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

Is Art Necessary?

A while ago I was telling Tom how much work cooking is - it took me half an hour to put together the base for a pork roast:  sauerkraut, raisins, apple slices. Then I remembered how struck I was by the beauty of the apples, and the shadows the bright overhead track lights threw on the counter, and I thought, when apples are so beautiful, why do we bother doing art?  So I'd reached for my camera.





Of course, my little Samsung phone camera does much more than I ever could do with film, including this kind of shot, which is negative......





and then the Picasa editing system auto-fixed the shot that had been a little under-exposed......

I had to laugh.  No wonder it took me half an hour to slice a couple of apples. 

And I had to laugh again when I realized that even as I questioned the necessity of art, I had paused to do art then and there, not having time (or expertise) to paint a still life.  Was this exploration of the beauty of apples needed?  Obviously, if you were really hungry you'd eat the damn apple.  But if you do have the luxuries of food and shelter and time to regard an apple and record its beauty, then your pleasure has been magnified.  Then too, there's something grounding and relaxing in appreciating what is right in front of you. It felt like time out for meditation. And I think that's all useful.

The Practice You Need

Collage August 26, 2012

My goodness, here it is Sunday and I haven't posted here since Tuesday.  You don't even want to know why, the chaos around here.  It's a new day, and I have awakened with optimism.  For a long time I have seen Sunday as a free day, a sort of sabbath to rest from the things I feel responsible for, not even demanding of myself that I meditate or exercise, though I do have to follow my elaborate pill schedule and drink enough water and brush and floss and wear my compression sleeve and leg things and shoes with insoles.......Yes.  And glasses and hearing aids.  Just to stay alive. It's not easy being me.  However, Sunday is my day off from all the rest of the catastrophe.  As much as is practical.

A while back a reader asked me to write about my practice.  I'm wary of being specific about it, because my practice suits me in my circumstance and this body, and after this many years along the Buddhist path.  So for now, to start with, I want to more generally talk about what I think that path is - in other words, the overview of the practice.

Based on the prescription attributed to the Buddha that is called "the Noble Eightfold Path," I have three goals:

understand reality deeply
be fully present
behave

Zen compels me to point out that I can't fully explain what I mean in words.  Furthermore, these three aspects of the path aren't separate. If you are entirely present and aware in a situation, that means you understand its nature, and the large nature of all reality, our interconnection, karma; and that means you will  try not to do harm by your speech and actions. These actually all point toward one goal, to practice being awake.

So maybe this is the point to use the word "enlightenment."  When I started on this path, that's what I wanted, and I understood it as a condition of no more suffering.  Of being relaxed and clear and free of stress and all those negative emotions like fear and anger, transcending pain.  I was suffering a lot then so I worked very hard, and after a while had a grand spiritual experience.  But the bliss and ease it rolled in with was eroded by the drip . drip . drip . of  life. I had a lot to learn about my own behavior, how I thought and what I did that made me suffer more than necessary.  I also had to learn that I was not going to be entirely free of suffering, that no one is.  If you read the Buddha's story/myth, he continued to suffer, too.

That learning came about through "spiritual practice," and I have done many kinds, through which I have chipped away at  my delusions and inched toward clear seeing and doing less harm.  I think I'll stop here for now.  It is Sunday, and I want to make it to coffee hour at church.  One of the things I've learned is that you have to have a community in which you feel valued and which shares your values.
~~~~~
p.s.  Had a delightful lunch after church with good friends and getting to know each other better.  But Panera's charges a bit much for a bowl of soup.  And you don't want to know how many calories are in a pastry.  Really.

Committed to Being Stubborn

Here we have Sherlock owning the newspaper.  He was stubborn, but then he was a male cat.  They are perfect just as they are, but I think the rest of us can do a little better.

I had another opportunity today in Kroger's to practice patience in the checkout line.  I stayed alert to the environment, and after a while saw that this could take a very long time, put my stuff back in my cart and went to (gasp) the self-service.  Since I had three kinds of produce that had to be weighed, I learned how to do that.  Yes, I am modestly proud.

I also got a writing prompt from the situation:  a very old lady was holding everything up, and still might be, as she was attempting to count out some $74 in ones.  When she thought she had it, the checker told her "There's only $35 here.  Your bill is $74."  That was when I moved on.

The lady looked very elderly, maybe 90, fragile-looking, tremorous and bent, and dressed in many shades of purple, down to her handbag and wallet and chiffon scarf protecting her hairdo; she knew what her favorite color was.  Watching her I thought, You really need to let your daughter come shopping with you.  I don't know whether she has a daughter, so what follows here is all my fiction.

The lady in purple does have children, a couple of them right here in town.  A son and a daughter, all you need to navigate old age, if they're decent people, and let's suppose they are.  They have had to take her credit card away because she was drawing money from ATMs and giving it to scammers, and then they had to take the checkbook away because she was constantly bouncing checks.  They have begged her to let them go shopping with her.  But she can shop alone, because she's still driving. You'd be surprised what kids will let their parents do, rather than make them mad.  It's sad.

Her kids have begged her to let them do the shopping - not a chance.  They need to insist, but they have.  They say, "She's so stubborn."

There's a lot to think about here (like, how are you going to handle your old age?) but I set out to write about being stubborn.  In my story, the old woman can't shop alone. Her endeavor was making her anxious, and the checkout lines were all backed up because she was effectively disabling one of them.  She needs to relax and accept the reality of aging.

The moral of the story is this:  Stubbornness is not a virtue.  In fact, sticking to the way you want things to be, no matter who it hurts, is a spiritual flaw.  Yet, people who would never admit to other character flaws (like having no impulse control or being mean) don't hesitate to say "I'm stubborn."  And they have trained their poor children to think it's an okay fact of personality.  "Oh, he's always been stubborn."

What follows from this, if you think about it, that a stubborn person is going to stick to being stubborn.  In a weird way, it makes perfect sense.

Seeing the Light

[video:  Maru sees the light.]

Understanding that we are fragile and our lives can be snatched from us any moment is a staple of Buddhist thought. Gaining that understanding is thought to be key to awakening; some monks meditate in cemetaries or worse, charnal grounds. (The link leads to an interesting Wikipedia article, but you probably don't want to know.)

During some Zen retreats a beautiful text may be intoned by a voice from the dark outside the zendo, encouraging us to to understand that the great matter is the fragility of our lives, and we should not waste one minute of our precious time on retreat.  Along this line, here's this from an article about one of the great Teachers who brought Zen to the West, and was known for a sense of humor.

Maezumi Roshi's style was warm, dynamic and direct. He lettered a sign on the zendo reading, "If you want to clarify the Great Matter of life and death you are welcome. Otherwise, better get out!"

 So I would have said I grasped this intellectually - but Zen is never satisfied with that.  Mind is only a piece of heart-mind.  And yesterday I got a body blow that took me deeper with it.

As you know if you follow this blog, we've been to four funerals in about three months - three friends, and Tom's father.  Two of these friends were way younger than me, and their deaths shocked a lot of people.

Another couple we know has had a string of frightening events.  In April the man had his first heart attack; last month the woman took a fall that fractured her pelvis, and means she is in chronic pain and has to use a walker; yesterday we learned that the man had fainted and hit his head, and is hospitalized. Why he fainted is still being investigated.  These are older (than me) people, entering their eighties but vigorous and engaged in life, who had already had to abandon a planned trip.

The woman leads the collage group I am in, and the way we work together in silence has led to a sense of intimacy in the group.  Maybe that was why the news hit me so hard.

The way it hit me was that my body feels soft, and it is as if I can see by x-ray vision my small bones and their significant deterioration. It's that sensation, and that enhanced perception of my fragility that has me reeling.  As much as I've been reminded of my age, as near as I've been to dying, first from cancer, then from kidney failure, I didn't feel it until now.  Or if I did, I'd forgotten.  Our bodies really are soft, our skin a very thin defense; we are constantly invaded by germs and viruses and cancer cells that would like to use us as a host. I knew that, but I didn't feel it.

So I find myself remembering that chant.  Here is one version. 

Let us be respectfully reminded:
Life and death are of supreme importance.
Time swiftly passes by, and with it our only chance;
each of us must strive to awaken.
Be aware! Do not squander your life.

Today's Spiritual Practice.

How easy it is to want the clean and pretty, to think that is spirituality. 

I was having my coffee, getting ready to close my door, open Dogen and intake a few paragraphs of Genjo Koan, then do stretches and meditate.  Thinking about when I can have time for poetry today, since it seems to be a good day.  Then Tashi came in talking to me.

So I got up and checked her box.  Diarrhea again.  Cleaned the box, washed my hands, went to kitchen, got out the diarrhea medicine the Vet gave us day before yesterday.  Tom held her, and I got 1 cc of the gel into her mouth.  Down she went, sat licking her chops.  I put the medicine on the counter and thought, There.  Now I can go back to my spiritual life.  It is making me smile to write this.

[image: Tashi on kitchen table, special effect]

This Very Day

Google could have done better for Labor Day than post a little American flag on its home page.  Labor Day was not created to honor this country.  It was meant to honor those who do the hard basic work that supports our comfortable lifestyle - who mine the coal that fuels the electric plant, drive the garbage truck, clean the toilets at J. C. Penney's, operate the crane in the mill.

Labor Day was gained in the "antiAmerican activities" of defying the rich who were then exploiting the working class in this country, and now exploit them in Asia (think Steve Jobs).  It got us the 40-hour work week and the weekend, and some employer benefits for full-time workers, though the wealthy get around the intent of the law by not employing people full-time (think WalMart).  It got us minimum wage, a good thing, though pathetically inadequate.

Near my hometown, Youngstown, Ohio, men were shot and killed by the thugs of the wealthy men who owned everything. And still do.  Now, some of the working class have been convinced to vote for tax breaks for the wealthy.  In our schools, we fight over whether to teach evolution or creationism.  How about teaching people how to think about being exploited and oppressed by the wealthy owners?  How about teaching the history of the people's battle for a living wage?  How about teaching people how many  small businesses fail. How unfettered capitalism benefits the very few and deals out bad cards for the many.

Like every national holiday, Labor Day has been turned into a secular feast day on which people try strenuously to have fun, eat, drink, go to festivals, buy stuff.  How soon we forget.  How easily we are manipulated by advertising and our delusions.

Instead of that little American flag, Google could have put up the poster above, which was made by the US Department of Labor in 2010.  It honors the woman Theodore Roosevelt called "the most dangerous woman in America."  The words on that poster were hers.  Fight for the living.  Put yourself on the line. That was her spiritual practice.

The performance/song below features Utah Phillips and Ani deFranco.

Are You Too Sensitive?

Sometimes art is all that saves us

Not feeling so good yesterday, I browsed around some scientific studies, as if to assure myself that I have an excuse for being depressed. I found, or rediscovered, that bipolar brains have thirty percent more monoamines, which produce "dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine. . . the altered brain chemistry due to the excess monoamine cells may directly impact the patients' cognitive and social function." These monoamines send signals between brain cells, or neurons and are involved in mood regulation, stress responses, pleasure, reward, and cognitive functions like concentration, attention, and executive functions. (link here)  Okay, so it's been really hard to get organized.

Then there was this:  "Bipolar disorder . . . is characterized by pathophysiological changes to the visceromotor network, disrupting the regulation of endocrine and autonomic responses to stress, and hence emotion and behavior." (link here)  Yes. So, a while back I got so irritated by a friend that I practically yelled at her. I'm sorry, and I apologized.  Even if I couldn't help it, I'm sorry when I'm rude and impatient.

But - here's something you already know - some people are never sorry for being rude.  I was raised by a couple of them, and I was trained to excuse anything the head alcoholic did or said to me, and he was constantly abusive.  He didn't mean it.  His back hurts.  He has a headache.  He had a hard day at work.  And my favorite, You're too sensitive.  You don't get to do things over, but if I could, I'd tell my mother, "No, I'm not.  He's too insensitive."  But when I was a kid, I didn't have the voice.

Sometimes I catch myself putting up with crap, to be frank, from the kind of friends who sometimes look like frenemies. I was trained, it was my habit, to find excuses for rude, thoughtless people. I was surrounded by them as the scapegoat in a very sick family.  And I want to say, when I had to work with people like that, I got along.  But in my social life, I don't have to. Putting up with their crap may in fact qualify as "idiot compassion," a term that refers, roughly, to enabling people in their stupid or dangerous behavior.

Thoughtless people often build a persona that helps other people excuse them.  (And many people like to have "an alcoholic" around, someone worse than them.)  I have known people who got away with murder because they had a stammer or chronic depression or a visible handicap. My dear, wise neighbor, Marge Endter, now deceased, once told me about such a person, "He trades on that."  Bingo.

I notice that I don't go through these things with people who are on a path, who have a spiritual practice.  Practice makes us more sensitive to the effect we may have on others, and the world.  And the religions I'm familiar with make a point of compassion, or giving, or love.  The Buddhists I know may have their issues, don't we all? but they believe in being kind.  They aspire or vow to be kind.  They write whole books about it. I have one.  And since I do, I will try to be kind in gently letting some people out of my life.  Because, actually, I'm too sensitive to be around them. 

Every Day is a Good Day

This talk by Rev. Nonin Chowaney is such a good explanation of how in the Buddha Way we work on accepting reality that I wanted to share it. The calligraphy is also by him; a similar one was a gift from Tom to me. More of his talks can be found here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A couple of years ago, it snowed in Omaha on April 29th. I had wanted to work in the garden that day and when I looked out the window, my heart sank.

Later, I walked downstairs and mentioned that it was snowing to Albert, one of our group. "Yes," he responded, "there's something quite beautiful about these late Spring snowstorms."

Indeed there is, if you can approach them with an open mind; if you approach them with complaint because there'll be no gardening, they can be a real pain.

Lama Govinda writes that, "All suffering arises from attitude. The world is neither good nor bad. It is solely our relationship to it which makes it either one or the other." Snow on April 29th, or any weather condition on any other day, for that matter, is neither good nor bad. Good and bad is a question of mental attitude.

Moment-by-moment, we create the world in the mind. We can look out and create a gloomy, depressing world on any day by the condition of mind we bring to it. A depressed mind can make a bright, sunshiny day black and dreary, and a contented mind can create heaven out of rain and storm.

I am reminded of the old Zen saying, "Every day is a good day." What determines this? The mind that dwells nowhere; the mind that accepts everything. This is nirvana.

Nirvana may be understood as the absence of greed, anger (or aversion), and delusion. In other words, it's a state of mind. If we can approach whatever life brings us with the mind free from greed, aversion, and delusion, or accept things as they are without grasping for more or turning away from what's there, we cultivate the mental state known as nirvana, quiescence, or, heart-mind at peace with what is.

This does not mean passivity. It does not mean that we lay back and not move. What it means is that we start from zero, from acceptance of our lives as they are, and move from there. In that way we are not kept from or hindered in our living by complaining, grousing, or blaming others for the conditions of our lives. Every moment, then, affords us the opportunity to practice awakening, nirvana, enlightenment. When we sit zazen, we cultivate this practice.

The instruction for zazen is to cultivate the mind that abides nowhere, the mind of non-attachment. We are to allow thoughts to come and go, to arise without denial or suppression and to pass away without clinging. Angry thoughts about the boss? Let them come and let them go. Contentment with a lover? Let it come and let it go. I can't garden because it's snowing? Let it come and let it go. This practice does not aim for any particular state of mind; it is in and of itself the awakened state; sometimes it is called "cultivating the natural condition of mind."

Buddha, the awakened one, taught the Way to end human dissatisfaction, and nothing more. He taught that the end to suffering is non-attachment, non-clinging. This is the practice of zazen. Gradually, we are able to also cultivate this practice when standing, walking, or lying down; our life itself is enlightenment.

A mind that can abide anywhere is always content, even when suffering greatly. This is liberation; suffering is gone through. We accept what comes, live it, and move on. In the words of Zen Master Bodhidharma: "When those who search for the Path encounter adversity, they should think to themselves, `In countless ages gone by, I've turned from the essential to the trivial and wandered through all manner of existence, often angry without cause and guilty of numberless transgressions. Now, though I do no wrong, I'm punished by my past. No one can foresee when an evil deed will bear its fruit. I accept it with an open heart and without complaint of injustice.'" The sutras say, `When you meet with adversity don't be upset, because it makes sense.' With such understanding you're in harmony with reason. And by suffering injustice you enter the Path.

When I was practicing at Tassajara monastery, I got sick with a sinus problem that kept reoccurring. Once during the training period that I was head monk, it came back and lingered for almost two weeks. I had a lot of responsibilities, but all I could do was lay in bed, and I'm afraid I didn't do a very good job of being sick; it was very hard.

One afternoon, I made myself a cup of tea and sat outside in the garden behind my cabin feeling sorry for myself, sneezing and blowing my nose, being miserable. I looked over toward the zendo where the late afternoon sun was glowing on the rocks. The flowers and shrubs were gleaming. In a moment, everything turned. It was incredibly beautiful. The world was a lovely place, no longer grim, dark, and heavy. Everything was all right, even though my nose was still clogged! Instead of a living hell, the world was the Lotus Land of beauty and purity.

This was an important experience for me. One moment, pain and suffering; the next, joy and relief. This all occurs in the mind; we create the world we live in. We sometimes cannot change the circumstances we live in, but we can always change our attitude. If we can learn to let go, it will change by itself.

As Lama Govinda said, "All suffering arises from attitude. The world is neither good nor bad. It is solely our relationship to it which makes it either one or the other." So, even if it's a bad day, "every day is a good day."

 

Three tips for instant happiness.

Gerenuk

 First, that this elegant beautiful creature exists - that makes me happy.  (My daughter saw some sort of striking long-necked animal along an Ohio roadway - maybe it was these?) It is endangered.

I'm sorry, I don't have your three things.  It's my warped sense of humor - I am a sucker for lists of tips, reading them is like eating something sweet and salty with no calories.  I don't really think there are three activities or strokes of luck that would suffice to make anyone happy.  Less neurotic and less miserable, yes, generally satisfied with life, yes, able to be happy, yes.  But those are things that take dedicated effort over a long time---for instance, a daily spiritual practice and getting enough exercise and saving for retirement---and do not bring instant gratification. There, that's three - but nobody is interested in tips like that.  Tips are about Instant!  Free!  Easy!!

Here's a suggestion, though.  Start a list of things that make you feel better.  Here are two I experienced this morning:

1. Getting a handle on tonight's dinner first thing in the morning.  I actually got chili going in the slow-cooker, no small feat working with single non-dominant hand.  It smells good, I feel proud, I'm looking forward to dinner.  If you are your own or your family's main cook, what to have for dinner will be lurking on your mind all day long unless you decide in the morning what to have.  Truth is, I learned this from a site called The Fly Lady.  If you need someone to nag you to do what has to be done around your house, go there.

2. Getting three! comments on this blog, and from new people.  This is the obverse side of my personal problem, which is that I hate my writing to be rejected.  On the other hand, I love for someone to tell me it matters to them. New readers make me happy, too.

Your list will be different.  Be careful about putting on it things that society has told you ought to make you feel better, I don't know, massage for example is torture to me.  Stretching, however, is great.  I loved yoga (with a great teacher, whose name is Kit Spahr if you live in the Columbus area) back when I could do it.  Hate running.  Love Ghiradelli chocolate with sea salt and almonds - it actually lifts my mood.  Love soft socks, supportive shoes.  Hate getting a manicure, but enjoy wearing the right nail polish. See, this is very personal.

The list of things that make me feel better is actually a sort of spiritual/psychological exercise that I made up for myself a long time ago. It is a way of paying attention to yourself.

Now I have to go take my noontime immunosuppressants.  I have to do this every day of my life now, and I don't mind it, it keeps me alive, but it doesn't make me feel better.  No pushing the list by putting on things you ought to be grateful for - that's a different exercise.

On crying as a practice

By now, I know more about the process of bipolar disorder than any psychiatrist.  That's 35 years of studying and experiencing, not counting the outbreak when I was 16, that got shoved back down until I was 32.  Then I had three years incorrectly diagnosed - and there was no excuse for missing it -and twenty more on lots of drugs, then twelve on few or no drugs, years given to working with the progressive kidney disease lithium caused.

One thing I learned: if you feel like you want to cry but can't, you're in big trouble.  Mental health screening tests see that as a sign of major depression.

In 1999, when a new shrink yanked me off lithium and three other psychotropics (yes, that was very stupid), I began crying again, a lot. I remember crying six times during one church service.   I know now that suppressing tears is a big mistake.  Womens' tears release certain chemicals, and that changes the chemical balance in your brain. 

Why I cried just now? so damn much pain I could neither sit or walk kinhin in the zendo. The SI joint is inflamed again, the torn rotator cuff hurt no matter how I positioned my arm.  I  had to leave, come to my room and meditate lying on my big heating pad, and think hard about taking a Vicodin, and then do crying practice, out of both frustration and pain.  This is at least the tenth time I've cried since we got here four days ago. And the depression I came here with it much better.  (Though it is not so easy to change the body.)

Our practice here is being, on the cushion and off.  Acknowlede everything, let it float on. Be brave, but don't be stupid - take your pain pills. 

Other Practices

I have begun a new spiritual practice, not meant to replace meditation but to add to my day - Ikebana:

The Japanese art of formal flower arrangement with special regard shown to balance, harmony, and form.  [Japanese : ikeru, to arrange + hana, flower.]

Taking a photo of the arrangement I made this morning also lent itself to working with, I have to say it, focus.  I got the image above in one shot that looked like it was in focus on the small display of my old digital camera.  A technically adept friend has advised me that digital makes it possible to take a thousand shots and find the good one.  He's right, I guess, however much I'd like to make one perfect shot.  But even if I'm taking a dozen shots, I need to stand still and regard the slant of the shadow, the very tip of the longest blade of grass - and put the camera on the tripod.

In the simple Hana arrangement above I used saw grass I found cut down in the church’s Oriental garden, and Queen Anne’s Lace from a bouquet my friend Gini brought me after my hospitalization.  It grows in her spacious back yard, along with some yellow mum-like flowers whose name we don’t know.  After a week (or two?) all but one of the yellow flowers were turning brown. That last one went in front of the Buddha on my little altar.  He likes contemplating the beauty in life and death cycle of a flower.  This particular anonymous flower sheds its petals, leaving a little mandala you can see here in front of his shoulder.

Buddha, taken after I learned all over again how to use the tripod and how to suppress the flash.  Then I learned again how to download the camera, all this providing an exercise in patience and another example of Murphy's Law.  What is wrong with me to forget these things?  Who knows?  Another good saying.  No one can untangle the countless causes behind change.

After all that exertion, I see the focus here is on Buddha's face, and the flowers are out of focus.  That's not what I intended and thought I got.  I am compiling reasons to buy another camera, a rechargable one with a bigger display screen so I can actually see what I've got.  That is going to lead me to examine my checking and credit card accounts.  In this way, in my day, things lead on to other things, a large network of things I have to do and want to do.  That sounds like desire contained in self-discipline, so it comes back to Zen.

A new practice

Vows or intentions come upon me, rise like yeast bubbles, and there they are. This one is to spend from 10:00 a.m. to 12 noon Monday thru Friday on my writing. That's writing, leaving blogging aside, because I'd become aware that writing a post was usually taking an hour and a half.

Practice, what is practice? It is an activity undertaken in a disciplined way with the end of advancing spiritually. Now, I don't like that word "advancing," so say "with the end of being with Oneself." Many people say "with the Divine." I don't think like that. In Soto Zen there is supposedly no end, just sit like a frog. Your reflections on what a practice is, and why, are welcome.

This entry isn't going to take me long because I'm not going to go down that beckoning path. But indeed, going back to making my (real) writing a top priority does represent some kind of long-worked gradual awakening for me. Doing your real work, that's a practice for a great many artists and writers, and not enough normal people.

Majoring in mystical experience

A friend asked me recently what I would major in if I were going to college today. I got as confused as I was back then. "Anthropology," I said. "No, art, visual art. No [thinking of the question, what would I choose for my life's work if I had it to do over again] oh, something in medicine. Meaningful hands-on work. Maybe being a doctor." I forgot to say, religion. Comparative religions.

Actually, I didn't get what I wanted from a course of that name when I took it in college, freshman year. The professor was from the philosophy department and didn't have any religion himself. I remember him, though not his name, and another student, a senior who intended to become a Christian minister, and tried never to argue with the teacher when invited. We were a very small class, just a few other students.

Our only textbook was a heavy hardback anthology of sacred texts from major religions, which I never opened once that class was over. It didn't even give us introductions to ground us in the context - that was the way academics thought then in the English department, too, in the grip of The New Criticism, which argued that all that mattered was the poem itself - that we should forget biography and history and the writer's culture. So we talked about the "ideas" of the religions, and their ethical codes, which are hard to pick out from the texts, I found.

And none of this touched me. I didn't know it, but I was there because I wanted to be touched. I wanted to hear not about ideas, but about practice - a word I did not then associate with religion. The only practices I knew of were distinctly Christian, though I had at least been exposed to a range of denominations. When I had practiced prayer and study, I did not think of them as helping my "spiritual growth" - an idea I was unfamiliar with. You were either A or B, in my understanding - a good Christian, trying with all your might, or a backslider. When I entered college, I was definitely the latter. But I was still interested.

In Comparative Religions, I wanted to hear much more than we did about prayer - which I hoped would lead me to mystical communion with the essential, the sacred or divine; though I don't recall now that it ever had. I'd had several mystical experiences in nature and in singing in groups - I think many people have - but I didn't know that was what they were called, and didn't talk about them. How could you? I know now that it is impossible to describe the mystical experience - I would find the best descriptions or evocations of it in poetry, especially that of Gerard Manley Hopkins. How strange it is to think back on my own time as a teacher of literature, that there must have been in my classes kids like I was, shy and silent, yearning for something of essence to be revealed here. You have no idea really what is behind those faces.

I knew teaching wasn't my right work, not that kind of teaching, and I am retired, with subscriptions to Netflix and The New Yorker - enough to keep an ordinary mortal satisfied. But I still wonder - what is my right work right now? (What should I major in?) I've been lucky to have illness cut me back from my enthusiastic pursuit of too many things. My energy is good mostly for sitting at this computer and writing. That is what I have devoted myself to every chance I got for most of my life. Since 1997 it's been mostly poetry, and I've been serious about it. So why is it even a question?

Well, because my father, who liked poetry, had contempt for it as a job - where's the money? That message comes at us from everywhere. "Ain't no money in poetry," as the song goes, not real money. And there really isn't in the serious practice of any art, leaving aside major self-promoters. The arts are a form of spiritual practice; they reach for experience in its essence. There has hardly ever been any money in that. As I remember the film, Brother Sun, Sister Moon, you need to keep away from the money. And to some degree, away from the culture.

I probably have, in the way that Poets have of not fitting in, even when we try. Looking back, if I had understood my yearnings and told my guidance counselor I wanted to be a mystic, I can't imagine what she would have suggested. Probably that I major in English.

Spiritual growth, Ow!

I know I'm stealing a cliche, but I can't help myself - Spiritual growth is not for sissies. It is hard. It means you give up mental stuff - and think how we sometimes balk at just giving up regular stuff, like our favorite flannel shirt, even though it is frayed, even torn. Spiritual growth comes from dancing with your demons, a metaphor I am drawn to, coming from a childhood informed by myth and fairy tales. Another way to put it is, you have to stop clinging to your illusions and delusions if you are to live comfortably in reality. That's the way the tradition I practice in sees it.

I think most people begin a meditation practice with the idea that it can bring peace of mind. (Here's an interesting side fact: one of the most effective psychotherapies, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, was created by Marsha Linehan, a very long-time meditator, and is based on techniques Zen teachers use.) Well, in the beginning meditation can feel very good; on one tape, Pema Chodron says there is a saying that spiritual practice begins in bliss and ends in bliss, but the road inbetween is hell. Teachers don't emphasize that, but try to inspire us to stay on the path by telling us how good life will be. Eventually. Keep sitting.

Yesterday I was on that craggy, dry, horrible part of the road. Depressed. I know better, but I tried to figure it out, and couldn't. Eventually - in the evening - I talked to Tom about how old I feel, how discouraging this foot thing is, and cried. This morning, the sun keeps coming out, making Ohio a worthwhile place to live, and I am singing little songs like - I'm not kidding - Three Little Birds. ("Don't worry 'bout a thing, 'cause every little thing gonna be alright.")

I can't seem to keep up with my health, and my fears about it. I can't seem to give up worrying about the next damn thing, knowing worry does no good. I push worry away, and it just goes underground. For instance, the transplant center called to make an appointment with the transplant surgeon in July, a routine re-evaluation. But what if I flunk? I just want a kidney, okay? Every time the phone rings it could be a kidney. . . next week I get full labs again, and I will hone in on that magic number, the GFR, the amount of your kidney function. Please don't fall. Please don't make me start thinking again about whether I will undertake dialysis again or just die. Always something to worry about.

I don't exactly worry about the damn feet, but they are absolutely handicapping. And as it is a temporary handicap, I am not set up with the kind of services you need, a housekeeper, transportation, an electric scooter. I rely on Tom too much. He is very supportive. Even so, it is a daily struggle. Cheery people want you to call it "a challenge," as if it were a Sudoku. I suppose on one level of abstraction, it is. One small life in the river of time, one blade of grass. Still, I am a sentient being and I feel pain as well as anxiety. Yesterday I absolutely couldn't get the new ankle support system comfortable. Then there was, and is, the pain in the hip from these major adjustments in footwear. Take tramadol or just Tylenol? I really should research tramadol . . .

I have been working with bone edema and ankle pain since January. Now I am out of the boot at last, but still wearing an air cast on the right foot, and a sort of little athletic supporter on the left ankle. They throw off the fit of all my shoes, and make my feet itch. Yesterday I got online and tried to find pretty all-cotton socks that would fit my big feet, and this was just one more source of pain - I could not find them in pretty colors. Big feet, you wear black or white. I know, there is an answer, dye them, paint them, sew beads on the cuffs. Sigh.

I need new orthotics the doctor said, but the physical therapist who specializes in that is on vacation, so I have to hobble around in the old ones for a couple more weeks. But that's okay, in a sense, because I'm not supposed to hobble, I am still supposed to stay off my feet. And not drive. Rest the ankles. I have thought of making a list of all the things you don't have to do when you're not supposed to stand or walk around, but the idea of trying to cheer myself up really did get me down.

So . . . yesterday all this was too much for me to really be with. The depression came up, a brown filter between me and all these frightening and frustrating realities. Today, much better. And a little closer to reality, more willing to follow doctor's orders, eat a good breakfast, write to a friend. Interested in life again.

Being depressed was a form of dancing with that particular foggy-brown demon, one I knew very well earlier in my life, one who used to come in and stay for months on end. Coming out of depression so quickly, I lay that down to continuing practice, meditating badly, reading dharma talks even as I grumbled. Maybe the most important thing was being being willing to let go of the resentment and depression, to be open to morning, to let my mood and attitude change and change again.
[the image: my current reading]