Self care

I have been trying hard not to get a cold for about a week and I used today to practice good self care. I got a massage, went to the art museum, to my favorite French grocery near Pike Place Market to get good cheese, rose mints (can't find them anywhere else) and a few other treats. Stayed home in the evening playing games with my wife and fiddling on the computer. A good day.

Kindness day

8:30 AM -- I woke up grumpy and tired. I feel like going into work with a "don't mess with me" attitude. Instead, I have decided this is Kindness Day. All day it will be my goal to be as kind as I can to everyone I encounter. This will be a challenge because our clinic is extra busy these days (details would only bore you and I am kinder than that) and we have no appointments available until next week. It will also be a challenge, of course, because I don't freaking feel like being kind today. Throughout the day, I will try to let you know how it's going.

11:15 -- I bought a box of chocolates for my coworkers to thank them for all their hard work; I was kind to myself by not having any. The clinic is not nearly as busy as it has been recently and that helps. I didn't buy the chocolate to make myself look like a good guy, but to set my thoughts on the path to kindness.

12:55 -- We talked about sociopaths at lunch; I'm glad I'm not one. We deal with quite a few of them here and I find it very disturbing to think that I could ever not care about being kind or generous or what effect my behavior could have on others.

4:30 -- All in all, that went pretty well. When a client got on my nerves a bit, all I had to do was remind myself that this was Kindness Day and my whole perspective shifted. Now, don't get me wrong; I am not one of those who believes in the efficacy of wishing things were so and that they will be as I want them to be. But I do believe in the old saying that "we might not be able to change the wind, but we can set our sails." The question I need to pose myself is this: who would benefit from my crappy attitude if I carried it around with me and imposed it on others? Would I? Or would I merely be spreading poison wherever I go? I don't need that and the world most certainly does not. There is enough fear, hatred, and just plain grumpiness to go around.

There is an old parable about a monk who set his bag down in dog shit and then wonders why he could never find a place that didn't stink. How often have I made a stink and wondered why the place I was (work, home, etc) wasn't a very pleasant place to be? I enjoyed Kindness Day. But I'm glad this day is done. I will go to bed now. Peace out. 

SADness

Very tired tonight and still have a lot to do before I can flop into bed, so I just wanted to write a few words about seasonal affective disorder or SAD. Of course, most people have heard of this, so I'm not going to say much about what it is. There is a pretty good description of it here if you are interested. My SAD is not very severe and in fact I really don't suffer from depression so much as low energy. It is interesting that one of the symptoms of SAD listed on the NIH link above is weight gain, though what they really are describing are the symptoms of depression. Of course, we know why weight gain is one of the symptoms. It is the drug we use to treat our low energy or feelings of sadness this time of year.

I live in Seattle, which is no help, of course. We not only are far enough north that the days are shorter than further south, but we famously have very little sunshine for about eight months a year. But I have taken some measures, including vitamin D, thyroid medication, adequate protein intake, lots of sleep, and drinking plenty of water. Previous years I have used bright light therapy, but have chosen not to do that this year as an experiment. I have read some research which casts doubt on the efficacy of bright light to help and blames the problem almost entirely on vitamin D deficiency. So, I am using myself as a guinea pig to see how that goes.

This blog is not about SAD, so I won't be writing a great deal more about it here. But I did want to mention that it's part of the whole constellation of what makes up my world. I am here to be honest about who I am, and that's definitely part of me.

Pray for the sun to return. I am told it will some day.

Calorie counting

I am aware that calorie counting may well be one part of my way of going about things that might seem a bit overwhelming. Of course, as long as you don't cheat, doing other things like exchanges or counting points works just fine, too. In any case it seems to me an essential part of this practice to keep track of what we eat. This serves two distinct functions; making us aware of what we put into our bodies and facing the feelings we have when we can eat no more for a day than we already have.

As I mentioned early on in this blog, my method is to take my ideal weight in pounds and multiply this by 10*--this is my calorie count per day. At first this tracking of calories can seem to be a real pain, but it's not so bad. What I know about myself is that I really don't eat a huge variety of foods, so once I have done the initial work of figuring the calories for these common foods, I can replicate them when they arise again, then add in anything out of the ordinary. There are also some websites that will do some of the work for you, but I find them to be more trouble than they're worth. (These sites also inevitably subject you to obnoxious weight loss advertising; avoid them, I say). There are some good, plain calorie charts on the web that are easy to use (here's one). If you eat out a lot, many restaurants will provide calorie counts on request (in some states, including mine, this is a requirement). *(If you read the earlier version of this post, I accidentally wrote to multiply by 100. Yikes! That would be generous indeed. I would like to think I couldn't eat 18,000 calories a day, but I shudder to think it might be possible!).

One day a week I do not track calories, but remember that this is not to give myself carte blanche to eat everything in sight; on the contrary, this is the day that I devote to purely mindful eating, paying attention to my hunger and what triggers it, what hunger really feels like, and what kind of hunger it is (it might be helpful to review the huger posts; there are three--hunger, hunger, part two and hunger, part three). I also don't count calories on special occasions like birthdays, but I strongly urge you to avoid labeling too much as special; this is an easy trap to fall into. Eating sensibly while others are eating insensibly will not cause you to feel deprived if you are focused on why you are doing so.

One thing you might find when you first start tracking calories is that you are shocked at how little food this allows you to eat. Be assured, it really is a sufficient amount. (On the other hand, if you are used to extreme diets, you may be surprised by how much you can eat). There is no harm in approaching the lower calorie count successively, reducing down to more calories than I suggest and gradually getting down to the ideal count. I also use a dietetic scale so I can't fool myself as to portion size (it will no doubt shock you to learn that when I first started this practice I discovered that my rough estimates were a trifle high).

If this all seems a bit onerous, a bit too much like work, it is helpful to think of all this as a meditation on food. After all, the point of eating like a buddha is not weight loss but awareness.The point of any Buddhist practice is awareness, because it is awareness that can lead us to the end of suffering. Another reason to emphasize the awareness of food rather than weight loss is that this is not designed to lead to rapid weight loss, but a gradual loss as you change your relationship to food. Losing more than a pound or two a week is not healthy and research has shown that weight lost rapidly nearly always returns, usually in even greater quantities.

And always remember that this is a work of love, not violence. You are being kind to yourself in taking this on. If you feel yourself getting caught up in shame or self-loathing, back away and try to think in terms of lovingkindness toward yourself. No one is more worthy of your love.

This and that

My weight today is 202 pounds.
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When I wrote my first Foundations post, I forgot that I already wrote about one of my foundational books, Mindful Eating. I will add it to the Foundations page.
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Kathy and I barbecued vegetables and vegetarian sausages yesterday, a kind of farewell to summer. They were extraordinarily delicious; zucchini, eggplant, portabello mushrooms, red and yellow peppers, and sweet corn. Such a very beautiful meal. (No, these aren't ours, but they looked sorta like that).
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One of you wrote a comment yesterday saying that she was "sort of Buddhist". To me, that's the perfect place to be. I firmly believe that the Buddha never intended for his teachings to become some new sort of religion or dogma. He taught freedom and did not want to create a new yoke for us to wear. There is a book by Stephen Bachelor, Buddhism Without Beliefs, that I have not yet read, but which I understand covers much the same territory. Even calling ourselves "Buddhists" is antithetical to what the Buddha taught, as it instantly sets up a duality of those who are and those who are not Buddhists. Is it any wonder that the next step in that progression is that some groups of practitioners come to believe that they have the "true" Buddhism and everyone else is not doing it right? There has, ironically enough, even been violent clashes between sects and also against other religions. Could there be any clearer indication that both sides completely forgot the very teachings they were trying to defend? So, for Buddha's sake, be cautious about becoming a professed Buddhist. Being a "sort of" Buddhist is a fine place to be.   

Foundations: Radical Acceptance

"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change."--Carl Rogers

The book Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach introduces a genuinely radical idea: that identifying what is wrong with us is precisely the opposite of the correct way to go about inducing ourselves to change something in ourselves that is making us unhappy or unfree. Early on in this blog I introduced the idea that was as humans live within what Pema Chodron called, "a misunderstanding so old we can no longer see it", that we are constantly threatened and only being perfect (and expecting that of others) can save us from certain death. Well, aside from John Maynard Keynes' famous observation that "in the end, we are all dead", this way of living is pure fantasy and only guides us to self-destructive and other-destructive (and world-destructive) paths.

What Brach proposes instead is radical acceptance, the idea that "the way out of our cage begins with accepting absolutely everything about ourselves and our lives, by embracing with wakefulness and care our moment-to-moment experience." [Emphasis hers]. When we use the strategies of self-improvement, playing it safe, withdrawing from our experience of the present moment, busyness, self-criticism, and focusing on the faults of others, we are moving away from true freedom even as we believe we are moving toward it. This is what she calls "the trance of unworthiness". She talks about it this way:

"The belief that we are deficient and unworthy makes it difficult to trust that we are truly loved. Many of us live with an undercurrent of depression or hopelessness about ever feeling close to other people. We fear that if they realize we are boring or stupid, selfish or insecure, they'll reject us.... We yearn for an unquestioned experience of belonging, to feel at home with ourselves and others, at ease and fully accepted. But the trance of unworthiness keeps the sweetness of belonging out of reach."

As Brach describes it, radical acceptance has two "wings", seeing clearly and holding our experience with compassion. It is far too easy to blind ourselves with the strategies mentioned above and "we lay the foundation of Radical Acceptance by recognizing when we are caught in the habit of judging, resisting and grasping, and how we constantly try to control our levels of pain and pleasure.... The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom."

Our lack of acceptance leads to the state of desire. If we cannot accept ourselves and our lives as they are in this moment, then by definition they must be unsatisfactory. The only way to make the unsatisfactory satisfactory (so we think) is to take a specific action or acquire a certain thing to fill the hole this is creating the unsatisfactory state. But this is circular logic: our lack of acceptance leads to unsatisfactoriness which leads to desire which can never be entirely satisfied which leads us to reject who we are which is a lack of acceptance. The only way out of this downward spiral is to break it at some point, and acceptance is the place where we have readiest access. (Though it should be said that this chain can be broken elsewhere, as well; this blog is an attempt on my part to break the chain in multiple places, including at the level of desire. When I feel a craving for more food, I can examine that and see it clearly, too).

Brach says,

"If our desires are simple and can be temporarily satisfied, our way of responding is straightforward. When thirsty, we drink. When tired, we sleep. When lonely, we talk to a friend. Yet, as we know, it's rarely this uncomplicated....Our gnawing everyday wants prevent us from relaxing and becoming aware of our deeper yearnings. We perpetually lean into the next moment, hoping it will offer the satisfaction that the present moment does not.... When we can't meet our emotional needs directly, the wanting self develops strategies for satisfying them with substitutes."

Like food, for instance.

She concludes that "we are all awakening beings, each of us learning to face suffering, each of us discovering the compassion that expresses our deepest nature. As we come to trust in suffering as a gateway to compassion, we undo our deepest conditioning to run away from pain. Rather than struggling against life, we are able to embrace our experience, and all beings, with a full and tender presence". And living our lives in this way would be a radical departure, indeed, from the way in which most of us live them. Radical acceptance is the place we can most easily begin to find the freedom that is inherent in our own true nature.

(This is part of an ongoing series detailing the sources of my inspiration. The list, which will be updated whenever I post a new one, is here).

Foundations

Until now, I have been writing almost entirely about my own impressions, opinions, and experiences of the dharma and other, related teachings. This has been intentional and was for two reasons:

• This blog is about my journey and I didn't want to start off by verbatim quoting the masters to establish my credentials. I don't have any credentials and I don't feel the need of any. I want this blog to be about my personal take on this material and entirely accessible to everyone, even (especially!) those who have no grounding, or perhaps not even any interest, in the Buddha or his teachings. By making this as personal as I can, I hope I have thus far given you access to one human being struggling with many of the same questions you are.
• The other reason is related to the first, but slightly different. Because I want to give you the feeling that the dharma is wholly available to you and to all people everywhere, I didn't want to start out with a bunch of abstruse background that would only serve to make me sound intellectual without clarifying much of anything. It is always worth remembering what I said a few posts ago about the finger and the moon: every spiritual path worth anything leads to freedom and there are as many roads to get there as there are dust motes in the universe. The idea that you will be excluded from enlightenment if you don't subscribe to a particular dogma or don't understand some obscure point are the absurd ravings of egomaniacs. But that message is out there in every spiritual tradition, including Buddhism. There is an old Zen saying, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." (Don't those Zen folks know how to keep it light?). Of course this isn't literal, but means that if you believe you have found one solid, incontrovertible truth that is Enlightenment or Nirvana, or if you encounter a teacher who says that he or she has it (and for only $499.99 you can have it, too!), kill that image and move on. Your path is your path and while there are guideposts, only you can know what is true for you; whether or not you are moving toward true freedom.

However, my views did not arise from nowhere, and I will from time to time be acknowledging my debt to certain specific teachers under this rubric of Foundations. The following post (which I intend to put up today in addition to this one) will concern the first of these, Tara Brach's Radical Acceptance. I hope it goes without saying that all of the books and teachings I mention in these Foundations posts are well worth picking up and reading or listening to on your own.

If you are particularly interested in the series of Foundations posts, as I write them I will be listing them here for easy reference:

Radical Acceptance

Mindful Eating 

Women, Food, and God 

Pema Chödrön

Rest

It's been awhile since I have had a day that was restful, as anyone who has been reading this blog knows. Much that is good and a few things that are not have happened over the last few months and all I can feel is a big "whew!" that it's all over. I am happier than I can say that my son and his wife (my son has a wife! Yikes!) found each other. I am very content that my wife was able to spend a month with her mother while she was feeling ill and that I was able to support them both during that time. I love my parents and loved visiting them. I wouldn't have missed the trip to Whidbey Island for the world.

But.

I'm ready to rest, and today was a good start. It is also so much easier to stick to my food discipline with a cheerful soul when I am rested. I didn't really have any psychotic food breaks this time around, but I was not always pleased to find myself at the end of my calorie count with a desire to eat some more. I guess confronting that desire is the whole point, though, isn't it?

Today I trimmed my sunflowers, pulled out my last sad pumpkin plant, pruned roses, pulled weeds, took care of computer business, read the rest of a wonderful book, drank lots of decaf, played a favorite game with my sweet wife (though she beat me two out of three, dammit), ate moderately, and relaxed. It was great. I think I will do more of the same tomorrow.




Ahh....

The finger and the moon

I realize I have been speaking of many different ways in which I expect myself to behave in order to be a dharmic human being. But it is very important for me to emphasize that none of these is the real point of the work I am doing.

There is an ancient way of expressing this truth. If on a dark night I point the moon out to you and tell you that the moon is what you are seeing, if you misunderstand me you might believe that the finger was the moon.

What the Buddha offered was the end of suffering, nothing else. The end of suffering--Nirvana--is the moon. Everything else, the lovingkindness, the wise speech, the precepts, meditation, the eightfold path, all of these are just fingers pointing at the moon. As long as you don't lose sight of the moon, the nature of the finger is pretty much irrelevant.

I write this because the burden of the dharma can begin to feel heavy. It need not be. This is a path we are walking and as long as we are headed in the right direction, keeping our eyes on the moon, we cannot go far wrong. And none of us are perfect at any of this. It is also not a useful witness to be self-critical if you feel you can't master one of these. On the other hand, it is quite easy to slip into a mindset that says that because we cannot be perfect we need not try. This is looking away from the moon and taking another path entirely. There is a Buddhist principle which is translated as "reproach", though that may be a rather loaded word for Westerners like us. I like to think of it as a constant witness or perhaps a conscience. We know when what we do causes harm and we can feel that creating this harm can't be a part of the path that leads to peace. It's really not much more complicated than that.

Play nice.

Wise Speech

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words shall never hurt me" is about the silliest homily of all time. My own version goes something like this: "Sticks and stones shall only break my bones, but words can surely hurt me."

We can do great harm with our speech. There can be little doubt of this. Our hurful words can resonate for years or decades and affect lives through generations. Of course, most of our speech is not that powerful and is forgotten as soon as it is spoken. Yet don't all of us harbor in our psyches something said that hurt us many years ago? Don't we all recall something unskillful we said long ago and which can still make us wince in the recollection?

So it is one of the most worthwhile practices of the dharma to practice Wise Speech. (And those who may have closely read the Precepts and the Noble Eightfold Path will observe that Wise Speech is a component of both). So what is Wise Speech? While the grosser levels of hateful, bigoted, violent, and denigrating speech may quite obviously be unskillful, there are subtler levels of speech worth investigating. Joseph Goldstein has said that working with mindful speech may well be sufficient dharma work all by itself because it is so very challenging when we drill down further into it. My own observation is that when I focus on wise speech I am silent much of the time.

When we practice wise speech we must avoid speech that is harsh or abusive, this is clear. Lying is frowned upon and the truth highly prized. Whenever we speak of others, we must bear in mind that criticizing or speaking ill of them is unskillful. This becomes a bit more subtle when we speak of others in a way that seems to be expressing our concern but is actually a way to slyly criticize. Generally speaking, gossip of any sort is unskillful speech. Whenever we speak of a person who is not present we should always ask ourselves what motives we have in doing so and generally refrain. Sarcasm and humorous abuse is also quite often hostile in intent. We may be "just kidding" or "just giving you a bad time" and still be doing great harm. Truth-telling can also be abusive if the intent is not kind or the timing is wrong.

Another more subtle form of unskillful speech the Buddha warns against is frivolous speech, the tendency to chatter on about nothing. Most of us are made nervous by silence when we are with others, but it is good practice to try silence unless you have something to say. Frivolous speech fills in the gaps in conversation when we could be focusing on what is going on in our hearts and in our minds. It keeps everything on the surface rather than allowing the silence to encourage us to deepen our understanding.

My rule of thumb for speech is the acronym T.H.I.N.K. Before I speak, I try to ask myself if what I am about to say is thoughtful, honest, intelligent, necessary, and kind.


One of the most important forms of skillful speech is skillful listening. When another is speaking, we should do our best to give them our undivided attention. We should avoid assuming what the rest of their thought will be. We should never interrupt them before they are through. We should try not forming our response while they are still speaking. We should avoid telling a story of our own to counter or top theirs (unless that is the point of the conversation). Skillful listening is very hard and requires practice.

In brief, we do our best to avoid abusive, harsh, loud, hateful, denigrating, sarcastic, critical, gossipy, frivolous, and unnecessary speech. We tell the truth, but only with tact. We try to be thoughtful, intelligent, and kind. We do our best to listen skillfully and completely. You can no doubt appreciate why I am so silent when I am practicing wise speech most vigorously. You can also see why the Buddha emphasized this skill so often and prized it highly. While most of us cannot be perfect in the practice of Wise Speech, we must not use this as an excuse to speak unskillfully. Wise Speech is an important key to our ongoing understanding of the dharma.

Foreverness

I find myself in a low-energy mind state this week. I feel sad. I am intellectually aware that this is the let-down after weeks--months, really--of constant vigilance to maintain my sanity through everything that has gone on. But the understandings of the mind is of very little use to my heart, which only feels the sadness and is convinced that it is entirely real. What is of particular interest to me is that my heart seems to believe that any mind state I am currently in will last forever. I will always be sad. I know this isn't true; I even have the evidence of just a few days ago, when I was quite content, as counterevidence.

It doesn't help any that I fell apart a little bit toward the end of all that activity and since then; nothing major, I forgot to pack a few things I needed for the Portland trip, I seem to have misplaced my favorite sweatshirt, little things like that. I, who am usually so meticulous. And of course my mind seizes on this as an example of my ongoing dissolution, not an aberration, never mind the ample evidence to the contrary. When I am tired, there is a part of my mind that is quick to whisper in my ear, "failure, failure, failure."

One of the most significant benefits of meditation, though, is that on a daily basis I get to see the mind bring forward thoughts and feelings that have no basis in fact. They arise and pass away. When I give no credence to these, they do not stay. It is only when I cling to them, when I believe them, that they have any meaning at all. Just as the wisdom of experience taught me to put no faith into the existence of either the Bogey man or the tooth fairy so, too, do all of these phantoms arise and pass away if I do not give them life through my belief.

Is this easy? No, not always. But when I check in with my life and know that it is a good one, when I look into my heart and know I am fundamentally a good person, I am able to bit by bit let go of my delusions and live in the freedom of now.

Karma and food

Every once in a while I have to circle back and remind myself of what this blog is all about, which is (more or less) how my relationship to food affects and is affected by my relationship to the dharma (in case you forgot, dharma is simply the teachings of the Buddha). I think it's important for each of us to have a central system of belief that guides us and for me that is the dharma, although the dharma itself contains the instruction to not take anything at face value, but to question it and apply it to one's own life.

So when I came to the realization that I was well into middle age and still overweight, rather than ask myself what I could do to lose the weight (I had asked that question many times before), I asked what it was that caused me to overeat. I think this is an important distinction. Previously, when I was asking what I could do to lose weight, the implication is that there was something wrong with me just as I was, which flies in the face of what the dharma has taught me. The beginning of any change is a complete acceptance of myself as perfect in this moment. This may seem paradoxical, to desire change while at the same time recognizing my essential perfection, but it really isn't. What the Buddha taught was that this moment is the only moment there is in which to live our lives; therefore, I am perfect in this moment because I could not have been otherwise than as I am. As I believe I have shared here before, the Zen Master Suzuki Roshi once said to his students, "You are all perfect just as you are...and you could all use a little work." To project ahead and desire change in a future moment is not inconsistent with the recognition of my essential perfection in this one.

The reason I emphasize this point is because when we begin something like weight loss, it is far too easy to do so from a place of self-loathing. We can also get caught up in the "if only" syndrome; if only I lose weight, then I can finally be happy, if only they behave in a way that is in accord with how I think they should then I will finally be happy, if only my boss treats me better, I will finally be happy. You know how this works; we all live much of our lives in this state of mind. The problem with this way of thinking is that one can easily live an entire life in this mode and never realize that the moment in which one was thinking of the next moment as being potentially perfect is the only moment one actually had to live in. If one is always leaning forward into the next moment and the next and the next, life can appear to be a wasteland of squandered opportunities rather than the rich field of beauty that it is.

When I live my life in the "if only" mode, I am creating the karma that will lead me to experience life as a travail. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one; if we think of life as an effort to improve upon what this moment has to offer, then the world in this moment is by definition unsatisfactory, and we will experience it as such. When I eat to make such feelings go away or try to shame myself into not doing so, I am attempting to unscrew a light bulb with a hammer; I am further burying myself in feelings of shame and remorse but getting no closer to being truly happy. Only by escaping this self-destructive cycle can I ever hope to have a taste of what it is to be free. Even if I never lose a pound, when I examine my relationship to food as a source of suffering, I am on the road to Nirvana.

Too tired

My weight today is 203 pounds. I'm too tired after the big weekend to write a decent post. I will try to get back on track tomorrow.

A wedding and other musings

We spent the rest of Friday and all of Saturday in Portland. We are now on the train back to Seattle (free Wi-Fi on the Cascades train!).

Yesterday our only child got married. It was a small, private ceremony with about a dozen people and our friend Glen presiding. It was just about perfect for the young couple who were coming together in this way. They have a devoted coterie of close friends in Portland who are their support and their anchor and I am so happy for them that they have this and that these folks could be at the wedding. They are truly a lovely group; I feel very fortunate that my son has found them and among them someone with whom he can spend his life. Since this blog is not really a personal blog, I have little else to say about that. But it was wonderful.

Friday I heard a tour guide say that Seattle is like the big brother who went to town and got the high-paying job while Portland was like the little brother who still works in a coffee shop. A great description. And whereas I have become more like the big brother, I always wanted to be the other one....

My eating over this weekend was neither out of control nor particularly abstinent, more along the lines of moderate consumption. I did, I will admit, have several pieces of the blueberry-lemon buckle, though. Yum!

We had a long discussion of that yesterday, actually, the question of what makes a buckle a buckle as opposed to, say, a cake? This brought up all those other strange dessert names like shandy, slump, grunt, Betty, pandowdy, crumble, and crisp. Where did all those come from and what's the distinction? Interesting stuff, I thought. The best explanation I could find was here. (That's an apricot-cherry pandowdy down there, by the way. Wow!)


Though for the most part all of this traveling and such has been glorious in its own way and most of what happened when I was doing it very gratifying, I am very glad that for the rest of the year we have very little planned. I am tired. Tomorrow I will return to my usual topics and will in particular try to tie karma into this whole topic of our relationship to food. Meanwhile, may your shandy not slump, your Betty ne'er grunt, and your pan not ever be dowdy.

Swifts

Today my son gets married. I am not going to wax poetic here, but I am very happy for him, for his fiancee, and for us. It is a very good match, I think, and I wish them all the best. I will no doubt write more about the wedding tomorrow.

Last night we went to watch the Portland swifts as they make their way into their roosting spot inside the chimney of a nearby school. They are actually called Vaux's swifts and every September they make this chimney their resting place at night. Thousands of birds gather into a huge cloud of birds, make themselves into a funnel, then pour into the chimney. It is an amazing sight. Here's a video of them (you might want to turn your sound off; the photographer has chosen to set them to music).

Karma II

Karma is both the least and the most important of Buddhist teachings. It is also by far the most misunderstood.

"My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand." ~Thich Naht Hanh

Karma is cause and effect. Any deed you do has a result; negative, positive, or neutral. (There are very few acts, though, with a neutral outcome). Generally speaking, we are aware of what is negative and what is positive in what we do. But there is no cosmic bean-counter keeping track, so we need not fear the ambiguous situations in which we may have done a negative deed with a positive motive or vice versa. A classic example is when we feel it necessary to tell a lie to avoid doing a larger harm. While the Buddha prized honesty, he also advocated against intentional cruelty in truth-telling. In Western philosophy, a theorist who advocated absolute truth in all things was asked this: you are hiding your brother in your house; a man comes to the door asking if your brother is there, and you know that if the man finds your brother he will kill him. What do you say? To the Buddha the answer was clear; the intention of the deed of lying would be to save your brother's life, which would be by far the greater good and therefore would produce positive karma.

Karma arises from intention, not necessarily from action. Though this seems a bit more vague than tallying deeds on each side of a good/bad ledger, when thought about more deeply it clarifies the question because the source of karma is in one's heart, not the body. Of course, the body participates, as does the mind, but the intention comes from the heart. Karma also has the quality of sowing seeds that come to fruition in the future, but this is not some deep mystery, either. If we allow ourselves to be morose and negative all the time, we will tend to find ourselves in negative situations. If we surround ourselves with drunks, drunkenness is more likely to be part of our lives. I have a friend who became a black belt in karate and told me he had to use it to save himself from great harm four different times. I was rather surprised, though I didn't say so, since I have only once in my life been threatened to that degree and he is much younger than I. I had to conclude that his preparation for violence (he had a teacher who emphasized how dangerous the world is) brought violence with it.

"Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in actions; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny." ~Tryon Edwards

Karma is an integral part of the Buddhist teaching of dependent arising. This sounds fancy, but all it really means is that you reap what you sow. I wrote of previous lives in my first post on karma because Buddhist cosmology posits that our conditions in this life are determined by our karma in previous lives and the conditions of future lives are determined by our karma in this and previous lives. But in the end, does this really matter? The reason I said at the beginning that karma is both the least and most important teaching is because, while karma determines what the outcome of our lives will be and is therefore very important, if our actions are done with the motive of getting something (good karma) in return, from a karmic perspective these actions are essentially worthless because they were done selfishly. In other words, if we ignore the idea of karma altogether and simply go forward with the idea of doing good for its own sake, because it is the right and honorable thing to do, we will in the process reap all the good karma we could hope for. Whether something arises from past karma or our current actions becomes entirely irrelevant.

"That's why you are encouraged to work with what happens to you rather than blame it on others." ~Pema Chodron

I consider one of the most vital of teachings on karma to be encompassed in an other quote from Pema: "The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings you need in order to open your heart." What arises as a challenge in our lives is precisely that which we need to confront in order to move on with opening our hearts. This is not magical, but common sense; if we have already dealt with a challenge and surmounted it, when it arises again we can brush it aside. But if we have not yet dealt with something--a fear, a selfishness, a hatred, an addiction--it will arise again and again until we open our heart to it and invite it inside, treat it with lovingkindness, and let it go.

Another of my favorite teachers, Jack Kornfield, likes to imagine from time to time that every being in the world except him is enlightened and every action of theirs he finds difficult is an intentional challenge to him to open his heart so he can join the ranks of the enlightened. In this way, the bitchy co-worker, the inconsiderate driver, the demanding mother, the lazy brother, and the indifferent store clerk can be seen as helpers in our quest to be free. And what better way to view them? Resentment and anger only serve to keep us in chains. Acting and seeing with love can set us free. Recall the Rumi poem I wrote about before; "Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond."

Aside from all this is the self-evident truth that to live with karma constantly in mind is to live in either the past or the future and we know from the practice of meditation that only when we are living in this moment, only then are we entirely free. It may be ephemeral, but this is a fleeting glimpse of what is possible, a brief taste of Nirvana.

"Our deeds determine us as much as we determine our deeds." ~George Eliot

Karma I

Karma can be a slippery subject and somewhat difficult to elucidate. So, first let me try to address the idea of past and future lifetimes, because a basic understanding of this is essential to a discussion of karma as the Buddha taught it.

Let me start off by saying that the more life experience I gain, the more things fall into the category of those that I neither believe nor disbelieve. Ghosts, UFOs, the efficacy of prayer, and past and future lives all fall into this group. For one thing, some perfectly reasonable people seem to have strong faith in these, which makes them more difficult to dismiss. And in the case of past lives, people like the Dalai Lama (an honest man if I've ever encountered one) recounted, even as a child, details of former lives he could not have known any other way. Hmm.... These things make me shake my head in wonder and admit that I just don't know. So, I can't say if I have had lives before this one; I certainly don't recall any. But the concept of karma as taught by the Buddha assumes this. And though this is helpful to a complete understanding of karma, it is not essential.

So what is this karma stuff anyway? Does it matter? Is it merely an ancient and antiquated beleif? I will start this conversation by mentioning a few things about what karma is not, and tomorrow I will give you my impression of what it is.

The most important thing that karma is not is a system of punishment for past offenses. This is the most common misconception. What this idea assumes is that there is some entity outside the realm of human knowledge deciding what is sinful and meting out penalties. This is not karma. Similarly, karma is not a system of reward for past good deeds, for the same reason. To attribute either good or bad fortune, especially in someone else, as due to karma is, quite simply, misguided. Karma is not a score-keeping and score-settling concept at all. This is a very Judeo-Christian perspective and does not gibe with the teachings of the Buddha.

And finally, no, karma is not merely an ancient and antiquated belief. An understanding of karma lies at the core of the dharma. I will devote tomorrow's post to what I believe karma to be.

Stress!

I have many stressors right now and one of the only habitual responses I have left to artificially cope with them is food.

Kathy has been gone for a month and gets back tomorrow. This is a very happy thing, but very stressful. What the research indicates is that the more positive or negative the event, the more stressful it is, regardless of its desirability.

The day after she gets back we leave for Portland to see our son married. As I mentioned before, this is a rather informal wedding and the big party will be next year. Still, this is the first time my boy will ever get married. It's another positive stressor.

Money sometimes rears its head as a stressor. Generally, I assume that we will have enough to do what we must, but there are some days I can't believe this. I have all sorts of evidence that when we do what is right the money is there for us to do it and to get what we need (as opposed to what we want). Still, I don't always believe.

My parents are generally well, but old and somewhat fragile. I would be lying if I didn't also admit that they contribute to my feeling of monetary stress. My mother-in-law is also ill, as I have written before.

We have done and coped with a great deal over the past few months and I think I'm a bit worn down. May we please have a normal, quiet month or two now? (Whatever "normal" and "quiet" mean).

I am a bit concerned that going out of town when I am stressed will cause me to overeat, which is itself
another stressor. I'm hoping that "telling on myself" here may forestall any such reaction. Last night I had a bit of a breakdown and ate a bit after I had supposedly finished for the day, so I know such a stress reaction is certainly a possibility for me.

Fortunately, I have tools to help me cope with all this. It certainly became clear to me last night how easily I can fall back into the old habits and ways of thinking. But I know how effective tonglen can be and how lovingkindness can ease my mind. Lovingkindness also serves to put my mind in the frame of otherness rather than me-ness. When I focus excessively on myself and my feelings, I can easily get lost and think that they are overwhelming, when in fact they are simply average. Meditation is my friend always. The idea that I am here to be of service rather than to be served is always very useful. This is all great practice for when the truly big things come to challenge me. I feel so fortunate to have come to the place I have with so many tools to help me cope.

Notes on lovingkindness

"It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than, 'Try to be a little kinder.'" --Aldous Huxley

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First of all, I forgot to mention yesterday that my weight is now 203 pounds.
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(This post is a continuation and yesterday's and will make more sense if you read that first).

I practice lovingkindness every day. I use three methods that seem to work for me:

--As I walk to work in the morning, I bring to mind all those I wish good things for. I am very specific and name each one. So this does not just become another rote recital of names, I do not move on to the next until I bring up a picture in my mind of that person, no matter how briefly. I include in this list those persons toward whom I feel animosity as well as those I spontaneously wish good toward.  The list need not be limited to the living. When I am done listing them all, I use lovingkindness phrases to send this out to all of them.
--I try to practice (with varying degrees of success) all through my day. Sometimes in the heat of the moment I forget and sometimes I can do no better than to think,  "May you be freaking happy, you *%!*#". Ah, well. We do what we can.
--One meditation teacher taught my wife, who then taught me, the effectiveness of practicing lovingkindness whenever I am waiting. For anything. At line in the grocery store, at a stop light, at the doctor's office. This practice turns an occasion for impatience into an opportunity to spread good will and open our hearts.

It is vital to bear in mind what we are trying to accomplish. Lovingkindness is not an aspiration to be a nicer person; it is far more revolutionary than that. This practice aims to entirely reset our default from defensiveness and reactivity to wishing only good things for every being at all times, even those (especially those) who really, really piss us off. This bears further investigation. Why in the world would we want to wish some jerk all the happiness the world has to offer? Don't such people deserve to suffer? But the simple truth is that it is we who suffer, not them. The old saying goes, "resentment is like swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die". You can feel that poison coursing through you, can't you? And if you think about it, if they are being so thoroughly nasty, it is most likely that they are already suffering. We have no right to lay more suffering on top of that, even if we have the power to do it. Generally, though, we don't have any such power, which means that we are accomplishing nothing but the creation of suffering for ourselves.

All beings are seeking the end of suffering. This is a basic premise of Buddhist thought. Yes, some people use extremely unskillful means to try to get there, but when we can remember this, it can activate our compassion. Oh, but this is hard. If we don't resent that person, glare at them, flip them off, then we are allowing them to get away with something, aren't we? Well, no, actually, we aren't. It is not our job to judge or punish or set the balance of the world right. When we take on that burden, it only serves to increase our suffering and in the process we often become the jerks in need of forgiveness. It is the job of karma to exact the toll that comes from meanness and negative actions. But that is a post for another day.

Lovingkindness

One of the things I am trying to accomplish in this blog is to make the concepts of Buddhism and meditation accessible to everyone. As I have mentioned before, this is what the Buddha was trying to do, too. Most of the complications that have arisen, the rifts and the different "schools"of Buddhism are all, in my opinion, the manifestation of the egos of those who came after the Buddha and not the intention of the Buddha. In fact, I think he would be quite amused to find that such simple teachings have derived so many meanings, and even more amused (as well as sad) to find they have created strife among those who follow his teachings.

However, while I have been speaking of these practices in the simplest way possible, it should also be understood that all of them can be practiced to even greater depth and that the rewards from them will deepen accordingly. This does not mean that you cannot be perfectly happy and content with just the basics; it simply means that, if the basic practice excites and invigorates you, then some of the deeper practices might as well. I think of it like learning to play the piano. You can learn to play simple pieces well and enjoy that immensely; but if the prospect of going deeper interests you, you can garner even more satisfaction from learning and practicing more.

I mentioned some time back the concept of lovingkindness, and gave a brief description of it. This was in the post on the brahma viharas. I was very concise there, but it can be very worthwhile to go deeper into this essential practice. (By the way, one of the best books on this subject is this one by Sharon Salzberg, in case you are interested in reading more).

Lovingkindness is the state of pointing your heart in the direction of love for all beings, including yourself. Now, before you roll your eyes and think of this as just another simpleminded feel-good ploy, remember that it is one of the cornerstones of the teachings of the Buddha, and that millions of people for thousands of years have practiced it to their benefit.

As a species, we have a certain reactivity to any challenge or any person who annoys or angers us. This is an automatic response that grows out of some primordial feeling of being unsafe. If we have grown up in environments of abuse or feeling threatened in some way, this feeling is deeply ingrained. Lovingkindness is not an attempt to make these feelings go away; rather, it might be thought of as an antidote to the poison of our agitation and anger.

The practice of lovingkindness is deceptively simple. Of course, you can do it any way you choose, but the usual practice is to say phrases either silently or aloud, whichever you are more comfortable with. Some people do this as part of their meditation session and others do it at another time.

Here are some phrases that are commonly used:

"May I be free from danger.
May I be happy.
May I be strong.
May I have ease and well-being.
May I have serenity.
May I know peace."

It is fairly typical to start with ourselves and then work our way outward, moving to a loved one next, then a mentor or someone else who has been very supportive, then to someone neutral, then to someone who bugs you a little, then to someone you consider an enemy. These phrases (or some of your choosing) are repeated over and over until the time you have designated is through. At then end, the phrases of lovingkindness are extended to all beings everywhere.

This practice can be transformative. It is important to understand that this is not some incantation intended to change the reality of what exists. Instead, this is a way of turning our minds away from negativity and reactivity toward love and wishing well for all beings. This is, indeed, a major change for most of us. No matter how hard we try, we seem to drift back into resentment, anger, sadness, and despair. But these are not constructive emotions and build nothing, whereas lovingkindness creates an atmosphere in which goodness can grow.

If You're New Here

It seems to me that there has been an increase in new readers of this blog (I humbly thank you). Since I have dedicated myself to blogging here every day (later changes to every week), I know it can be a bit intimidating to see all of those posts and wonder where one should even begin. I hope this post might be helpful in making those choices. By the way, I will periodically be updating this page, so you might want to consider coming back from time to time if you don't come to "The Buddha Wasn't A Fat Guy" on a regular basis.

If I were you, I would begin at the beginning and read the first, second, and third posts. This will give you an idea of what I'm up to here. Reading The Source will further that understanding. After that, if you read A Summary, you will have a good grasp of where I am coming from; this post also contains helpful links that will illuminate what I am trying to say. I eventually came to the realization that weight loss wasn't the real focus (or at least the only focus) of the blog, so made some changes you might want to read about.

If you are not familiar with meditation and especially if you have tried it and think you can't do it, I strongly encourage you to read both Meditation and Meditation, Too.

Because they are so central both to Buddhist philosophy and to the approach to eating I am advocating here, I would suggest you read both The Four Noble Truths and The Fourth Noble Truth. I wrote a series of posts on the Eightfold Path (which comprises the Fourth Noble Truth). The first of those is here and there is a link to each subsequent entry. It is also worth considering the three characteristics of life as detailed by the Buddha, impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and non-self.

I think the post Freedom is both amusing and informative. Because it is something we all feel, Anger is also a post well worth reading. Karma I and Karma II are helpful.

The Finger and the Moon is a good reminder.

Other than that, heck, just dive in anywhere. Though there is some accumulation of knowledge assumed as I go on, I try to remember to put a link back to older posts if I refer to a piece of information contained elsewhere.

And, thanks for reading.

Reid

Tonglen

One of the readers of this blog asked me if I practiced tonglen with the anger that I wrote about the other day. It's a good question. Unfortunately, the answer is no.

Now, most of you are asking just what the hell I'm talking about. That, too, is a good question.

Tonglen comes from the Tibetan lineage of Buddhism. The word means simply sending/taking. It's one of the simplest and most effective of thespiritual practices one can learn. It works like this: any time you have a feeling that we normally label as negative, breathe it in. Encourage it to fill your whole body, to the very tips of your fingers and toes. Let the anger or shame or remorse just fill you to the brim. Then, as you breathe out, give away all the goodness, peace, serenity, confidence, patience, and any other positive feeling you can think of.

It doesn't really seem like that big a deal, does it? But tonglen can be extremely freeing. I have written here before that the source of our suffering is not the experience of a negative event but our reaction to it. When we try to escape it, to push it away, we give it strength. Similarly, when we try to grasp on to a positive feeling or event, we diminish it because we shrink it to a size that can be grasped and this causes it to be much more ephemeral than it might be if we shared it freely. So, tonglen works counter to our impulses, asking us to freely take on all the darkness and give away all the light.

What happens, of course, it that we find that the darkness cannot harm us; when we invite it in, as in the Rumi poem I quoted in an earlier post, when we treat it as an honored guest, it will stay for as long as it must and then move on. And when we share the lightness, it stays and infuses our being, as well as that of those around us. This sounds like voodoo or something, but it's actually simple common sense. When we allow things to move through us without an impulse to control their movement, we are much more at peace. We are attracted to what it light and helpful, and it is attracted to us.

But the question really was, do I use it when I am angry. I know from experience that this can be very effective, but in the heat of the moment I tend to forget about it. For me it is progress to practice "the holy pause", that moment of hesitation between the flare of anger and the words coming out of my mouth or from my keyboard. At the very least I have avoided doing harm. The next step is to use that pause to take myself to a place where fear is not in charge and I can open my heart back up after the impulse to anger has closed it down. This stuff really works, folks. It can change your life.

Nothing

Well, it's not quite true that I have nothing to say, but it's been a long and busy day. I have promised myself to write here daily, though, so this is what I have to say for today. It was a good day. I was anxious because I had so much I wanted to get done, but I didn't let it take away my serenity (though it robbed me of a couple of hours of sleep!) All in all, not a bad day at all.

Anger

I had occasion to be angry a couple of times yesterday. Well, perhaps not as angry as that guy over to my right, but pretty angry.

I have a lot of shame around anger. I have been angry a lot in my life, and consider myself to be a recovering angerholic. I have done a great deal of damage with my anger, some of which could be healed and some of which could not.

I also love to eat at my anger. Dammit, I deserve to comfort myself with white chocolate and pizza. (Some people use a stiff drink, but I have lost that privilege for life, I'm afraid).

So, yesterday I was angry. Neither event was really all that deserving of such a response, which clues me into the idea that I am pretty stressed about all of the things that are going on in my life just now. Nothing bad, mind you (well, for the most part), but both good and bad stressors have added up to my having rather a short fuse.

Many of the Buddhist teachings make clear that anger is both a precious energy and that it has no inherent validity. Interesting paradox. The first is true because, as I have written here previously, anger or other intense emotion focuses our energy. If we are truly in a threatened state, this energy is very useful. We can run, lift, think, speak and do many other things with greater focus and more directed force. But it also has no validity because it assumes that we are all separate beings and that my anger can be directed toward you without having any effect on me. We all know this isn't true. Yesterday, it really did feel as if I had been poisoned; I could feel it working its way through my body as it dissipated. Very disconcerting.

The key, though, was that I let myself simply feel the anger with a minimum of acting out. Yes, there was a bit of a hissy fit and a slightly misguided email, but I really didn't create any of the wreckage I have so often in the past. It has been the work of at least two decades to reach this point, where my anger isn't used to simply level all that stands before it. When I felt the anger yesterday and acknowledged how it felt in my body rather than in my mind, I was able to let go the impulse to act on it. Contrary to popular belief, acting on or "venting" anger is not essential to it passing away. In fact, acting on anger has been found to rehearse the anger and therefore reinforce the same expression of anger another time. As with all negative emotions, if we allow it to arise and pass away, it will, and quite quickly, too.

And I didn't eat over it, either, though I was sorely tempted to. This blog is an amazing deterrent; I knew I would have to fess up and decided I would much rather say I hadn't. I also know that when I act out in that way I am short-circuiting the process through which I learn how to let my anger arise and pass away without having to do anything about it. Oh, yes, this is sometimes hard, and I am a prone as anyone else to believe I am "letting them get away with it" when I don't lambaste someone who has aroused my ire. But, really, when has that ever had a good outcome?

It arose. It passed away. I survived. I wrote an explanatory email. I moved on. It's all good.

You are here

I found myself telling my favorite blond joke yesterday:

Two blonds are on either side of a swiftly rushing river. One yells across, "How do you get to the other side?" and the other yells back, "You're already on the other side!"

How often do we do this, seek to find our way to the other side where things are somehow better, when all along we are already on the other side? Namaste.

What's that got to do with it?

I suspect that some of you may be asking, "Yes, OK, but so what? What does all of this philosophizing and Buddha-ing and dharma-ing have to do with losing weight? How does the concept of joy or grief or any of this stuff fit into my life, this very life in which I am overweight, unhappy about it, and can't seem to do anything about it? Most of my life I have struggled in vain with the impulses that cause me to eat more than my body needs and all of this blah, blah, blah about the Buddha just doesn't seem very relevant."

Well. Here's the thing. Our society is founded on the basic principle of more. If some is good, more is better. If this made me feel good today, more of it tomorrow will make me feel even better. If I have ever gotten comfort from an object of my desire, I can derive that same comfort from similar objects in the future. There is something, somewhere that will fill this hole I feel in the center of my being. We have convincing evidence for these assertions, for we can recall a time when a meal made everything OK, or the purchase of an object made the pain go away, or watching a television program filled the emptiness.

The problem is this: these are all transient. There is no permanence to any of them. There is also the tricky fact of what we might call "moreness". The problem with using any external object, emotion, or person as a way to fill the spiritual void we feel is that, once we have this object of desire, its efficacy will quickly fade and leave us wanting another such object. Once we possess the new object, we will want another. Because the hole can never truly be filled with these things but somehow in our delusion it feels as if they are, we will constantly seek something new to take the place of the object that is no longer doing the trick. We will always want more.

Now, much of our seeking is dangerous (for instance if adrenaline is the drug we crave) or harmful (drugs and alcohol) or distasteful (pornography, for instance), or becomes infeasible as we age (partying all night). Some simply does not work after a while, like compulsive television viewing or computer use. And all of these have one thing in common: we can give them up and not die. But food, ah, food. We must use it or starve. It is not particularly expensive unless we have exotic tastes. So, while we tend to lose many of these addictions (to call them by their right name) as we age, food stays with us, and is often the last bastion of our rebellion. It may have been many years since we asked ourselves against what, exactly, we are rebelling, but, dammit, it's my life, and I'll eat what I want. Haven't I given up enough?

But as so often happens, we are not getting good answers because we are asking the wrong questions. When I eat--or do anything else--in an attempt to fill the void, I am not only doomed to failure but have placed myself that much further away from what could actually fill it. This is the irony, that in the seeking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I neglect the fact that the gold mine is under my feet; I need go nowhere at all. And in the traveling away from my home (which is to say, my inner being) to seek that fool's gold, I leave the true gold behind. That's what all of this has to do with eating.

By the way, if we seek to lose weight to fill the void, believing that it will make us feel better about ourselves and therefore make us more spiritually fit, we are doing the same thing. Addiction to the idea of losing weight is as real as any other addiction. We need to give that up as surely as we would heroin, for it can be as dangerous. We must begin from a place of total and complete acceptance of ourselves as perfect human beings before we can change anything with a grateful heart, which is the only way change can take place.

Joy and happiness

I realize that yesterday's post raised a rather thorny question: is it truly possible to remain joyful all the time? Is that really a choice we can make?

First of all, I make a distinction between happiness and joy. Happiness is a transient state, dependent on conditions. Joy, on the other hand, is an expansive state and more a tendency of mind that can be cultivated. Happiness is winning the race; joy is taking pleasure in the running of it.

The hard question arises: "Is it possible or even desirable to be joyful in the face of, for instance, the death of a parent, partner, or child?" or "Is it possible or even desirable when terminally ill or in pain?" What these questions assume is that there is a value to suffering, that to fail to suffer under these circumstances would somehow be disloyal or dysfunctional. How is it possible to feel joy in the presence of a cancer diagnosis or a child's death? How is it right?

There is no giddiness to joy. It is not the feeling of kicking up our heels or running in the tall grass. Joy is much more gentle than happiness but is more lasting. The opposite of joy is not unhappiness; I believe the opposite of joy is bitterness, the feeling that life has treated us unfairly. It's not that there isn't unfairness or injustice in the world, of course, but this feeling of bitterness is completely incapable of doing anything other than exacerbate our suffering around events that have already occurred. One wise person said, "Problems are just situations we decide never should have happened."

What, then, is the nature of joy, and how can it be cultivated? This goes to the core of the teachings. In opposition to the ingrained tendency to go straight to "flight, fight, or freeze", the classic triad of responses to states of high alert when confronted with stressors, Tara Brach proposes the paradigm of "tend, befriend, and expand." She says, "The habit is to think this life is a problem to be solved. The possibility is to live this mystery and to love without holding back." The outcome of practicing a different way of responding to the stress of everyday life is joy. It is an openness to all things and all beings "without holding back". We tend to think either that some person or thing must earn our love or that there is a limited amount of love to go around and if we begin to distribute it willy-nilly it will run out just when we need it for someone near and dear to us. Both are fallacies and have no basis in fact; quite the opposite is true. The more we can open our hearts to the whole world and all beings in it, the more space there is in which to love and the more love we have to give. This has been demonstrated by enlightened beings for centuries. When we think of those we most admire and would like to emulate, it is invariably those persons who have found a way to unstintingly love those around them. The mistake we make is in thinking that Ghandi or Mother Theresa or the Buddha or Jesus or Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela were or are exceptional human beings and that we cannot aspire to such benevolence. On the contrary, they were all quite ordinary human beings who transcended the ordinary way we deal with our lives. (Of course, this is my opinion; I do not intend any disrespect to those who believe that one or more of these persons was divine). Even in suffering and the face of death they remained joyful and open-hearted.

To return to Tara Brach's paradigm: she advocates what I have come to call "The Holy Pause". When we feel ourselves responding to stress with the desire to flee, can we pause to see if we can abide in the feelings that arise and stay in the situation without leaving it either physically or emotionally, what she called "tending". When we feel ourselves responding to stress with the desire to fight with words or fists or blaming, can we pause to see if we can befriend these feelings and impulses and possibly even the person or thing that arouses them? When we feel ourselves in these situations curling up into a little ball and retreating (freezing) like an animal playing dead, can we pause to see if we can expand, open our hearts to the fullest extent of which we are capable?

The road to joy is not in reaching some enlightened state in which we are always able to do these things all the time. The road to joy is practicing them over and over until our habitual responses are retrained to sometimes be the more peaceful, openhearted ones. Over time these can even  become more frequent than the less skillful, habitual outcomes. This is true joy and can be present no matter what the outer circumstances bring to our awareness. This is where I choose to live.

Freedom

When I got back home from California today, there was a part of my mind that was grousing and grumbling about getting back into the flow of things, of having to take on the day-to-day duties of your average householder ("householder" being what the Buddha called all those who were not monks).

"I should be able to do anything I want for the next two days and not have to worry about all of this crap there is to do," said Wanda Whiner. "I have been busy flying back and forth and doing things for others; it's about time I had some hedonistic time to just sit around and do whatever I  feel like."

Another member of the internal committee--we'll call him Responsible Rick--said, "But, Wanda, that's not how it works. It's not like you earn points for being a good boy or girl and that buys you the right to ignore obligations and what needs to be done. You were of service over the weekend because it was the right thing to do, not to store up brownie points. Having done that does not give you any special license."

"Says you. Why is there always more stuff to do, anyway? Why can't we ever be just done for once?"

"Well, as far as I can tell, that's just the way life works. I mean, you know about entropy..."

"Oh, boy, here we go," Wanda muttered under her breath.

"No, seriously. It's absurd to think that the floors will remain eternally clean or the groceries eternally fresh, even if you didn't eat any of them, which would be rather a self-defeating way to get out of going to the store, by the way."

"For heaven's sake, there's no need to be so fricking literal. I didn't mean FOREVER or anything like that. Jeez. Why can't we just take a break?"

"Well, of course we can. Most of tonight and most of tomorrow is wide open and we can spend it relaxing and taking our ease. But there are some things, like blogging and walking and unpacking and watering that need to be done. We can't simply abandon our responsibilities."

"See, that's just what I mean. Why not? Why can't we just have a day of complete rest?" Wanda began to snivel a bit.

"Well, the plants would die, for one thing. On Tuesday when I have to go to work, I wouldn't be able to find things I need from the backpack I took to California. And I have promised myself to exercise regularly and to blog every day."

"THERE! THERE! Perfect example, Mr. Perfectionist! Blog every day? Why? Who cares?"

"Well, I promised..."

"Promised whom?" Then, under her breath, "And nobody reads it anyway."

Rick refused to be bated. "Now, Wanda, you know that's not true. Besides, that's not the point. I want to be accountable, if only to myself. I want to put down how things are every day, not just when I'm having a good one or a bad one or have some flash of insight. It's important to do it every single day, even when it's inconvenient; especially when it's inconvenient."

Spiritual Spencer chimed in, "I think there's something you both are forgetting." Rick and Wanda rolled their eyes. "No, really. Listen, have you forgotten that you are always as free as you allow yourself to be? That in any moment you can be as thoroughly joyful as you ever will be, if you make that choice? And that in every single moment you have that choice?"

"Oh, sure," said Wanda, "I shall be joyful while washing the dishes. Fat chance."

"But that's a choice, surely you can see that. It's not about getting things done, as Rick asserts. It's not about doing nothing, as you assert. Oh, sure, if you didn't ever wash the dishes, then that would lead to consequences you would eventually have to face, specifically nothing to eat off of or with, and a smelly house. But that is a choice you could make joyfully. On the other hand, you could make the choice to wash them joyfully. The mistake we make is believing that what will bring us happiness is always in the next moment, or perhaps the one after that. This is the only moment in which you can be happy or joyful. This is also the only moment you can be miserable or resentful. These are your choices. Remember what Pema Chodron said? 'You are always standing in the middle of a sacred circle.'"

The rest of the committee murmured growing concurrence with Spencer's logic. "It's not that I disagree with either of you. Reid must do things and he has a right to take it easy, both. We of the committee are here to see to it that he finds a balance that will give him access to as much joy as possible, isn't that right?"

Wanda, refusing to give in, yet recognizing the overwhelming nature of Spencer's logic, sulked into a corner. Rick grinned and relaxed. Reid went for a walk, but got a couple of movies while he was out. He came home, put the dishes away, and sat down to write his blog post. While he wrote it, he ate a few things that made Wanda happier. All was quiet in the committee room. Will the last member to leave please turn out the lights?

A good last day in California

I spent the day today with family here in California and finished off with a lovely dinner at Latitudes in Auburn. If you are in that neighborhood, I highly recommend looking them up. It was my brother, my parents, my nephew, and me. A pleasant little group. We told family stories and were probably too loud because my mother is deaf but...oh, well!

Not much more to say. I fly out tomorrow morning. I am very tired. I spoke to my wife on the phone. I probably overate today. All is well in my universe.

Yes, we all age

The ultimate outcome of living the life of an aspiring buddha is to recognize that everything is illusory, that what we view as permanent and lasting is actually ephemeral. In fact, even we ourselves are never fixed entities that can reliably be pointed to as "me" or "mine" (this, by the way, is essentially what is meant by the Buddhist concept of "no-self" in case you run across it. I will no doubt post on that subject another time, but don't let the somewhat mysterious sound of that concern you; it's not really all that complicated or weird. In any case...). I bring that up mainly to tell the story of a Zen master whose son died. When he was found weeping, his students asked if he had not told them that all life is illusory, therefore its passing is merely a part of the flow of the universe and not to be mourned. To which the teacher replied, "Yes, yes, that is true. But my son was such a very real illusion."

So, I recognize that there is nothing more normal then my 83 year old parents being fragile, forgetful, weak, and subject to being knocked off-kilter by just about any illness or other crisis, no matter how minor. Ah, but how real is the illusion I have of them as strong, capable, and invincible. They are, after all, my parents. Just so, it is perfectly reasonable that my 87-year-old mother-in-law should be seriously ill for the first time in her life. Why wouldn't she be? She's lucky to have escaped it this long, I suppose. But how real the illusion that she's still the woman I met 32 years ago (not long ago I realized with a shock that she was the age I am now when Kathy and I first started dating). All three have been pillars of my life, people who were simply always there and always to be relied on. Now, Kathy and I must be the reliable ones (along with our siblings and their mates, of course, and to an even larger extent than us because they live where our parents live).

I think what I'm getting at is that it is not such a difficult proposition to understand intellectually that people become ill, age, and die, but when it comes to my Mommy, well, I mean, she's my MOMMY, for God's sake! That's different. My father was an athlete when he was young and even into middle age maintained an active life. But today he got out of the car and looked as if he was going to collapse. He just plain looked old and feeble. Oh, there were logical explanations and easy short-term solutions; it was nothing serious, really, nothing a little snack and some rest couldn't cure. But it brought home to me again with such vividness that both of them are growing old and will some day no longer be here. How do I reconcile this feeling of loss with the realization of impermanence as I have come to know it with my head if not yet my heart?

I am convinced the answer lies in meditation. Though I have spoken of meditation only as a mode of concentration leading to mindfulness, if used skillfully it can also help us to understand questions such as that I raise above. A warning, though: this is not intellectualizing, philosophizing or otherwise trying to find answers. The nature of paradox is that it has no answer, for one thing. But, even more importantly, as long as we are trying to use our minds to answer the mind's questions, we will end up going in circles. What I have in mind (pun fully intended, of course) is using some of our time in meditation to focus on the question, but to just lay it out as if on an examining table and step back. We must resist the temptation to dissect the specimen or examine it, focusing the power of our concentrated minds on the question itself. This is very helpful, though it will yield no specific answers, or at least none that can be put into words. That this provides an enormous amount of comfort goes without saying. But it also leads us to insight, one of the highest aspirations for any practitioner of the teachings of the Buddha.

Off I go!

I am home sick again from work today, but still plan to fly out tonight to visit my parents and other family members in California; it has been planned for too long to let a cold get in my way. I went for a walk today, thinking it would make me feel better. It did, but it also wore me out, which leads me to know I really am sick. I hope I'm not too tired when I get to California.

Something about flying makes me anxious, but it really isn't the flying itself. I rather like the sensation of this enormous metal box lifting off the ground. I have yet to get over my incredulity that something that large can actually get into the air. It feels like a miracle every time. Maybe it is!

But the sense of disconnectedness from my secure little world couldn't be more stark than when I fly. I must get the the airport on time. I must expose all of my possessions and my person to examination. I must take my shoes and belt off (wait a minute, isn't that what they make you do in jail? Hmmm). I must divest myself of the tchotchkes and bric-a-brac from my pockets that in some part make me uniquely me. I am all but stripped bare. Then on the other side of security I must reassemble myself like C-3PO in the junkyard and take a seat for a long wait until it is time to shoehorn myself into my narrow seat and sit fetally for an hour and a half, wait for a shuttle to take me to my rental car, drive 45 minutes to my brother's house (arriving about three hours after my usual bed time) and flop into bed. What's to disorient me in that?

I think the value in this recitation is the recognition that I have defined a certain set of parameters as my "home" and when these are disrupted, I am no longer at home in my body or my head. I recall one Buddhist teacher (I can't recall now whom) who said, when asked if it would be good to get back home that he was always at home. This is something to aspire to.

The point in this blog, of course, is that I tend to eat my way through my anxiety, and I usually eat something or other from the time I hit the airport until I arrive at my brother's. It may just be those evil snack mixes they sell in the newspaper stands, or it may be a meal from a vendor, but (now that I think about it) I am pretty much eating something the whole time. So, my plan today: I will eat something before I leave, then I will buy a sandwich to eat on the plane (usually half is plenty) then, other than water and my ubiquitous cup of decaf I will eat nothing until breakfast tomorrow. Let's see what happens!

As I have said before about other such events, the point of this exercise is not to keep from eating, but to recognize just how often my eating is a way of evading something else, in this case my anxiety about the displacement I feel. When I come face to face with my demons, they lose their power.

To refuse to face them is to, literally and figuratively, feed them. Today I will not.