a life of service, went to a lot of trouble and expense to do it for the feral cats she fed on her back porch. They would not be touched, but used to follow her every morning when she walked.

The video above goes on to show pictures of many feral cats someone decided to love, and gave a name to, reminding me of The Little Prince.  (If you haven't read that classic, you can give yourself a copy for Christmas.)