.
"An even sameness among all things."
Somewhere I read or concocted that notion and attributed it to people who seemed much more adept at a spiritual practice. They seemed serene ... or anyway serene-r than I was, and I too wanted a peace of mind that exhibited itself in that sort of serenity ... an even sameness among all things.
But it's a funny thing: If you run around trying to fit all times, places and events into one saintly box or another -- kind of arm-wrestling the mind into a perceived virtue -- life won't sit still for it and anger or love or beauty or ugliness will bite you on the ass ... hard. All that virtuous, sweaty effort might be better used making a nice pan of brownies or mowing the lawn.
Wanting to see all things with a serene eye and perhaps touting that point of view as best and most comely is just that ... wanting. My mother said, "Don't get too holy by next Thursday." And she was right. Using the very tool that led to doubt and uncertainty in the first place (i.e. wanting) is hardly likely to do much more than impress your friends. But friends cannot assure peace. Only you can do that.
"An even sameness." Words are just words, but they sure can foul the works.
So there is practice -- attention and responsibility -- day after day, year after year, anger after anger, love after love, brownie after brownie. Halos and hopes and beliefs ... how could any of them really tell the tale? Inspire? Sure. Encourage? Sure. Point the way? Sure. Does anyone need a closet full of halos? Maybe yes, maybe no, but there is no room in over-stuffed closets. Spring cleaning is required.
Practice is experience and experience beats arm-twisting virtues any day of the week. So let's practice.
Practice and see what actually happens.
.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
marriage in the U.S.
.
Sometimes I think that what is/was so volubly praised is just bound to run out of steam. As with long-term avid distaste, the energy wanes.
.
Nov 18, 6:20 AM (ET)Complete story
By HOPE YEN
WASHINGTON (AP) - Is marriage becoming obsolete?
As families gather for Thanksgiving this year, nearly one in three American children is living with a parent who is divorced, separated or never-married. More people are accepting the view that wedding bells aren't needed to have a family.
A study by the Pew Research Center, in association with Time magazine, highlights rapidly changing notions of the American family. And the Census Bureau, too, is planning to incorporate broader definitions of family when measuring poverty, a shift caused partly by recent jumps in unmarried couples living together.
Sometimes I think that what is/was so volubly praised is just bound to run out of steam. As with long-term avid distaste, the energy wanes.
.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
candied carrots
.
The donkey dons the carrot, the carrot entices the donkey:
"It is wise to..."
"It would be better to ..."
"Compassion is necessary ..."
"Emptiness is the nature of all things..."
"Evil and good are not the same thing ...."
"Enlightenment is just around the corner ..."
"Choirs of angels sing ..."
"Love and oneness prevail...."
"Heaven is up, hell is down ...."
"Wisdom resides in ...."
"Ignorance and attachment -- a fool's errand ..."
Delicious carrots.
Take care of the jackass who straps on such carrots.
Beware and take care.
.
The donkey dons the carrot, the carrot entices the donkey:
"It is wise to..."
"It would be better to ..."
"Compassion is necessary ..."
"Emptiness is the nature of all things..."
"Evil and good are not the same thing ...."
"Enlightenment is just around the corner ..."
"Choirs of angels sing ..."
"Love and oneness prevail...."
"Heaven is up, hell is down ...."
"Wisdom resides in ...."
"Ignorance and attachment -- a fool's errand ..."
Delicious carrots.
Take care of the jackass who straps on such carrots.
Beware and take care.
.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Forever 21
.
In the supermarket check-out line, a woman who, naturally, couldn't find what she wanted in her pocketbook slowed things down and I was stuck scanning the women's magazines and other tchotchke inviting a last-minute purchase.
And among the offerings was some kind of credit card thingie that boasted a skinny young woman with blond hair and a come-hither look. The largest label on the small, flat packet said, "Forever 21."
Since the item was for sale and since someone thought someone else might actually buy it, I assumed it was purveying some sort of blessing, some kind of improvement, some something-or-other that was good ... instead of the sense of curse that leaped in my mind.
As an old person, I am willing to be patient with those who are significantly younger. What the hell, I was once the same. But I am not willing to overlook the lack of substance or understanding that generally pervades (as it pervaded my) youth. "Forever 21" sounds like a voodoo curse to me. Give me wrinkles and bulges and sags and grey hair, assuming they imply a world of experience that shaped an interesting person. The curvaceous and washboard-ab-ed too often strike me as airheads.
Forever 21 ... it sounds like some ancient biblical curse... as if the laughter of life had been extinguished.
Looking it up on the web, Forever 21 seems to be a fashion store for men and women.
I refuse to post the directions. :)
.
In the supermarket check-out line, a woman who, naturally, couldn't find what she wanted in her pocketbook slowed things down and I was stuck scanning the women's magazines and other tchotchke inviting a last-minute purchase.
And among the offerings was some kind of credit card thingie that boasted a skinny young woman with blond hair and a come-hither look. The largest label on the small, flat packet said, "Forever 21."
Since the item was for sale and since someone thought someone else might actually buy it, I assumed it was purveying some sort of blessing, some kind of improvement, some something-or-other that was good ... instead of the sense of curse that leaped in my mind.
As an old person, I am willing to be patient with those who are significantly younger. What the hell, I was once the same. But I am not willing to overlook the lack of substance or understanding that generally pervades (as it pervaded my) youth. "Forever 21" sounds like a voodoo curse to me. Give me wrinkles and bulges and sags and grey hair, assuming they imply a world of experience that shaped an interesting person. The curvaceous and washboard-ab-ed too often strike me as airheads.
Forever 21 ... it sounds like some ancient biblical curse... as if the laughter of life had been extinguished.
Looking it up on the web, Forever 21 seems to be a fashion store for men and women.
I refuse to post the directions. :)
.
goddamned attention!
.
What a pain in the ass -- just like Zen practice!
Yesterday, around 8:30, a young woman rigged me up with a portable heart monitor as part of the latest heart shenanigans. A small box is strapped on the torso with several suction-cup leads snaking out to points on the chest and rib cage. It's a 24-hour deal, after which I turn the box back in to the office and someone 'reads' how the heart is doing or has done.
The kicker part is that I have had to keep a log of what I do during various time frames of the day. The young woman said to do a general log-keeping ... not every single moment of the 24 hours. But it is hard not to focus in smaller and smaller increments and get irritated. So, for example, I get up in the morning and note that. But getting up involves walking to the bathroom, taking a leak, then walking downstairs, then taking meds, then doing some mild exercise, then sitting at the computer and writing ... and some of the writing can stir things up, so do I note the topics under consideration ... whether I am bored or excited?
Start somewhere and suddenly it's like one of those fancy lab microscopes with lenses that bring you in closer and closer and closer and you're never entirely sure what's close enough. No one, I'm convinced, wants to pay attention to their lives and they certainly don't want to waste time focusing on every nanosecond, every flake of dandruff, every word ... like the word "word." To pay attention is to call into question the assumptions made when you're just plain doing, just plain enjoying yourself, just plain being sad: Breathing and body and shelter and errands to run ... all that stuff is assumed in the pursuit of whatever pursuit comes along. And something within rebels like a childish tantrum: I don't want to pay attention; I want to do what I want to do without being called to account or somehow limiting the scene of being alive.
Yesterday, on the radio, there was a report about a new autobiography by Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain, the wry and sometimes acid American writer. It took him years to find his voice, to find an appropriate way to write an autobiography. And one of his problems -- a problem he had to overcome -- was the notion of time. At first he thought he had to write things consecutively ... first one thing, then another, then another ... day by consecutive day, year by consecutive year. But it flummoxed him, constrained his voice, shackled his honesty. Finally he settled on this: Start anywhere and let the rest flow. Anywhere in your life is your life -- perfectly connected and unconstrained and unlimited.
But without trying to limit things, how could you find out how foolish trying to limit or separate things is? So, as I understood it, Twain started with the slick and socially-acceptable sounds of chronology and ran into a brick wall: It didn't ring true because it wasn't true ... it was limited.
And perhaps that's what meditation or logging activities shows... pointing towards the whole story but not yet content with being the whole story. If you're not willing to do something that irritates the piss out of your deepest honesty (limitlessness), how likely is it that you can settle down to what doesn't irritate you at all?
Well, a little noodling. I can say that I will be relieved to turn in the heart monitor and its dratted log. I just hope the interpreter of the data won't call my bluff with all of my caring entries.
.
What a pain in the ass -- just like Zen practice!
Yesterday, around 8:30, a young woman rigged me up with a portable heart monitor as part of the latest heart shenanigans. A small box is strapped on the torso with several suction-cup leads snaking out to points on the chest and rib cage. It's a 24-hour deal, after which I turn the box back in to the office and someone 'reads' how the heart is doing or has done.
The kicker part is that I have had to keep a log of what I do during various time frames of the day. The young woman said to do a general log-keeping ... not every single moment of the 24 hours. But it is hard not to focus in smaller and smaller increments and get irritated. So, for example, I get up in the morning and note that. But getting up involves walking to the bathroom, taking a leak, then walking downstairs, then taking meds, then doing some mild exercise, then sitting at the computer and writing ... and some of the writing can stir things up, so do I note the topics under consideration ... whether I am bored or excited?
Start somewhere and suddenly it's like one of those fancy lab microscopes with lenses that bring you in closer and closer and closer and you're never entirely sure what's close enough. No one, I'm convinced, wants to pay attention to their lives and they certainly don't want to waste time focusing on every nanosecond, every flake of dandruff, every word ... like the word "word." To pay attention is to call into question the assumptions made when you're just plain doing, just plain enjoying yourself, just plain being sad: Breathing and body and shelter and errands to run ... all that stuff is assumed in the pursuit of whatever pursuit comes along. And something within rebels like a childish tantrum: I don't want to pay attention; I want to do what I want to do without being called to account or somehow limiting the scene of being alive.
Yesterday, on the radio, there was a report about a new autobiography by Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain, the wry and sometimes acid American writer. It took him years to find his voice, to find an appropriate way to write an autobiography. And one of his problems -- a problem he had to overcome -- was the notion of time. At first he thought he had to write things consecutively ... first one thing, then another, then another ... day by consecutive day, year by consecutive year. But it flummoxed him, constrained his voice, shackled his honesty. Finally he settled on this: Start anywhere and let the rest flow. Anywhere in your life is your life -- perfectly connected and unconstrained and unlimited.
But without trying to limit things, how could you find out how foolish trying to limit or separate things is? So, as I understood it, Twain started with the slick and socially-acceptable sounds of chronology and ran into a brick wall: It didn't ring true because it wasn't true ... it was limited.
And perhaps that's what meditation or logging activities shows... pointing towards the whole story but not yet content with being the whole story. If you're not willing to do something that irritates the piss out of your deepest honesty (limitlessness), how likely is it that you can settle down to what doesn't irritate you at all?
Well, a little noodling. I can say that I will be relieved to turn in the heart monitor and its dratted log. I just hope the interpreter of the data won't call my bluff with all of my caring entries.
.
Monday, November 15, 2010
eat your dinner!
.
Funny how when friends go into a restaurant together, no one is surprised or outraged or concerned or upset or corrective about what the others order. But when it comes to spiritual life, whether subtle or gross, all sorts of heels can dig in.
When people tell me that their Buddhist adventure began with the television series "Kung Fu" or that Alan Watts and the Beats pressed their buzzers, I can sometimes feel my mental eyelids tightening with protective doubt. "Kung Fu" struck me as a magnetic (kick-ass) presentation of Buddhism, but utterly smarmy -- a Stepin Fetchit Buddhism. And Alan Watts and the Beats sometimes strike me as deliciously, socially rebellious without much serious flavor or nourishment.
So, it's not my taste and more than that, I may even feel my own taste rising up protectively: Stick with the heavy hitters, with Huang Po and Hui Hai and Huineng and Dogen and Rinzai and Ta Hui and ... my laundry list goes on and on and on. I may not enunciate my tastes -- such a good Zen Buddhist, dontcha know -- but they can be there on the inside, upright and combative and -- god save me -- virtuous.
What a lot of energy it takes to be "right." What a lot of training it takes to let things alone. When I let things alone, my importance and sense of self is somehow diminished and I become just another daisy in a daisy chain. It's a come-down and yet over and over again, life whispers, "That's right. You're just another daisy -- indispensable, but not indispensable."
Imagine how much energy there would be for more important things if you stopped stipulating what was important. Sure, you like chicken and the other person enjoys spaghetti. State your taste and enjoy your food -- isn't that enough? It takes a tremendous weight off your shoulders and more, it lines up with life's whispering.
Buddhism-lite, OK. I prefer the Buddhism with the Marsala sauce. You came in your door and I came in mine ... now let's chow down! True, there is a right way and an wrong way to go about things, but what's wrong with being wrong? What's right about being right?
Just thinking it lightens the load to be a daisy when you are a daisy. It's more than a relativist matter of taste. It's just the way things are. And hell, you don't even have to think about it... which leaves more energy for hop-scotch and laughter.
.
Funny how when friends go into a restaurant together, no one is surprised or outraged or concerned or upset or corrective about what the others order. But when it comes to spiritual life, whether subtle or gross, all sorts of heels can dig in.
When people tell me that their Buddhist adventure began with the television series "Kung Fu" or that Alan Watts and the Beats pressed their buzzers, I can sometimes feel my mental eyelids tightening with protective doubt. "Kung Fu" struck me as a magnetic (kick-ass) presentation of Buddhism, but utterly smarmy -- a Stepin Fetchit Buddhism. And Alan Watts and the Beats sometimes strike me as deliciously, socially rebellious without much serious flavor or nourishment.
So, it's not my taste and more than that, I may even feel my own taste rising up protectively: Stick with the heavy hitters, with Huang Po and Hui Hai and Huineng and Dogen and Rinzai and Ta Hui and ... my laundry list goes on and on and on. I may not enunciate my tastes -- such a good Zen Buddhist, dontcha know -- but they can be there on the inside, upright and combative and -- god save me -- virtuous.
Imagine how much energy there would be for more important things if you stopped stipulating what was important. Sure, you like chicken and the other person enjoys spaghetti. State your taste and enjoy your food -- isn't that enough? It takes a tremendous weight off your shoulders and more, it lines up with life's whispering.
Buddhism-lite, OK. I prefer the Buddhism with the Marsala sauce. You came in your door and I came in mine ... now let's chow down! True, there is a right way and an wrong way to go about things, but what's wrong with being wrong? What's right about being right?
Just thinking it lightens the load to be a daisy when you are a daisy. It's more than a relativist matter of taste. It's just the way things are. And hell, you don't even have to think about it... which leaves more energy for hop-scotch and laughter.
.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
breath-counting
.
When it comes to practice, I have always thought highly of the breath ... counting exhalations from one to ten and begin again, for one.
But this morning in the zendo, it occurred to me that in 35-40 years I have never managed (when I was honest) to count to 10 without interruption.
This morning, I counted to one.
That didn't work either.
So much for a Zen Buddhist practice. :)
.
When it comes to practice, I have always thought highly of the breath ... counting exhalations from one to ten and begin again, for one.
But this morning in the zendo, it occurred to me that in 35-40 years I have never managed (when I was honest) to count to 10 without interruption.
This morning, I counted to one.
That didn't work either.
So much for a Zen Buddhist practice. :)
.
quackery
.
Ducklings are so soft and noisy and full of life. They are assured as they follow in a parent's footsteps. I wonder: When do they become full-fledged ducks?
They follow and follow and follow and mimic and mimic and mimic and then, somehow, they are no longer mimics.
When do the thoughts and deeds of others become thoughts and deeds of their own? I never have seen a full-fledged duck following dutifully in the wake of another adult duck so there seems to be a point at which they relinquish their copy-cat behavior and are known as ducks rather than ducklings.
If it were otherwise, if they could do no better than to follow and mimic, they would become quacks, wouldn't they?
I imagine the same is true for academics and carpenters and doctors and spiritual seekers: Follow and mimic and parade your abilities noisily and with confidence. It's convincing in its own way, but it is not yet a duck. If a full-grown duck performed in this way, it would be a strange, perverted quackery. How can you pretend to be a duck when you already are a duck? Other ducks would give an understandable wide berth to a duck pretending to be a duck, always mimicking another's wisdom.
In Zen Buddhism, there is an ever-present encouragement: Rely on nothing whatsoever.
Don't be a quack. It annoys others and it lets you down in the deepest possible way. Don't be a quack ... be a duck.
It's ducky.
.
Ducklings are so soft and noisy and full of life. They are assured as they follow in a parent's footsteps. I wonder: When do they become full-fledged ducks?
They follow and follow and follow and mimic and mimic and mimic and then, somehow, they are no longer mimics. When do the thoughts and deeds of others become thoughts and deeds of their own? I never have seen a full-fledged duck following dutifully in the wake of another adult duck so there seems to be a point at which they relinquish their copy-cat behavior and are known as ducks rather than ducklings.
If it were otherwise, if they could do no better than to follow and mimic, they would become quacks, wouldn't they?
I imagine the same is true for academics and carpenters and doctors and spiritual seekers: Follow and mimic and parade your abilities noisily and with confidence. It's convincing in its own way, but it is not yet a duck. If a full-grown duck performed in this way, it would be a strange, perverted quackery. How can you pretend to be a duck when you already are a duck? Other ducks would give an understandable wide berth to a duck pretending to be a duck, always mimicking another's wisdom.
In Zen Buddhism, there is an ever-present encouragement: Rely on nothing whatsoever.
Don't be a quack. It annoys others and it lets you down in the deepest possible way. Don't be a quack ... be a duck.
It's ducky.
.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
playing with dolls
.
Once upon a time, there was a doll named Poor Pitiful Pearl. She was homely as a hedgerow. As distinct from the chic and well-endowed Barbie doll before whom children (and some adults) might stand in drooling awe, Pearl's allure seemed to lie in the fact that no child could be that homely, that bland, that, well, pitiful.
"Buck up!" Pearl seemed to say. "Things could be a lot worse." There was something reassuring about Poor Pitiful Pearl: "There is hope for me yet."
Pearl and Barbie and the reactions they may induce remind me a little of those seeking some peace through spiritual endeavor.
The twin sisters -- one spotlessly endowed, the other galumphy as an old shoe -- seem to be part of the terrain: Over there is the Barbie Buddha, shiny as a new penny. Meanwhaile, here I stand, a poor pitiful putz, up to my neck in mistakes, dull as dishwater ... and there is no crisp and perfect outcome on my horizon.
Hope and whine, hope and whine, hope and whine ... which one of us has not done it?
Longing for enlightenment, for compassion, mindfulness and other fine attributes without really investigating. Praying to win some miraculous reprieve from ignorance and anger and attachment and other habits that have reliably tripped us up in the past and left an indelible stamp of "ugly sister" on our foreheads ... without ever really investigating.
I thought of this doll-house metaphor while reading an internet thread in which someone suggested that if he did or thought a particular way, then of course he was not enlightened. Poor Pitiful Pearl. And yet if he did not do or think in this particular way, then, of course, he would gain enlightenment. And turn into some Barbie babe.
Well, hope, however mangled and undefined, has the capacity to inspire action, but sometimes I think people become entranced by being the ugly sister. The Buddha is compassionate, so if I just do my groveling best, surely a light will descend from on high and everything will be all better. Sometimes I think the whine is just too delicious and Poor Pitiful Pearl becomes the stand-alone goddess, the safe haven, the one in which to put my faith. No need to pay attention and take responsibility ... all I need to do is wallow.
Sometimes kids play with dolls. Adults aren't much different. And I see nothing wrong with playing with dolls for a while. But after that while -- please god, in this lifetime -- then I think it is time to get to work. Of what does this doll-house universe consist? What does it mean, all this shiny Barbie talk I can utter? How does it differ from the down-in-the-dumps Poor Pitiful Pearl fairy tale? Is there some honest difference between "ain't it awful" and "ain't life grand?"
Doesn't there come a time when it's imperative to call your own bluff ... lay your cards down and lay your dolls aside and take up some attentive investigating that requires no dolls or cards? It's hard to say which stinks worse, a Barbie-bright or a Pearl-dumb garrulousness (the two are, after all, twin sisters), but wouldn't it be better to find the air-freshener that will actually refresh the air?
You want big boobs and hour-glass figures? Pick a church or a porn site.
You want humble-pie groveling ... check out self-flagellation or hit yourself with an Ugly Stick.
But when it's time, when the games lose their savor ... just get to work.
.
Once upon a time, there was a doll named Poor Pitiful Pearl. She was homely as a hedgerow. As distinct from the chic and well-endowed Barbie doll before whom children (and some adults) might stand in drooling awe, Pearl's allure seemed to lie in the fact that no child could be that homely, that bland, that, well, pitiful."Buck up!" Pearl seemed to say. "Things could be a lot worse." There was something reassuring about Poor Pitiful Pearl: "There is hope for me yet."
Pearl and Barbie and the reactions they may induce remind me a little of those seeking some peace through spiritual endeavor.The twin sisters -- one spotlessly endowed, the other galumphy as an old shoe -- seem to be part of the terrain: Over there is the Barbie Buddha, shiny as a new penny. Meanwhaile, here I stand, a poor pitiful putz, up to my neck in mistakes, dull as dishwater ... and there is no crisp and perfect outcome on my horizon.
Hope and whine, hope and whine, hope and whine ... which one of us has not done it?
Longing for enlightenment, for compassion, mindfulness and other fine attributes without really investigating. Praying to win some miraculous reprieve from ignorance and anger and attachment and other habits that have reliably tripped us up in the past and left an indelible stamp of "ugly sister" on our foreheads ... without ever really investigating.
I thought of this doll-house metaphor while reading an internet thread in which someone suggested that if he did or thought a particular way, then of course he was not enlightened. Poor Pitiful Pearl. And yet if he did not do or think in this particular way, then, of course, he would gain enlightenment. And turn into some Barbie babe.
Well, hope, however mangled and undefined, has the capacity to inspire action, but sometimes I think people become entranced by being the ugly sister. The Buddha is compassionate, so if I just do my groveling best, surely a light will descend from on high and everything will be all better. Sometimes I think the whine is just too delicious and Poor Pitiful Pearl becomes the stand-alone goddess, the safe haven, the one in which to put my faith. No need to pay attention and take responsibility ... all I need to do is wallow.
Sometimes kids play with dolls. Adults aren't much different. And I see nothing wrong with playing with dolls for a while. But after that while -- please god, in this lifetime -- then I think it is time to get to work. Of what does this doll-house universe consist? What does it mean, all this shiny Barbie talk I can utter? How does it differ from the down-in-the-dumps Poor Pitiful Pearl fairy tale? Is there some honest difference between "ain't it awful" and "ain't life grand?"
Doesn't there come a time when it's imperative to call your own bluff ... lay your cards down and lay your dolls aside and take up some attentive investigating that requires no dolls or cards? It's hard to say which stinks worse, a Barbie-bright or a Pearl-dumb garrulousness (the two are, after all, twin sisters), but wouldn't it be better to find the air-freshener that will actually refresh the air?
You want big boobs and hour-glass figures? Pick a church or a porn site.
You want humble-pie groveling ... check out self-flagellation or hit yourself with an Ugly Stick.
But when it's time, when the games lose their savor ... just get to work.
.
daydreaming
.
.
Complete storyBBC Nov. 12, 2010People spend nearly half of their waking hours not thinking about what they are actually doing, according to a US study conducted via the iPhone.More than 2,200 volunteers downloaded an app which then surveyed them about their thoughts and mood at random times of day and night.
....
"This study shows that our mental lives are pervaded, to a remarkable degree, by the non-present."
....
Reports of happiness were most likely among those exercising, having a conversation or making love, whereas unhappiness was reported most while people were resting, working, or using computers.
Dr Killingsworth said: "Mind-wandering is an excellent predictor of people's happiness."
However, whether mind-wandering is the cause, or the result of unhappiness is still not proven by the research.
.
bishops seek exorcists
.
If enough people believe in evil, I wonder to what extent that belief nourishes the very evil they believe in.
Calling all exorcists!
.
If enough people believe in evil, I wonder to what extent that belief nourishes the very evil they believe in.
Calling all exorcists!
.
surprise!
.
Yesterday, my older son came home for a visit from college bearing a suitcase full of laundry for his mother to attend to. It was the same day on which my daughter suited up in crisply-creased clothes to go to an interview for a college internship. Meanwhile, my younger son borrowed my car because I had dropped his off at the mechanic for repairs ... he was off to pizza and a movie as part of the "best buddies" program in high school.
Now and then, it sweeps over me: How did all this happen? Where was I while these children went from tricycle-riders and spinach-haters to being tall and strong and self-involved in more-adult ways? Almost simultaneously, I can remember older people pinching my cheek affectionately and saying what sounded ridiculous ... "You're getting so big!" I can now see where they were coming from. Now I pinch my own cheek wryly and think, "You're getting so small!"
Things may be as they are, but I can't muster the energy to fault marveling at them and wishing, wishing, wishing.
.
Yesterday, my older son came home for a visit from college bearing a suitcase full of laundry for his mother to attend to. It was the same day on which my daughter suited up in crisply-creased clothes to go to an interview for a college internship. Meanwhile, my younger son borrowed my car because I had dropped his off at the mechanic for repairs ... he was off to pizza and a movie as part of the "best buddies" program in high school.
Now and then, it sweeps over me: How did all this happen? Where was I while these children went from tricycle-riders and spinach-haters to being tall and strong and self-involved in more-adult ways? Almost simultaneously, I can remember older people pinching my cheek affectionately and saying what sounded ridiculous ... "You're getting so big!" I can now see where they were coming from. Now I pinch my own cheek wryly and think, "You're getting so small!"
Things may be as they are, but I can't muster the energy to fault marveling at them and wishing, wishing, wishing.
.
Friday, November 12, 2010
out of the past
.
The past can be so wondrous or so horrific and yet it is past and only the present can it find a viable peace. This is not just some spiritual-lite mumbo jumbo. It is a fact and I think anyone who reflects a little will know it is true.
Today there is the story of a 42-year-old man who is who is due in court because, 35 years after the alleged facts, he beat a 65-year-old retired priest bloody for sexual assaults when the younger man was a child:
How much might anyone give to be free of such a past? How much might anyone give to revive and relive a wonderful or wondrous time in their lives? It has a heartless feeling -- the past is past and no memory, good or bad, really remembers accurately. But that doesn't mean the past cannot be as searing or uplifting as memory.
I don't much like the smarmy nitwits who address such edgeless memories with spiritual nostrums -- texts and teachers and "you've got to let it go." First, I think, the facts in all their horror or all their splendor need to be acknowledged: How can what is past be past when it infuses the present so fully? Intellectually, the past is past. Viscerally, it's anything but past. It claws and bites or fills you like a kiss. And one of the aspects of the past is that you are alone ... and that aloneness runs counter to every social nicety...which makes everything worse. What was relied on in social and intellectual settings cannot be relied on.
Now what? We cannot share experience ... so where's the joy? Where's the peace? Where's the relief?
It's hard work, peace. It's not like some group-think rally at which someone makes peace out to be the absence of war. Peace is a personal -- really intimate -- business and it requires hard work, close attention, the patience of Job, the courage of a redwood. There is no fortune-cookie, one-size-fits-all nostrum.
There is the work ... the same work everyone does in one way or another, the same work Jesus did when he walked alone into the desert. Some accept the challenge. Some do not. And still experience demands the effort if there is to be any credible peace.
The past is past.
What does that mean? What does that mean really?
What is peace?
Who am I?
.
The past can be so wondrous or so horrific and yet it is past and only the present can it find a viable peace. This is not just some spiritual-lite mumbo jumbo. It is a fact and I think anyone who reflects a little will know it is true.
Today there is the story of a 42-year-old man who is who is due in court because, 35 years after the alleged facts, he beat a 65-year-old retired priest bloody for sexual assaults when the younger man was a child:
"He took my faith, he took my innocence, he took my sense of self," Lynch said of Lindner. "He raped me, he tortured me, he violated me in every single way, and he completely changed who I was supposed to be forever."Yesterday was Veterans Day, a day when those who survived their service and perhaps combat were honored. It was also a day, I imagine, when some of those veterans faced off again against some truly awful memories and the fact that no one in a civilized setting could possibly envision or suffer from such memories. They were alone and haunted and there was no one to tell.
How much might anyone give to be free of such a past? How much might anyone give to revive and relive a wonderful or wondrous time in their lives? It has a heartless feeling -- the past is past and no memory, good or bad, really remembers accurately. But that doesn't mean the past cannot be as searing or uplifting as memory.
I don't much like the smarmy nitwits who address such edgeless memories with spiritual nostrums -- texts and teachers and "you've got to let it go." First, I think, the facts in all their horror or all their splendor need to be acknowledged: How can what is past be past when it infuses the present so fully? Intellectually, the past is past. Viscerally, it's anything but past. It claws and bites or fills you like a kiss. And one of the aspects of the past is that you are alone ... and that aloneness runs counter to every social nicety...which makes everything worse. What was relied on in social and intellectual settings cannot be relied on.
Now what? We cannot share experience ... so where's the joy? Where's the peace? Where's the relief?
It's hard work, peace. It's not like some group-think rally at which someone makes peace out to be the absence of war. Peace is a personal -- really intimate -- business and it requires hard work, close attention, the patience of Job, the courage of a redwood. There is no fortune-cookie, one-size-fits-all nostrum.
There is the work ... the same work everyone does in one way or another, the same work Jesus did when he walked alone into the desert. Some accept the challenge. Some do not. And still experience demands the effort if there is to be any credible peace.
The past is past.
What does that mean? What does that mean really?
What is peace?
Who am I?
.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Veterans Day
.
My younger son gets a day off from high school today.
It's Veterans Day.
Veterans Day or Remembrance Day is observed Nov. 11. "Major hostilities of World War I were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 with the German signing of the Armistice" according to Wikipedia. And other wars are remembered today as well.
On the one hand, my son gets a day off because others fought and died. On the other hand, I would rather he didn't get a day off if it meant the slaughter and loss would be erased.
World War I was sometimes referred to as "the war to end all wars."
It didn't work.
And neither will this one.
.
My younger son gets a day off from high school today.
It's Veterans Day.
Veterans Day or Remembrance Day is observed Nov. 11. "Major hostilities of World War I were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 with the German signing of the Armistice" according to Wikipedia. And other wars are remembered today as well.
On the one hand, my son gets a day off because others fought and died. On the other hand, I would rather he didn't get a day off if it meant the slaughter and loss would be erased.
World War I was sometimes referred to as "the war to end all wars."
It didn't work.
And neither will this one.
.
yearning
.
I don't know about anyone else, but when I first got hooked on the spiritual adventure, there was a lot of yearning. No joke, I was like a teenager trying to figure out how to get the girl of my dreams to notice me.
From a novice standpoint, the dream was perfect: Temples and texts were delicious; monks and nuns left me puddling within; the great trek from here to there might seem impossibly long and outside my grasp, but that didn't mean I couldn't moon and swoon.
Of course once in a while I would catch myself swooning and give myself a Dutch Uncle talk: This wasn't just some abject surrender realm, some fall-into-someone-else's-arms adventure, some do-it-their-way arena ... shape up and get to work! But the longing to swoon and puddle and love and be loved was there in the corner, waiting to be fulfilled. I'd turn the page of some book or scripture and it would jump off the page and into my soft and yearning places.
If I could just dissect enough, analyze enough, explain enough, find meaning enough ... well then my yearning would be fulfilled somehow. And I look back on this all with fondness. I was going to wrong way to the right places. But whatever the wrong-ness of the approach -- the only approach I was capable of at first -- still it was full of energy and hope and oomph.
Yearning. Weaving thoughtful, hopeful tapestries that might requite that yearning. Thinking. Cuddling. Pocketing.
I was lucky to run into Zen practice, if only because it put my feet to the fire. The literal, physical, sit-down-cross-your-legs-erect-your-spine-shut-up-and-focus exercise didn't diminish the yearning. It simply put the yearning to the test. Sweet anthems found a worthy comrade in a right knee that burned like fire or an irritation with some of the goody-two-shoes fellow practitioners ... people who no doubt yearned as I did but didn't express that yearning in a way I felt comfortable with. They could really piss me off, and being pissed off is a good exercise when yearning is involved.
My mother once said, "Don't get too holy by next Thursday." She was right, but what does yearning care for right and wrong. Yearning wants its satisfaction ... yesterday if not sooner. And not just a tale-telling, belief-oozing satisfaction, but a real, down-to-earth satisfaction ... sort of like your right knee burning like fire: No doubt about it!
It's funny about yearning and an actual-factual practice. In order to practice, yearning has to be put on the back burner. No one can be "good" when they are being good. No one can say what they believe or hope in the middle of a sneeze.
Yet yearning inspires and builds a fire under your butt. You may be going the wrong way to the right places, but you are going. And that puts a warm place in my heart for those willing to go. Despite all the mistakes ... going.
Going...
Going...
Gone.
.
I don't know about anyone else, but when I first got hooked on the spiritual adventure, there was a lot of yearning. No joke, I was like a teenager trying to figure out how to get the girl of my dreams to notice me.
From a novice standpoint, the dream was perfect: Temples and texts were delicious; monks and nuns left me puddling within; the great trek from here to there might seem impossibly long and outside my grasp, but that didn't mean I couldn't moon and swoon.
Of course once in a while I would catch myself swooning and give myself a Dutch Uncle talk: This wasn't just some abject surrender realm, some fall-into-someone-else's-arms adventure, some do-it-their-way arena ... shape up and get to work! But the longing to swoon and puddle and love and be loved was there in the corner, waiting to be fulfilled. I'd turn the page of some book or scripture and it would jump off the page and into my soft and yearning places.
If I could just dissect enough, analyze enough, explain enough, find meaning enough ... well then my yearning would be fulfilled somehow. And I look back on this all with fondness. I was going to wrong way to the right places. But whatever the wrong-ness of the approach -- the only approach I was capable of at first -- still it was full of energy and hope and oomph.Yearning. Weaving thoughtful, hopeful tapestries that might requite that yearning. Thinking. Cuddling. Pocketing.
I was lucky to run into Zen practice, if only because it put my feet to the fire. The literal, physical, sit-down-cross-your-legs-erect-your-spine-shut-up-and-focus exercise didn't diminish the yearning. It simply put the yearning to the test. Sweet anthems found a worthy comrade in a right knee that burned like fire or an irritation with some of the goody-two-shoes fellow practitioners ... people who no doubt yearned as I did but didn't express that yearning in a way I felt comfortable with. They could really piss me off, and being pissed off is a good exercise when yearning is involved.
My mother once said, "Don't get too holy by next Thursday." She was right, but what does yearning care for right and wrong. Yearning wants its satisfaction ... yesterday if not sooner. And not just a tale-telling, belief-oozing satisfaction, but a real, down-to-earth satisfaction ... sort of like your right knee burning like fire: No doubt about it!
It's funny about yearning and an actual-factual practice. In order to practice, yearning has to be put on the back burner. No one can be "good" when they are being good. No one can say what they believe or hope in the middle of a sneeze.
Yet yearning inspires and builds a fire under your butt. You may be going the wrong way to the right places, but you are going. And that puts a warm place in my heart for those willing to go. Despite all the mistakes ... going.
Going...
Going...
Gone.
.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
science and faith
.
If it's not too far off-topic I gnawed a bit this morning on which might be a more fruitful approach to spiritual life -- scientific inquiry or flowering belief.
It's probably a false dichotomy, but I always found scientific inquiry to be more compelling... not necessarily better or more lofty or exclusive, but, for me, convincing.
Scientists of course have their sometimes unrecognized beliefs, but they do dwell in the empirical, the provable and the right-in-front-of-your-nose. Science is what guides our day from gravity to starlight to the crunch of a potato chip. If you can't incorporate the obvious into spiritual life, what use would spiritual life have?
And the answer is that belief, when pushed and prodded far enough, can tell wondrous tales that can be more enthralling than television or Victoria's Secret. Beliefs have a format and if you work hard, you can fit anything into a belief ... allowing the belief to be the arbiter of what is right in front of your nose. The beautiful flowers bloom and God did it ... that sort of thing.
The trouble with beliefs is the same as the trouble with science ... both have edges and limits and spiritual life has no such edges.
But as a means of actualizing or realizing the edgeless, you have to start somewhere. Science or faith -- is there really so much difference, assuming anyone would consent to keep on investigating, keep on knocking down conveniently cozy walls? Conclusions are tentative, answers are tentative, certainty is tentative.
A false dichotomy, yes. But I prefer the false safety of science to the false safety of belief ... assuming I had to choose one over the other.
Which, obviously, I do not.
.
If it's not too far off-topic I gnawed a bit this morning on which might be a more fruitful approach to spiritual life -- scientific inquiry or flowering belief.
It's probably a false dichotomy, but I always found scientific inquiry to be more compelling... not necessarily better or more lofty or exclusive, but, for me, convincing.
Scientists of course have their sometimes unrecognized beliefs, but they do dwell in the empirical, the provable and the right-in-front-of-your-nose. Science is what guides our day from gravity to starlight to the crunch of a potato chip. If you can't incorporate the obvious into spiritual life, what use would spiritual life have?
And the answer is that belief, when pushed and prodded far enough, can tell wondrous tales that can be more enthralling than television or Victoria's Secret. Beliefs have a format and if you work hard, you can fit anything into a belief ... allowing the belief to be the arbiter of what is right in front of your nose. The beautiful flowers bloom and God did it ... that sort of thing.
The trouble with beliefs is the same as the trouble with science ... both have edges and limits and spiritual life has no such edges.
But as a means of actualizing or realizing the edgeless, you have to start somewhere. Science or faith -- is there really so much difference, assuming anyone would consent to keep on investigating, keep on knocking down conveniently cozy walls? Conclusions are tentative, answers are tentative, certainty is tentative.
A false dichotomy, yes. But I prefer the false safety of science to the false safety of belief ... assuming I had to choose one over the other.
Which, obviously, I do not.
.
Sisyphus revisited
.
Feel the fun, feel the energy, feel the effort, feel the laughter, feel the desire, feel the intensity, feel the frustration, feel the failure, feel the certainty, feel the ambition, feel the anger, feel the kindness, feel the entitlement .... I'm positive if I keep trying, I will ...
.
Feel the fun, feel the energy, feel the effort, feel the laughter, feel the desire, feel the intensity, feel the frustration, feel the failure, feel the certainty, feel the ambition, feel the anger, feel the kindness, feel the entitlement .... I'm positive if I keep trying, I will ...
.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
hospital
.
After nine months or better of taking an increasing number of pills, some of which had physiological effects worse than the psychological downer they could create, today I will go to the hospital for a cardiac ablation, a one-day procedure that hopes to realign the electrical current in the heart and, as a side effect, get me off some of the medication I can't help but think of as "those damned pills."
I am trying to suppress the kid-before-Christmas anticipation that goes with this medical effort, but it still rises up, irrespective of down-side possibilities. Some part of me dances with the Tooth Fairy who will make things all better ... the perfect gift inside an as-yet-unwrapped present under the tree. The whole thing glows, I imagine, because it has a pro-active feel to it ... "get 'er done!" But what, precisely, will get done, what the actual results might be, how I will feel and be able to act post-facto I have no real idea. At 70 years old, I can't expect e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g to get fixed, but even few small steps would be very welcome... not, for example, spending periodic nights in the emergency room only to turn around and come home, waiting for the next event.
Who knows, maybe I could even gain some weight. Over the 9 months of being a pharmacological experiment, I lost 40 pounds, some of it muscle mass, and I would be grateful to eat something other than bunny food and to stop looking like a poster-child for Bergen-Belsen.
It's an adventure all right.
.
After nine months or better of taking an increasing number of pills, some of which had physiological effects worse than the psychological downer they could create, today I will go to the hospital for a cardiac ablation, a one-day procedure that hopes to realign the electrical current in the heart and, as a side effect, get me off some of the medication I can't help but think of as "those damned pills."
I am trying to suppress the kid-before-Christmas anticipation that goes with this medical effort, but it still rises up, irrespective of down-side possibilities. Some part of me dances with the Tooth Fairy who will make things all better ... the perfect gift inside an as-yet-unwrapped present under the tree. The whole thing glows, I imagine, because it has a pro-active feel to it ... "get 'er done!" But what, precisely, will get done, what the actual results might be, how I will feel and be able to act post-facto I have no real idea. At 70 years old, I can't expect e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g to get fixed, but even few small steps would be very welcome... not, for example, spending periodic nights in the emergency room only to turn around and come home, waiting for the next event.
Who knows, maybe I could even gain some weight. Over the 9 months of being a pharmacological experiment, I lost 40 pounds, some of it muscle mass, and I would be grateful to eat something other than bunny food and to stop looking like a poster-child for Bergen-Belsen.
It's an adventure all right.
.
Monday, November 8, 2010
pick up your garbage
.
Today is garbage-pickup day for those in my neighborhood who choose to have a truck swing by and collect their trash. Barrels and boxes dot the sidewalk in front of some houses. There are no such containers in front of my house -- I take the garbage to the dump myself.
This morning, as I looked out front, I noticed a variety of trash bits in front of my house ... a tin-foil container, some balled-up newspaper, and a few odd chunks of cardboard. Apparently they had blown into my world from someone else's world and I decided to collect them after the rain let up.
But twenty minutes later, when I returned to the porch, my across-the-street neighbor was out in front of my house, red umbrella in hand, dog in tow, picking up the trash she evidently recognized as her own. She returned them to the trash barrels in front of her house.
Now that's what I call a sensible person -- someone who takes responsibility for and makes the effort on behalf of their own leavings. Everyone leaves a trail in one way or another, but I see no reason not to do your best.
.
Today is garbage-pickup day for those in my neighborhood who choose to have a truck swing by and collect their trash. Barrels and boxes dot the sidewalk in front of some houses. There are no such containers in front of my house -- I take the garbage to the dump myself.
This morning, as I looked out front, I noticed a variety of trash bits in front of my house ... a tin-foil container, some balled-up newspaper, and a few odd chunks of cardboard. Apparently they had blown into my world from someone else's world and I decided to collect them after the rain let up.
But twenty minutes later, when I returned to the porch, my across-the-street neighbor was out in front of my house, red umbrella in hand, dog in tow, picking up the trash she evidently recognized as her own. She returned them to the trash barrels in front of her house.
Now that's what I call a sensible person -- someone who takes responsibility for and makes the effort on behalf of their own leavings. Everyone leaves a trail in one way or another, but I see no reason not to do your best.
.
rainy day
.
Today is a grueling example of why those who are employed may hate getting up on a Monday morning.
A cold and cutting rain falls in the early light -- a pelting, break-out-the-umbrella rain -- and because of the time change yesterday, everyone is operating an hour earlier than they might have last week. The clocks may say one thing, but eating and sleeping habits say another.
As if trying to put on a chipper face weren't enough, there is THIS!
Yesterday, during a football between the Eagles and the Colts, Colts wide receiver Austin Collie was left immobile after being tackled during a particular play. He did not get up, as many players do, and hobble away. He just lay there, inert. After a minute or so, six or eight medical personnel gathered around and finally took the player off the field on a gurney. A telephoto shot showed his face with his eyes open ... open and his lids blinking. He was alive in a way his initial inertness suggested he might not be.
Everything had been full of cheering delight and wonderful athleticism and then ... there was the potential for death. Suddenly, the whole scenario and mind set were brought into a new perspective. The babbling commentators were quick to increase their babble, as if babbling could change or explain what had happened: It's just part of the game, one of the risks anyone takes when colliding with someone else on purpose ... blah, blah, blah. And still the hit and the inertness remained in the mind, unexplained and unassuaged. It turned out that Collie had suffered a concussion... but before that was known, there was the inertness in the midst of an an athletic festivity.
Last night I dreamed a dream in which there was no more water. Like all dreams, it was convincing and potent. And even in the dream, the babbling went to work -- how to escape from what was inescapable; the certainty that death would result papered over with explanations and a search for exculpations: "I have been good. Why is this happening to me?!" "If I talk and think enough, maybe it won't be so."
The dream was edgeless and powerful ... incorrigibly factual.
And yet this morning, the water pours down as if it would never stop.
.
Today is a grueling example of why those who are employed may hate getting up on a Monday morning.
A cold and cutting rain falls in the early light -- a pelting, break-out-the-umbrella rain -- and because of the time change yesterday, everyone is operating an hour earlier than they might have last week. The clocks may say one thing, but eating and sleeping habits say another.
As if trying to put on a chipper face weren't enough, there is THIS!
Yesterday, during a football between the Eagles and the Colts, Colts wide receiver Austin Collie was left immobile after being tackled during a particular play. He did not get up, as many players do, and hobble away. He just lay there, inert. After a minute or so, six or eight medical personnel gathered around and finally took the player off the field on a gurney. A telephoto shot showed his face with his eyes open ... open and his lids blinking. He was alive in a way his initial inertness suggested he might not be.
Everything had been full of cheering delight and wonderful athleticism and then ... there was the potential for death. Suddenly, the whole scenario and mind set were brought into a new perspective. The babbling commentators were quick to increase their babble, as if babbling could change or explain what had happened: It's just part of the game, one of the risks anyone takes when colliding with someone else on purpose ... blah, blah, blah. And still the hit and the inertness remained in the mind, unexplained and unassuaged. It turned out that Collie had suffered a concussion... but before that was known, there was the inertness in the midst of an an athletic festivity.
Last night I dreamed a dream in which there was no more water. Like all dreams, it was convincing and potent. And even in the dream, the babbling went to work -- how to escape from what was inescapable; the certainty that death would result papered over with explanations and a search for exculpations: "I have been good. Why is this happening to me?!" "If I talk and think enough, maybe it won't be so."
The dream was edgeless and powerful ... incorrigibly factual.
And yet this morning, the water pours down as if it would never stop.
.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
time
.
Here in the United States today, many clocks were set back an hour and there was a return to standard -- as opposed to daylight savings -- time.
We 'gained' an hour that we 'lost' in the spring.
I once read a longish story about how such time changes made railroad schedules difficult. Maybe it makes personal scheduling difficult as well.
But the sky is just as blue at 7:44 a.m. around here as it might be at 8:44.
Time passes, but it's hard to say what passes or doesn't pass at all.
.
Here in the United States today, many clocks were set back an hour and there was a return to standard -- as opposed to daylight savings -- time.
We 'gained' an hour that we 'lost' in the spring.
I once read a longish story about how such time changes made railroad schedules difficult. Maybe it makes personal scheduling difficult as well.
But the sky is just as blue at 7:44 a.m. around here as it might be at 8:44.
Time passes, but it's hard to say what passes or doesn't pass at all.
.
spiritual desperation
.
How desperate spiritual persuasions can be.
How desperate spiritual persuasions need to be.
Desperation -- a realm of intimate intensity and fear and woe and longing.
Is it something other than desperation that leads Christianity to threaten its constituents with hell? Is it something other than desperation that leads Zen Buddhists to practice as if "your hair were on fire?"
Without desperation, spiritual persuasions become a thin and manipulative gruel, dressed in pink tutus, waving wands, and rife with hugs. Consenting to be desperate seems to be the only cure for superficiality: Once anyone steps off the desperation diving board, there is no alternative but to dive deep and diving deep is the only way that spiritual persuasions make any real or useful sense.
Maybe it's so -- desperation is the only cure for desperation.
Desperation is serious and wracking and in-your-face. It has nothing to do with molding or convincing others. It is like standing in a room without walls ... being walled in by no walls.
People are desperate not to be desperate. They are willing to work hard not to be desperate. And this hard work pays off.
As Suzuki Roshi once said of Zen Buddhist practice: "It's serious, but it's not that serious."
.
How desperate spiritual persuasions can be.
How desperate spiritual persuasions need to be.
Desperation -- a realm of intimate intensity and fear and woe and longing.
Is it something other than desperation that leads Christianity to threaten its constituents with hell? Is it something other than desperation that leads Zen Buddhists to practice as if "your hair were on fire?"
Without desperation, spiritual persuasions become a thin and manipulative gruel, dressed in pink tutus, waving wands, and rife with hugs. Consenting to be desperate seems to be the only cure for superficiality: Once anyone steps off the desperation diving board, there is no alternative but to dive deep and diving deep is the only way that spiritual persuasions make any real or useful sense.
Maybe it's so -- desperation is the only cure for desperation.
Desperation is serious and wracking and in-your-face. It has nothing to do with molding or convincing others. It is like standing in a room without walls ... being walled in by no walls.
People are desperate not to be desperate. They are willing to work hard not to be desperate. And this hard work pays off.
As Suzuki Roshi once said of Zen Buddhist practice: "It's serious, but it's not that serious."
.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
refreshing what is stale
.
When I worked in book publishing, I was once assigned to go to an author's house and read all of his previous magazine articles with an eye to creating a book -- something that would provide some exposure and income while he worked on his big book about a former presidential contender, Adlai Stevenson.
John Bartlow Martin was a gracious host, as I recall. He gave me the materials I needed and space in which to read them. I stayed the weekend.
At one point, over a meal, I asked him why he had given up writing magazine articles. His were so good, I just couldn't imagine giving up that fertile field. And he gave me an answer I never forgot:
"I started to write like John Bartlow Martin."
Not AS John Bartlow Martin, but LIKE John Bartlow Martin.
What a good description of skills and convictions held so long that suddenly they become stale and repetitive and imitative and rote. Loving not because you love but because you once loved. Hating not because you hate but because you once hated. Doubting not because you doubt but because you once doubted.
It can be a jolt, finding yourself reprising something that no longer quite fits, that lacks whole-heartedness, that is held onto because the alternative is unknown and, well, maybe scary. Like a computer, you may need a "refresh" function, but touching the key takes more energy or courage than you possess.
Such doubts can drive anyone further down the rabbit hole, re-emphasizing the very habit that doesn't quite hold water any more. If you re-emphasize it, perhaps what was once true will become true again.
Better than re-emphasis, I think, is to let the genie that is already out of the bag out of the bag. Just let it be confused and uncertain ... and see what happens. Just care for this new and uncertain world ... and see what happens.
What the hell -- you are who you are even when you don't know who you are.
.
When I worked in book publishing, I was once assigned to go to an author's house and read all of his previous magazine articles with an eye to creating a book -- something that would provide some exposure and income while he worked on his big book about a former presidential contender, Adlai Stevenson.
John Bartlow Martin was a gracious host, as I recall. He gave me the materials I needed and space in which to read them. I stayed the weekend.
At one point, over a meal, I asked him why he had given up writing magazine articles. His were so good, I just couldn't imagine giving up that fertile field. And he gave me an answer I never forgot:
"I started to write like John Bartlow Martin."
Not AS John Bartlow Martin, but LIKE John Bartlow Martin.
What a good description of skills and convictions held so long that suddenly they become stale and repetitive and imitative and rote. Loving not because you love but because you once loved. Hating not because you hate but because you once hated. Doubting not because you doubt but because you once doubted.
It can be a jolt, finding yourself reprising something that no longer quite fits, that lacks whole-heartedness, that is held onto because the alternative is unknown and, well, maybe scary. Like a computer, you may need a "refresh" function, but touching the key takes more energy or courage than you possess.
Such doubts can drive anyone further down the rabbit hole, re-emphasizing the very habit that doesn't quite hold water any more. If you re-emphasize it, perhaps what was once true will become true again.
Better than re-emphasis, I think, is to let the genie that is already out of the bag out of the bag. Just let it be confused and uncertain ... and see what happens. Just care for this new and uncertain world ... and see what happens.
What the hell -- you are who you are even when you don't know who you are.
.
compassion and clarity
.
Compassion and clarity ... maybe these two are the baseline requirements of a spiritual practice ... a life practice ... a life.
I don't know about anyone else, but for me, the effort to be at home with these two aspects is not always easy: I can grow suspicious and downright cranky in the face of my own efforts ... and the efforts of others.
Did you ever find yourself in the company of someone who positively oozed 'compassion?' Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. So goody-two-shoes it makes you want to puke? Everything is just 'oneness,' so there's no need to differentiate this from that or take offense or speak out boldly.
Ick.
And then there's the other end of the spectrum -- everything has a deeeeep meaning, is profound, is solemnly in need of a severe haircut, is crystalline and factual and as-it-is. Ramrod straight and never heard a good dirty joke they couldn't refrain from laughing at. No duality. Emptiness. Rigid as Viagra. Spiritual life is important.
Ick.
The ick's, for me, just seem to refer to my own unwillingness to relax; to let life unfold without my imagined help; to pay attention but not grasp; to stop imagining I could possibly be good or better ... or, in some secret place, best.
As inescapable imperatives, clarity and compassion are not two things. Each is the other, though of course time passes. To know what they are escapes me.
But it does seem that they work a lot better when I stop interrupting.
.
Compassion and clarity ... maybe these two are the baseline requirements of a spiritual practice ... a life practice ... a life.
I don't know about anyone else, but for me, the effort to be at home with these two aspects is not always easy: I can grow suspicious and downright cranky in the face of my own efforts ... and the efforts of others.
Did you ever find yourself in the company of someone who positively oozed 'compassion?' Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. So goody-two-shoes it makes you want to puke? Everything is just 'oneness,' so there's no need to differentiate this from that or take offense or speak out boldly.
Ick.
And then there's the other end of the spectrum -- everything has a deeeeep meaning, is profound, is solemnly in need of a severe haircut, is crystalline and factual and as-it-is. Ramrod straight and never heard a good dirty joke they couldn't refrain from laughing at. No duality. Emptiness. Rigid as Viagra. Spiritual life is important.
Ick.
The ick's, for me, just seem to refer to my own unwillingness to relax; to let life unfold without my imagined help; to pay attention but not grasp; to stop imagining I could possibly be good or better ... or, in some secret place, best.
As inescapable imperatives, clarity and compassion are not two things. Each is the other, though of course time passes. To know what they are escapes me.
But it does seem that they work a lot better when I stop interrupting.
.
Friday, November 5, 2010
a soft spot
.
An email note earlier this week informed me that a man and his wife wanted to come to the zendo on Sunday. They had read books about Zen, the note said, and now they were interested in actually practicing the practice.
I'm not sure why, but I always have a soft spot for those who step across -- or even consider stepping across -- some imaginary line between intellectual consumption and finding the wherewithal to act. On the face of it, it's the next logical step. But putting out the energy to act seems vastly different. It is like a horse galloping at full tilt when suddenly the reins are pulled tight.
Acting requires us all to slow down or even stop dead in our tracks. We have to go back to the very beginning, to review every shred of experience in this life. It's not much different from learning anything new: There has to be a willingness to practice bit by bit something about which we know nothing despite all the intellectual touchstones that may have been gathered. Somehow, it takes real balls, real courage ... it's so vast when we consent to begin. Every ounce of patience and courage is required because the zippy intellect knows everything ... and yet, for the moment, we know nothing.
Every blind date, every job application, every moment of growing up, every aspect of everything -- it all comes into play. It's huge ... and yet here we sit, learning to cross the legs, straighten the spine, breathe attentively, shut up, and focus the mind. How can this activity have anything to do with the vast reaches of prior experience, prior emotion, prior thought? Really, it would be so much more comfortable and perhaps comforting to be a believer or a philosopher or something: "Enlightenment," "compassion," "emptiness," "peace," "living in the present moment" -- it really is easier to say these things and find others who will agree and we can all sit around telling each other pleasant fairy tales.
But then something, some common-sensical intent mutters, "oh really?" or "bullshit!" and the house of cards is threatened. And ... well ... it's as scary as it is challenging and refreshing.
I guess I will never figure it out -- how it is that someone becomes willing to take that step. I guess I'll just have to be content with my soft spot for people who do.
.
An email note earlier this week informed me that a man and his wife wanted to come to the zendo on Sunday. They had read books about Zen, the note said, and now they were interested in actually practicing the practice.
I'm not sure why, but I always have a soft spot for those who step across -- or even consider stepping across -- some imaginary line between intellectual consumption and finding the wherewithal to act. On the face of it, it's the next logical step. But putting out the energy to act seems vastly different. It is like a horse galloping at full tilt when suddenly the reins are pulled tight.
Acting requires us all to slow down or even stop dead in our tracks. We have to go back to the very beginning, to review every shred of experience in this life. It's not much different from learning anything new: There has to be a willingness to practice bit by bit something about which we know nothing despite all the intellectual touchstones that may have been gathered. Somehow, it takes real balls, real courage ... it's so vast when we consent to begin. Every ounce of patience and courage is required because the zippy intellect knows everything ... and yet, for the moment, we know nothing.
Every blind date, every job application, every moment of growing up, every aspect of everything -- it all comes into play. It's huge ... and yet here we sit, learning to cross the legs, straighten the spine, breathe attentively, shut up, and focus the mind. How can this activity have anything to do with the vast reaches of prior experience, prior emotion, prior thought? Really, it would be so much more comfortable and perhaps comforting to be a believer or a philosopher or something: "Enlightenment," "compassion," "emptiness," "peace," "living in the present moment" -- it really is easier to say these things and find others who will agree and we can all sit around telling each other pleasant fairy tales.
But then something, some common-sensical intent mutters, "oh really?" or "bullshit!" and the house of cards is threatened. And ... well ... it's as scary as it is challenging and refreshing.
I guess I will never figure it out -- how it is that someone becomes willing to take that step. I guess I'll just have to be content with my soft spot for people who do.
.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
the kindness of strangers
.
The car was a bit poky this morning when I first started it up, but I chalked it up to the cold and rainy weather. I made it to one appointment then stopped off at Walmart for some staples.
But when I came out of the store, the car refused to start. It clicked ineffectually when I turned the key. I lifted the hood and toyed with the battery wires, hoping there was just a loose connection. No such luck.
It was raining, it was raw and then, when I tried to call AAA, my cell phone didn't work. The albatross represented by a car that didn't work gained another albatross in a cell phone that didn't work.
And as I sat there addressing the helpless sense that rises up in such instances, a fellow pulled up in the next parking space and asked if I needed some jumper cables. We tried unsuccessfully to try the gadget he had. And then he said we might try pushing it and jump-starting the car.
And even in the rain and cold, he helped me to push.
It didn't work and I had to walk to a nearby garage to use the phone ... and everybody there was sympathetic and helpful.
And while I sat in the car waiting for the tow truck, I found that the sense of helplessness and frustration had been blown away by people whose names I did not know. They didn't ask for recognition or accolades, they just did what they thought needed to be done.
When the car got towed to the garage I use, I had to beg for a ride home. Wife, daughter and son were all out of the house and I had to say please once more.
Sure thing. No problem, said Jose.
To me, it all seemed like incredibly good fortune.
To all of these strangers, I think it was as natural as the unforgiving rain that was falling.
Their assistance made me want to act with an equally undemanding kindness when circumstances arose.
Or, as the Dalai Lama once put it, "My religion is kindness."
The difference seemed to be that these people skipped the religion and went straight for the kindness.
.
The car was a bit poky this morning when I first started it up, but I chalked it up to the cold and rainy weather. I made it to one appointment then stopped off at Walmart for some staples.
But when I came out of the store, the car refused to start. It clicked ineffectually when I turned the key. I lifted the hood and toyed with the battery wires, hoping there was just a loose connection. No such luck.
It was raining, it was raw and then, when I tried to call AAA, my cell phone didn't work. The albatross represented by a car that didn't work gained another albatross in a cell phone that didn't work.
And as I sat there addressing the helpless sense that rises up in such instances, a fellow pulled up in the next parking space and asked if I needed some jumper cables. We tried unsuccessfully to try the gadget he had. And then he said we might try pushing it and jump-starting the car.
And even in the rain and cold, he helped me to push.
It didn't work and I had to walk to a nearby garage to use the phone ... and everybody there was sympathetic and helpful.
And while I sat in the car waiting for the tow truck, I found that the sense of helplessness and frustration had been blown away by people whose names I did not know. They didn't ask for recognition or accolades, they just did what they thought needed to be done.
When the car got towed to the garage I use, I had to beg for a ride home. Wife, daughter and son were all out of the house and I had to say please once more.
Sure thing. No problem, said Jose.
To me, it all seemed like incredibly good fortune.
To all of these strangers, I think it was as natural as the unforgiving rain that was falling.
Their assistance made me want to act with an equally undemanding kindness when circumstances arose.
Or, as the Dalai Lama once put it, "My religion is kindness."
The difference seemed to be that these people skipped the religion and went straight for the kindness.
.
just the facts, ma'am
.
In Indonesia, a powerful volcano has been spewing lava and ash sporadically during the last week or so. Each time it subsides, evacuated residents try to return to their homes, only to be ousted anew.
A news story this morning began like this:
Some things seem to be like that -- explosive, disrupting and somehow endless. Each new hope of reprieve is dashed as another gush, another explosion fills the universe. Memory and hope entreat the universe ... this is unbearable! ... and yet events require still further endurance. Hope and belief are useless. Numbness doesn't work. Kindness is shredded. Intellect is stupid.
Death, disease, drugs, divorce and other situations: Make it stop! But there is no stopping....
Once, at a sesshin or Zen meditation retreat, I was experiencing a lot of pain in my legs. At sesshin, everyone sits still and silent for periods of 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 minutes at a time. The periods are interspersed with walking meditation (kinhin), but invariably each student returns to his or her cushion to sit some more. Over and over again.
I was sitting and my mind was full of whimpering and screams and anger and a half-baked defeat and then some more screaming. Explosion after explosion, moment after moment of being forced from my home -- a home in which the agony of my legs was absent. Seconds were like hours. And there was no reprieve, no the-end, no return to sanity, no roof over my head or walls to protect me. I was angry at and envious of the others who sat so still and uncomplaining in the room -- how could they not see the pain I was in? How could they be so still and composed? How come they were so much better than I was? Why wouldn't they share their serenity with me? Where was their compassion? It's their fault! ... aaarrrghhhh!
And still the volcano exploded ... hips, knees ... agony in waves and spasms and endlessly.
And then, towards the end of one particular sitting, as my mind squirmed and screamed, "I can't do this!!!!!" a small conversion appeared. That conversion didn't change anything in my legs, but it did clarify the scenery. The thought that arose like pure water was that at the same time I was wailing, "I can't do this!!!!" -- at precisely the same moment -- I was, in fact, doing it. There was no consolation in the fact, but there was a sense of release.
Naturally, the release didn't last long. I was so habituated to my aches and pains and complaints that I really didn't want the facts to interfere. Somehow I didn't have the strength for them ... just the facts. But that one small moment did instill some of what I think of as fruitful doubt. It was a seed.
The inescapable was just the inescapable. Isn't that the case in every moment? I think it is, but I also think it takes some practice to be able to stick with the facts...be the facts... as if there were any other choice. :)
.
In Indonesia, a powerful volcano has been spewing lava and ash sporadically during the last week or so. Each time it subsides, evacuated residents try to return to their homes, only to be ousted anew.
A news story this morning began like this:
Nov 4, 5:11 AM (ET)
By SLAMET RIYADI
MOUNT MERAPI, Indonesia (AP) - Towering clouds of hot ash gushed from the mouth of Indonesia's deadly volcano Thursday, hours after its most explosive eruption in a deadly week sent screaming women and children fleeing mountainside villages and emergency shelters.
Scientists - shaking their heads as they watched the wide, fast sweeps of a needle on a seismograph - worried that the worst might be yet to come.
Some things seem to be like that -- explosive, disrupting and somehow endless. Each new hope of reprieve is dashed as another gush, another explosion fills the universe. Memory and hope entreat the universe ... this is unbearable! ... and yet events require still further endurance. Hope and belief are useless. Numbness doesn't work. Kindness is shredded. Intellect is stupid.
Death, disease, drugs, divorce and other situations: Make it stop! But there is no stopping....
Once, at a sesshin or Zen meditation retreat, I was experiencing a lot of pain in my legs. At sesshin, everyone sits still and silent for periods of 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 minutes at a time. The periods are interspersed with walking meditation (kinhin), but invariably each student returns to his or her cushion to sit some more. Over and over again.
I was sitting and my mind was full of whimpering and screams and anger and a half-baked defeat and then some more screaming. Explosion after explosion, moment after moment of being forced from my home -- a home in which the agony of my legs was absent. Seconds were like hours. And there was no reprieve, no the-end, no return to sanity, no roof over my head or walls to protect me. I was angry at and envious of the others who sat so still and uncomplaining in the room -- how could they not see the pain I was in? How could they be so still and composed? How come they were so much better than I was? Why wouldn't they share their serenity with me? Where was their compassion? It's their fault! ... aaarrrghhhh!
And still the volcano exploded ... hips, knees ... agony in waves and spasms and endlessly.
And then, towards the end of one particular sitting, as my mind squirmed and screamed, "I can't do this!!!!!" a small conversion appeared. That conversion didn't change anything in my legs, but it did clarify the scenery. The thought that arose like pure water was that at the same time I was wailing, "I can't do this!!!!" -- at precisely the same moment -- I was, in fact, doing it. There was no consolation in the fact, but there was a sense of release.
Naturally, the release didn't last long. I was so habituated to my aches and pains and complaints that I really didn't want the facts to interfere. Somehow I didn't have the strength for them ... just the facts. But that one small moment did instill some of what I think of as fruitful doubt. It was a seed.
The inescapable was just the inescapable. Isn't that the case in every moment? I think it is, but I also think it takes some practice to be able to stick with the facts...be the facts... as if there were any other choice. :)
.
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