Blame

I am being falsely accused of something at work. I can't say much more because, hey, you never know who is going to read one's blog.

But I also have no desire to go into detail because it really doesn't matter much. As with everything else we encounter all the time, every day, day in and day out, the real meat of the matter does not reside in the details but in how I respond. And I feel blamed.

I have written before about the vicissitudes, the famous four pairs of conditions:

pleasure and pain
praise and blame
fame and disgrace
gain and loss

I have felt mostly praised in this job, at least recently. I have received many acknowledgements and this feels good. I want this feeling of praise to stay with me, I grasp it and will not allow it to arise and pass away. So when blame comes in, threatening to drive out the glow of praise, I am unprepared to open wide my doors and let it in.

I have written also about the lovely Rumi poem Guest House (actually, I find I have written about it twice, the other time here). I will not reproduce the entire poem here again, but the piece I find most relevant today is where, after writing that we should invite in every new arrival ("a joy, a depression, a meanness") he says that,

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of all its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be cleaning you out for some new delight....
Each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

My teacher Heather is fond of saying that there are not just four vicissitudes. We cannot live always in pleasure, praise, fame, and gain, much as we might like to. It just doesn't work that way. And Rumi is adding that I cannot possibly know what the outcome of one of the other four coming into my life might be. It could be that I am being cleaned out for a new delight.

It is especially interesting to contemplate the feeling of blame when I know myself to be entirely blameless. If my mind were a logical entity, I would simply understand that the blame was irrelevant to the situation and, no matter what the outcome, I can feel good about myself. On top of this, I work in a pretty reasonable place, so it is highly unlikely that the situation will lead to anything negative happening to me, at least nothing that will impact my ability to do my job and keep collecting a paycheck. I am in what I refer to as my "terminal position", meaning that I have no desire to have any other job before retirement, so even if there was some sort of censure, it would not matter. So, why the fear (because, of course, that's what is really going on here, I am deeply afraid). But it is not rational; it is an animalistic response to threat.

Another poem I have written about is William Carlos Williams' "Red Wheelbarrow". And while I

stick by my contention that this poem is, in fact, about a red wheelbarrow and is not particularly symbolic, it also seems to me that the line, "So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow" is evocative of a larger reality. So much depends upon this job of mine: my home, my life, my health insurance, my wife's ability to live the life she lives (and that I treasure being able to help make possible), my ability to be a support to my parents and other family, food, clothing, meditation, the very electricity that makes it possible for me to write these lines (not to mention the computer and my internet connection). To feel that it is threatened (no matter how minor the threat) is to have to face the idea that what I hold most dear might not remain whole. It is mother, father, wife, son, teacher, student, member of society, survival itself.

At the risk of repeating myself, once again I must reach the conclusion that the answer is to open my heart. As Rumi says, "The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in." The answer, still, is love. I must love myself enough to know that none of this can last, it is all illusory. All of them, my parents, my wife, my son, my accuser, myself, all of us have arisen and will pass away. This situation has arisen and will pass away. The challenge (and the opportunity—oh, and what an opportunity!) is to practice loving the person who is casting aspersions on my integrity and professionalism, to entirely open my heart to her and let her in. Oh! how I want to reject her, push her and her accusations away, blame her in return and make her appear Wrong in her own eyes and the eyes of others, but this is the very nature of suffering. Make no mistake, the aversive impulse does not cause suffering, it is suffering.

And so, one more poem, from Hafiz, one of my favorites (and Heather's very favorite, I think), about which I have also written before:

The small man
Builds cages for everyone
He knows.

While the sage,
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,

Keeps dropping keys all night long

For the Beautiful,
Rowdy
Prisoners

I will drop my keys. I will not imprison her or anyone else. I will work for the freedom of all beings and, in the process, will free myself. I will love, not only including where it is most difficult, but especially there. That's just the way it works. Everything else is suffering and the creation of suffering. Hey, I might not have to duck my head when the moon is low, but I'm working on it.

The Limits of Compassion and Its Limitless Nature

It is foolish for me to believe that I can understand what it is to be black in America today. As one commentator put it, there is Team Black and Team White, but if you are on Team White, you don't even realize you are on a team, it's just Normal. The only slight taste I get of the constant fear and loathing black people experience, the reflexive sense of caution and suspicion that Team White most often imposes on them, is the feeling of tension I sense in the parents of children I don't know but speak to in public. Because I am a man, the assumption is that I could possibly be a pedophile. Even in those I love, when I comment on how cute a little girl is, I can feel just a hint of the assumption that it might be a bit creepy for me to say that. They know me, they know I have no such predilections, but there is the blanket assumption that Male=Potential Creep that sneaks into every interaction, no matter how innocent. If asked, these people would say they are not sexist or prejudiced, they are just being cautious. Uh huh.

I can only imagine (I can truly only imagine) how dreadful this same sort of suspicion must be for Team Black in America. People cross the street. They wonder what you are doing in their neighborhood. It crosses the white mind to wonder if you truly belong in this place or that, or if you might have some nefarious purpose. I have never had the experience (literally never) of being stopped by a police officer unjustly, nor have the majority of my pale companions. But it is the rare person of color who has not had this experience (just ask them).

My point is this: I wish to consider myself a compassionate person. Compassion quite literally means "feeling with", what we might also call empathy. But because I really don't know how it feels to be a black American, there are limits to how deeply my compassion can run.

I celebrated the victory in the Supreme Court for gay marriage, but I realize that there, too, I have a very limited ability to understand the depth of meaning this has for those whose lives and loves have been further validated and enshrined in law by the highest court in the land. I can rejoice, but I can't join in. I have, after all, been able to marry for the past 41 years, and have availed myself of this privilege three times (to two people with only one divorce—it's a long story).

I can't know what it is like to be a woman. A woman who has never given birth to a child can't know what it is like to do so. We can do our best to "feel with", but there are limits. We can imagine what it is like to be another gender, but can't really know. If we have felt pain or sorrow or sadness, we can imagine what it is to be in chronic pain or deep grief or intractable depression, but this will miss the mark by light years because the very chronicity of the experience is its most salient feature. By its very nature, the pain most of us feel is short-lived and that is what makes it both tolerable and an entirely different experience from those states that seems as if they may never cease, which in fact they may not, except (one would hope) in death.

In Buddhist terms, compassion is one of the translations of the word "bodhicitta". To define things further, there are two types of bodhicitta, the relative and the absolute. It is relative bodhicitta which is sometimes spoken of as compassion. But absolute bodhicitta is emptiness or openness, and it is in this concept that we can see the truly limitless nature of compassion. While it is true that I cannot appreciate the specifics of your experience (unless you happen to be a middle-class, middle-aged, straight, white, married, male nurse), nor you mine, what I can do is strive to break down the barriers between us that make this so impossible. To put it another way, if I am so hung up on the specifics of my experience and how it is different (and therefore better, worse, superior, or more painful) from yours, then I make it impossible for us to find the common ground of feeling that opens the whole world for us to experience and share.

I understand, at least to the best of my ability, the need many people feel to separate their experience from that of the rest of the world. To do otherwise must seem like a betrayal of that experience and those who share it, whether that be the experience of color, gender, sexual orientation, poverty, politics, profession, religion, disability, parental status, education, ability, preferences, choices, needs, or what have you. But to deny the possibility of the transcendence of these categories of experience is to also deny the possibility of the end of suffering. We must never forget that the Buddha did not preach a higher moral order or a religious understanding of the world. What he taught was the definition of suffering and the real possibility of its end. By striving for the greater goal of absolute bodhicitta, we open the gate to the road of such a complete openness that we cannot divide our experience from the experience of all beings. Such divisions are artificial in any case and the reinforcement of them is the precise cause of all suffering in our lives and in the world.

In the conventional sense, compassion has nothing but limitations. But in the larger sense, the absolute nature of compassion is not a mere feeling with, but a being at One with all that is. If we can get there (if only somewhat, for it is a continuum), how can we do other than love all that is and all that can be? To live our lives there is what Joy would feel like.

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.

Happiness is...

I struggle sometimes with an ill-defined sadness. Mostly I am a fairly cheerful guy, not a jump up and down type, but generally optimistic and hopeful. Then there are these other times.

I have written about this here before, so feel free to skip this entry if you have heard this already. I am writing mostly for my own benefit anyway, though I suspect most or all of you know exactly what I'm talking about.

It can begin with a book, as it seems to have this time. It can begin with a slight, an offhand remark from someone, an unskillful remark of my own. It can begin anywhere. It can be exacerbated by an unintentional cruelty (I know they didn't mean to, but they hurt me when they did that), like this time. A movie can set me off. A poem. A death. A birth. Someone's success (which sometimes makes me feel like a failure).

And here's something strange: for years it has seemed clear to me that I must channel the sadness and anxiety of others, though I only feel it when it is particularly strong. And the holidays are terrible times for many people, even those who love it, times of anxiety and fear and trepidation. We don't talk about that much, but there is an undercurrent of real human suffering under all that holly and mistletoe. Ho, ho, fucking ho.

Not that I am a Grinch or a Scrooge. I love the tree and the presents, the wreath and the lights (mine are always up the day after Thanksgiving, rain or shine, and god, did it pour this year). I love the music and the visits and the cookies and cakes and pies and candy (until it gets to be just too much, then, ick). I love the true, deep, human feeling this time of year. Oh, shut up, you cynic. I know that this time of year is a commercial bloodletting. But it's more than that. There really is an inexplicable good will we practice (well, most of us) that is kinda hard to explain.

Yet the anxiety is there, too, if only the anticipation of Santa Claus or what might be under the tree. I remember that feeling of disappointment as a child, not that I didn't get what I wanted (I mostly did), but when it was all over, all of that counting on things, my belief in magic, in the end this only yielded stuff. Of course, I could never have expressed it in so many words back then, but the magic of Christmas always devolved to this pile of stuff that was not very magical at all. Welcome, treasured, wonderful. But no longer magic. And I wonder if that is not some of what the end of the season brings. And that I am feeling it on behalf of others.

And it's the first day of a new year. (As if the caterpillar or the crow knows the difference. And if it weren't for our ritualistic defining of time and practice of rituals, we wouldn't know it, either). It's the first day of a new year and it brings with it both new hope and a sense of futility. Because nothing really changes much.

I thought about writing down my anxieties and sadnesses today. I opened a file in my electronic notepad titled "Anxieties", just to see what was there. The list must have been made a year or so ago, but I didn't need to change much to update it for today. A tweak here and there. The same issues, the same problems, the same worries and concerns. Far from being depressing, though, it felt freeing. "Oh, yes", I thought, "having been happy most of the year and beginning from this place, my happiness must have mostly to do with how I deal with things, how I am in relationship to them. Much more so than the circumstances, which have, quite evidently, not changed much at all."

And so I set forth on another year.  I will turn 59 at some point in this one, will celebrate 35 years of marriage, and will have spent 25 years at my current employer. Someone I love very dearly (who shall remain nameless) will turn 60. I will carry on. I will thrive. I will open my heart. I will weep a bit (because it's sad around here, in case you hadn't noticed). I will crave and understand it as craving. I will hate and understand it as such. I will blame and rage and resent. I will do my level best not to create any more suffering in the world. And I will laugh. I will love. I will be. 

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

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.

Resentment

I resent someone. I don't hate her. I even understand why she's doing what she's doing that frustrates and infuriates me. She has her reasons and they are actually quite good ones. I might well be doing the same thing if I were in her shoes. This realization doesn't help much.

Now, this is worth remarking on mostly because it is not all that common for me. I don't often resent, not any more. But I used to be a world champion resenter. I could resent you for eating lunch. Breathing my air was an unforgivable offense. I could warm up a hundred or so resentments between the time I woke up and the time I opened my eyes, a thousand before breakfast, and pretty much everyone I encountered by the time I left the house.

When I needed to make a list of resentments as part of a spiritual program I undertook, China was on my list. Not just the country and its government, but every single one of the billions of people who lived there. Just because. China. Billions. I didn't mess around with Luxembourg or Venezuela. China.

But what was revealed by the effort to seek a better way of living my life was that resentment was a mask for fear. Actually, I have come to the conclusion (with some help from my spiritual friends) that not only resentment, but anger, unhappiness, depression (in many cases), greed, lust, cruelty, violence, and hatred are all fear in scary masks. Because fear is wimpy, dontchaknow, but hatred, ah, now that feels like a manly sort of thing.

Resentment made me feel superior to all of you (certainly all of China), and I needed to feel that way because I feared that I was actually grossly inferior, in fact not worth the skin I was printed on, worthless. But I found out that this was not so, that I am merely human and pretty much as worthwhile as anyone and everyone else. Sad but true, the hierarchy of worth is, in fact, artificial and largely nonsense, no matter what Ted Cruz may think.

And resentment, as the saying goes, is like swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die. It only contaminates me. Certainly the Chinese remained unharmed by my vitriol. As part of the path I had undertaken, I had to examine my resentments and find out what part of them had to do with me, with my fears and hurt feelings and confusion. Which turned out to be...oh...all of them.

Which is not to say that people don't do shitty things or that we should let them get away with them. For one thing, someone who is cruel or violent or abusive to me will undoubtedly find another victim, and I have a solemn responsibility to prevent that if I can. But the idea that it will have any positive effect whatsoever for me to stew in the juices of hatred is just absurd on the face of it. In fact, change for the better must begin from a place of acceptance and love; working from a place of anger will only exhaust me and lead to more harm.

So, to return to my present resentment. Because I don't resent all the time and have become very comfortable in my peace and sense of well-being, now even a single resentment feels like a shard of ice in my heart; cold, sharp, hard, painful. I can't stand it. I have a feedback mechanism now that tells me when I have gone there. This is healthy and right.

The solution, I am told (and have experienced) is to wish for this person everything I would wish for myself. I wish her health and well-being and peace and harmony and love. I wish for her to be comfortable and healed. I wish for all her dreams to come true. I wish her miracles. I wish her joy.

It's not easy. I am selfish. I want what I want and I want it now. I wish I could say that I am motivated by pure altruism, but the truth is that I don't want it to hurt anymore. That's OK. Why I do good things is not as important as the fact that I do them. I will have to wait a few lifetimes down the road for sainthood. But at least the Chinese are safe from my wrath. Bet they're relieved.

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.

Incomplete, Part II

(This is a continuation of last week's subject. This post will probably make more sense if you read that one first, if you haven't already).

What this really speaks to is the failure of egocentric thought. The word "egocentric" here is taken not as a judgment but literally, simply the self being the center of the universe. From this perspective, there is no denigration of this literally self-centered view as wrong or bad. But in the way of thinking and being I am proposing here, there is an essential recognition of this mode of thought as a failure, at least if one is seeking happiness, well-being, peace, joy, wholeness, or freedom.

This is all fine and well in theory, intellectually I thoroughly understand it, but when life comes up, when push comes to shove, I return to the same selfish attitudes I have fostered all my 57 years.

"If not me, whom?"
 "No one else has my interests at heart."
"If I don't protect myself, I will be taken advantage of."
"If I don't speak up, they will get away with it."
"They have no right to judge me, exclude me, not acknowledge my goodness, find fault, or seek inferior ways of doing things. If I don't say my piece, I have allowed them to persist in error."
"I only have enough time and energy to take care of my own needs. If I had extra, then I would certainly devote it to the well-being of others."

And on and on and on. The question is not whether these are failed strategies for living a joyful life—they are, both from the teachings of every spiritual tradition I know of and from personal experience—but how do I break the chain of these obsessive, self-centered thoughts and truly enter on a more fruitful path?

The Third Zen Patriarch said this:

The Great Way is not difficult

For those who have no preferences.

When like and dislike are both absent,

Everything becomes clear and undisguised.

Make the smallest distinction, however,

And Heaven and Earth are set infinitely apart.

To set up what you like

Against what you dislike

Is the disease of the mind.

But I keep wanting to say to all these great teachers, "Yes, but, how? Release myself from all preferences? What, are you nuts? I know this sounds like a good idea, but how does one get there? And what is the difference between having no preferences and being indifferent? Look (I want to say), when I hurt my shoulder, the physical therapist said, 'Do this, and eventually you will feel better,' and I did. Then she said, 'Oh, and do these exercises for the rest of your life and you will continue to feel better', and that's what I intend to do. Where is the pith spiritual instruction that will break through the delusions that rule my life?"

Now, don't get me wrong; I have done a great deal of work in this direction and it would be dishonest and self-defeating to say I am nothing but a selfish bastard—I'm not and know it. But Selfish Bastard can and does rear his head on a fairly regular basis, particularly in times of stress (and most especially when I am afraid). This is the default I would most like to change, to find the magic word that would unravel the tightly wound skein of my self-concern and remind me that the path of joy, as well as the path of goodness, lies elsewhere. Because I know it does, but knowledge alone will not guide me to that place.

Next week I will address what I have learned (and what I have still to learn) about the answer to these questions.  

Order

I am a person who likes order. (Those who know me well are rolling their eyes at this understatement. Eyeballs back on the screen? Okay, then. Moving on). Yet life is chaotic. Note I do not say my life; that's because it is just life that is chaotic, by its very nature. I don't like to accept this fact. I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time struggling against it. My work life, my daily life, my computer life, everything mitigates against order and I struggle and struggle to make it otherwise.

I know beyond doubt that I crave order because without it I feel unsafe. But safety is a delusion. "Anything can happen anytime" is a mantra I learned from Joseph Goldstein. This is not fatalistic, simply a fact. That a meteor is unlikely to fall from the sky and flatten me is no very sure evidence that it could not. I could be brewing cancer or a cerebral aneurysm. My life could end ten minutes or 40 years from now and I have no way of knowing which.

The problem with craving order (safety) is not the impossibility of achieving it. The real problem is that this craving is the very heart of suffering. I know I have written on this subject before, but I need to hear this often for it to begin to sink in. St. John of the Cross said,

Disquietude is always vanity because it serves no good. Even if the whole world were thrown into confusion, and all things in it, disquietude on that account would still be vanity.

This is very important for me to hear because he is saying that it is not I alone who suffer when I create conflict in this way, but all beings. Why? Because not only does my attitude create disquiet for others, but when my energies are spent in pursuing the impossible, I have none left for the pursuit of the goal of the end of suffering for all beings. This is why he chooses the word "vanity" and not, say, "futility" or "sadness". "Disquietude is always vanity".

Not Heather Martin

Yesterday I spoke with my teacher Heather Martin. She reminded me that this feeling of dissatisfaction is a result of living in the Small Mind, the part of my consciousness that is ruled by these ideas of finite orderliness rather than the vast spaciousness of the open heart. I think of the Small Mind as being controlled by a Jack Russell terrier. It is a bundle of nerves that believes it knows what should come next and that it must be done Right Now. But, just like a nervous little dog, my Small Mind has only the vaguest idea of what would serve me well and rather a one-track mind.

This sounds innocent enough, cute even, but my life and, I would argue, the lives of most people are run by this unwise little dictator. One of the most important lessons the Buddha had to teach was that the larger mind exists; most of us have no clue about this unless it is pointed out. What Heather was trying to remind me was that in the spaciousness of the broader consciousness, there is room for everything, with vast  quantities of real estate to spare. I need not avoid the toxicity life brings my way because it can be placed in this space and will cause no harm, will barely be noticed. When I am living in the Small Mind, every little problem threatens to suffocate me, or so it seems. When I am living in Large Heart, love is the predominant force, it scents the very air I breathe.

All of this, I must realize, is a matter of choice. I can choose to be in one mind or the other. Why do I choose the more painful? Once again, I have to believe it is because it is familiar, is what I have believed for most of my life was the only world there was, the only world in which I was safe. Even when I have been shown the doorway to Oz, why do I hesitate? Just because there's no place like home doesn't necessarily mean it's a good place to dwell.

I would like to live in the place that Hafez describes in his poem "With That Moon Language":

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me."

Of course you do not do this out loud,

Otherwise someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this,

This great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one who lives with a

Full moon in each eye that is always saying

—with that sweet moon language—

What every other eye in this world is dying to hear.

Lost

Not sure where to begin. I feel so lost sometimes, as if the core if who I am gets called into question. I know I have written about this feeling a great deal lately. But this is, for me, the most profound of all experiences, this contrast between my reality as a being that does, after all, exist in some form (however ephemeral)  and the truth of the constantly dissolving, crumbling nature of that beingness.

Does this sound very foreign and strange? Contradictory and a little nuts? Yeah, it feels that way to me too, quite often. Yet it also feels more entirely truthful than the next largest truths there are. I want for things to be certain and comfortable, always. Yet because I desire the certainty, I cannot have the comfort; there's a Catch-22 for you! It's as if I had hitched my happiness to the sun always shining—at least once a day for half the day (or thereabouts) my hopes would be dashed.

My parents are old and becoming gradually less able to care for themselves. Contemplation of the inevitability of aging, decay, and death is one of the Buddha's primary instructions to us, an entry point to the holiest of understandings, that all things are of this nature, the nature to arise and pass away. We can understand this intellectually with great profundity, yet have no capacity to face the reality of it in the form of our own illness or injury, or the slow diminution that is the inexorable march toward the end of life as it is experienced by those we love. Because it is deeply uncomfortable, of course. Death is one thing, but gradual loss is quite another. Here's the Buddha's take on this, though: suffering is my resistance to the truth; the experience itself is entirely neutral.

Easy for him to say.

There is another factor in this situation with my parents: we cannot afford to provide them with everything that might make this journey as comfortable as it could be. This precipitates us into hard choices and difficult conversations no one wishes to contemplate.

So much comes down to humility, it seems to me. In the contemplation of the great mysteries, even in thinking of the smaller ones, the minor questions, an honest survey reveals how entirely helpless I am in the face of these forces. Not merely the forces of old age, disease and death, not just the forces of nature that destroy homes and lives, not only the forces of economies and injustice and misplaced societal priorities, no, even in the contemplation of the smallest realities of my existence I am almost entirely powerless to change things. I can choose which shirt I wear today and, perhaps (if I am willing to be uncomfortable) not to wear a shirt at all. But I can choose neither the nature of the body upon which I place the shirt nor the need it feels to be clothed. I cannot willy-nilly decide to disregard decades of conditioning and wear a dashiki instead, not with any level of comfort. I must humble myself to know that I am the sum total of the causes and conditions that brought me to this point. Far from being a free agent, I am at the mercy of that which led to this time in my existence. I must, in the words of the old phrase, "dance with him what brung me".

I am tired today, without any identifiable reason. I have goals and plans and schemes, but I am tired. I probably won't do most of what I had in mind. I must listen when my body tells me to halt. I need to make myself a steward of this body and this mind in order to move forward into a deeper understanding of what it means to have a body and a mind.

There is no easy solution to my parents' situation, of course. There are complexities piled on top of complications. Also to be considered is the fact that the grooves of the relationship between my parents were first laid down over 70 years ago when they first met and have been worn and deepened every day since. We may be as logical, sensible, rational, caring, loving, and reasonable as we wish, yet this will be no proof against these well-worn patterns of love between them. Because it is love, that's clear, even when (especially when?) they bicker or disagree or grow impatient.

I began this post by saying I was lost. And I am. But lostness is the truth of our lives. It is when we consider ourselves found that we are living most in delusion, if only because even if this feeling is true it cannot last. Where I have found myself will change, I will change, and once again I will be lost. We are all wanderers in this wilderness of being alive and human. It is not easy. But it sure beats the alternative. It is enough.

Overcome any bitterness that may have come because you were not up to the magnitude of the pain entrusted to you. Like the mother of the world who carries the pain of the world in her heart, you are sharing in a certain measure of that cosmic pain, and are called upon to meet it in joy instead of self-pity.

  Pir Vilayat Khan

Regret

An email from my mother got me thinking about regret. My dictionary says that regret is to feel sorrow or remorse for (an act, fault, disappointment, etc.) The Buddha would define it quite differently, though. He would say, I believe, that it is thinking of the past as if we could change it to something more desirable. The importance of this definition for me is the recognition of the sheer futility implied. We cannot change the past any more than we can write upon the ocean. Nothing is more ephemeral than the past, unless it is the future. There is no reality save what exists in this moment.

Intellectually, we understand this. The past has passed and will never be again. But there is something fundamental in us, it seems, that makes it desirable, imperative even, to relive our past deeds and characteristics as if to do so serves some distinct and worthwhile aim.

"Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past." —Anne Lamott

Perhaps most pernicious is the nugget of a poisonous idea that we deserve to feel regret and remorse for things we have done, said, felt, lost, or broken. Nothing could be further from the truth. As the saying goes, the coal can only stop burning when you drop it. This is essential: you do not deserve to be punished for your misdeeds. There may be some need on the part of the society to impose a penalty, but if you truly feel the wrong of what you have done in your heart, make what amends you can, and set out on a path that does not involve repeating the wrong, you have done the sum total of what it is possible to do. Anything else is not only masochism but a waste of your precious energies, which could be devoted to freeing yourself and others from the bonds of false belief, the highest calling it is possible to have. And what better antidote for remorse than this?

Here's a formula for you: if there is something you regret, face it head on. Acknowledge your fault wholly. Make what amends you can, if possible in a face to face meeting with the wronged person (if there is a person involved), otherwise in as direct a fashion as possible (eg, if you stole money, pay it back). Then LET IT GO. You have done all you can with this regret and it can no longer be of any use to you. I am aware this is far more easily said than done, but it is the intent that is most valuable. To see the regret for what it is, a vestige of an event far in the past that only has power to harm while you allow it, is to put yourself on the road to healing.

Not that grief, pain, and remorse cannot, to a certain extent, be healing in their own right. If we blithely passed over the death of a loved one or the end of a cherished bond, we would hardly be human. But to wallow in these as if the pain itself had value is an odd vestige of a time when we humans were required to be ever-vigilant and dwell on our failures because to forget them could be deadly. When a predator nearly caught us through an act of negligence, perhaps a momentary lapse, it was worthwhile to vividly recall the event. But we no longer live with that kind of threat and have the intelligence to learn a lesson without flagellating ourselves with it.

The Buddha said:

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly. 

and 

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere.

These are not casual ideas to be given lip service or to be hoped for and not practiced. Rather, these are at the very core of the teachings of the Buddha. We have only so much energy to divvy up among the many demands of our minds and bodies. To waste one more second on the past than to glean from it what lessons it has to give is to carry in our arms the corpse of one we loved. It is dead. To bury it is to do it the full honor it deserves.

Thus have I heard.

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.

Who We Are

Last week, there was a shooting in my neighborhood, this one just a block away, a drive-by that may have been gang-related. I don't think this means I live in a dangerous place, at least not more so than any city and much less than many.

I was in California visiting my family this weekend. Circumstances sensitized me to the many acts of kindness, large and small, that go on around us every day. They are many and often, from the person who donates millions to promote the well-being of strangers half a world away to the man who held open the lid to a garbage can for me. In fact, our society runs on consideration and kindness. One example: driving would be warfare if we didn't yield right-of-way, make way for merging traffic and drive at somewhat sane speeds. Oh, I know, there are lunatics and rude people on the road, too, but the level of civility implied by millions of miles of 65 mile-per-hour driving without constant altercation and mayhem is a monument to a deeply grounded ethic.

Governance in this country has been reduced to a cruel hoax, with entrenched interests playing off against one another for pieces of a shrinking pie which ought not, by all rights, be theirs to divide. The most vital questions of our era, of any era—global climate change, entrenched societal racism and sexism, economic inequality, systemic disenfranchisement, unchecked and increasingly futile militarism, macroeconomic senescence—are not even under discussion, while what passes for seriousness is empty posturing and deeply ignorant moral certainty.

With the exception of a vocal minority, the country has embraced the right of gay men and women to marry, parent, work and live without harassment or legal barriers.

The internet is an annoying rabble of scrabbling self-interest while being full to bursting with millions of people putting forth enormous amounts of time and effort to provide content, guidance, information and shared knowledge with no thought of return.

Fear—of personal economic ruin, poverty, otherness, violence, abrogation of freedoms—has led to a poisoned atmosphere of suspicion and hatred in a powerful minority of Americans.

Every devastating event—tornado, earthquake, flood, forest fire, drought—brings with it an outpouring of heartfelt generosity.

War has been a staple of the human species since Og first struck Oog with a rock in a dispute over mastodon steaks.

Considering its history of contention and bloody strife, the efforts of Europe to unify is amazing, fraught with peril and misguided provincialism, perhaps, but nonetheless a testament to the great, deep well of forgiveness and grace of which we are capable.

All over the country, every day, small groups gather—little Tea Party cells—to revile and feed their hatred of everyone who's not like them. All over the country, every day, small groups gather—little 12 Step cells—to collectively reach the realization that only when we love, honor and help others will we find fulfillment and joy.

Which is all to say that we are a surprising, frustrating, kind, mean, generous, selfish, fabulous, revolting, gentle, violent, hopeful, hopeless, intelligent, clueless, informed, ignorant, dumb, damned, doomed, delicate, decisive, disastrous, determined, dithering delight of a species.

What to make of us, eh?

It's OK to Feel Alright

It's OK to feel alright. Yes, I know, the world is a mess. I am aware that I have not always been the best person in the world. The question isn't whether or not I deserve to feel alright, whether I deserve to feel joy and happiness. The question really is, what end does it serve for me to feel anything other than perfectly fine? It really is entirely justified for us to feel at peace with life; in fact, it is the only way it is constructive to be. Our anger, our frustration, our self-blame, our doubt, our despair—these are not useful. They feel useful, I will grant you. They feel as if they are the only way to be in the face of everything that is going on in the world and many of the things that have gone on in our lives.

What does the Buddha have to say? One of his primary responses was teachings on the brahma viharas. Now, let me say something first about this term, brahma vihara. This is usually translated as "divine abode". Both the Pali term and the translation, though, make these seem as if they are something remote and esoteric. But we must never forget that the Buddha was above all a pragmatic teacher, so let's delve a bit further.

Brahmas were, indeed, divine beings. Vihara simply means a dwelling or a secluded place to walk. So, the term means "where the brahmas hang out". But the Buddha was using the term to try to evoke a particular understanding in his listeners. In that era, he could safely assume that those he was teaching would like nothing better than to live where the brahmas lived. In our era, a somewhat successful analogy might be "heaven", if to you that means a particularly desirable place. In any case, I believe the best translation of brahma vihara is "a really great place to live your life." The Buddha was hoping his students would want to spend as much time as they could with these states of being.

The brahma viharas are compassion, sympathetic joy, openheartedness, and equanimity. (Let me leap right in and admit that I have used the term "openheartedness" in place of the usual "lovingkindness". Two of my teachers have pointed out that love is a very loaded word and this was not really the intent of the original term, metta. Rather, the Buddha hoped that we would be able to extend our hearts to as many of our fellow creatures as we can manage, thus the term "openheartedness").

Compassion is the "quivering of the heart" felt in response to another's pain. Sympathetic joy is the flip side of this emotion, a quivering of the heart in response to the joy or success another feels. Openheartedness is the ability to keep all beings in your heart, no matter what. Equanimity is the quality which keeps all these in balance without letting them overcome you.

I bring all this up because last weekend it came to me as something of an insight while on a non-residential retreat with Sharon Salzberg that I often act as if there was some virtue in feeling bad. There isn't. It may sometimes be inevitable (grief, pain, sadness) and even useful in leading us into ways of deepening compassion, empathy and openheartedness. But don't we all tend to think (at least sometimes) that because we have from time to time been unskillful we deserve to feel ashamed or that it is only through this shame we shall become purified? Don't we all sometimes believe that we have no right to joy when people are living with war, starvation, lack of clean water, disease, and institutional abuse? Yet these are not only utterly untrue but destructive. We cannot increase the well-being of others through increasing our own suffering. Let me be very clear about this: you will not help yourself, the world, or other beings by feeling negative toward yourself.

Of course, we must also aver that it is also alright to not feel OK. It is not that there is any problem with feeling badly, but our tendency to believe that this is somehow inherently meritorious. It is interesting, isn't it, how self-pity, self-doubt, self-hatred, self-blame and self-examination all begin with Self. How can we act in the best interest of others if we are so thoroughly engaged in such selfish pursuits?

Up In The Air

Thursday, June 21, early morning: I begin this post high up in the air over the flatlands west of the Rocky Mountains. Soon I will be in Denver, then on to Milwaukee, where my mother-in-law is dying.

I suppose I should apologize for writing so much the past few weeks about death, but I won't. The way I have been thinking of it is this: if I were in the circus, I would write about clowns and elephants. As it is, I happen to be in a time of dying and decreasing function in those about me, so that is what is on my mind.

I am feeling dislocated and anxious, though I suspect this is mostly to do with getting up so early. The day after the longest day of the year and I still arrived at the airport in the dark. Of course, there's also the fact of the suddenness of this trip; this time yesterday I wasn't even at work yet and it was only after lunch it was decided I should come. It's been a whirlwind. But I feel as if I am heading toward something useful at last. My birth family has been in an uproar the past few days over my parents' diminished capacity, my wife has been in Milwaukee while that situation is unfolding, and the friend I wrote about in my last post is facing all that. Meanwhile I sat at home doing housework—useful but feeling irrelevant.

(Speaking of that friend, I might as well admit here to an insecurity: so few people commented on my last post that I fear you hated it; mostly I fear that the person it was about disapproves of it. I have thought of no reason why I should regret it, but I carry the fear anyway. Not your problem, dear reader; saying it in this post is just a way of trying to keep it from clanging about in my head...)
.
Is it perhaps selfish to want to be relevant to other people's process? But of course it is my process, too, and I want to be present for it.
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Late morning: Now up in the air between Denver and Milwaukee. Nothing to see but agricultural fields all the way to the horizon, and beyond, I imagine. In a certain way this is dull and repetitive to look at, but astonishingly ingenious in design and execution. To think that all of that land was forced into some sort of fecundity by human hands in one way or another—if not directly, then through the machines they brought into being—is unnerving and inspiring. It is difficult for me to imagine the vastness of it until I am up here like this. I especially like the circular fields, clearly made that way to accommodate straight-line sprinklers on a central pivot. (Though I can’t help but wonder about the wasted space that making a circle in the middle of a square implies. I also wonder: if you build your farmhouse within the circle, if you forget to turn the sprinklers off or are unexpectedly called away, do they run into your house, or what? Or are they more sophisticated than that?).

I think I’m looking down on the Mississipi River now. It’s big and long and water, in any case. I figure I’m in about the right place....

My friend Tamara reminded me that the process of being a witness to the life-transitions of other people is one of watchful waiting, of just being with rather than doing. I admitted to one of my friends yesterday (before it had been decided I would make this trip) that I organize and clean and tidy because I believe, somewhere inside me, that no one will be hurt or die as long as I keep things neat. I can keep us all safe with a good vacuuming and reorganizing of the paint shelf. Let me tell you, the tool area in the basement has never looked so good. 

Heather, my spiritual mentor, reminds me to let my grief and pain be embodied, to know what it feels like. The small mind, she warns, wants nothing more than to make it seem as if the concerns, routines and tasks it comes up with are all there is, and that a solution to some problem or other can be found in paying attention to that persistent voice telling me to strive and strive and strive. I know it isn’t so, but it feels like I am doing something, anything, to ward off the fear. This isn’t fear of death, mind you, at least I don’t think so, not my death or anyone else’s. This is fear of disruption, of my comfortable little world being challenged. This is precisely what the Buddha spoke of in his first teachings, that the nature of suffering is this desire to keep things just the same, to fend off the uncomfortable while accepting only what I like. It’s not that he thought this a bad idea, necessarily, but recognized its absolute futility and the inevitable frustration (suffering) of being stymied in that desire over and over again.

Seeing small towns from the air makes clear what we mostly (as a species) come late to understand: after we have cut down all the trees and cleared the land for agriculture, in the places we live we want those trees back and must replant them, this time in neat little rows that define the streets where we plunk our houses down. This seems to be true everywhere in these flat, fertile lands except where the rivers flood, which look to be places where the trees have been allowed to grow undisturbed; from a farmer's perspective the marshy ground good for little else, no doubt.
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Evening: Now in Milwaukee. This truly is only a bearing witness. Oh, there are a few things to do, a few opinions to voice, a concern or two. But mostly it is a reflection: what a miracle this life is, what a mystery the infolding of our consciousness as it ends. She was here, now mostly she is not, though her body lives on and now and then she rises to the surface (when she recognized I had come Jeanette said, "Well, look who's here!") but mostly not. She is gone and not gone. We spoke of the possibility of chemically inducing a coma to make her less restless and (presumably) more comfortable, but her daughters didn't want that. The distinction is subtle but real to us. What is being here and not being here? Where is that line? Why does the body go on when the spirit is ready to go? For that matter, what influence does the spirit have on the automatic processes of the body? Some, we know, but not total hegemony.

So I will bear witness. I will be helpful where I can, but mostly bear witness. It feels a bit lame to end such a post in such a way, without any profound Buddhist sentiment about death and dying, but there it is. Bearing witness and opening my heart—to Jeannette and to those who love her, to the process she has begun and that only she can decide how to end—that's all I am here to do.

I will share this from Pema Chodron, though:

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.