wisdom and bullshit

.
Woke up thinking about the Diamond Sutra lines:

All composite things are like a dream,
A phantasm, a bubble;
Are like a shadow; a dewdrop and a flash of lightning.
They are thus to be regarded.

It seems to be impossible to wake up and not start thinking something -- chattering about one thing or another -- so I suppose the Diamond Sutra (a Buddhist text) is about as useful or useless as anything else. OK, so this morning it was the Diamond Sutra instead of about mowing the lawn or the Red Sox.

For the longest time, based on upbringing, perhaps, I have had a real burr under my saddle about those who know what other people or texts have said and then run around flag-waving the information as if some truth were honestly in hand.

Did you ever notice, for example, that college philosophy departments seem to be filled with "philosophers" rather than "philosophy teachers" and that few, if any, of those teachers have the good grace to correct the perception?

But I don't mean to pick on philosophy teachers. Isn't it pretty much the same for all of us? How about the old nudge to star-spangled Christians? -- "Just because you go to church doesn't make you a Christian, any more than standing in a garage makes you a car."

And there are any number of realms in which there is a disconnect between walking the walk and talking the talk ... or, as they sometimes say in Texas, "He's all saddle and no horse."

Anyway, I awoke thinking about the giddyup lines from the Diamond Sutra and how I often find a sour taste in my mind's mouth when I or others quote third parties...bibles or Qur'ans or sources of impeccable information as if knowing that information meant the person spouting it actually had an experiential handle on it ... and was therefore wiser or smarter or more worthy than the next fellow.

Nobody likes a bullshitter, but what occurred to me this morning was that getting my tail in a twist was a bit of an overreaction ... a long-standing habit based on the harm I have experienced at the hands of an over-active intellect, i.e. an over-active imagination.

When each person is confronted with the bullshit in their lives -- the disconnect between talking the talk and walking the walk -- when, in fact, there is not much other than bullshit to work with, then working with bullshit is simply the name of the game. It is a way of encouragement and effort, a flash of lightning that may, in fact, help to put the saddle on the horse. The fault does not lie with the bullshit itself but with the unwillingness or inability to investigate and make whole what is for the moment disconnected...the distance between the "philosopher" and what for the moment s/he may acclaim as "philosophy."

Well, all of this is just my problem ... this irritation I can feel when quoting others comes along and is clung to with an iron grip. That irritation, it occurred to me today, is really not necessary. People grab whatever life preserver is at hand in the middle of their wild and confounding oceans.

And who knows, maybe those life preservers will actually save them.

Though I doubt if it will preserve them.

The Diamond Sutra is nice. Who knows -- maybe it'll make me a car.
.

electronic book

.
With the help of an internet wizard -- or I should say with the internet wizard doing all of the heavy lifting and me trotting along by her side -- the book got uploaded to an e-book site. This means that those more savvy than I can now read it on the Kindle-like gizmos.

I guess this is not entirely true: The book, "Answer Your Love Letters: Footnotes to a Zen Practice" has been uploaded, but will take several weeks to reach the destinations that distribute such things.

But in the meantime, I have to offer my prostrated thanks to Julia for getting things as far as they got. She was an exemplar of patience and good spirit as I made correction after correction ... and whined about one thing or another.

The ebook has added a few chapters that do not appear in the paper-paged version I tucked in a chapter on being "finished with the eternal" and another about "Clerical
Sex Scandals" because I thought both were warranted. Then to, a short chapter entitled "On Vulture Peak" and another, "One Last Reminder." To be honest, I don't know if I will get around to adding those chapters to the paper-paged version ... it's pricier than what the checkbook will allow at the moment. Anyway, the ebook is cheaper by half.

Although it hasn't reached the distributors yet and I'm not sure when it will, here is as far as the ebook has come.

I find it hard to believe this form of reading is the wave of the future, but a lot of people seem to think so...including Google, the supreme god of the internet.

But the main point of this entry is to say thanks to Julia. I'd offer her my first born by way of payment, but since she already has a first-born, she'd probably see my offer in the debit column.
.

Mother's Day

.
Along the peace picket line yesterday, a young fellow with long hair stopped to ask if we needed a permit to stand where we were on Main Street. When he was told we did not, he seemed relieved: He was planning, he said, to mount an anti-Mother's Day effort to draw attention to ... well, I only heard him from a distance, but it sounded as if he found the holiday exploitative in some way

Earlier, while driving to the location where the picket is held, there was a radio discussion about YouTube's pulling the plug on a parody of Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Germany before and during World War II. Apparently those who sought removal of the parody felt that it was too touching a subject for levity. There was some criticism of early-comedian Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator," a Hitler spoof that appeared before World War II. It was argued that Chaplin trivialized Hitler's demeanor and outlook and thus, in some sense, was complicit in supporting his eventual depredations in the actual-factual world.

Is there any topic -- any topic at all -- that cannot be seen from myriad points of view? Funny, horrific, serious, sad, important, trivial, elevated, debased ... the list is endless and always will be, I think. To suggest that any topic cannot be seen in some other way is to suggest that human beings are limited and that there are topics on which everyone must or should agree.

But even when people agree, they don't agree, so I think the argument falls on its face. Say the words "love" or "freedom" or "compassion" or "enlightenment" or pick-your-favorite-topic for example, and, although there may be some group-hug of an agreement, still the agreement is only approximate. Human beings are more interesting than their agreements or disagreements. And the underlying premise of the approximations they agree to or disagree with is this: Each person is responsible for his or her own reactions or thoughts or feelings.

And I suppose that's the rub. Each might wish the warmth and support of those who 'agree' with them ... in part because it seems to eradicate the need for a responsibility that cannot be evaded. If you and I agree about something, then, perhaps, I can rely on you and you can rely on me ... and the fact that I can only rely on myself or you on yourself is placed on some back burner as each of us asserts the foundation of our beliefs or affections and support the argument with a "they" or "them" who is separated from the "me" who makes the decision.

Responsibility may feel anti-social or cold or group-hug-averse, but for anyone with a mirror, it keeps staring you in the face. And trying to escape the mirror is an endless and fruitless battle ... I am responsible for my spoofs and serious considerations and solemnities and religions and wars and ... well, it's my doing and if I cannot come to terms with that responsibility, there is likely to be a constant uncertainty ... nagging, whispering, needling.

Once upon a time, a young man asked Soen Nakagawa Roshi why he bowed to the Buddha statue on the altar. Why didn't he spit? And Soen replied mildly, "You spit. I bow."

Every now and then, you run into a grown-up in life.
.

short and sweet

.
On the radio, a woman was saying today that her experience with books of various kinds led her to believe, among other things, that fewer and fewer people read long works, even when they were well written.

The growth of the Internet, she said, had led to a proliferation of badly-written long stuff and had also fueled a mind-set that has little or no capacity to read anything long ... or even long-ish. There was economy of language, she said, and then there were sound bites ... I couldn't quite figure out where the line was between the two.

And I couldn't help but agree in a lot of instances. I come out of a news world where once the axiom held sway: "Stand up, speak up, and shut up." But now there seems to be an institutionalized movement afoot ... keep it short or risk being ignored. I can't help but think of it as an inescapable Fox-News effect ... short, self-centered and, often, dumb.

OK ... short and sweet: Sex, sex, and more SEX... and there you have the nightly news.

Oh well, time passes.
.

stormy

.
There was thunder this morning at 4.

And lightning.

And in the distance, a car alarm begging for attention.
.

sometimes I wish people wouldn't die

.
Awoke this morning thinking how fortunate I had been to have a Zen teacher who left no Dharma heirs. I'm cannot claim to know why Kyudo Nakagawa Roshi did or didn't do what he did or didn't do but I felt fortunate to have been his student and been put in the face of that fact -- no Dharma heirs, no Dharma offspring, no continued teaching in a traditional sense, no 'lineage going all the way back to the Buddha,' as some advertisers put it.

Maybe Kyudo's students were not accomplished enough to warrant the transmission he might have bestowed. Maybe he did not want to burden them with something unnecessary. Maybe ... well, maybe anything. I don't know, but I do know I feel fortunate to have been instructed in his ways, however bumbling my own footsteps.

In 1163, when he was about to die, the Zen teacher Ta Hui was asked to write some final verse. It's a custom in long standing for Zen teachers to do this. And Ta Hui, who had been born in 1089, complied. He wrote:

Birth is thus
Death is thus
Verse or no verse
What's the fuss?

I hope, but don't know, that the translation is somewhere close to accurate. But even if it's not, still the sentiment and pointing are surely apt. Not just pithy or wise or witty or profound or encouraging ... just apt. A statement of fact, a no-screwing-around appreciation ... take it or leave it.

Sometimes I wish people wouldn't die. I don't wish it because they have entered a great, spooky 'unknown,' or because of the sorrow they leave in others' hearts. Rather, I wish it so that the the memories that later generations impose on them might be corrected by the source of those memories.

Yesterday, I got a note from a psychoanalyst in the UK who had run across the fact that my mother had gone to several shrinks at a time when psychology was getting its feet under it here in the U.S. She wanted to know the names of those shrinks and, although I could not immediately provide them, I said I would ask my mother.

At the time she went, I imagine my mother didn't think much of her actions -- other than to hope, like anyone else who goes to a shrink, that things could get better, that her understanding might be improved, and that there could be a little more peace in her life. And yet here was a person in later times who saw in my mother's actions something that was not apparent in those times -- something glistening and historic and ... well, some icing on the original cake.

And isn't that the way with appreciations, past or present -- a kind of compression of intent, a way of summing up who or what a person thought or said or did ... a hip-pocket appreciation of a person who had no similar appreciation of the scene?

The horror or delight of later times can be argued with a serene disregard of the fact that human beings cannot be limited in such ways. A thousand-thousand rivulets of intention and reaction went into their actions ... endless rivulets of a living life and yet now, now at another time, those rippling, rushing rivulets are reduced to "history" or "wisdom" or "understanding." And those who reduce others in such ways are satisfied with their summations, whatever protestations they might make about not wanting to paint a false portrait.

It is a strange habit and probably one that would be wise to cut off.

One-time U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins once described meeting a favorite author as "one of life's most reliable disappointments." And why? Because, I think, what is written on the page is limited, is dead ... whereas the author is not. The author is not ... until, of course, s/he is ... at which point s/he, like the pages s/he penned, is consigned to greatness or dismay or profundity or some other bright twinkling in another's mind.

Yes, sometimes I wish people wouldn't die or get old or 'be remembered.' Too many gravestones are erected, and yet, I guess, without the fables that gravestones tell, how would anyone see the fables that are the stuff of gravestones?

Kyudo left no off-spring. Ta Hui asked, "what's the fuss?" Were these people telling some wiser tale than any of us might tell? Were they afraid of life? Did they encourage a reliance on the dead? Wouldn't it be a grave insult to recall them as profound or wise or Buddhist or mediocre or downright laughable? Did they shimmy and shimmer in their time ... or even now?

Seriously, sometimes I wish people would leave off dying, hang around, and disabuse us of our diamond-cold memories.

The question has to be asked: Why aren't these people -- all of them, from 'us' to 'them,' first to last -- laughing?
.

Wall Street rant

.
Received in email, this musical Wall Street rant that reminded me a little of Pete Seeger back in his socialist days:

Wall Street rant
.

Grammar Nazis

.
Received in email something that may have more impact for those who have seen the movie "Inglourious Basterds," but still carries some impact without the connection:

Grammar Nazis
.

immaculate lifestyle

.
Someone referred to the current economic downturn as the "immaculate recession" and I think it is a good term.

No one is to blame.

No one is to blame and yet those who are less to blame bear a disproportionate share of the responsibility for righting the wrongs.

Congressional hearings, new regulations, bold headlines, hand-wringing statements ... none of it is likely to arouse in those who created this miraculous birth the willingness to assume the duties of fatherhood.

Immaculate recession ... what the hell, I never heard of God stepping forward to assume his responsibilities. And the money manipulators do so easily see themselves as immaculate gods.
.

logolatry

.
People who have attended sesshin, or Zen Buddhist retreat, may have noticed ....

After an almost 100% silence for three or seven or more days, perhaps there will be a get-together or tea to mark the end of sesshin efforts. And at that tea, the room will fill with a symphony of words and conversation.

Think of it -- after seven days of silence, how much news could anyone have to report? And yet there seems to be a lot to report, a lot to talk about. You'd think everyone had been on a tour around the world ... so many adventures, so much excitement, so much talk. And if you try to put a cork in it, to maintain the silence of the time just past, it seems positively contrived or arrogant ... or that was my experience.

Logolatry is defined as, "A blind regard for words or verbal truthfulness" and that's not exactly the word I'm after the describe the scene ... "blind" has too disparaging a feel to it. It's not that after sesshin people idolize or worship words, it's just that the word engine gets a workout after a period of disuse.

What a curious function and yet not so odd at all. Talking is one of the things we all do. We are social. We communicate. We say smart things and dumb ones.

Perhaps the function of a purposeful silence is to find the meaning or substance that words cannot covey and yet convey as well as any purposeful silence.

Adore the silence and still there is silence. Adore the words and still there are words. Adore the truth and the world succumbs to so many lies ... and still there is the truth.

What the hell? -- this is a tea party, isn't it? Tea parties ares something anyone might enjoy.
.

still

.
The emptiness of water is still wet.

The fullness of time still ends.

Pumpkin seeds still do not presage the roses.

Forgotten dreams still have their force.

Profundity still twinkles only in the shallows.

Whose joy, whose bliss, whose kiss is this?
.

practice and tears

.
I wasn't brought up to cry. On any number of fronts, weeping was not in the cards. As a child, naturally I did cry some, but not much. But as I got older the habit took hold. Whatever the tragedy or horror, my cheeks generally stayed dry.

I thought of this this afternoon as I watched "Chariots of Fire," a 1981 movie about the 1924 Olympics. Costumes, principles, intelligence, bigotry, and romance all centered around people making a great effort. And by the end, the tears were rolling down my cheeks, for no reason I could name or explain. Just drip, drip, drip.

I think perhaps, having missed my chance earlier on, it's time to catch up with a perfectly good function and capacity. Others have been luckier and more skilled than I ever became.

But now it's my turn, I guess.

Sap, sucker, softie ... that's me. Or maybe it's just my practice.
.

the giver should be grateful

.
True, it's open to abuse. But by the same token it is worth considering ... taken from 101 Zen Stories:

The Giver Should Be Thankful

While Seisetsu was the master of Engaku in Kamakura he required larger quarters, since those in which he was teaching were overcrowded. Umeza Seibei a merchant of Edo, decided to donate five hundred pieces of gold called ryo toward the construction of a more commodious school. This money he brought to the teacher.

Seisetsu said: "All right. I will take it."

Umezu gave Seisetsu the sack of gold, but he was dissatisfied with the attitude of the teacher. One might live a whole year on three ryo, and the merchant had not even been thanked for five hundred.

"In that sack are five hundred ryo," hinted Umeza.

"You told me that before," replied Seisetsu.

"Even if I am a wealthy merchant, five hundred ryo is a lot of money," said Umezu.

"Do you want me to thank you for it?" asked Seisetsi.

"You ought to," replied Umeza.

"Why should I?" inquired Seisetsu. "The giver should be thankful."

Today, I went to Wal-Mart and bought a bunch of canned and dried goods to put in a couple of bags that will be collected on Saturday and given to the local shelter.

While tooling up and down the food aisles, I felt as I feel at Christmas: I really enjoy buying things for others. And all the more so when it is something as basic as food. I was lucky to have enough money so I didn't really pay much attention to how much I collected in the cart was going to and did cost ... spaghetti, rice, canned peaches, coffee, Pop Tarts, soup, Ketchup, beans, Jell-O, brownies, peanut butter ... some stuff that made sense, some that was more frivolous. Everyone deserves frivolity, however small the frivolity may be.

And as I sat on the porch, sorting out what I had bought and figuring how to fit it in a couple of bags that had been left on the doorstep ahead of the collection by the local postal workers, I realized that people I don't know and may never know had done me a great favor.

I am not sure how I will repay that debt.
.

imperative

.
A young fellow came by here yesterday to find out something about Buddhism. He had seen my web site and, well, he thought he would investigate. So we sat on the deck for a while, took a look at the zendo, and he was off.

Reporting this later to a friend, I realized that I talk about Buddhism in the same way I take pictures ... take a lot of pictures and hope that one of them is decent; talk a lot and hope that something rings a bell.

There is something in such meetings that brings with it an imperative in my mind. It's probably too much -- the imperative -- but there it is.

Someone says Buddhism and, well, no one ever took up Buddhism because they were so damned happy. And I take that implicit unhappiness or uncertainty seriously, with a sense that I would like to lend a hand, tell what I can and hope not to screw the pooch too badly.

But I know as well that people don't get fixed. They fix themselves.

So the imperative is not really necessary.

But at the moment, my heart has its ways.
.

spin doctors

.
Because it got under my skin, I wrote a letter yesterday to our local newspaper, The Gazette, about a front-page article describing the new round of personnel cuts at the city's hospital.

In times no one has the nerve to call a Depression, corporations everywhere are realigning their energies and trimming staff to make an amount of money that is acceptable to them. I can see the necessity and need and even the greed.

What irritated me was a line that is often seen in such stories -- a corporate mantram in fact: Yes, there will be cutbacks, but the quality of whatever is produced will remain at the same level as it was before the cuts. Customers can expect the same level of service.

There is enough bullshit coming out of Washington these days without having to swallow additional nonsense locally. If you have an effort that requires 20 people and you cut five, then the remaining 15 will have to pick up the slack if the quality is to remain the same. More work -- or, as the corporate spin doctors like to say, greater productivity -- means that each person will do more ... less well. There are only so many hours in any given day and mediocrity -- both in attention and production -- is bound to result from cutbacks.

This is the way of things and, although I may not like it, still I can see the argument. What I dislike is being lied to. So I wrote a letter to the paper and got a couple of emails from the editor explaining things from the hospital point of view. The impetus for his emails, I imagine, was that I suggested that cutbacks at the newspaper was another good example of creeping mediocrity ... that with a reduced staff, there was no way to assess the corporate allegation that quality would not be affected by cutbacks.

Yes, I was feeling crabby.

But more than just crabby about the corporate mantram or the newspaper's inability/unwillingness to dig into what I thought of as bullshit spin-doctoring, it made me think of how often anyone might allow him- or herself to go along with their own spin-doctoring. Of how we may allow ourselves to excuse ourselves or excuse our friends for what is not really examined.

Yes, it's human, and yes, human beings are frail and flawed from one point of view. That's OK. But for as long as such spin-doctoring is allowed to go unchallenged -- for as long as we can find excuses and explanations without really owning up to the situations or perceptions in our lives ... well, how could anyone expect to be happy and at ease?

It's not a matter of good or bad when it comes to the habits we have. It's a matter of honesty and honestly owning our own choices. I choose to eat a little bread and butter and applesauce and a couple of hard-boiled eggs for breakfast. It's just a choice ... with some positive and some negative results. And the same is true for more compelling habits -- what I like and what I dislike. These are my choice and until I own them, I will keep living the life of a spin-doctor -- someone who cannot or will not address life as it comes along ... plainly. I dislike the wars my country prosecutes endlessly -- Afghanistan and Iraq are the latest examples -- but who owns this distaste? Are my explanations and findings of meaning really the point here -- except if I want to wow or convince others? Not really. I dislike the wars ... that's all. I think they are an abomination ... that's all.

I can't say that I expect anyone else to agree with my point of view. What's important is that I find a way to agree with myself and recognize that what I create and what I think and what I feel ... are my responsibility. I think this is important: Living life at one remove -- like some endless spin doctor -- just doesn't work very well. Bad habits? Yes, my responsibility. Good habits? Yes, my responsibility. And all of it is worth paying attention to ....

Spin-doctoring is possible.

But does it work?

As much I dislike others bullshitting me, I dislike it worse when I bullshit myself.
.

first place

.
My older son told me last night that he had attained second place in western Massachusetts high-school discus-throwing standings. He is going to another meet down in Connecticut on Saturday and hopes to improve his lot.

I was happy for him and told him so. He is doing well academically and doing well in his chosen sport.

How nice to climb whatever ladders anyone might put in front of themselves... to measure, to sweat, to attain. And it struck me that comparisons are the most obvious way of attainment. How would anyone know if they were any good if they did not compare?

I was happy for my son because he had probably outstripped whatever achievements I had once imagined for myself ... a first-place trophy in a college billiards competition; a first-place prize from the New England Associated Press for a series on alcoholism; and, although it was not a first prize, coming in fourth in a class of 32 at language school in the army ... the best academic training I ever had.

Being 'the best' or striving to be 'the best' -- I guess it's par for the course, a way of measuring and assessing progress and accomplishment... meeting the challenge and succeeding at something you consider worth succeeding at.

Spiritual endeavor brings with it the wonderful and horrific realization that there is no way to compare, no real way to succeed. But the habitual mind is so full of blue ribbons and all that they imply that it is hard not to squirm and struggle to find the markers that delineate ordinary success stories. There are the teachers of old ... seeming to stand on high and distant and light-strewn mountain tops. There are teachings which confound the student even as they weave a magnetic web. How wonderful it might be to come in first, to accomplish, to succeed.

But no matter how many books anyone writes or how many lectures they give or how popular they are among fellow practitioners ... no matter how they grovel with "compassion" or shine penetrating observations on the scene...still, the comparisons and yardsticks do not really compute. They offer no trophies. The best is somehow not the best ... or at any rate it is not the best by comparison. To a first-place mind, this can be a terrible disappointment. If there is no corner office to attain, how could anyone gauge their expertise and accomplishment?

Getting used to the incomparable nature of spiritual life is no easy task. Some people never get over the blue ribbons of comparison. Human beings are social creatures and comparisons create connections even as they create separations. To stand on your own two feet seems to fly in the face of a social existence ... lonely and distant and austere.

But perhaps there is another way of seeing things. If there are no comparisons -- no first place finishers -- then everybody comes in first and the social connections, rather than being severed, are asserted with a more realistic force. And from there, it is a small step to the recognition that since everything is already connected (so to speak) there is no need to connect and compare.

Daisies are daisies and roses are roses -- how about them apples?
.

the bolt holes

.
Strange to think: There are those who seek out spiritual life as a bolt-hole from the slings and arrows of a more mundane existence ... an escape, a succor, a warm place against the cold.

And yet those who seek out spiritual life are frequently found seeking bolt holes that will protect them from the requirements of the spiritual life which they sought out as a bolt hole in the first place.

Yes, there is some longing for relief and clarity, perhaps, but having entered the realm of promise, the first words out of anyone's mouth or out of the depths of their most secret heart are, "Yes, but...."

The alternative is too daunting, too lock-step, too night-of-the-living-dead. No one wants to be a pawn if they've got any sense. But the bolt hole that was invited in has its demands. So then, perhaps, there are bolt-hole exceptions, bolt-hole doubts, bolt-hole nostrums with which to paper over the friction between longing for a bolt-hole relief, and seeking a bolt hole from the realm of relief that is chosen.

I remember sitting in a college classroom and being absolutely smitten when I heard that there was a philosophy that "everything changes." That simple statement, to my young and peppy mind, was one of the few philosophical principles I had heard that had some relevance and empirical proof in my life. I was purely in love with the philosophy and the philosophers who worked on that basis. I was one of them. I was at home at last. What a relief to find a home! Until ... until ...

Until I realized that everything might change, but my relationship with my then-girlfriend was exempt in my mind. Surely that would never change. Surely that was too compelling in its affections and wonders.

And I was caught between a rock and a hard place. Espousing an everything-changes point of view made perfect sense, a perfect home ... and yet ... well, surely it couldn't include this scrumptious relationship ... and yet it did ... and yet surely it couldn't ... and yet it did ... and I busied myself finding a bolt-hole that would get me off the hook.

Intellectually, all of this interests me about as much as piss in a snowbank. But as a personal matter, something that assails anyone who might seek some peaceful relief in one way or another ... well, that's important.

So what about the bolt-holes we seek in the bolt-holes we have chosen? My view is that it is no good trying to paper them over with ever more fervent assertions of bolt-hole theology (whether or not the bolt-hole is spiritual).

Better is to acknowledge and examine the bolt-holes sought in the bolt-holes of choice. What limitation have we invited into our lives? Are those limitations necessarily bad or sad? Who wants relief from this relief, escape from this escape, freedom from this freedom? Just take a look and don't try to solve anything ... just look and ...

See what happens.
.

shooting stars

.
Received in email:

SAME STUFF, DIFFERENT VENUE
.

pivot point

.
If I had to guess, I guess I'd guess that one of the pivot points in spiritual life is the recognition, acknowledgment, surrender to the fact that there is no "they" to revere or fall short of or even be equal to.

It's a personal recognition, not arrogant or dismissive -- just the understanding that if wise men from time immemorial can find some peace in their lives, then there is nothing saying you or I might not do the same.

True, it can be something of a fright or a pain in the ass -- such a realization or acknowledgment. Even to consider intellectually the notion that you might be as capable as Buddha or Jesus or Mohammad or, well, pick your exemplar ... it puts the ball in your court.

No longer are things a matter of awe or groveling or imagining there was something to attain. When there is no "up there" or "down here," when the responsibility simply asserts its factualness ... well it can be hard because it tosses what often passes for religion or philosophy out the window.

Stuck with the farm ... ohhhhh shit!

It's not a matter of choice or pronouncement and it does not open itself in the face of the usual pretenses. You are you and you are in charge. You are you and it is completely sufficient to the task. Nothing extra is required. Nothing whatsoever.

Spooky, perhaps, but critical ....

And, in the end, not all that bad, do you think?
.

among the buses

.
Sometimes it seems that there is what happens and then there is what happens...and there is somehow a disconnect.

Incidents in California and China are reported as news because a knife-wielding woman at a Target store and an apparently-crazed man stabbing 28 school children are not a part of a sane and peaceful life ... the life a human being might weave in the mind. They are shocking incidents -- incidents that point out the limited and fragile quality of the peaceful life anyone might assume or pursue.

Naturally, such incidents are extreme. They are shocking. They are insane. But the most upsetting quality, perhaps, is that they are entirely possible and much of what passes for a sane and peaceful life is composed of holding some possibilities close and keeping others at bay. Some assumptions are more comfortable than others just as (George Orwell) some pigs are more equal than others.

Of spiritual endeavor, someone once observed approximately and aptly, "Understanding is knowing to get out of the way of an on-coming bus. Practice is for the bus you didn't see coming." Although not everyone has run into a knife-wielding insanity, still, everyone has experienced the bus they didn't see coming ... the event or circumstances that upset the sane and peaceful apple cart of the mind... the comforting and comfortable assumptions of this life... the assumptions that may never be articulated or investigated ... the background hum of any given life.

All things are possible, but we all spend quite a lot of time assuring and asserting that some things are possible and some things are not. It's an individual and quite personal matter, but that doesn't make it any less true... making up rules and philosophies and beliefs that will keep the buses we didn't see coming under control, at bay, or held close.

And still, there are the buses we didn't see coming. Still, the limitlessness of possibilities asserts itself. Still, our apple carts are upset in one way or another.

It takes some courage and patience to address such matters. Courage because limitlessness is not a part of our training and upbringing. And patience because that training and upbringing are deeply ingrained ... habitual as salt and butter on popcorn.

It takes investigation to discover that the bus we imagined we saw coming is not the bus we saw coming ... ever. It may seem to be as we imagined it -- peaceful and sane and under control -- but then ... well, then things never turn out exactly as expected.

A recognition of limitlessness can be pretty depressing, given our training and upbringing. It smacks of helplessness and incompetence and yet human beings are never helpless or incompetent. If everything is nothing but the bus we didn't see coming -- if every moment is brand new and wide open as a mother's arms -- how are we supposed to make our way in a peaceful and sane life? Limitlessness sounds like anarchy or like some impersonal dictatorship ... a determinism infused with laziness and wishful thinking. Oy vey ... knife-wielding lunatics around every corner! Prepare yourself! -- The end is nigh.

Actually, of course, the uncertainties aroused in the mind are nothing but fertile ground. The only question is, who will plant a nourishing crop? Who will make the effort to get the matter of limitlessness straightened out in their own hearts? Who will make friends with the bus they didn't see coming? Who will stop begging for water while drowning in the lake?

Practice is for the bus we didn't see coming. And in what does that practice consist? Well, different people express it in different ways, but I like "attention" and "responsibility." Talking the talk can never replace walking the walk.

And who wouldn't prefer a pleasant walk among the buses no man ever saw coming?
.

gastronomy

.
What with one son's track meet and the other son's baseball game, there won't be much if any time to cook supper, so I busied myself making a casserole and some brownies this morning.

The casserole took a little doing since there were several ingredients ... not complicated, just a little time-consuming ... a time during which I couldn't help thinking ...

Yes, I'll plead guilty ... your grandmother and mine were correct when they expounded the ancient wisdom:

THE WAY TO A MAN'S HEART IS THROUGH HIS STOMACH.
.

Mark Twain

.

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

- Mark Twain
.

old friends

.
Sometimes it is fun -- even useful -- to review the events of this life... places you went, people you knew, events that made you smile or weep.

And one of the things I find is that, in looking back, it becomes easier to see old friends in every time and place ... and less easy to identify anything that might be called an enemy.

There is nothing forced about it, no imposed vision or self-help virtue or need to control the scene from some 'mature' viewpoint. It just seems to be so -- good friends who have pointed the way.

Horrors, ecstasies, and ordinary stuff -- all of it smiling you into this moment which is also smiling ... or not. How could anyone be where they are if they hadn't been where they were?

How fortunate.
.

watermelon seeds

.
Funny how the same problems come up over and over and over again in practice. But you can't say that. If you say that, those listening will feel left out of some broad-brush application which does not apply precisely to their circumstances ... pay attention to me, to my circumstances, to my life, to my difficulties ... this is unique and not subject to some answer that comes out a cereal box!

And so, of course, it is unique and needs to be treated that way. "Your life is so difficult that it has never been tried before."

The woman who came to instruct me this morning -- to sit with me -- had recently gone through a painful divorce. She and her former partner had joint custody of their three-year-old daughter. She had a hard time sitting because thoughts interfered and were painfully diverting. She would be counting her breath from one to ten and then find herself at 27 with no clue as to how she had gotten there. She would find herself glancing at the clock, wondering when the at-home sitting would be over.

There is no consoling such a person but they definitely won't find consolation in knowing that everybody else who practices -- or has practiced -- has gone through precisely the same thing ... precisely! No, this is different ... it's no like anybody else's difficulty ... some same ol' same ol' be fobbed off with a generalization. If I am unique and important, well, don't treat me like another pit in the watermelon!

And yet the answers are always more or less the same: It takes determination to practice, so muster your determination. It takes courage and patience and doubt, so muster your courage and patience and doubt. If you make a promise, then keep a promise ... or take responsibility for not keeping it. If you make a mistake, just correct it. And if you make it again, correct it again ... and again...and again...and again.

Attention and responsibility -- the same ol' answers as ever before, only this time it's no joke, no broad-brush generalization, because this time the problems are yours and you -- like the rest of us -- are desperately important.

The older I get the fewer the suggested answers seem to get. Once upon a time, there were hundreds of heart-felt suggestions, one for every ache or pain or confusion or sorrow. Then there were fewer and they reached further. Then there were fewer still and they spread their arms wider still.

Pay attention and take responsibility ... but I won't say that. That's miles too broad-brush, I imagine. :)

OK ... so spit out the watermelon seeds or try pinching one between a thumb and index finger ... see how far you can shoot it. Do try the watermelon, though ... on a hot day it's sweet and juicy.
.

check out the "obvious"

.
It probably doesn't mean a whole lot to others, I suppose, but it matters to me:

Yesterday, as I was weeding out front, a neighbor pulled up in the street to tell me she had seen my letter to the editor in the local paper. And we gossiped a little about the topic -- advertising fliers thrown weekly on the front lawn. I have enough problems cleaning up my own litter without having to deal with someone else's.

But the subject itself -- one that had cranked me out enough to write a letter a week or so ago -- wasn't really what interested me. What really interested me was the fact that my neighbor had seen the letter, but I hadn't.

Not that I was waiting with baited breath to see my deathless prose in print, but it struck me as revealing that the newspaper had run the letter without ever confirming that I had written it. That's something that newspapers used to do as a matter of course -- confirm the obvious and not just relegate the obvious to the realm of the "obvious." Assumptions, large and small, were not enough.

One of the first things any reporter learns is that when interviewing someone for an article, the question must be asked: "How do you spell your name?" and "Do you have a middle initial?"

It may be "obvious" how "James Smith" may spell his name ... right up until the moment when you find out it's spelled "Jaimes Smythe." And, given the fact that "James Smith" is a common enough name, a middle initial and an address and an age are other ways of confirming the "obvious."

The fact that no one called me to confirm my authorship is not a big deal. I don't plan one of those outraged actions that people resort to in a righteous dudgeon before trying to do something without the injection of some turkey-buzzard lawyer. But it tells me something about news-gathering, a lesson those inclined towards spiritual endeavor might heed.

Check out the "obvious." Always check out the "obvious." What is "obvious" in your life or mine usually means that our biases are comfortable and there is no point in exerting the investigative energy to check it out. Example: I'm a Democrat, no need to check that out or consider a Republican point of view -- it's "obvious" what THEY think, just as it's "obvious" what I think. Example: My intellectual and emotional responses are true and worthy and, well, "obvious" -- who in their right mind wouldn't agree with me!?

But the facts of what is "obvious" are never so obvious as they seem. If "I gotta be me" and there is no willingness to check out who this "me" actually is ... well, how does this differ from some Ku Klux Klan disciple whose righteousness can be very profound? Isn't this just the same shit in different clothing? I think it is.

Check out the "obvious" and when you find that you were wrong -- when it becomes obvious is not so "obvious" at all -- then correct course ... and keep investigating.

And if the whining certainty arises in words like, "I gotta be me!" then be sure to answer the corollary query, "Oh, really?"

What is it that is so "obvious" that you don't need to check it out? Well, it's your life and your search for happiness and if you're content with the "obvious," don't say no one ever warned you:

Check out the "obvious."
.

the teeny-tiny stuff

.
Funny how very small things renew themselves. They are slightly different and yet recognizable as having at some other time been present and living.

What tripped this solenoid switch in my mind was an email from a woman who came to practice zazen here a lot of years ago. I remembered her name and her coming and she mentioned that she still had the chanting sheets I had given her for practice purposes. But I forget what she looks like or what she does for a living or anything more tangible. Another Zen student. Another Zen student like me. And now she was asking if I still sat and could she come and sit too.

It's like bits of flotsam floating up out of some rich and rushing river pool -- here a leaf that shows itself and then sinks anew; there a twig that pokes out of the water like some investigating snake, only to slide back silently into the bubbles and dark water. Everything in motion. Everything moving. Everything new and yet known as old as well.

Trying to pinpoint one event or another, one reconnection or another, is far too greedy. But I see no reason not to enjoy the dance. What is new was once old. What is old is now new. Happening, happening, happening.
.

Gay Pride

.
Main Street was abuzz as I stood on the peace picket under the warm sun today. The Gay Pride Parade was going to be held and traffic was snarled, people were dressed in their most noticeable clothing, and there was a certain festivity in the air.

In one sense, those who might feel under-appreciated or under-valued had a time to shine and express solidarity: Fifteen minutes or a couple of hours, not so much of fame, as of knowing you were not alone.


Vendors sold hats and necklaces and boas and flags ... most of them colored with some version of a rainbow. There were women with fat behinds and short haircuts and stern faces; lots of people, mostly women, holding hands; men who were in the process of or had completed sex change operations; teenagers with lots of piercings and hair dyed in luminescent pink or orange or turquoise; but mostly people were smiling and the kids ... well the kids were people who didn't wave words like "diversity" like some weapon. They were smiling and happy and waiting for the parade and held flags because ... well, because they were alive and those who protected them had brought them.

It feels so odd these days to think that once upon a time, "gay" simply meant a kind of merry happiness and "diverse" carried no code-word political undercurrent but simply meant ... well ... diverse ... or varied and different.

The whole of Main Street felt happy and, whether tall or short, man or woman, young or old, fat or thin, happiness is not exclusive. Anyone can be happy. Whether they need to feel proud about it, I leave to them.

I didn't stay for the parade itself ... I've seen parades before and besides, an hour and a half in the sunshine had made me hungry.
.

BOOM!

.
A huge oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is slip-sliding towards the coastline of the southern United States after an off-shore drilling platform exploded and sank this week.

Recriminations have begun, but the oil slick doesn't seem to mind as it edges towards the shores of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida, threatening wildlife and various fishing industries.

The disaster, which looks to be the biggest of its kind in U.S. history, comes in a week when the administration in Washington announced -- but has now put on temporary hold -- that off-shore drilling would be expanded. Today's disaster will eventually be forgotten and drilling will go forward under rules that will promise that accidents like the one in the Gulf of Mexico won't occur again.

Forgetting and ignoring and balancing risks against rewards -- what an ingenious capacity.

I guess everyone feels the regret and remorse that accompanies the explosion of their own off-shore oil rigs. All that building, all that risk assessment, all that expensive effort in their own lives and suddenly ... BOOM! And I imagine that everyone has a public relations shill as well -- some voice in a blue suit and with immaculate finger nails who will spin the disaster and help them forget, forgive, or make lemonade out of lemons... and move forward with more drilling.

Yes it is "human."

But I wonder if it really works -- really sets a scene in which things do not, by their very nature, go BOOM! Money, successes, relationships, good times and bad ... BOOM!

Religions, of course, can capitalize on the BOOM aspects of life, but religions too go BOOM, so a confected goodness is hardly an answer ... it's just another version of a guy in a blue suit with immaculate finger nails.

For those who are honestly tired of watching the oil slicks creep onto their shores, watching the wildlife flapping and flopping helplessly, watching things come apart in yet another BOOM, I think there is a better mousetrap.

That mousetrap requires a seldom-used capacity to pay attention and take responsibility. But just because it is seldom-used doesn't mean it is not available -- this BOOM-stopper.

If BOOM is the nature of all things, then it would behoove us to investigate and embrace our BOOMs, not hire some PR firm to paper things over.

Attention and responsibility -- there's no point in praising them. But there is something to be said for exercising them.
.

the symphony

.
The symphony seems to begin at 3;30-4:00 in the morning -- the birds holding forth, each with its own important instrument, in the darkness. It's a bit like having a teenager in the basement with a drum set and sometimes I want to holler, "Turn it down!"

But the symphony is the symphony and there never is a volume control.

The birds weave themselves into the dark silence even as the dark silence weaves itself into the birdsong. It's all of a piece and each finds a partnered voice in the coming of light. As the light tiptoes in, the darkness turns down its volume and so do the birds.

By now, at shortly after 6, the light has taken center stage and the birds become an occasional background note while the darkness keeps its peace.

Like any music, none of it has edges or end. As with any symphony, there is a time for French horns and a time for violas, a time for darkness and a time for light, a time for hollering and a time for volume control.

But always there is deliciousness and delight ... no need for applause.
.

books are dead

.
Talking yesterday to a literary agent about the direction of one of my mother's books, I asked her casually about her take on electronic books. Claudia admitted she didn't know a lot about them and was a bit grumpy about their incursion into the actual-factual-touch-'em-and-smell-'em book markets, but then she said, based on a lot of years in the industry, "Books are dead. It's inevitable."

Since both of us are of an age that grew up with books that became like friends along our book shelves, welcoming us into one room or another, we whined a little about the inevitability of the demise of books and whether it implied an increase in the lack of knowledge that seems to beset a lot of young people. We were just two old farts, whining.

When something is inevitable, can it be sad or happy?

Not that I plan to stop whining about the fate of books. But I also mourn the reduced availability of the potato ricer -- a tool that used to sell for a couple of bucks but now sells for $20-$40 and seems to be offered primarily in stores that specialize in things like monogrammed toilet plungers.

Sic transit gloria mundi (thus passes the glory of this world) has a dirge-like solemnity to it. But doesn't it really mean, as it has always meant, "thus passes the glory of me?"
.