the updrafts of spiritual life

In the kitchen during a sesshin or Zen retreat, I remember whispering with another student. Sesshins are supposed to be arenas of silence, but what are rules if not to be broken? Anyway, we were whispering surreptitiously when he said to me in a language that is perhaps more understandable to anyone who has been to sesshin....

"It takes everything!" His face was wracked with a horrified anguish.

"It can't take everything! It's got to leave you something!"

From a distance and with the subtly-smug calmness of not-being-there, his cries might be soothed and smoothed with spiritual nostrums. "There, there," the diploma-ed analyst and savvy Zen practitioner might croon, "let me give you another wise and well-lubricated explanation. Ego...attachment...compassion ... blah-blah-blah. Hakuin says and Dogen says and Rinzai says and Gautama says ... blah-blah-blah."

But what do Hakuin and Dogen and Rinzai and Gautama know?! In the midst of this compelling anguish, this right-now wracking of the soul ... fuck them! This scarier-than-shit is purely scarier than shit.

"It takes everything!"

Like some gannet floating on sustaining updrafts, spiritual life has times of warming ease -- restful, peaceful, supportive. And then ... and then ... it can seem to turn around and betray you: In order to eat, in order to be nourished, in order to live, the warming updrafts are not enough and the visceral imperative asserts itself: Dive! Dive! Dive!

"It takes everything!" and in this dive, all else is forsaken -- a death before what may be death. Who knows what lies beneath the waves? Sustenance perhaps, but likewise, also, a profound danger. There is life beneath the waves. But also there is death ... no bird can live forever underwater.

Who in their right mind wouldn't be scared? Scared and scared witless? Maybe that visceral understanding is precisely what gives longevity to restful, peaceful and supportive arenas in which spiritual life moves smoothly on the updrafts of belief.

"It takes everything!"

Without hitting the panic button just yet, I think it is possible to consider how much effort and care has gone into constructing this life. Really, it's a hell of an effort ... from tying shoelaces, to understanding Kant, to speaking another language or even just the mother tongue ... what a lot of stuff has been ingested and shaped and used. For all its lumps and bumps -- what a masterful fabrication and construction.

And when someone or something suggests that things need to be deconstructed or defabricated -- even just by observation -- well, it's pretty scary for anyone who actually gives it a try. From the moment of birth up until the present moment, brick by brick, incident by incident, understanding by understanding this life grew.

And now you're telling me -- or I'm telling me -- that it needs to be deconstructed, the mortar needs to be dissolved .... On the face of it, this spells collapse, dissolution, helplessness ... it goes against everything I have learned ... everything that holds me together. The prospect is truly fearful: I don't want to die: "It's got to leave you something!"

Bit by bit and day by day and year by year, practices like sesshin continue... a time to look, a time to see, a time to dive, a time to float. Sometimes it's smooth as an updraft. Some times it's bumpy as a high wind. Bit by bit by bit by bit ... the mortar comes loose. And the strange thing is, nothing falls down. Nothing gets deconstructed. There are bricks galore. Building or constructing is a possibility that is no better or worse than not building. Dig my brick pile! Dig my minarets! I am possible just like you ... how about them apples?

And asking "who knows this?" or "who makes these bricks?" ... it's just more bricks, right? Why mess with a perfect picture?

Don't ask, don't tell. It is possible to dive ... so dive. It is possible to float ... so float. Where I am possible, anything is possible ... just like you.

If you live life solely in the updrafts, you're going to starve to death.

Around here, it's time for breakfast.