The Only Power We Have

The only question these days, or so it seems to me, is, "How do we live in this world as it is?" Because it is no secret to anyone that we are in a bit of a mess. We are threatened on every side, or so it appears, and it is difficult to remain optimistic. And yet I am. I am not naively optimistic that everything is going to be O.K., because I'm pretty sure it's not, at least not by the definitions of okayness I have always held as my measure of such things. And sometimes I genuinely despair when I think of the world children being born right now will inherit.

No, my optimism has an entirely different source, one that is difficult for me to tap into from time to time, but which is much more solid and real than the cynicism it is so easy to fall into these days. It is not that everything will someday be alright, but the thought, the deeply held understanding that they could not be otherwise.

I know this can seem to be a tautology: things are as they are because they are as they are and could not be otherwise because if they could be otherwise, they would be otherwise. Well...duh. But that's not really what I mean. The deep meaning of the teachings of the Buddha (at least as far as I am capable of penetrating them with my relatively shallow insight) is that there is nothing that cannot be made worse by wishing it were otherwise. And there is no joy that cannot be ruined by wishing that it could remain forever so. The good and the bad (so-called) arise and pass away.

Each generation believes they are living in the end times. I recall very clearly the certainty we felt in the 1970s that nuclear apocalypse was upon us and the only question was when it would happen. We had to decide from day to day whether or not it was worthwhile making plans. Kathy and I had quite a serious discussion about bringing children into a world they would never see into adulthood; that is how thoroughly we believed in the end of everything. Yet that era arose and passed away. From the luxury of historical remove, we can see that world wars have a beginning, a horrid middle and a joyous end. But in the minds of those living through them there is no such certainty. They, too, have lived through the certainty of end times that nonetheless never arrived.

So, I go through my life with two key commandments for myself: the first is to practice complete and utter acceptance to the best of my ability, because pushing against the reality of what is will only increase the misery of all those around me. The second is to do my very best not to make things worse. There are actions I can take to ameliorate my small corner of global climate change. I can vote for and support those who practice tolerance and kindness. I can open my heart to everyone around me to the best of my ability (I am not very good at this, I admit—it's scary. But I try). I will assume that everything will come out precisely as it is supposed to, not in some sort of "God predestined it" way, but because, indeed, it could not have happened any other way. To presume we can change the past to create a better future is pure fantasy and is not helpful.

And I will not hate. I understand that there are many people who are doing a great many despicable things, but to practice hatred is to let those evildoers call the tune and create in me a place of hardness and rage to match theirs. Humans seem to share an odd delusion that if we practice hate toward a person or group of people, somehow our hatred will overwhelm theirs (somewhat analagous to shouting at the television to change the outcome of the ballgame). Where is the evidence for this? How exactly would that work? Do we believe Donald Trump has the answer to these questions? He seems to think he does, but I have yet to hear him give us a practical plan for how hate is going to solve anything at all, how it will not in fact make things much, much worse, than they already are.

I am not going to do these things because they are the right thing to do, even though they are. I am not going to do them in the vague hope that my love will spread all over the world and make things better, though it might. I am going to do these things because it is the only decent, respectful, openhearted, constructive, proper way to live, and in the end, it is the only decent, respectful, openhearted, constructive, proper way to die, if that is what is to come sooner rather than later.

What else can we do? How can we do anything but love? What other power do we have?

A Year of Metta

I have been pondering the metta sutta recently. For those of you not familiar with the teachings of the Buddha, metta can be translated in several different ways, but most commonly as lovingkindness. And a sutta is simply a teaching. So, the metta sutta is a teaching on lovingkindness delivered by the Buddha.

One of the things that led me to consider this sutta is that quirk of human character which makes all of us more or less selfish. I know this sounds like a criticism, but what I mean is that we are hardwired for survival of ourselves as organisms, and that while essentially no effort is required to think in this way, quite a bit of effort is required to think altruistically.

This fact is not a problem, really, at least not for the most part. Of course, taken to an extreme, this overarching philosophy is the source of all war and the degradation of the environment, since we tend to think rather narrowly about personal or tribal survival at the expense of more (literally and figuratively) global concern. But on a day to day basis, thinking in this way does not really create much havoc.

But it doesn't create much harmony, either, and I have been wondering if my own life and the lives of those around me might not be made considerably more harmonious if I focused my attention on ways of serving others as my first consideration. It's not that I'm some insensitive bastard in my accustomed mode, mind you, but I do find myself rather narrowly focused on what is going to get me through the day, rather than how I can make your life simpler or easier.

Thus the metta sutta. It seems to me that this simple teaching provides the guidance I need to make this shift in thinking and acting in the world.

One quick word on the name of this sutta. Metta can apparently be translated in several ways. I don't speak Pali, of course, but a teacher I trust (Christina Feldman) has chosen the term unconditional friendliness as the translation she prefers. She has said that the term love can be quite a loaded term for many of us, and kindness a bit vague. On the other hand, unconditional friendliness seems to her (and to me) very specific and describes a way of being in the world to which we can all aspire. Thus, from here on out, when I speak of metta, it is this translation I will use. You probably won't see me write the word lovingkindness in this blog for quite some time.

Not that I dislike the word itself, but I do feel it has become code for some sort of vague, warm, fuzzy feeling toward the whole world and all the creatures in it. I'm not sure that's what the Buddha had in mind. We can all generate happy thoughts about bunnies. What metta asks of us is much more stringent. Can you, it asks, feel unconditional friendliness toward everyone and everything? Toward nuclear reactors and ISIS? Toward those who practice hatred, greed, and violence? Toward people who have done the deepest damage to you in your life? Rather than the casual generation of good vibes, metta may well be among the hardest work any of us will ever do.

What I am proposing is to make metta the heart of my practice for a full year. I have taken such vows before (not metta vows, but others) and find that a year is a good test of my discipline. Also, after doing just about anything for a year, it usually becomes an integral part of who I am. That is the hope. Because I distrust the whole idea of New Year's resolutions (too often bogus, too often broken by January 15), I propose to begin this on Decmeber 1st, which is, of course, in a few days.

I'll keep you posted. In future posts, I will also write a bit more about the sutta itself so that you (and I along with you) can figure out a bit of what this vow means. What have I gotten myself into? I guess we'll see.

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.

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.

Being dissed

It is sometimes difficult for me not to think apocalyptically. The environment, government ineptitude, SARS, MERS, Ebola, intractable internecine and international wars, the rise of radical factions of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and even Buddhism; all of these threaten my equanimity and sense of peace. Not to mention the normal day-to-day ravages of aging, illness, and impending death; family struggles, traffic woes, dueling egos, and overwrought colleagues.

I have become disenchanted.

Hmm...quite a lovely word, disenchanted. What we take it to mean is that once upon a time (in a country far, far away, perhaps), things were wonderful, or meant to be wonderful, and now they are no longer so, and this is sad, sad, sad. But it seems to me that this word is much more informative than we give it credit for. What it truly means is that I was once living in a fantasy world, I was enchanted, as if by a sorcerer or a fairy queen, and now I am disenchanted, no longer blinded by fairy dust.

I have become disillusioned.

The Buddha was very clear that the cause of our suffering is our illusions, the resistance we exhibit in response to the normal vicissitudes of our lives. It is not bad or wrong that there are wars or disease, old age or death, struggles and hatreds, shame and remorse. This is the way of things—perhaps not as we would wish them to be (and there are tools we can and ought to use to change what it is possible to change)—but as they are, nonetheless. I have stepped out of my illusions into the light of reality. I have ceased (to the best of my ability) feeling resentment, hatred, and fear in response to things being other than as I want them to be.

I am disappointed.

I am no longer the self-appointed judge of what you do and who you are. I have experienced a profound realization (ah, if only I could always remember this) of the nature of things as they are, of people as they are. We are all the result of conditions which have accumulated over centuries, millenia even, to result in this one unique being. Our DNA is packed with instincts and understandings arising from the experiences of our forbears (and which are the mirror image of those who did not survive to pass their inheritance on). Our psyches are stuffed with the emotional and physical experiences not only of our lives, but of the lives of thousands upon thousands who came before us. What you bring to the table across from me is the sum total of all this, and our paths have been different, so how is it possible that I should believe you are just like me, will react and think as I do, will see the world as I do?

I no longer have this disability, this disadvantage, am no longer disaffected or disagreeable. These have disappeared, been disarmed (well, I wish). Things may be in disarray, but this no longer disobliges me. I can discontinue the behaviors that lead to distress. I need not be the source of discord, in me or in the world around me; I need not be disgruntled. There is less and less a discrepancy between my beliefs and my actions. I can discriminate between the true and the false.

I am disencumbered.

Expectations

A confession: until recently I wasn't sitting in meditation very often. Since I was promoted, I have been spending much longer hours at work and what got sacrificed (for a while) was meditation. These things happen in the life of someone devoted to this practice, so it doesn't concern me much. At the beginning of this month I committed myself to sitting every day, went back to the habits I had until not that long ago.

Here's the thing, though: when I began sitting again, one of the reasons I did so was to seek a feeling of ease. This is what's known as a rookie mistake. I should know better. Why? Because one of the surest ways to make a mash of meditation is to place expectations on it. Meditation is only truly effective if I drop all hope for an outcome and relax into the experience of it. This was the central message the Buddha had to impart: it is not circumstances that cause us to suffer, but the idea that somehow things should be other than they are. I took up meditation again for all the right reasons and a couple of wrong ones.

And I found myself falling into the same trap that most beginning (and many experienced) meditators fall into: the belief that because I did not feel immediate relief, it was the meditation that was failing me and not my expectations that set me up for a false feeling of failure.

I have the great good fortune, though, to have studied enough of the Dharma and to have had wonderful teachers. So I know that this is irresponsible nonsense. It is true that meditation leads to a sense of freedom and greater happiness, but it is a process, not a recipe. And it only comes to pass when all hope of achieving freedom or happiness or pretty much anything else have been abandoned. Because it is the abandoning itself that yields these fruits.

Big assignment, I know. That's one of the reasons retreats are so valuable. The wonderful thing about retreat is that it accelerates this process. The outcome is not permanent peace and serenity (though at the very end of a retreat—before you re-enter the real world—it can feel like it might). The outcome is that you have touched peace and serenity, so you know it is possible to get there. Then you never want to give up seeking it (by not seeking it at all—see, it's tricky!)

It sounds contradictory, I know. There is a certain kind of magical thinking in the world that truly believes good can come to us by wishing for it rather than working for it. Does that sound curmudgeonly? It's not, really. It is, as I said, the core of what the Buddha taught. There is no fairy godmother to make your dreams come true. Knocking on wood will not protect you from calamity. And meditation will only bring you desirable things if you pursue it without expectation and with the willingness to continue putting butt to cushion day in and day out even if what arises is unpleasant.

Think of it this way: jumping out an airplane can be a wonderful experience, but only in very narrowly defined circumstances. Doing so with the expectation of soaring on your own without equipment or preparation is unlikely to end well. Being thrown out, no matter how well-equipped you might be, will also likely end in disaster. But armed with information, a good teacher, and the requisite stuff, it might just be one of the most wonderful things you can do.

Reflecting on expectation this past month also caused me to take a look at the world and see what evil can be brought upon us by this dangerous force. There is an expectation of comfort, of plenty, of being able to impose your beliefs on others, of untouchability when one is in power. There is the expectation that we can continue to do as we do while the world heats up. That we can solve the world's problems with bombs and guns (ain't worked yet).

It's not that I don't understand the world is a complicated place; I know it is. I live in the midst of contradiction and competing goods that can't all be fulfilled. I work in an environment where the challenges facing everyone (not just clients) are complex and where there is not sufficient time, ever, to fufill the many demands placed upon us.

All the more reason to break down the corrosive concept of expectation. All the more reason to sit down at least once a day and let go of all that. All the more reason to surrender to the void, open our hearts, let ourselves soar. The world is not a hopeless place and we are not inherently destructive beings. But seeking to be always satisfied makes us into that. Let's not.

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.

But It's Still Work

I have been writing quite a bit lately about letting go, which sounds so easy. And it is easy, once we get past all of the things that stand in the way. But getting past those things requires an enormous amount of work.

Now, why should this be? I have been curious about this question for as long as I remember. Why are we not just born with an innate sense of the value of letting go of all those things that keep us from happiness and joy? Is there some adaptive reason why we can't just begin life as wise beings?

I think there is. Of course, some people are born more wise than others (I have no idea why that might be so, though it seems to be), but all of us have to go through the maturation process of separation from our parents and making our way in the world, which is, in a word, terrifying. It might also be wonderful, exciting, and cool, but it is nonetheless terrifying. We respond to that terror with ways of coping which make life more bearable, but which also isolate us, place barriers between ourselves and others and also between ourselves and the naked truth.

Babies are born with an utter openness, which they then lose. Those of us seeking freedom later in life must work to get that openness back. But it would be futile to hang on to that infantile openness, because only with experience can we gain wisdom. And it is only when the openness is combined with wisdom that it can actually lead anywhere worth going. Freedom without wisdom is empty, even dangerous.

But what exactly is the work we have in front of us? That is, perhaps, the most important question we will ever ask ourselves. I suppose that for each of it the form this work takes is different, measured out not only on the basis of our preferences, but as a result of our individual experiences. Still, there is a common theme to the work we must do if we are to reach the freedom that is available to each of us.

I have come to believe that this work may have no better name than kindness. I am aware that this seems a bit wimpy; I could have said "justice" or "spiritual awakening" or "enlightenment", but I truly believe that these (and other such aspirations) are a result, more than anything, of kindness. Because if we aspire for ourselves, we are leaving behind all those poor, benighted others that don't achieve what we achieve. Only with a heart of kindness can we know that all must be brought along with us for spiritual attainment to be worthwhile.

Language, as always, is inadequate to express what exactly I mean by kindness. In Pali, the word metta is familiar to most practitioners of the Dharma. Metta is generally taken to mean "lovingkindness", but also translates (so I am told) as "unconditional friendliness" and "openheartedness", as well as other, similar terms. What would it be like to be entirely loving, friendly, and openhearted? What would it take to be thoroughly kind?

What would be required is complete and unconditional acceptance of life as it is, of others as they are, of ourselves just as we are in this moment. What would be required is letting go, but doing so with unconditional love.

Does this sound impossible? It's not. It's unlikely, but not impossible. And the good news is that we can start absolutely anywhere. Try this: be the nicest person the grocery store clerk encounters all day. Just do that. It is an act of love. It is openheartedness. It is metta. It is not only the road to ultimate peace, but the road to true freedom, what we choose to call nirvana. We can achieve this one grocery clerk at a time. Start there. Work your way up to the person you find most unforgivable. When we hate or resent, when we put any creature out of our hearts, we are only poisoning ourselves.

It is simple, truly it is. Not easy, but simple. Peace awaits us.

Delight in the Difficult

While walking home from the grocery store today I dropped a gallon of milk. The plastic split and all of the milk spilled on the sidewalk and into the street. I was grumpy about this as I walked back to the store until, fully formed and without my volition came into my head, "Don't cry over spilt milk," which made me laugh.

This is a minor unpleasantness, of course. It is just milk. I have enough money to buy more. It's a hassle and a waste, but it's no big deal. But we all have experienced much more bitter disappointments, failures, and disasters. The challenge of delighting (a subject I began last week) is much greater with the difficult things we must face than those that are wonderful or neutral. This is where the grist for the mill of mindfulness resides.

It is easy to say that one should merely accept all things as being as they are. While this is true as far as it goes, the problem is that some things really do feel very odious. Pain is by definition unpleasant. The death of a loved one feels as if it will rip us apart. Loss of our dreams, hopes, aspirations or good fortune digs a deep pit of despair. To say we should accept these things with equanimity seems more than just a bit facile, the breezy recommendation of one who has never experienced them. (I wrote a post a few months ago about The Happy Bird, who asked that everyone "sing a little happy song when every little thing goes wrong". The point of this story is that everyone wants to strangle the little shit).

A good friend of ours has a young friend (only 20 years old) who was in a terrible car accident a few weeks ago and may not have much of a recovery. When my friend went to a coworker and said, "This just isn't good", her friend immediately said, "Oh, we don't know it's not a good thing!" Well...yes, we do.

Acceptance is not denial. Acceptance is the idea that everything is as it is. There is no judgment of good or bad in acceptance. Everything must be as it is because if it could be otherwise, it would be. Wishing it were different cannot make it so. Wishing it were different, inveighing against how bad things are, how those who don't deserve such suffering should not have to go through such things, and how those who are evil sometimes get much more of the good than they should, does not tip the scale one way or the other.

What such thinking does is increase the suffering in the world. The Buddha spoke of two darts; the first dart is the original injury, which he acknowledged is not a pleasant experience. But the second dart is this insistence that the first dart should never have injured us, that it's not fair that we should be hurt by a dart when so many go unhurt, our demand for justice. We read all the time about families who carry bitterness and a desire for revenge for years after a loved one has been hurt. I see them as bristling with darts, weighed down by the poison of them. And only the first of those darts was put there by someone else.

How much more wonderful would it be if we could find it in our hearts to accept what is, not to believe that all things are "as they are meant to be" or "part of God's plan", but merely that they are as they are. We can delight in the difficult because it gives us the opportunity to practice what we know of the Dharma, to look to the Buddha and ask how this can be the road to enlightenment. There is an answer in who he was, in what his teachings are, if we open our hearts to them.

Delight

I think I missed the point of my own post last week. I knew what I wanted to say when I started, but then lost sight of it. It goes something like this:

What we need to work toward is taking delight in the everyday. This is the very nature of nirvana. When we think of the mundane as a drag, as things to be gotten through so the Real Living can begin, we miss out on the treasure hidden within every moment.

There is a story of a man who went all over the world seeking riches, yet when he came home, broken and old, he was told by a deity to dig beneath his house, where he found a box full of the greatest treasure he could imagine. At which (so the story goes) he promptly died. A little heavy-handed, perhaps, this tale, but you get what it's saying. When we ignore the treasure in our midst we live our lives in the grasp of greed, the constant seeking for something other than what we have. The treasure of meditative awareness is contained in every minute detail of our lives; it is always and forever available to us.

Nothing could be more mundane than the breath, yet this is what many of us choose as the focus of our meditation. It is prosaic and boring, ever-present and mostly unvarying (at least we hope so!) Yet think of where we would be without it (well, we wouldn't be without it, of course). Another story: a young Zen monk sitting by the shore of a river with his master was complaining that the breath was boring, that he couldn't imagine spending the rest of his life contemplating something so unbearably common. Without a word, the master grasped the young man and thrust his head under water (in these stories, Zen masters are always incredibly strong), holding him there just long enough to make his point, then asking, "Now, my brother, what do you think of the breath?" Which also reminds me of the comic in which a young monk is sitting next to an old monk and the latter is saying, "What do you mean, 'what next?' This is it."

Which is not to say we should set out to glorify the breath. It truly is simply a part of being, with us from birth to death, constant as a metronome and about as interesting. What we need to do, though, it take this as our cue to elevate everything we experience to the level of valued teacher. Every meal we eat, every heartbeat, every step we take, each tick of a clock, every horn honking in the street; sitting, standing, lying down, toileting, bathing, brushing our teeth, walking down stairs, taking out the garbage—all are grist for the meditative mill, if we allow them to be. I have seen this shift occur in me in the middle of doing something I consider boring or merely necessary—when I wake up to the meditative possibilities, it transforms the event into something holy. Pretty neat trick to play when picking up trash or washing the dishes. Suddenly my every motion becomes a dance, where every step is known, not just taken.

Instead, what we most often do is dismiss these as the bridge between meaningful activities, missing the value of the breath, the treasure under our floor, right under our noses. While we wait for the gift to be delivered, we fail to unwrap the hundreds we already have. But how does one do this? In any moment, we can stop. Unless the house is literally on fire, we can stop, just for the moment it takes to bring awareness into what we are doing. It changes everything.

This is, I think, what I was trying to say about meditation in my last post. When I think of myself as too busy (or too tired, bored, or important; what have you) to sit in meditation, I am exhibiting this very dismissal of the gifts in front of me. It's not that meditation is a brief foray into the spiritual; rather, it is a training ground for all of life, a reminder that the normal, the everyday, is where enlightenment lies. The most significant moment in my meditation is the moment I decide I will sit, for in that moment I have come to a recognition of the value of the practice and have shaken off the imperious voice of my mind telling me I have more important things to do.

This does not mean that all of  life must be mundane in order to find awareness; on the contrary, few things could be more meditative than those that are exciting or daring. The concept of "flow" teaches us that some of the most clearly concentrated moments of our lives are when we are thoroughly engaged with an activity, and nothing demands this of us quite so clearly as the extremes. You had damn well better be thoroughly concentrated when rock climbing or hang-gliding, or you might not survive the experience! But to seek these adrenaline rushes as the be-all of our lives is also to miss the point. All of life has the mundane in it, and all of the mundane has the Buddha in it. It really is no more complicated than that. We would like it to be more complex, because that would make us Important, but, truly, one may find ultimate peace and harmony while dusting the furniture. It's up to us.

Evil and it's Opposite

I just finished a wonderful book, The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert. This is not the place for a book review (the book is excellent, though), but there is one aspect of it that has captivated and held my attention, namely the main character's assertion that there is a flaw in the theory of evolution because it cannot account for altruism in the human (and in some cases non-human) species.

I find this odd. It seems to me clear that we are a cooperative species because we would have died out long ago if we were not, simple as that. I know that many acts of kindness or heroism have nothing to do with the survival of one's offspring, but I don't think evolution needs to be quite so literal. Birds, for instance, evolved wings because it made it more possible for them to survive, but they swoop and soar sometimes simply for the pleasure of it. There is no evolutionary adaptation there; it is more or less a side effect of a desirable trait. Just so, the extremes of altruism may not have anything directly to do with evolution, but the trait itself is highly adaptive. Or, so it seems to me.

Of more interest to me is the nature and persistence of evil. Here we truly do have a human characteristic that would seem to fly in the face of evolutionary theory. While it's true that the mass extermination of others (for instance) would seem to lead to the perpetuation of one's own offspring, such extreme acts go far beyond the level necessary for evolution to take place. Indeed, such extremes (history suggests) will eventually rebound upon the perpetrator and make the survival of his or her offspring less likely.

Caligula

I am thinking of the big evildoers here: Hitler, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Caligula, Torquemada, King Leopold. What could possibly have motivated these men (and it's worth noting that they are all men) to the heights of murder, rape, and torture? To simply call them evil and leave it at that seems disingenuous. These were men like any others; they were not substantially different in form from any of us.

This addresses what I believe Hannah Arendt was getting at when she coined the term "the banality of evil". It is both a disservice to humanity and an untoward exaltation of the evil one to think of Evil as something exceptional or outlandish. This way of thinking can lead to an attitude that can serve to sanitize or even romanticize evil acts. Just think about how we sometimes speak of a man like Rasputin, as someone extraordinary and mystical instead of just one more normal man gone bad.

Closer to home is the thorny situations where neither good nor bad is entirely clear. Take, for instance, the aversion most of us have for lying. We nonetheless engage in this vice on a fairly regular basis—and a good thing, too! Part of the social contract is those lies that make life possible ("Does this dress make me look fat?") On a deeper level, there is the thought experiment dreamed up (I believe) by Kant: a man who believed that lying was always wrong was sheltering his brother from a man who wanted to kill him. The potential killer came to the man's door and asked if his brother was there. What does the man say? It seems clear to me that one must always consider the greater good. To be a moral absolutist is to be a moral idiot.

I ran across two linked philosophical thought experiments the other day that also challenge the way we think about such choices. Here they are:

An out-of-control trolley is careening toward a large crowd of people and will undoubtedly kill dozens of them if it continues on its way. However, you have access to a track switch. If you throw the switch, the trolley will divert to a different track where only a few people stand; they will surely be killed in the collision. You only have time to throw the switch but not enough time to warn anyone. What do you do?

Usually people recognize in this scenario that the greater good takes precedence and, even though your action will lead directly to the death of some people, it will also save many others. But what about this?:

The same scenario as above, but this time there is no switch.You are on an overpass above where the trolley will pass. The only way to stop the trolley from killing all those people is to push the fat man standing next to you onto the tracks below, which will stop the trolley. (And, no, you are not adequately hefty to serve the purpose). You don't have time to warn anyone, including him, and you have the necessary strength to do the deed. Do you do it?

For most of us, this is a much more difficult scenario. Interestingly enough, in the latter scenario, you are responsible for the death of only one person versus "several" in the first one. Yet because you must actually put your hands on someone and directly cause his death, this is much more difficult for most of us to imagine doing. (Another twist on the scenario is that the fat man is responsible for the trolley being out of control—he rigged the controls and you know it. Is it easier to contemplate throwing him in the path of the trolley now? Why?)

I don't pretend to have facile answers to any of these questions, but I find them interesting. I think the only way we can survive is through a bit of moral relativism. Yet when we take this relativism to an extreme it can lead to horrendous injustice and indifference.

Which brings us back to altruism. It is essential that we feel compassion and openheartedness toward all of those beings in our world in order for us to survive. With all that is going on around us, this can be extraordinarily difficult. How can I hold in my heart every last refugee and starving person, every whale and polar bear, and still lead a life joyful enough to be worth living? The Buddha would say that our hearts have an infinite capacity to consider and address the problems of the world, but it doesn't always feel that way, does it?

I wish you all wonderful holidays. I will write here again after the New Year. Watch out for those trolleys.

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.

Anicca

As I walk to work, I pick up trash. Why I chose to start doing this is lost in the mists of time, but now it is simply part of what I do—I would no more leave the house without my trash-picking gloves than I would without my pants.

As I walk to work, I practice metta (lovingkindness). I first list all those whom I wish to include in my good wishes: friends, family, neighbors, pets, coworkers, difficult people. I include a broader and broader range of beings as I go, eventually including in my well-wishing all beings, everywhere. At the end, I include myself.

I am somewhat limited in the routes to work, but I have a few options. Some of them are more trash-strewn than others. Most days, these feel like the right place to be, where I can do the most good. On some days, it is far too discouraging to walk there, in places where I have, over the years, picked up a ton or two of trash, yet are sometimes still blanketed with it.

When I have completed my litany of those in my circle of loving wishes, I wish for them these things:

May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you be free of suffering.
May you know the end of pain and fear.
May your hearts be open.
May you live in unconditional friendliness.
May you live with ease.
May you know peace.

It would be a miracle, of course, if even one of these came to anyone in its totality. The idea that we could be thoroughly happy or entirely well, eternally free of suffering or that pain and fear should disappear entirely, are devoutly to be wished, but hardly to be expected. Yet it is to be hoped for nonetheless, with all our hearts.

Today I am planting bulbs for flowers that will appear in the spring.

Today I am beginning to pack for a trip to California to help celebrate Debbi's life and the release of her death.

I remind myself that the cleanliness of a place is not the point of what I am doing. I am working to open my heart and be of service to all beings everywhere. I do my best to refrain from parceling out my assistance based on my perception of merit. The trashy street is just as worthy of my attention as the nearly pristine—and is clearly more in need. Still, there are days, especially dark and gloomy days, when I cannot bring myself to go those neglected routes.

I wish these things with all my heart—well, to the best of my ability, anyway—and equally. My wife is in the list, but so is Osama bin Laden's family. My son is here, but so is Dick Cheney. As far as that goes, "all beings" includes all beings, no matter how loathsome. So mosquitoes are here, and Congress, Barak Obama and George W. Bush, the coworkers who drive me nuts and those I am drawn to. I wish them all the best of everything, always. For reasons I am not sure I understand, I do not include the dead, so there are gaps where people used to be. We arise and pass away, that is the teaching there. My list changes as there are births and marriages and divorces and death.

Sometimes I pick up pieces of trash that were part of something that was at one time, perhaps long ago, lovingly acquired, or I like to think so. The beauty or utility of a thing arises in our minds and we take it into our lives. Then it fades and becomes less useful or attractive until we entirely forget why we desired it in the first place. Then it becomes trash. And sometimes, with the heedlessness of the distracted or the misguided flip of a garbage can, it becomes litter, trash on the ground, my fodder.

Everyone is working toward the end of suffering. Hitler thought he was working toward the end of suffering, Idi Amin thought so, as did Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein. Their means were unskillful in the extreme, but their goal was the same as mine—to end suffering in this life and always, so that we might have true and lasting joy. It is difficult to bring this realization into my heart, the more so with examples that are less remote and affect me more directly: does my boss really have my best interest at heart? Does the government of this country really care about the well-being of the poor? The answer is, it doesn't matter. They all wish, as I do, for the end of suffering, and I wish this for them. I wish them peace and happiness and harmony. Wishing them ill does nothing to punish them and only harms me.

Just as we all seek the end of suffering, so, too, there is nothing created by humans in this world that someone, somewhere didn't think would be useful, if only in a limited way. Junk mail, rotting food, plastic bags, old mops, hard drives, broken lamps, bottle caps, cigarette packs, napkins, drink cups—all had their day in the sun. Sometimes I imagine them with preferences, glad to have been of service and now resigned—proud, even—to be sent back into the stream of reuse and decay. They were purposeful, then discarded, their constituent elements recommitted to usefulness.

Which is not to say that it is right to allow wrong to happen in this world. Those who are so unskillful as to create suffering for others in the process of attempting to find an end to their own must be confronted, and the greater the harm, the more urgent this need. But even this can be done with love in our hearts, not only for those who are victims of harm or threatened with harm, but toward the perpetrator. If we proceed with hate, we will inevitably cause more harm.

And the lesson is contained in this: tomorrow there will be yet more trash. In the worst places, it is never completely clean, for I can only spare a small amount of time to the effort and it seems that few others are making any. This is impermanence (known as anicca in the world of Buddhism), the knowledge that all things arise and pass away. Even trash arises and passes away...and then arises again in a different form. These streets will never be clean, and this is as it should be. My job is to be of service, to do what I can, to stoop and bend and take that one piece of paper to the recycle bin. And then another.

This is the lesson of metta. The practice of asking that good come to all beings is not a process of wishful thinking or a form of magic. These are not incantations that will bring about goodness through some esoteric process. This is an inclining of our hearts toward goodness, toward kindness, generosity and love. Though we may feel as if our contribution to the whole is minuscule, imagine what could come to pass if millions of us, billions, even, were actively hoping for good to come to pass for all beings! War would be impossible, murder would cease, rape would be a thing of the past, cruelty a fever dream. We would not tolerate evil among us and would smother it, not with swords, but with our hearts.