Put the Lime in the Coconut

My visit to the doctor last week yielded some fairly ambiguous results. I am, despite my best efforts, getting older (go figure). I have nothing seriously wrong with my shoulder, which is, of course, good news, but also means that all I can do about it is work hard with a physical therapist. Damn. One can always hope for a quick fix, eh?

My labs told me pretty much what I already knew. I am what I call "pre-pre-diabetic," meaning the labs that measure such things say I am not yet there—in fact not even very close—but am trending in the wrong direction. Whereas my fasting glucose was just barely outside the range of normal, I would not consider myself in no danger whatsoever unless my result were smack dab in the middle of normal. I find little consolation in a result that was just barely on the other side of desirable. As I mentioned in my last post, my HDL was also slightly low. That does not bode well for the future, either. I am only 56 so must assume that, if nothing changes, I will eventually be facing larger problems.

*Sigh*

Of course, my immediate response is panic. I must eliminate all bad foods, all sugar, all fatty foods, all saturated fat....Silly, of course, especially the elimination of saturated fat, at least a small amount of which is essential to my physical well-being. When the small mind is in charge, nothing will do but an all-out assault on the Problem, whatever it may be.

But what is most fascinating for me is the shift in my relationship to food in a broader sense. This has been the theme of much of this blog. It is clear that I, that most of us, do not use food merely for sustenance. It is a social force, a source of comfort, a pleasure, a joy. Fat and sugar are two of the surest sources of pleasant food experiences. Nothing inherently wrong with any of this, of course. But when one's health is impacted, whether that health be spiritual or physical, different choices must be made. And from the point of view of the Dharma it is in facing those choices that the rub comes in.

The questions become these: am I living my life in full awareness of my relationship to food? Or do I wander through life trying to use food to solve insoluble problems? Is my response to discomfort (pain, undesired emotions, stress, unhappiness) to reach for food, as if it could take this away? Am I, in other words, hungry for something other than food and trying to use food to feed that hunger? Am I eating with mindfulness or eating to mask things of which I ought to be mindful? In response to these realizations, am I going overboard in the other direction, into the heedlessness of obsession over "healthy" foods? (I put that word--healthy--in quotes because if I run after bodily health at the expense of my spiritual growth, that is far from any kind of health I truly desire).

The even more significant question is this: why am I doing all this? Why should I struggle to achieve any understanding of this or any mastery over these impulses if the outcome is nothing other than more struggle at the next level? The Buddha had a vital and unequivocal answer: spiritual attainment is possible for all of us, in this very lifetime. The impression is sometimes given that in order to achieve anything like enlightenment, one must strive for lifetimes upon lifetimes. This may be true. On the other hand, there are many stories in the life of the Buddha where he speaks a few words and people are struck enlightened, just like that.

Perhaps it would be helpful to define what is meant by enlightenment, at least in the way I am using it. Enlightenment is a state of being in which there are no preferences, no reactivity either for or against, complete and utter acceptance of the way things are. It is ultimate peace and serenity. But it is not passive; far from it. Enlightenment is total engagement in the ways of the world with a loving heart that does not judge but seeks to nudge others toward the ways of peace, justice, and harmony, all in the service of guiding them toward their own enlightenment and toward the enlightenment of yet others. The Bodhisattva (an enlightened being) does not sit idly by when violence, injustice, or prejudice rears its head, but works in ways that are loving and kind to change them, reflecting back their opposites (gentleness, justice, inclusion) as an antidote to the poisons that threaten well-being and peace. Enlightenment sees these unskillful mindstates and actions not as evils but as unwitting barriers to ultimate joy. Both victim and victimizer are struggling in a darkness that can be illuminated.

To get back to the question of whether it is possible (or even desirable) to achieve enlightenment in a flash, or whether it takes lifetimes: the answer is yes. Either is possible. Any time span in between is possible. But here's the kicker—as can be deduced from the definition above: one of the keys to enlightenment is not desiring it. Since striving toward this state is antithetical to the state itself (even the idea of "toward" is inaccurate), it is impossible to set a goal of being enlightened and then to work diligently for it. At this point, the small mind wants to throw in the towel and give up. What? A pot of gold at the end of a rainbow that I cannot work toward? Isn't enlightenment like the PhD of spiritual growth; I jump through enough hoops and pass sufficient trials and then am awarded the crown?

Well, no. In fact, desire is one of the barriers to enlightenment. So, what's a human to do? I believe with all my heart that the journey toward this ultimate mindstate beings with acceptance. We start there and work from that solid base. (A dictionary definition of acceptance I like: "to receive something offered, especially gladly"). We are as we are. Life is as it is. Reacting against (or for) any of it only creates suffering, divides the world into the camps of "wanted" and "unwanted", with us as both the arbiter and the one who strives incessantly to have the one and reject the other. The state of acceptance is a radically different way of viewing the world.

In my mind's eye I see a man who imagines himself in a pit. Out of the sky food is constantly falling. As they fall into his pit, the man immediately evaluates these foods as good and stores them away or as bad and throws them out. He does this constantly. He does this so assiduously and unceasingly that he never has any time to enjoy those tasty morsels he has stored away. His judgment is so clouded by prejudice and ignorance he often throws away the very best that is offered. What the man in the pit doesn't realize is that he is not in a pit. He is on a vast plain, infinite in its scope. He is in no danger of being overwhelmed by what falls his way; he can let it be. He need not judge what is good or bad, but can taste of each and find that which is pleasing or instructive or freeing. Some of what he tastes is bitter, but he need not reject anything on this basis. He can ask one simple question: is this nourishing? And he will find that all of it is. It is enough.

(P.S. If you find the title of this post perplexing, that's the prescription the doctor gave in a Harry Nilsson song).

Sugar

I have mentioned in this blog before the concept of renunciation, which is the Buddhist cosmology has a special meaning. Unlike the temporary giving up exemplified in Lent for certain Christians, renunciation in the Dharma is neither an abasement nor a sacrifice. Rather, it is a way of bringing to the forefront the ways in which we attempt to escape from the present moment into the trap of diversion. This form of renunciation can be permanent, such as my renunciation of meat and alcohol, or may be temporary, as a way of bringing these ways of thinking into sharper relief. A good example of this is a renunciation once taken on by the teacher Sylvia Boorstein in which she gave up purchasing fresh cut flowers for a full year. She truly loved buying these flowers, but had recognized the attachment she had to this practice and wished to come to a deeper understanding of this urge.

Over the years I have done some of what I call special renunciations, too. I once gave up ice cream for a year. Other of my renunciations have been more personal and private, but most have revolved around food. Recently I realized how much sugar has become a part of my life and have been contemplating a year-long renunciation of it.

First of all, it is important to realize that there are no rules to such a renunciation beyond those which are self-imposed. The Buddha did not say anything about the details of such a practice. For instance, though I say I intend to renounce sugar for a year, I understand that this can only be done within certain parameters, because naturally-occurring sugars exist in all fruits, vegetables, grains, and other food. It would be silly and possibly fatal to do away entirely with carbohydrates in my diet. What I use as my guide in such situations is a return to the reason for my renunciation. I must ask the question: to what, exactly, am I addicted?

Because addiction is what I'm really talking about here. This term can be overused, I know, but a definition of I like is this: an addiction is anything used as a way of avoiding the truth of one's existence. When thought of this way, one can see that such things as television, the internet, sex, shopping, focusing on the problems of others, exercise, gossip can all be addictive. I have certainly used sugar this way. This blog began as a quest for the meaning behind the reality of my inability to keep my weight within a range that is normal for a man of my age and size, and sugar has been a huge part of that struggle. One certain sign that this is an addiction for me is that the consumption of any processed sugar inevitably leads to a craving for more.

On April 13, 2011, Gary Taubes wrote a provocative article in the New York Times Magazine identifying sugar as a toxic substance. He paraphrased the pediatrician and specialist on pediatric hormone disorders Robert Lustig as saying that our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them." He refers to sugar as literally poisonous. Both Lustig and Taubes define "sugar" in this context as any source of sucrose (brown or white sugar) and high-fructose corn syrup. They argue that the problem isn't merely that these substances are empty calories, but that the way our body processes them is entirely different from the way we process other sugars, and that the difference is inherently toxic.One of the ways in which this toxic reaction may happen is that the liver cannot easily process the fructose in these compounds at the rate at which they enter the blood stream. This inability in turn induces insulin resistance, which is a problem in both diabetes and obesity, both of which have seen a meteoric rise over the last two decades. Sugar may also be implicated in some cancers and heart disease. A pretty damning indictment.

My own addiction to sugar does not take the predictable form of sodas or pastries or such things. I am more likely to get my sugar fix from ice cream or candy, from cookies, candied ginger or cocoa, lattes and mochas. No better for me than those others, certainly, but a bit more subtle. Which is part of the problem.

Another issue is the degree of comfort I get from these foods. If I am suffering from insomnia, there is nothing that works better for me than to have a big cup of cocoa. Never mind that there is caffeine in chocolate and the sugar is more likely to rev me up than calm me. Mine is clearly a psychologic rather than a physiologic response. The same applies to ice cream. It is for me the ultimate comfort food, as can be deduced from the fact that I felt the need to do a year's renunciation of it.

When I first contemplated doing a year-long sugar renunciation I thought it would be fairly simple. Cut out the candy and the cookies entirely and voila! it's done. Not so fast, bucko. The more I looked, the more I realized how much added sugar there is in so much of what I enjoy. Which brings up another question: at what point is the risk of possible toxic effects worth the pleasure it gives me? Clearly, if one is consuming a six pack of soda a day, the risks are far too high. But a dish of ice cream once a week? What could be the harm there?

(Then I went to the doctor this week and had my blood drawn. Mostly things are fine, but my HDL cholesterol is low and the first thing I thought to myself was, "Do I have to be freaking perfect just to be healthy? *Sigh*)

The answer for me, and for many such contemplations when the Dharma is applied to them, is what I referred to earlier: to what spiritual use am I putting these foods? Am I trying to (ahem) sugar-coat my experiences as a way of not having to actually live them? For me, the answer is clearly, yes, quite often that is the case.

I'm afraid it will take me a while to figure out exactly how to proceed with this renunciation plan. I will share my process with you as I go. This won't be easy but, as has been observed by those wiser than I, very few things worth doing are.

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

Guest House

This being human is a guest house...

I came into conflict with two people I love over the past week. It caused me a great deal of pain. I struggled mightily with so many different emotions and impulses that I felt half-crazed much of the time, as if all of who I was had been exploded, the foundations remaining but the House of Reid destroyed. I know this sounds like hyperbole but, then again, I am not telling you how it really was, merely how it felt. Whenever threatened, the ego makes the event into The Biggest Thing Ever. It is death. It is disaster.

It's not all that hard to fall into the trap and believe the stories the ego is putting out, either (we do it all the time). When in extremis, the ego is also quite skilled at assigning blame, feeling self-righteous and superior in its suffering (a particular specialty, I think), engaging in rationalization and justification. You will note that I do not use personal pronouns which speaking of the impulses of the ego. As one of my teachers says, what we are dealing with here is THE mind, not MY mind. If it were mine, for one thing, I would be much more in control of what it thinks, which I clearly am not. I speak to it quite often, telling it I am thoroughly done, thank you, with certain memories of shame or remorse, but it has...well...a mind of its own, so they keep arising anyway.

This being human is a guest house

Every morning a new arrival

A joy, a depression, a meanness....

When I give in to the impulse to think that such events are unmitigated disasters, I am forgetting the most basic truth of all: life is change. It is when I can see the leveling of my ego, my pride, my self-image as not only inevitable but a good thing, when I recognize that dissolution is going on all the time and that in times of crisis it just becomes more obvious than at other times, this is when I can choose: on the one hand, to grow into the new being I was headed toward in any case, or on the other to resist the transformation and suffer, inevitably causing those around me to suffer, as well. I could, in other words, use up huge amounts of energy bolstering the crumbling walls of my Self (which is the self of yesterday, of last week, of a former life) or I can choose to accept the dissolving of the barriers as the gift it is. It is truly a gift; this is something of which I must always be aware.

This being human is a guest house

Every morning a new arrival

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

My existence is a delusion of the moment I am in. Of course I exist, I can prove this in any number of ways (Monet kicked a rock). But to think of myself as a solid, unchanging being is sheer delusion. This is no less true of my inner life than of my body. I have the choice to embrace this reality or reject it. The one is the road to joy, the other to suffering. Of course, even my resolve to accept myself as impermanent can be an expression of ego if I am not aware at all times of the impulse to make it so. If I feel that I am in any way superior to others because of this or if I think I have Gotten Somewhere as a result of my understanding, then I am placing myself at the same risk I was in before I ever had the realization. These concepts are by their very nature ego concepts. Put another way, if I truly inculcated this understanding into my being, the concept of achieving anything (being superior, right, accomplished, real, a Good Buddhist) would have no function, since there would be no ego to consider it important or even acknowledge its existence. This is, by definition, the end of suffering.

It is also true, though, and just as true, that criticism of myself is a manifestation of ego. This can be tricky. To justify any and all actions as being mere manifestations of ego and therefore excusable (because they were not done by Me) is also to live in delusion and has the potential to be extremely destructive. But to dwell upon my unskillful actions as the manifestation of who I truly am is just as egotistical as if I only praised myself. And in our culture it is far more common for us to obsess on what is wrong in us than on what is right.

The Guest House poem by Rumi is one of the guides to my life; I try my best to live by it. He goes on to say,

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

We don't know. Nothing is more universal than this not-knowing. Even those things of which we are most certain are subject to dissolution, decay, and death. The great Zen masters make it clear that while there is nothing more important than believing in Zen, it is also and equally true that there is nothing more dangerous than believing in Zen. I believe that what comforts me is essential to my well-being, but this recent conflict with my loved ones and the outcome of that conflict (the growing into a better, more loving human, I hope) makes clear that I am, quite simply and clearly and absolutely entirely, wrong. The end of suffering is renunciation, the renunciation of any concept of who I am or where I ought to be or what I should achieve. Even peace, enlightenment, kindness, openheartedness, love can be sources of suffering if I have some internalized measure of progress toward them or claim to have achieved them. It is part of the paradoxical nature of Buddhism that when we feel we are closest to having accomplished something with the practice, we are farthest from getting anything of true value from it.

Pema Chödrön speaks eloquently of this delusion when she writes that "when you start to want to live your life fully instead of opting for death, you discover that life itself is inconvenient....You have to find the path that has heart and then walk it impeccably...." But, she goes on to say, "sometimes when you just get flying and it all feels so good and you think, 'This is it, this is that path that has heart,' you suddenly fall flat on your face....You say to yourself, 'What happened to that path that had heart? This feels like the path full of mud in my face.'" This is how I felt this past week, as if I had found the path with mud on my face. The key is to know that this is neither a bad thing nor a good thing. It's a thing.

Sometimes I can overcomplicate events (well, OK, quite often, not just sometimes). I require reminders that this is all extremely simple if I let it be. I have the impulse to judgment, which is really just the belief that I know best and the world has nothing to teach me. Yet, as Rumi says further,

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whomever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

He is not speaking of the malice, meanness, or misbehavior of others; Rumi is referring to what comes into my own mind, into my own heart. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that does not have the capacity to open my heart if I let it. Those dark thoughts, that shame, the remorse, the meanness, the hurt, the anger, the vulnerability and the accompanying shame that I am so vulnerable—all of these are my teachers. Sometimes I am just a little slow on the uptake; this is not my teachers' fault. One of my favorite sayings (I call it Reid's Rule #1) is, "If you set your expectations low enough, you are bound to fulfill them." But yesterday, while speaking with friends, I realized that I should restate this (rather cynical) statement to read, "If you set your expectations low enough, miracles are much more likely." I can open my heart to all that is. This is simple. It is also a miracle.

On Friday I had occasion to call a tech support line. The person on the other end was not a native English-speaker. He was doing very well at explaining what I needed to know, but then departed from the script a bit. His grasp of what he was saying in the vernacular may have been a bit imperfect, but it ended up being a lesson I needed to hear and bear with me always. I said that this whole process was pretty complicated, to which he replied, without any sense that he was making a joke or (I don't think) any thought that it might be tactless, "Oh, no, it is very easy. You are just not getting it."

I am just not getting it. The Buddha had great patience, but one wonders if he wasn't sometimes a bit exasperated and wanted to say, "For heaven's sake, this is very easy. You are just not getting it. Stop with the judgment and the breast-beating and let it all go. The only reason you are making such a big deal of all this is because it makes your small mind feel important. Let it go. It is enough."

Fear

I am afraid.

I had another topic all picked out for this week, knew what I was going to say, even which photographs to use, but then I became afraid.

Let me tell you about this fear, because it is instructive. Things are in a bit of flux at work. My role there is shifting and I am uncertain whether or not the new role is a good fit for me. I might have to look for other work. This scares me. (In the service of full disclosure, there are other factors: things going on with my parents, issues around money in our own lives, but this is the main one).

Here's the thing, though. This is a place where I have seniority over every other member of the nursing staff. I am respected and liked there. It is good work. And if I looked for other work it would be within the same institution and the same profession (with the same pay and same benefits, or better). And if I couldn't find other work accorded to my needs, I could just stay where I am indefinitely, perhaps not as happy as I could be, but perfectly fine.

(There is one mitigating factor I should mention: I am 56 years old and have every intention of retiring at 65. What this means is that if I am going to jump jobs I should probably do it soon; I would think that most employers would rather not hire someone who is going to be with their department only a few years and then start on the downhill slope to retirement. So, I do feel a bit of pressure, though not much, not really, since, as I said, I could just as easily stay where I am).

The point I am trying to make is not that I am a big baby to be afraid (though you may draw that conclusion if you wish). My real point is that I have very little control over the fear I feel or its degree. The small mind sees every threat as being essentially equivalent. This little tempest in a teapot is no different to my mind than a charging rhino (well, OK, maybe the degree is different, but you understand what I mean). I wonder why this is? I also wonder what one does about it.

The Dharma says that fear is a response to conditions, that like everything else in our world it is composed of one condition piled upon another until is appears to be real. When I think of conditioned existence, the image which speaks to me is of the Oogie Boogie Man in "Nightmare Before Christmas", a being who has no independent form at all, but is a burlap-enclosed bundle of smaller creatures. Toward the end of the movie, you recall, the covering unravels and the bugs run away, leaving nothing at all of Oogie Boogie. As Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, "there is no there there". There is no reality to...well...most everything. Yes, I know how very real things feel, but that is just because of the solidity of the illusion. In Pali this is known as anicca, generally translated as impermanence.

All conditioned things are impermanent and all things are conditioned. When we say "conditioned" what is meant is that nothing in this world can arise without that which allows it to arise and that which arises from conditions will also pass away. We sometimes live in the delusional state of thinking ourselves independent of what surrounds us, but this is just an intentional blindness to reality.

A flower arises because of the seed or rhizome that was its source. The flower arises because there are the conditions of soil, water, air, nutrients, microorganisms and such that make it possible for it to arise. In the course of things, the flower lives its lifespan and comes to an end. The elements that made up the flower re-enter the cycle to become whatever is next for those molecules, perhaps me!

This cycle is no less true of Reid or a mountain or a table or a house. Just because dissolution and decay take decades or centuries is no proof against the certainty of them. Mountains arise from the conditions of motions of the Earth's crust and magma, the conditions of water and air and wind and weather. They are worn away by the same forces and, absent new eruptions or extrusions, our world will eventually be one large, flat mass. Everything is rushing toward an equilibrium of flatness, except that the rushing in this case is occurring over eons. It is an odd fact of human consciousness that we tend to think of that which we cannot perceive as nonexistent. There is far more to the electromagnetic spectrum than visible light, but what we cannot see cannot be seen, as far as we are concerned. Similarly, all things are passing away, but because of our limited sense of time, we can act in most cases as if it is not so.

Does all this help with my fear? Well, the rational part of it, sure. But the fear remains, its own free-floating creation made up of my mind's insecurities. The truly irrational, self-sustaining, cyclical aspect of this type of fear is that what the mind fears is dissolution of the known, the familiar, and yet there is nothing but dissolution. This is, I believe, what Yeats meant when he wrote that "the centre cannot hold..."

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

He was speaking of the Second Coming, but it seems to me that this is the nature of the world. This is certainly what the Buddha taught and thought. What causes suffering is resistance to the core truth that there is nothing which lasts in its present form. Not you, not your child, not Mt. Rainier. Nothing. Life is nothing but loss. The key realization is not that this is so, but that this is not a problem.

Nor is the fear. It is only a problem to the extent that I let it be in charge and run my life, to the extent that I resist and try to change it into something it is not or solve it with something that cannot (food is my favorite, of course, what's yours?)

An essay by Karen E. Bender in today's New York Times Book Review said something that gets to the heart of why I write all this into my blog:

Giving shape to a painful experience is powerful because it...doesn't stay trapped within us, unspoken, curdling--instead, the art of arranging and transforming it reduces the burden. It no longer belongs to only you. The process of assigning the experience a beginning, a middle and an end, of giving it form, is a way of mastering it. Each sentence contains the chaos--our experience becomes what we perceive. And the honesty in these perceptions...creates a bridge to another person.

I am afraid. I am alive. I am dying. I am courageous. I am free if I wish to be. There is no problem that is not me. There is no solution to any problem that is not within me. It is enough. Thank you for being with me on this journey.

Compassion

Compassion (Karuna in the language of the Buddha) is sometimes difficult to identify and to distinguish from self-indulgent and dangerous forms of involvement in the problems of others. When does compassion morph into co-dependence? When is seeming compassion actually pity, that emotion destructive to both recipient and giver? And what the heck is "compassion fatigue", anyway?

Those of you who have been reading this blog awhile (or who are familiar with Buddhist terminology) will remember that compassion is one of the four brahma viharas (the others are openheartedness, sympathetic joy, and equanimity). This is worth noting because the Buddha singled out these four states of being as those which were the most desirable places to spend our emotional time and energy.

The roots of the English word compassion mean "to feel with". When we can open our hearts to the suffering of another without letting our own needs and desires (for comfort, for being seen as one who is compassionate, for superiority over the sufferer) getting in the way, we can truly say we feel compassion. The key to this definition is that what we feel is not for us but for the other, the one who suffers.

Each of the brahma viharas has what is known as a near-enemy, something which masquerades as the real thing but which actually is a form of avoidance of the deeper emotion. In the case of compassion, this near-enemy is pity. Pity is thinking sympathetically of another's woes without engaging one's heart and has an aspect of subtle superiority to it ("poor dear") through which we actually use it to distance ourselves from the real experience of "feeling with".

Pema Chödrön also mentions a form of misguided pseudo-compassion she terms "idiot compassion":

Don’t impose the wrong notion of what harmony is, what compassion is, what patience is, what generosity is. Don’t misinterpret what these things really are. There is compassion and there is idiot compassion; there is patience and there is idiot patience; there is generosity and there is idiot generosity. 

For example, trying to smooth everything out to avoid confrontation, not to rock the boat, is not what’s meant by compassion or patience. It’s what is meant by control. Then you are not trying to step into unknown territory, to find yourself more naked with less protection and therefore more in contact with reality. Instead, you use the idiot forms of compassion and so forth just to get ground. 

So you sit there and you say, “Okay, now I’m going to make friends with the fact that I am hurting and afraid, and this is really awful.” But you are just trying to avoid conflict here; you just don’t want to make things worse. Then all the guests are misbehaving; you work hard all day and they just sit around, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, eating your food, and then beating you up. You think you’re being a warrior and a Bodhisattva by doing nothing and saying nothing, but what you’re being is a coward. You’re just afraid of making the situation worse. Finally they kick you out of your house and you’re sitting on the sidewalk. Somebody walks by and says, “What are you doing sitting out here?” You answer, “I am practicing patience and compassion.” That’s missing the point.

Sometimes it is compassionate to turn the beggar away from our door. Sometimes it is compassionate to say to the addict or alcoholic is our lives, "no, this time I cannot help you". Sometimes the most compassionate thing we can do for our children is allow them to fail.

I recall an event in my son's life that can still fill me with deep feelings of sadness and pain. He was looking for a job after college and was very reluctant to approach businesses to put in applications because he was such a shy, reticent, hesitant fellow. I could have helped him do this. I even knew a couple of people who probably would have given him a job. But I knew, deep in my heart, that the truly compassionate road was to let him go through this experience, even if it meant he didn't get a job and could not meet his financial goals, which were very important to him. He was not asking for my help, so in this instance my compulsion to assist him was wholly centered in my selfish desire to avoid feeling the discomfort of grief and empathy for the struggle through which he was going. It hurts even now, almost a decade later. But I knew and know now that I was doing the right and the compassionate thing.

So what about this "compassion fatigue" idea? Can we truly open our hearts so wide as to wear out their ability to feel compassion?

No.

As a nurse, this is a phrase that comes up quite often. I confess that  I truly despise it, mostly because it means (so far as I can tell) absolutely nothing. Someone brought this idea up to me the other day in connection with a family member and I think she was fairly surprised by the vehemence of my reaction. So, what is this compassion fatigue stuff, anyway?

The first context in which I heard this term used was that of refugee workers who saw so much suffering each day that they could no longer feel compassion for the individuals in front of them. Perhaps if one is trapped in such a situation (by a long-term contract, for instance) and there is no escape, this term might occasionally have some validity. But in the ways it is usually trotted out, I find it a thinly masked form of emotional laziness and self-pitying martyrdom.

The example my family member brought up was this: a man we both know, who is in his 70's, owns a pickup. Because of this, many people ask him to help them move. After having done several of these moves, he admitted to being exhausted and wishing he could stop saying yes to these requests. This was diagnosed as "compassion fatigue". In my work I hear it used to describe the experience of being around too many sick people with too many demands on one's energy, which is a more common use of the term. What I find disturbing in both cases is that the persons involved did not take responsibility for their feelings. In the first instance, of course, what is required is the emotional maturity to simply say, "No, I won't help you move." It can be said without rancor or apology, simply, "no", full stop. As for my fellow nurses, doctors, and others in our field, I would say that what they are experiencing is more likely pity than true compassion. Because compassion does not involve my needs at all, there is nothing to burn out or decay. I suspect, as Pema noted, that what is truly fatiguing is the need to control and the failure of our strategies to do so, which failure is bound to happen in the face of the uncontrollable which, for the most part, both other people and their diseases are.

The 14th Dalai Lama

We must also consider those for whom compassion has been and is a way of life: Jesus, Mother Teresa, Quan Yin, Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, Thomas Merton, Pema Chödrön, Albert Schweitzer and others. All of these felt/feel great compassion for others at all times and did not fatigue in the process. One of the greatest dangers we face is when we label such people as saints and their deeds beyond our ken. Central to the Buddha's message is the fact that he was a man like any other, the implication being that any of us could achieve what he did if we orient our hearts toward true compassion.

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion--The Dalai Lama

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.