Selfish

I spent much of the week (selfishly) reflecting on how selfish people are, how self-centered and self-motivated. Why can't they just realize that if we all pulled together, everything would be easier for everyone? Why is everyone so predisposed to be so selfish?

To which my teacher, Heather (this is why I have a teacher) had a response that surprised me: they aren't. People are, by and large, helpful and kind. We watch out for each other and obey rules we don't need to obey simply because it is the right thing to do and makes the world a better place. Driving anywhere, at any time, would be virtually impossible if people really were entirely selfish. Working, buying groceries, taking a walk, going to the theater—all of it would be entirely impossible. (Hmm...I sense an allegorical novel coming on).

Now, I can give you a hundred examples of how selfish people are, how that selfishness makes my life more difficult, how I know the right way to go about things, dammit, and if they could only....

Oh.

I think what I have mistaken for selfishness (most of the time, anyway) is a failure to comply with my idea of what is right and workable. As a boss, I also sometimes confuse acquiescence with being kind. I mean, I really do have the authority to simply say, "No. No, you may not take that day off. Sorry, that doesn't work for us". And I have, sometimes. But when I find myself becoming angry because people are doing things that serve them well but might not serve the whole, if these instances are things I could control if I chose to, well, then, I either have to cowboy up and risk their displeasure or accept the consequences with a full and open heart. Which isn't nearly as much fun as fuming, which makes me feel righteous and superior.

I just went for a long walk today and encountered no fewer than three Little Libraries, and I wasn't

even looking for them. Do you have those where you live? They look like the ones in this picture (though all of them are a bit different from the others, which is one of the things that makes them charming). People buy them (or make them), mount them outdoors and fill them with books. Why in the world would they do that? There is no reason except that they wish to share something they love with others. It is anonymous. It is effortful. And they do it because of the love in their hearts.

My teacher is right. There is more evidence for the goodness of this race than there is evidence of its opposite. Oh, I know. Don't tell me about Boko Haram and bigoted police officers and ISIL and canned beets—I know there is evil in the world; I am not naive. But there is beauty and love and helpfulness and joy and generosity and more love in abundance. I just have to remember to look for it.

Poaching Quince

What you will need:

Two pounds quince

Four cups water

Three quarters of a cup honey

A cinnomon stick and some cloves;

Ginger or anise, if you like.

There is bitterness in my life, I won't deny it. I spend more time than I ought imagining how life would be if it were not as it is. Why must there be strife and anger and decay? Why is it so difficult for those who are in conflict to see how much better life would be in every way if they were kind? Love sounds like a cute cliche to those in the midst of hatred. But it's still the right answer.

Quince is a hard, bitter, astringent fruit that is inebidble in its natural state.

(Try a little nibble if you don't believe me).

Yet it is closely related to apples and pears.

You will need to prepare the quince with care.

The Buddha was quite clear that all things are subject to change, that all things are subject to dissolution and decay, that all things die. I tend to think of this as relating only to me and my loved ones, or at most to all sentient beings, but that's not what he said. He said, "all things". This world, too, and all the beings in it. Stones and mountains and seas. Planets and stars and galaxies. Cars and trains and ships. All things must change, break down, and die.

Peel the quince and cut them in half, but be careful if you are using a sharp knife;

It is a very hard fruit and your hand may slip.

With a paring knife, cut out the center seed core.

Slice the quince into eighths.

But I don't want it to be true, that the world must also end. Strangely enough, I feel as if I am prepared for those I love to die, and for myself. Not that I will be happy about it, but I feel deeply that it is inevitable and merely a part of the natural cycle. But the world? It seems we should have done better, and still could. (Though I admit it doesn't seem likely). This, too, is part of the teachings, that even this world must go. Just because our malfeasance may well have been a part of the process does not make this any less true.

Put the honey and spices into the water.

Place the quince slices lovingly in.

Bring the whole thing to a boil,

Then turn down to the lowest simmer you can.

Cover loosely.

What I can do is bring light into the darkest places. Where there is sadness and pain, I can bring hope and help. Where there is conflict, I can bring my own peace. I cannot cure what ails the world, but I can do what is possible to make it less worse. There is so much of goodness in the world, and I know this in my heart. Evidence to the contrary does not negate the reality of this, and in fact gives the light, by contrast, that much greater luminosity.

Simmer for thirty to fifty minutes.

After thirty minutes check the quince.

What you want is a soft fruit that is not mushy.

And, look! As it cooks, the pale, beige fruit turns a rosy pink.

It's not always easy. I must always be reminded. There seems to be such urgency to the demands life places on me and on us. Yet nothing could be more useful than a little bit of uselessness. I cannot justify to you the time I take to sit at my desk and breathe deeply. This will not appear on my timesheet; I am not sorry. When I open my heart, freedom leaps out and I will share it with you. The world may not be healed but we, at least, will not go down enveloped in the flames of anger.

After removing the quince to cool

Continue to simmer the liquid uncovered.

Let it cook down.

It will make your whole house fragrant

And, when strained, yield a delicious nectar

That is good in everything.

This is a very good idea.

If I find y

I found a piece of cardboard on the ground the other day
An almost finished sign scrawled on it that said,
If I find y

And I wondered

What would have completed that sentence?

Perhaps...

If I find you have been sleeping with my wife...
If I find your wedding ring...
If I find you dying, crying, bleeding...
If I find yogurt-covered raisins...
If I find youth...
If I find yak...
If I find young, nubile women...
If I find yesterday...
If I find your conversation scintillating...
If I find yanking on this chain causes the world to end...
If I find you on fire...
If I find yellow daffodils...
If I find you have a terminal disease...
If I find yams all hot and steamy...
If I find you all hot and steamy...
If I find yodeling annoying...
If I find years and years and years have gone by and I have no idea why or how and you have been here all that time and I am grateful and it makes me stronger and love being the only thing that matters feels less each day like a cliche and more and more like a hard, cold truth...well...then...

I will:
Run for help
Fight
Scream
Come find you
Look the whole world over for you
Search for you until I die

I will:
Love it
Love you
Cherish you
Hug it
Hold it
Treasure it
Yes
Yes, even the yak
I promise

If I find y

Addicted

I was a little depressed yesterday and could not for the life of me figure out why. Last week was extremely stressful and it should have been a relief to have it over, and it was. But I was not at all pleased nonetheless. I really had to dig deep and use all the wiles I have been taught by the Dharma to figure out what was wrong.

Nothing was wrong.

But over the past month I have been "the man" at work. No matter what the problem, they were turning to Reid, and more often than not I had the answer. I got praise from every corner for what a great job I was doing. The clinic held together in difficult times and I had something to do with that. I felt like I glowed in the dark.

The problem, then? I had become addicted to that feeling, to being praised, admired, acknowledged. The situation was coming to an end and my role would change and all of that would go away. I was suffering from the vicissitude of praise.

In English the word vicissitude means (at least according to one dictionary) "a change of circumstances or fortune, typically one that is unwelcome or unpleasant". Since I don't read Pali, I am uncertain if this is a good translation of the original or not, but I have always felt that something more familiar like "mishaps" or "difficulties" or "misfortunes" might be a better choice. But reading this dictionary definition, I realize how accurate the word may well be, because a vicissitude is not necessarily a bad thing; it's just something different, a change of circumstance.

In the Buddhist cosmology there are eight vicissitudes: gain and loss, fame and disrepute, praise and blame, pleasure and pain. No distinction is made between the ones we deem positive and those we think of as negative. What the Buddha taught is that each of these can cause as much suffering as the others. In the words of one translation of his teachings on the vicissitudes, he says the unskillful action is that we "weclome the gain and rebel against the loss, welcome the fame and rebel against the disrepute, welcome the praise and rebel against the blame, welcome the pleasure and rebel against the pain." In our welcoming of these pleasant states, we grasp at them, seek to make them stay and grow. And our rebellion against those we find unpleasant is a grasping of its own, a seeking of the opposite or some other pleasant state, rather than an openhearted acceptance of the situation as it is.

I recognized that what was causing me to suffer was the fact that I wanted to cling to praise, to gain, to fame, to feeling good about myself, to being the Man of the Hour. And it became clear to me once again that the Buddha's teachings are not about what I should or should not do or be. He was not really a prescriber, but a describer. He told it like it is. He was telling me, over those 2000 years distance, that I was suffering because I was grasping, and that the solution was to let go of my grasping and relax into the present moment. And it worked.

I am not completely recovered from my bout of praise-sickness, but I'm getting there. The wonderful thing about the Dharma is that just the realization has the seed of freedom in it. There is nothing I need to do; I need to do nothing. Above all, I need to return to work without any grasping for a replication of the positive things I experienced last week. For one thing, stress at that level would probably kill me if sustained over weeks or months.

I am so grateful that I have the teachings to guide me and help me realize what is causing me to suffer. It is not always obvious, but I know that above all I want to be free. I am willing to give up any amount of pleasant sensation if freedom is the end result.

Because there is such love

A girl sings and I cry. I suspect that many of you have seen this already, but it is worth taking another look. I was blown away. (Ignore the judges, if you can; they are speaking in Dutch, for one thing).

I admit to feeling a bit of skepticism lately about the essential goodness of our species. I am not really a pessimist at heart, nor am I a cynic. When I was younger, I thought cynicism was a form of intellectual sophistication, but have since come to understand that it is actually cowardice and dishonesty in disguise. I say this because a little girl can make me cry, because there truly is so much beauty in us. What species but humans are capable of such love, generosity, compassion, and grace? Well, none, of course.

But we are also the only one capable of such destruction and devastation. We war and build and burn and kill and dig and use and pollute. How can I not be disillusioned?

Because there are little girls who can sing with such feeling. Because Puccini could write such a song (it's called "O Mio Babbino Caro", by the way, and the girl's name is Amira Willighagen). Because when disaster strikes, we come together to help one another. Because every day I work with people who come to the clinic to serve those who are less fortunate and struggling. Because we can create a painting like this:

this structure:

and a building like this:

Because we give our love to each other with so much of our hearts, with all of our souls, even though we know it is risky.

Because we have faith in each other and in Powers we don't understand.

Because there are more people like me, who believe in the basic goodness of my fellows, than there are those who do not, despite all the evidence that can be ranged against such a belief.

Because the human heart and mind are capable of writing this, as John O'Donohue did:

Bennacht

(Blessing)

On the day when

the weight deadens

on your shoulders

and you stumble,

may the clay dance

to balance you.

And when your eyes

freeze behind

the grey window

and the ghost of loss

gets into you,

may a flock of colors,

indigo, red, green,

and azure blue

come to awaken in you

a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays

in the currach of thought

and a stain of ocean

blackens beneath you,

may there come across the waters

a path of yellow moonlight

to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,

may the clarity of light be yours,

may the fluency of the ocean be yours.

And so may a low

wind work these words

of love around you,

an invisible cloak

to mind your life.

IOU

I have no delusion that Phillip Seymour Hoffman owed me anything. He didn't know me, nor I him. We weren't friends. Still...

Art is a contract, isn't it? We both (creator and consumer) invest something in the exchange and expect something in return. That seems only fair. Without my emotional investment, the roles Hoffman played would be meaningless to me. And without a similar investment by thousands of others, he wouldn't have been able to do what he did at all, because there wouldn't have been an audience for it.

Don't get me wrong, I think the guy had every right to be a junkie if he wanted. He had the right to take his own life, too, if the overdose was intentional (though I choose to think it was not). But still there is an anger in me that he left so soon, that what I gave, though a minuscule part of the whole, was so lightly regarded that he could die before his time. That perspective feels a bit bizarre even to me, but I think it's a valid one.

Not taking care to stay here for us is a breach of faith, it seems to me. Now, retiring from the scene (as in Grace Kelly, for instance, or J.D. Salinger) is a different matter—they and others like them decide for whatever reason that they are through with serving up what we want. But to exit inadvertently or with malice, either one, is to rip apart that bond between us, no matter how tenuous it might be.

David Foster Wallace

Do you hear that, Marilyn? John Belushi, are you listening? David Foster Wallace, you prick, did you hear what I said? Does this ring a bell, Heath? C'mon, Kurt, did you really have to put that gun in your mouth? James Gandolfini, Andy Kaufman, Whitney Houston, James Dean, Jim Morrison, Judy Garland, Jimi, Janice, oh the list goes on and on. It is so sad. I feel so deprived.

And I feel a bit of a cheat, too. What business do I have to still be alive when The Big Bopper died so young?

Yet, we carry on. The world goes round. We celebrate who they were and listen, watch, and read what they did. We hold them in our hearts. We hope they are at peace. We wish them well on the journey. We go on.

My input was not sought

Last Sunday I went to the memorial service for my good friend Debbi. I have written several times here about her and her progression toward death.

Toward the end of the day, after all the songs had been sung and poems recited, the memories relived and rehashed, I was standing at a large, beautiful collage of photos, all of Debbi at various stages of her life, lovingly put together by her husband, Sam. The whole trajectory of her life, from beginning to end, laid out in such an orderly way. I turned to my daughter-in-law and said, "death is chaos".

Death is Chaos.

It's the best I can do. I wish I could be of more comfort, but as far as I can tell, this is the truth of it. Because death (or, more accurately, grief) is felt in the heart and not the head, I cannot think my way through this thing. Intellectually, death makes a lot of sense. We all know it's coming, and thank goodness for that. Life would have little meaning if there weren't a period at the end of this particular sentence (living a semicolonic life would be misery, I think). In Debbi's case, it was particularly clear that death was a desirable ending to her last chapter. She had been suffering, in one way or another, for over a decade, and the last year or so she was almost entirely immobile. If you knew her, you know that was a form of hell for her. So—good on her for dying, we all say.

But....

But grief is experienced by the heart, and the heart knows no such thing. The heart still expects to be able to pick up the thread of a conversation, finish that letter, make the visit not made. The heart knows only infinity; it doesn't consider the possibility of endings. It's not that the heart shies away from them, mind you, just that it never occurs to it. To the heart, death is as if one had awakened with legs where arms used to be and vice versa. No matter how much everyone told you that this was a normal state of being and to be expected, still, it would come as something of a shock. One might even be rather skeptical of the reassurance. It would feel like chaos. Such is the heart's incredulity.

I suspect this was, at least in part, what T.S. Eliot was speaking of when he wrote:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
(From "The Four Quartets")

And it turns out, at least in my experience of it, that once activated, grief is indiscriminate. It becomes greif for every damn thing, every relationship I neglected, every opportunity that passed me by, every experience that never came my way. In the final analysis, we struggle to make sense of the finality of things not only because it makes us sad but because our hearts cannot fathom the utter completeness of loss. There is no going back there, to that person, to those moments.

John Updike:

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market—
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.
("Pefection Wasted")

But I think the poem that most captures how the heart speaking to the mind feels is "Dirge Without Music" by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lillies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains;—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Good-bye, dear Deb. I love you and am glad you are at peace.

But my heart does not approve.

She, Dancing

My dear friend Deborah Bell Dancer died yesterday. She was (I believe) 59 years old.

I posted She, Dying about Debbi several months ago. Please click on the link if you wish to know more about who she was. She was a unique, delightful, gifted, loving, amazing person.

And now she is dancing again. May angels and devas and gods and demons join her. She will be missed. But her suffering has ended and that is all to the good. My love and everlasting devotion go with her.

Pain

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions."

--Hamlet, William Shakespeare

Life has been difficult lately and this morning I hit my head. Hard. On a kitchen counter. Wham! Ouch.

The past week I have had back pain, the like of which I have never experienced. I know how bad back pain can be and that many people suffer from it chronically. My pain is not as bad as that (though pain is very subjective, so who's to say?) and it's only been a week, so it feels a bit silly, selfish even, to complain. But it hurts, man. I don't like it.

There's troubles at work, too. Much of that is of my own making. The job is changing and I don't like the way it's changing. The management has changed and I don't like the way it changed. Personnel have changed, the whole atmosphere in health care is changing and uncertain, the economy is causing administrators to squeeze and to justify every dollar spent, which increases the pressure on us to justify our existence. Then there is my acting out in response to stress, which has had consequences, which adds to my stress.

And I'm too damn busy. And there is too much suffering in those I love. And the world is a mess.

Nice, huh?

Then there's the kitchen counter. My physical therapist wants me to do chair push-ups to strengthen my shoulder (which, as long as I'm doing the pain recital, has been bothering me for over a year)  and I did the push-ups with a wooden chair. Bad idea. Chair (which was pushed against counter) collapsed and I broke the fall with my head. No loss of consciousness, but significant loss of dignity. And a big old knot on my forehead for a long-term reminder. Kathy decided to stay home from work to monitor me to make sure I act no stranger than usual so if I do she can rush me into an emergency CT or something.

I'm the luckiest man in the world. Think I'm kidding? I'm not. I have a loving wife who cares if I have a head injury and insists on being here for me. I have something to do about my pain. I can laugh and pick up the pieces of the chair ("cheap piece of shit") and lug them downstairs. I can afford to buy a new one. I have access to a CT scanner if I need one. I have a physical therapist who is helping my shoulder heal. I am 57 years old and up until now I have not  paid much of a price for my age and the fact that I did many foolish things as a kid that should have had more serious consequences than this. I have a job and it's not in jeopardy, and if I dislike it enough, I can probably find another one. All the things I am "too damn busy" with are wonderful things I have chosen.

And then there's this: one of the things the dharma has taught me is that, as the saying goes, pain is inevitable but suffering is optional. When I am able to focus on the pain and not on my resistance to the pain, when I can meditatively consider it, really look at it, not with fear but with curiosity and interest, it is transformed. Not that it no longer hurts, but the nature of the pain is changed from one of a problem to just another opportunity to practice awareness. And in awareness is freedom. And in this freedom, taken to its logical extreme, is nirvana. It's all grist for the mill. It is only in my small, controlling, whining mind that this is not so. All is well.

Happy Bird

When Things Fall Apart....

Number One: We contracted with someone to replace our front stairs (from the street to the upper walk). They have been disintegrating and in need of repair for some time. The Concrete Guy came yesterday and...did a disastrous job. I mean, truly dreadful. We're talking unsafe. Not to code. Visibly crooked. Disappointing doesn't even begin to describe it.

Our new front steps...briefly

Number Two: When we came home from our long weekend over Memorial Day, our freezer wasn't freezing properly, which means that our refrigerator wasn't refrigerating, either, which meant spoiled food. (Good thing we're vegetarians!)

Number Three: I work in an environment in which my boss doesn't have my best interest at heart, at least that's the way it seems to me. Not that I am in any way objective; I could be entirely wrong here. I freely admit the possibility—the likelihood even—that she is a saint and I am an asshole. Though there is precious little evidence of the former assertion, there is plenty to support the latter. Still, this blog is about my world, n'est-ce pas? In any case, all I'm saying is that it makes for a moderately tougher work week. I'm not trying to make a case here for summary execution or (yet more radical) a job change. I just wish it didn't have to be so hard.

So, what the heck am I trying to say?

While growing up, my brothers and I loved listening to Little Orley stories. My son liked them too, once I found them on CD. (Every once in a while we play them for our partners and they think we're nuts. Guess you had to be there). Anyway, one of the stories in there is about the Happy Bird, who prescribes singing a happy little song, when every little thing goes wrong. Be as happy as can be and fill yourself with glee. Just sing a happy little song. Eventually the Happy Bird falls in a mud puddle and Orley challenges him to sing his own little happy song, which he does, if grudgingly. Today I feel like the Happy Bird covered with mud. But I ain't singin' no song.

The Buddha wants us to understand that considering anything as lasting is to court suffering. Everything is ephemeral. In fact, the most concise description of the teachings of the Buddha is this simple phrase: "All that has the nature to arise has the nature to pass away." Nothing lasts. To say that things fall apart is like saying one must breathe. Things fall apart not because of anything I did or because the world is out to get me. Things fall apart because things fall apart. Things fall apart because they cannot do otherwise.

So, I know that crooked stairs are a temporary phenomenon. One of these days I will have forgotten all about them (which will begin next week when they are torn out and replaced). I also know that my freezer that isn't freezing can be repaired (and will be, I hope, tomorrow). And aren't we lucky to have the money to pay for these things? I further know that my feelings of stress, my insomnia, and my dissatisfaction with my work life will pass, will pass, will pass.

But sometimes the directive to consider all phenomena as ephemeral feels like the Happy Bird singing. Like it or not, I'm the one living in the world with these crooked steps and this unsupportive boss in it, living with what Pema Chödrön calls "a lot of ephemeral—but at the same time vivid and convincing—stuff....When the bottom falls out and we can't find anything to grasp, it hurts a lot". What to do? I can't sing a happy little song, dammit, I just can't. Yes, this too shall pass. But right now it sucks.

Pema again:

The path...is not about going to heaven or a place that's really comfortable. Wanting to find a place where everything's okay is just what keeps us miserable. Always looking for a way to have pleasure and avoid pain is how we keep ourselves in [suffering]. As long as we believe that there is something that will permanently satisfy our hunger for security, suffering is inevitable.

Her solution:

Instead of always blaming the other, own the feeling of blame, own the anger, own the loneliness, and make friends with it....See how you can place the anger or the fear or the loneliness in a cradle of loving-kindness...learn how to be gentle to all that stuff. In order to be gentle and create an atmosphere of compassion for yourself, it's necessary to stop talking to yourself about how wrong everything is—or how right everything is, for that matter....I challenge you to experiment this way: drop the object of your emotion and see if the fact the intensity of the emotion lessens.

This isn't the Happy Bird's advice. Pema (and the Buddha) are telling us something we already know but have trouble believing—the source of our suffering lies within us and therefore the end of it lies there, too. Perhaps this is not what we want to hear. It is much easier to blame the Concrete Guy for my unhappiness. Yet when I practiced kindness toward him while remaining firm, I did not have to add to either his suffering or mine. Or to the suffering of the world. There is enough of that. There is enough.

Family

I don't write  much here about my extended family because I don't want to violate their privacy. I'm certainly not going to start now. But I went to California last weekend to help celebrate my brother's 60th birthday and want to write about how that was.

My brother and I have not always been close, at least not in a conventional sense. We have, more so than my other siblings perhaps, been enmeshed with each other's feelings and reactions, but throughout our childhood and into early adulthood this was not a good thing. Our acute sensibility of one another mostly took the form of anger, hostility, and confusion. This all started to change about 15 or 20 years ago and  our relationship has progressively improved to the point where he is now one of my favorite people in the world. This was hard work on his part  and on mine. To be able to go to his celebration felt as much like the culmination of a glorious progression as it did like a birthday party.

rb photo © 2013

We have a beautiful family. No, really, we do. We're pretty darn white (though some progress is being made in that regard), but for all that we are amazingly diverse. And for a bunch of middle class (mostly) white people, we do pretty well at  being joyful in each other's company, cutting each other enough slack to make this family thing  work. We love each other and it shows. We accept each other for what and who we are and, hey, no reason to sugarcoat it, there has been a lot to accept over the years. I wish this made us just the average family, but that's not what I see. It seems to me there is a great deal of grudge-bearing and vindictiveness in the families I know and experience through others.

Through all of the time that some of us were being obnoxious twits (I'm talking about myself here, though if anyone else feels the shoe fits them, feel free to put it on), our hearts have always been in the right place, or so it seems to me. Am I  being a bit of a Pollyanna here? I suspect some of my family would say so. But that's my observation. Where push came to shove, we have always had each other's backs. Even now it  is not all sweetness and light by any means—my sister couldn't come to our celebration because of a crisis with a grandchild. But we persevere.

rb photo © 2013

Our celebration was on the Northern California coast, about 40 miles south of San Francisco. It is a beautiful place, full of wildness, wind, and weather. It was cloudy, sunny, rainy, warm, freezing, foggy, and perfect, all in the  space of three days. We ate together, sat around fires, roasted marshmallows, went to the beach, and even visited the Boardwalk at Santa Cruz.

rb photo © 2013

I fulfilled my Bad Uncle role by encouraging children to play with sticks they lit on fire. I mean, what could possible go wrong, am I right? I am proud to report that (to the best of my knowledge) no one was permanently scarred and I'm fairly certain my nieces are still talking to me. I also had an 11-year-old tell me she wasn't sure I counted as an adult. A proud moment.

But the real  pleasure was being in each other's company. I know this sounds like any family anywhere, but I feel the miracle of us coming together every time we meet. Frank Bruni, in his New York Times column of May 26 (published while I was in my little tent cabin on the coast, a sweet coincidence) notes that family "aren't people [we] would have likely made an effort to know or spend time with if [we]'d met them at school, say, or at work.... They're less tailored fits than friends are. But in a family that's succeeded at closeness, they're more natural, better harbors." A safe harbor, that's exactly what it feels like when I am with my family. And, I must say, I don't really feel that way anywhere else in the world. The way our world is currently constructed does not consistently create communities in which we can feel accepted and at home. To have that, I must go find these people, wherever they may be.

Our parents moved around a lot, not from one community to the next, but to new homes within the Sacramento area. Which is to say, we have no edifice to go home to, no family manse, a physical structure to give solidity to our "familiness". I for one don't miss it, though. It is these people who make the safe place for me to come to rest. I will just keep going where they are. It's a good place to be.

Expectation and Envy

I have not posted in nearly three weeks, the longest I have gone since beginning this blog. I feel a little rusty and even somewhat hesitant, as if it has become unfamiliar. I also feel a bit guilty, as if I have neglected a duty rather than just taken a break from something that is, in the final analysis, a recreation. More about that later....

I have this tendency to think I have gotten to the point where there is little left to learn about myself or about my relations with other beings. I am, so the thinking goes, 57 years old, set in my ways, unchanging and set in stone. What a crock. How is it that this lesson I have learned nearly every day for those 57 years, that each moment shows me a new perspective on myself and the world, how is it that I can believe somewhere in my addled mind that this is not so? The mind is odd in this way always. It seems incapable of believing that a future that doesn't look anything like the present is possible.

I bring this up in the context of how I have been feeling in my interactions with my fellow human beings: my family, coworkers, people I meet on the street. I am undergoing a sea change in my attitude toward myself and it's not all that comfortable. I thought I understood a few things and have come to realize recently not only how wrong I was but how counterproductive it is to believe this.

I have very high expectations of myself and others. A mantra I like (not original with me) is this: "Expectations are premeditated resentments". Let that sink in for a moment. Everything I expect to happen is a set up for disappointment and its attendant sense of betrayal, especially when that expectation includes other human beings. I will be rewarded, I will be applauded, I will be reinforced in my opinion of myself. Even the idea that I will receive feedback of some sort is an expectation. Another aphorism: "You would stop worrying so much about what people think of you if you came to realize how very rarely they do". I have heard it said that expectation is a craving for things to be other than they are. Kathy points out that expectation can only be for the past or the future, since if we are truly living in the present, regret or worry (expectation for a different past or future) are not possible.

Thus my guilt about not having written here in three weeks. Circumstances made this inevitable (trips and obligations and obsessions, oh my!), yet I have an expectation that I will write every week (at the beginning of the blog it was every day—talk about unrealistic expectations!), and when I don't fulfill that expectation, I am somehow a failure as a human being; not just as a blogger (which would be silly enough). The efficacy of my very existence is called into question. A bit out of proportion, eh? As if you, those who read these words, hang on every output of my fertile mind and go into collapse without them. I suspect you survived intact. But my expectations extend to you, as well. You are to respond in a particular way. You are to recognize my essential correctness. You are to acknowledge my inimitable contributions to the world. Let me just tell you, you are not living up to these strictures. You are falling woefully short.

Of course, I don't think this consciously—I'm not quite that psychotic or quixotic or narcissistic. But somewhere in the murkiness of that part of my subconscious that determines my attitude toward the world, I I think I really do believe these things. I feel aggrieved much of the time. You are not responding as you should and it reflects badly upon me. I worry and plan and regret, never realizing, it seems, that my life has become these things. The mind has this idea that if I just fine tune this thing and tweak that one, my life will finally be perfect and I can then begin to live, to relax into it all. The biggest problem with this approach to life is that by the time such a well-adjusted life happens, if it ever does (highly doubtful), my life will be over and I will have lived as a tweaker and a fine tuner rather than as a fully awake human being.

Joseph Goldstein points out that expectation is not the same as aspiration. They both look forward to a future that is not the same as the present in some specific way, but expectation is an aspect of craving (the source of all suffering), whereas aspiration is a letting go of craving, a gentle placement of my spiritual boat into the stream. He also wishes us to understand that the practice of the Dharma is not the gaining of anything, but the letting loose of all things; gradually, but steadily and inevitably. Only there does freedom lie. He quotes a simple mantra which originated with Buddhadasa: : "Nothing to do, nothing to be, nothing to have." Liberation is that simple, if we let it be. Letting go is the answer, but it's damn hard to do, I must say, as if a great master said, "All you must do to achieve Nirvana is stand on the ceiling". The ceiling is right there, waiting to be stood upon, yet I cannot seem to figure out how one does it.

Envy is another aspect of this same egocentric complex of belief. One more saying I ran across: "Envy is a hostile form of self-pity". Yes, it is. When you get something good, my first response is "Where's mine?", not "I'm so happy for you". This feels like a sickness, yet it is my default response. I truly do wish to wish you well, to practice the ancient Buddhist principle of mudita, which is usually translated as "sympathetic joy". Mudita is not just the idea that we ought to feel good for others, but that since we are all interconnected, any joy you feel is also my joy, not just in some theoretical, spiritual way, but as literally as if you shared out your joy among all of us. There is no separation between us, but that's very difficult to feel sometimes.

I said to my soul,
Be still, and wait, without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.
Wait without love, for love would be the love of the wrong thing.
There is yet faith;
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought,
For you are not ready for thought.
So the darkness shall be light
And the stillness, the dancing.

—TS Eliot

Judith Ragir once said that the key to freedom is to "allow the universe to satisfy me". Everything I need is here. It is enough.

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P.S. I cannot include photographs in this blog the way I did before because, as part of their misguided attempt to bring everything under the banner of their operating system (which is obnoxious), Google made most of their images unreproducible on any other platform. Of course, this is their right and I wish them well, but I miss being able to break up the unremitting text a little with visual accents that have some relevance. I have a passion for photography, though, so I hope this will motivate me to include more of my own photos here. The problem, of course, is not so much having photographs to hand as having any that are relevant to the text. I will do what I can. All of the photographs in this post are mine.

ADHD? OCD? OK? LOL! TMI? tl;dr

I read a fascinating article in the New York Times last week about autism and how useful the specific characteristics of the autistic person can be to some businesses. It is a mind-bending speculation to think that the recent uptick in incidence of autism might not just be an increase in identification of those who are autistic and others on the same continuum (Asperger's and such) or an insidious development at all, but might actually be a step in the evolution of the species in response to our predilection for technological advancement. This thought is certainly not original; google "autism as human evolution" and you will see a plethora of articles on this subject. (In passing, I should note that due to the somewhat antisocial nature of this disorder, it is difficult to see how those on this spectrum have a reproductive advantage, which would be necessary for this development to truly be an evolutionary change. It has been demonstrated to be hereditary, however, at least to a certain extent).

Now, I know it's de rigueur to consider oneself somewhere on this spectrum, just as a decade or so ago to declare one's affiliation to ADHD was popular and even now OCD remains a somewhat attractive label. One wonders why we should be so quick to embrace these labels, and to do so fairly inaccurately. My brother was diagnosed with ADHD (then simply called hyperactivity) when he was quite young (he was taking Ritalin when it was still experimental) and his life has been made much more difficult by it. Why would we choose to co-opt suffering to ourselves? Why, for that matter, would we want to diminish the adversity faced by those who actually have a disorder by appropriating it in a (more or less) lighthearted fashion? I suspect the explanation is that having a label on which to blame our more antisocial or obnoxious characteristics is comforting and supplies us with a built-in justification for unwonted behavior. ("Oh, honey, I threw out your cockroach collection in a fit of OCD; I'm so sorry. But you know how it goes!")

Which is all by way of me doing precisely what I have just described! Here's the thing: I felt a frisson of identification when I read the Times article. I have quite often in my adult life felt one step removed from the social interchange that seems to come so easily to others. Of course, I know how dangerous it is to "compare my insides to other peoples' outsides," as the saying goes. It could just be that I am introverted (another label, eh?), which I certainly am. But the spectrum characteristic of being contented with repetitive tasks also feels mighty familiar. There is a particular list I maintain at work that I know would be enormously tedious for most people but for me is a true pleasure, and I become faintly irritated when interrupted while working on it. (Maybe I'm OCD? Heh). Just yesterday I spent several hours connecting a new television and all of the wires and cables that go along with having associated electronic components. Loved it. Perhaps I'm just patient.

Another thing: I marvel when witnessing my fellow humans engaging in lighthearted conversation that then, by all appearances, leads to association, which yields, in some cases, real friendship, wherein they voluntarily spend time together. Just being together. Strange. I don't mean to make light of this; I truly do marvel at these behaviors. They seem as odd to me as spontaneous human flight. I would be about as astonished if you stepped off a cliff and just kept walking on air. I scratch my head in perplexity when I witness unforced bonhomie. My interpersonal relationships tend toward banter, which serves the purpose of distancing me from any lasting connection to my fellow humans.

From an article describing Asperger's syndrome:

They are not content to be alone all the time and they long to form friendships with others. Since they cannot read social or emotional cues well, they come off as insensitive, pushy or strange, yet have very little insight into how they are perceived. They have very little idea how to make a friendship work. [Emphasis mine].

Hmmm.

Don't get me wrong; I really do like being around people and can hold my own in social discourse. I am even well-liked in my small social circles; I know this. I have a close, loving, intimate relationship with my wife and with many of my family members. Yet I am also aware of a certain arm's-length orbit around me that keeps most of those I know comfortably unknown unless I make a vigorous effort to bridge that chasm. I also don't want to give the impression that I have no true friends or intimacy. I have both, though these are select and few. Perhaps this is just as it should be, I don't know. But sometimes I envy the (seemingly?) easy affinity I see around me, the crowd of loved ones some people seem to effortlessly gather around them, to attract as adroitly as politics attracts fools. I have even tried to make myself more like a person to whom this might happen, without much success. Oddly enough, I have quite warm relations with a handful of relative strangers I encounter on my round of errands every Friday—the lady at the dry cleaners, the produce manager at my favorite store and others. I love to listen to their stories and even, sometimes, their troubles. Yet, of course, this makes its own kind of internal sense—they are not likely to become my actual intimates and our discourse is limited by time and circumstance to a narrow band of my attention.

I belong to an organization that emphasizes "fellowship". People go around talking about how much this means to them and how they couldn't survive without it. It is something they seem to have gained purely as a perquisite of being a member and take entirely for granted. I once again shake my head in wonder. I have even out-and-out asked what the hell this is all about and how one goes about getting some of this fellowship stuff. I get queer looks. But in this same organization I had the experience just recently, when all this fellowship blather (so it seemed to me) was going on and I was feeling on the outside once again, of wanting to raise my hand and ask, "Is it O.K. if I'm happy anyway?"

That's the thing. Overall I'm pretty happy. I know what your next question will likely be: then why worry about it? I don't know, it just looks like fun to have that warmth and intimacy all around me. Maybe that's only for a certain type of person. I was never destined to be a great basketball player, either; that doesn't make me less-than, just a person with specific abilities, talents and characteristics, none of which are particularly well-suited to a career in basketball. Or to widespread familiarity. I think of it as "the Brussels sprouts phenomenon". I like Brussels sprouts. Some people (OK, most people) can't stand them. I am convinced that I actually taste something different than they do. I don't like walnuts at all, but most people love them. My brother can't stand the taste of any citrus fruit. My wife dislikes anise or black licorice flavors and there are few tastes I like better. For all that we humans are very, very similar to each other in many ways, we also have these quirks of difference that make us interesting. Perhaps my way of relating is like this.


I love deeply where I love. I bestow my affection not easily but thoroughly. I am kind much of the time. I care deeply about the suffering of others. My heart soars in the presence of compassion, openheartedness, altruism and generosity. I am passionately devoted to the Dharma and other philosophies that emphasize kindness and love. I give of myself where I can. I am loved. This is enough; it is enough.

Heritage

It's as plain as the nose on your face and as subtle as an attitude, what we get from those who came before us. The shape of our eyes and the shape of our worldview, the tendency to everything from depression to cancer to obesity, our responses of fear, hope, aspiration, humor, violence and love; in some way or another we inherit all of these from our ancestors.

Yet we know this is not a straight-line correlation. Often the ways we think are shaped by a negative response to what we grew up with. My political beliefs, for instance, are nearly the opposite of my parents', though at depth the motivation behind our beliefs is not all that different. We simply disagree about the appropriate expression of compassion, not the inherent value of it. I have also noticed that my way of communicating in the world is an amalgam of many learned responses coupled with my conscious rejection of some of them. Much more difficult to recognize and change are my assumptions about the nature of the world; it is nearly impossible for me to make a different choice if the basis of that choice is not recognized or even known to me, but feels as if it is simply the Truth. Every once in a while I catch a glimpse of this: my feelings about race, about poverty, about what makes people tick is deeply ingrained. My conscious response to these may be to choose a more or less kind, generous, compassionate way of standing in relationship to them, but the underlying assumptions remain, often unchallenged because unknown.

These thoughts have come more sharply into focus for me lately because Kathy inherited from her parents certain artifacts and heirlooms, physical manifestations of generations of her family. My initial reaction to these was as Cool Old Stuff. (The photos in this post are real examples). There is a table made by her grandfather, a solid desk her mother used for years, chinaware over a hundred years old, a clock that is ticking in my ear right now that ticked in her greatgrandmother's house, in her grandmother's and in her mother's. Some of these are tchotchkes, geegaws, of no inherent value, imbued with meaning by context. There are also writings that would mean nothing in the wider world but mean a great deal to those of us who have the words of our fathers and mothers and others who existed in our lives, some of them who have always been only stories we have heard, illustrated by grainy black and white photos.

I have come to understand, though, that these heirlooms serve a more important function. As we unpack and place them around our house or, in some cases, make the choice to discard or donate them, they are serving as a repository of the ephemeral DNA of our family members and are essential tools in healing from the grief of their loss. That we will never see Kathy's mother again in this life is incontrovertible, but the ticking of the clock is an artifact that was years in the making, the background to all of the joys and sorrows that came to pass in her home over the years. Though it cannot carry memories of her into the present, like a fingerprint this sound has so thoroughly imbued our recollections as to be inseparable from them. As we place a table there, a plate here, as we discard that old towel, we meld into our hearts and minds the person who was, the complex web of body, mind, way of being in the world, posture, response and love that made Jeannette who she was.

Laurie Anderson, on her album "Homeland", tells the story of the birds. Birds were the first creatures, she says. They existed before the Earth was born, when there was only air and birds, "billions and billions and billions of birds." One day, a lark died. This was a problem because, where does one put the body? There is no Earth and thus no place to bury him. His daughter came up with a solution: "she decided to bury him in the back of her own head. And this is the beginning of memory".

This is, in part, how we continue to bury our dead. We put them in our heads. We incorporate them as part of our being. We have this odd belief that we continue on as the same people no matter what happens to us, when in fact quite the opposite is true--everything that happens to us changes us. Large events change us in noticeable ways, but even small things change us subtly. What you choose to have for lunch causes a minuscule shift  in the possibility of who you are and who you can hope to be in the future. How, then, could the death of a mother be anything other than grandly transformative?


But here's the crux of what I am trying to say: in the act of cherishing these keepsakes, Kathy is internalizing and externalizing her grief and loss, tying herself to the recent past and the long past through things that have meaning only (or mostly) within the context of who used them, touched them, honored them. Did her greatgrandmother treasure her cabbage shredder? I doubt it ever crossed her mind. But here it is, hanging on the wall of our kitchen, imbued with meaning from her having handled it, the finish on the wood mellowed by her sweat and the oil on her hands. Her daughter in turn honored and used it, and thus her daughter and now yet another daughter has placed it, not just physically  but psychically, into a corner of her life where each successive generation and the loss of those who are gone exudes from it as certainly as any photograph or letter. They become a part of us and we transform through the inclusion. And through Kathy I, too, am changed. Some of this is personal memory (I have, after all, been a part of this family for over 30 years), but much of my transformation is osmotic, once removed. As she changes I change; love is a form of melding and after all this time she cannot make a seismic shift without my own world tipping toward a new way of being.

It seems to me that we are losing some of this ability to transmogrify loss, the passing through the medium of material possessions into memory. It is doubtful we will proudly pass on our Ikea. "Son, this was your grandfather's iPad" just doesn't seem a very likely death bed bequest. We will not stumble upon a stack of love emails tied with a ribbon. Willing your World of Warcraft character to your daughter is unlikely to evince those feelings of connection that the ormolu clock might. Not that I count myself as one of those who thinks this loss of heritable goods is inherently bad. We are evolving as a species into a different form. The disposability of what we own and the sheer massiveness of information available to us is a manifestation of our new ethos and is morally neutral from the perspective of inherent desirability (the effect on the environment is an entirely different question, of course, not to mention examples of true, lasting craftsmanship). But when considering our ability to incorporate our elders into ourselves, these everyday, carefully crafted items carry with them an aura of those who have used them. Kathy's grandmother's grandmother handled this bowl, used it to knead her bread, perhaps, in the early settlement days in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. In keeping and using it down the years, each successive person incorporated a bit of her being into it, until it comes to us freighted with the spirit of five or six generations of meaning, of grief, of joy, of carrying on, no matter what, with great love.

11,000

I just got back from a vacation to that warm-weather hotspot that's all the rage, yes, that's right, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. You just don't know what you're missing....

Well, OK, yes, you do. It was cold and wet and windy. We went there to visit Kathy's family; she has twin sisters who were turning 50 and it was very important that we go there to remind them of just how old they had become. I know, how kind of us. Of course, they are seven years younger than we are, so the force of our needling rhetoric was somewhat lacking.

And I came down with a cold almost as soon as I got there. I never know whether to blame air travel or not. I used to think it was impossible to come into contact with a cold virus on the plane and get sick the next day, my thinking being that there had to be an incubation period of at least a few days involved here. But, at one point during my copious down time (it was a pretty bad cold), I looked it up on my smartphone and even the Centers for Disease Control says that you can show symptoms in as few as 12 hours after exposure to a rhinovirus. So...who knows? I have been pretty fortunate the past few years in not getting ill too often, but I couldn't dodge it this time.

On the other hand, it was great to be forced into a supine posture and to stay there. I sat in a recliner while others worked around me (we were staying in my late mother-in-law's house and cleaning it out so it can be sold in the spring). I love to supervise the work of others. And I know I needed the rest. I sure did go through a few boxes of Kleenex, though!

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The 11,000 of the title refers to the number of views this little blog of mine has gotten since I started a little over a year ago. I'm not bragging about that number, of course; I am acutely aware that there are many blogs that get ten times that many hits in a single day. But I find it fascinating to think so many people have at least clicked on a post to see what it's all about. Blogger keeps track of  many statistics on this stuff and it thrills me no end that among those 11,000, six were from Malaysia, eight from South Korea and 11 from India, among other places. What does someone from India make of what I have to say, I wonder? I wish a few of them wrote comments so I knew a bit more about them.

I also find it fascinating (and, frankly, a bit head scratching) to see which posts have garnered the most hits: Happy Day has gotten 99 so far, Return 56, Cafe Racer 52 and Living Without A Car an amazing 294 hits. Joyful has been looked at 334 times, Shaking Up the Snowglobe a mind-boggling 501. I note with interest that whereas Eightfold Path, Wise Action (Part I) was viewed 245 times, only 43 of those folks came back for Part II. I feel gratified that the introductory post If You're New Here has been viewed 128 times; I guess it must be helpful (though I have no idea if most of those folks took a look and then ran away as fast as they could). My very first post, No, Indeed He Wasn't, has gotten almost a third of the total number of views, 3062.

Ah, well, I know these numbers don't really mean much in the final analysis. Well, I suppose they mean something, but I'll be damned if I know what it is. People seem to be looking for things to give meaning to their lives and to bring them joy. I'm sure that many of those who came here are attracted to the idea of accepting their bodies as they are while simultaneously taking on their complex relationship to food. It is perhaps the most fascinating journey I have been on, I can say that for certain.

But where the numbers truly have little meaning is in how I intend to continue. I have only my own experience and my own perspective to guide me and to give meaning to what I write here. I have enjoyed the ride so far and intend to continue, even if this post only gets 20 hits. What the heck, that's 20 more people than usually listen to me when I'm saying something!