Up In The Air

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I will share this from Pema Chodron, though:

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

She, dying

She is dying of a brain tumor and decided this week to throw in the towel; not in defeat (she is the reigning champion) but exhausted and realistic. She will be (has been) written up in medical journals for the twists and turns her disease has taken. Small comfort, if any. She never could do things the simple way.

When I heard from her about hospice, end-of-life care, all that, I wrote, "Funny, what wells up in me immediately upon reading this is that though I have acclimated myself fairly thoroughly to the process of your dying, there was one synapse that never closed: at the end of the process you will be dead. I had not gotten there yet, apparently." To which she replied, "There is that. And the universe of love I will leave you with. Don't break it. Don't lose it. And please share."

She was a dancer. Still is, but when we met she was all grace and poise and fluid motion. She is sharp of wit and tongue. She praises with the extravagance with which she damns. We have known each other more than 35 years. I was in love with her once and still love her deeply. We have not always been the best of friends (life and distance intruded, my own illness, my divorce, my anger and low self-esteem; now it all seems sordid and vain, silly, even, but felt like life and death at the time), but have never been less than true loves for all that.

Our children grew up far apart yet became close friends.

In truth, this feels like the end of her and not the beginning of some grand, new adventure. I love the idea of karma, of rebirth and grace, heaven even, more than I have faith in a hereafter. I have said for some time that I don't not believe in anything: ghosts, UFOs, fairies, elves, time travel, yeti, well-intentioned Republicans, Nessie, an afterlife, an end to war, the perfectability of a human life—I have seen precious little evidence of any of these, yet who am I to pass final judgment on things of which so many are convinced? After all, I believe in quarks, though those who have seen one are far outnumbered by those who have seen Bigfoot. But wishful thinking will not do when I think of her, think of her dying, think of her dead.

Did I mention she was a dancer?

Life when we met was thrilling and new, an adventure waiting to happen, pregnant with the possibility of glory, fame and fulfillment. We were vain and thrilled, the way only twenty-somethings can be, before reality and disappointment, then achievement of different joys and ultimate contentment took the place of our exuberance. We were young, attractive, restless, cocksure, judgmental, a little bit ruthless, and free.

Had we known about the future, about the child who died, my alcoholism, mortgages, jail, ailing parents, distances, struggles to survive and thrive, what would we have done? Laughed, no doubt. Said, "bring it on!" There was and is a fierceness in our hearts that dares the world to challenge us in ways we can't handle. It has done its best to do its worst and we are still standing.

And dancing.

Happy Day!

It is my birthday today and find I am thinking of death. These two facts might not be related, but they might. I am only 56 years old and in good health, but I am not young by most non-geriatric measures of such things. I am certainly nearer death from any cause than I am to birth, or at least I hope so (112 seems more than a little like showing off).

I suspect this maudlin turn has more to do with the fact that my wife is away helping her mother, who is dying, and that I spent Saturday evening in an emergency department with my father. (Nothing serious, in his case). I was also this weekend with my mother, who is slowly losing her wits. So the end of life is on my mind as I celebrate the anniversary of the beginning of mine. But, you know what? It is a beautiful day today in Seattle and I have the day off. There is wash on the line and frozen custard in my belly. For a grim reaper contemplater, I am in a very cheerful frame of mind.

Western Buddhists face an interesting quandary when it comes to death. Most of us exist somewhere on the skeptical end of the spectrum when it comes to the idea of reincarnation, yet the Buddha made it central to many of his teachings. In particular, the teaching on karma assumes the ability of the fruits of our actions to follow us from one incarnation to the next. The teachings also face us with an interesting conundrum: if there is no separate self, how can a self go from one life to the next? Isn't this a basic contradiction within the teachings?

My own skepticism is challenged by the fact that perfectly trustworthy people like the Dalai Lama speak of their former lives as if they were neighbors they spoke to yesterday—recalling events, personal items and conversations that no one else could have known about. The stories of his recognition of the personal effects of the previous Dalai Lama while he, the current Dalai Lama, was still a child are legendary. What to make of that?

I have long been of the opinion that karma is simultaneously among the most and least important of the Buddha's teachings. It is vital because of the need for a deep-seated integrity and morality it implies. But if we are good to each other only to score points on the Karm-O-Meter, then we really have no morality at all, only the fear of negative consequences being visited upon in a future existence. Seen this way, karma becomes much more like the literal Christian's version of sin and, like that philosophy it infantilizes us into creatures subservient to a set of rules declared from on high. Not very appealing.  We must make the choice to be moral for its own sake, it seems to me, and let the karma chips fall where they may.

The same is true, I think, of concepts like heaven or reincarnation. If I am the best person I can possibly be, then if there is a reward for that behavior then bully for me. And if there is not? It could never be a waste to be a good person, to be kind, generous and loving. How could I have any regrets if I have been that? And if you tell me that I needed to join your particular brand of belief in order to be truly saved, well, I didn't much want to be in that particular heaven with you anyway.

As for the seeming contradiction of the non-self being reborn as a new self, the scholars are clear that it is the very fact that we cling to the concept of a separate self that creates the karma which leads to rebirth. It is not for nothing that those who have reached Nirvana are called "non-returners".

I have lost much of my fear of death, but like most people fear dying badly, in confusion or pain. But even that fear is muted by the fact of living in this moment as the only moment I have. Nothing comforts me on a regular basis quite so much as meditation because it reminds me over and over the joy of being in this moment and no other. If I can die while I am dying and live while I am living, I will have done all I can do in this world. And if there is a next one for me, well, I guess I'll just have to do my best in this life to make the next incarnation a pleasant one. Perhaps I can spend a few centuries as a mountain; that might be good.

What does that have to do with it?

Now, wait a minute, you may well be asking, what does all of this have to do with losing weight? Isn't that the premise upon which this whole enterprise is predicated?

Well...yes and no. If you were to ask if losing weight was my goal when I started this blog, my answer would have to be no, that really wasn't what I was trying to achieve. Why? Because it is this very kind of striving that is the creation of suffering as defined by the Buddha in the Four Noble Truths. But if you were to ask if losing weight was one of the outcomes I was hoping might come to pass from writing this blog, then I would have to answer yes, of course. Am I being inconsistent here?

I don't think so. And here's why: I consider the excess weight I carry around as a symptom of suffering. It is not suffering itself unless I make it so by opposing the idea of being overweight by telling myself I am a fat slob or a weakling because I am incapable of losing it. I have given up these forms of suffering. (It is possible, by the way, to make such a choice. It may not happen overnight—it didn't for me—but you can, believe me. There is no reason to create this kind of suffering for yourself. And you may also have noticed it doesn't help you lose weight, either).

No, the extra weight I carry around is a direct result of trying to bring an end to suffering through the expedient of extra calories. It doesn't work, it can't work, but that's why it's there. Which is why I have chosen to confront this challenge as a meditation (or series of meditations) on what the Buddha was trying to say. What I have found is that the more I incorporate these principles into my life, the less I suffer. The less I suffer, the less likely I am to overeat. It works the other way, too: when I feel the urge to eat to excess, I have the opportunity to confront that urge with the understanding that I am trying to bring an end to suffering through unskillful means. Both of these lead directly to liberation if I have the wisdom to use them skillfully. Here, for me, is the most important factor, though: I do not use the fact of losing or gaining weight as a measure of my self-worth or my success or failure. Everything we confront is an opportunity to become free and this is no exception.

That sounds all fine and well in principle, of course, but what does it mean in actual fact? How do I go about this? Well, as I have described before, I restrict calories. This serves the practical purpose of aiding my desire to lose weight but the more important function of allowing me to see clearly what it feels like to have a desire to eat when I do not need any food for sustenance. Why do I want it, then? What hunger am I feeding if I eat when I am not physically hungry? What do I feel I am lacking that I am trying to fill with food?

I want to be clear that I believe with all my heart that this is a path to total and complete liberation from the fetters of this world. It is far from the only path, but it certainly is one. Anything upon which we can meditate and come to a profound understanding of the nature of suffering and the end of suffering can lead to liberation. That is why I have taken this on. It is also why most of this blog is about the dharma and much less of it is about actually losing weight. I've lost some, I've regained some, I've lost it again (I keep an Excel file with my weights in it and over the past few months the graph looks like gently rolling hills). But in the process I have come to a deeper understanding of the dharma. Am I entirely free? Well, of course not, far from it. But the Buddha made clear that such a release is entirely possible in this very life and for each of us. It is not an esoteric or mysterious path, not the purview of mystic yogis or ascetic recluses. The grist of the mill of liberation is present in every moment of every day of every human life.

Cafe Racer

I went by Cafe Racer today, the little coffee shop near my home where yesterday four people were shot to death. I wondered what sense the Buddha might make of such a tragedy.

I suspect he would make nothing of it, though. He might just sit there silently in response to our asking "why?" and "why them?" and "why here?" and "what could we have done?" and "what do we do now?" My guess is that he would understand that the questions are the answers, that not only do they not have answers that will satisfy, but that in the asking we come to understand much more than we would have otherwise.

There are mounds of flowers outside Cafe Racer. I would guess that many of those who left flowers (and beer and wine and photos and other mementos) had never been there, or had been only rarely, like me. As you can see, there are people sitting and standing and hugging and wondering and grieving together. Many more people drove by as I was standing there. All of us were bearing witness to the loss, the pain, the sheer lack of sense in all of this. A community is grieving together and we don't know what else to do.

The Buddha might mention karma, but probably not. Karma may be involved, both for those who died and the man who killed them (and who killed himself later), but any such explanation for such an event is not only grossly inadequate but vaguely insulting, as if we can pass over the wrongness of it by consulting some cosmic ledger. I think not. I doubt the Buddha could be that insensitive.

This was a pleasant little hole-in-the-wall with surprisingly good food and good coffee. They served beer and wine in the evenings and had a stage for live music. They were, by all reports, good neighbors and loved companions. They did not deserve to die this way, at this time. They left a scorched patch of life behind them.

But here's the thing. When we calmed down, when we could put away our hatred, anger and fear for a moment the Buddha might well tell us, "Yes. Yes, this is evil. Yes, this is wrong. Yes, this is sad. Yes, this is tragic. But, look, it has always been so. We are born, we live, we die. And the most important lesson you can take away from this is that we are all connected. There is no separate self. You are as much a part of the killer as the killed. You carry in your heart the seeds of grace and pain, anger and benevolence, peace and discord, isolation and communion. Violence such as this cannot happen if we understand in the depths of our hearts that we are all one, for to shoot a man in a coffee shop would be the same as shooting our grandmother or our dog or our father or our mother. We wouldn't be able to do it.

"My teachings," he might say, "despite what you may have heard, do not counsel indifference to such things. On the contrary, my teachings are to understand with your whole being that this happened to you, too. This is not an event outside yourself. And my teachings would tell you, I hope, that to hate the man who killed is just as much to hate yourself or your grandmother or your dog. It is not that he is unworthy of blame, but that putting more hatred into a world made poorer by this man's hate and rage makes no sense. It is like pouring gasoline on a fire.

"Open your hearts. To everyone, always, as much as you are able and, one would hope, a bit more each day. Only in this way can we heal. Only in this way can we find true peace, a peace that last for lifetimes and covers the earth with garlands of flowers rather than scars of grief.

"And understand: this is possible. My example and those of hundreds of other buddhas and bodhisattvas demonstrate that in this very life your heart can open entirely and you can surrender hatred forever. And in the process you will be healing one small part of the torn fabric of life as it is currently lived. You will become attractive to others who will want to follow your example, and the life-sustaining force of love will take over the world."

At least, that's what I hope he would say.

Eightfold Path: more thoughts on Wise Mindfulness

There is a story about Sylvia Boorstein, who once asked an Asian scholar-monk, who had been studying the dharma for many decades, if he could encompass the teachings in one sentence, what it would be. The bhikkhu promptly replied: "Know what you're doing."

Another story: Joseph Goldstein was teaching a retreat and a young man came to him and said something like, "My shoulders are so tight and I know it's because of my job and my relationship..." and on and on and on. Joseph said, "You mean your shoulders are tight." "Yes," replied the student, and then launched into a historical analysis of what in his childhood and young adulthood might have lead to such a state of being. Joseph replied, "You mean your shoulders are tight." Apparently this exchange went on for quite a while until the young man suddenly realized the truth in what Joseph was saying: what was really happening was that he was experiencing a tightness in his shoulders and that was all. The rest is what in Buddhist circles is known as "proliferation", an attempt to explain, analyze, justify and solve what is happening. It's not hard to see that awareness of the physical sensation is the work of consciousness and proliferation the work of the overactive mind.

Mindfulness is this simple knowing. What the mind doesn't understand is that all the explanations in the world are unlikely to be helpful in finding peace and deep awareness. On the contrary, when we are busy 'splainin' (as Ricky Ricardo would say), awareness has no chance to enter in. Much of modern psychology reinforces this misconception by promoting the idea that we must dig down deep and find the sources of our neuroses before they can be "cured". This is dubious advice, if only because the sources may well be buried so deep in our psyches that all the mining in the world would never bring that ore to the surface. It is also doubtful that this is a useful exercise in any case. To assign blame or responsibility, you have no doubt noticed, is no path to healing.

The Buddha's answer was bare attention, the cultivation of thoroughly knowing what is happening in this moment. "Bare Attention," writes Nyanaponika Thera in The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, "...allows things to speak for themselves, without interruption by final verdicts pronounced too hastily. Bare Attention gives them a chance to finish their speaking, and one will thus get to learn that, in fact, they have much to say about themselves, which formerly was mostly ignored by rashness or was drowned in the inner and outer noise in which ordinary man normally lives."

Living without a car

So, it has been a while since we stopped owning a car. I really don't miss it, except on Fridays, when I am accustomed to doing all my errands. I also have an evening commitment on that day. What I have been doing is renting a car. There is a service called Zip Car here in town where I could rent a car by the hour. They are parked all over the city and if you are a member, you can just reserve one, pick it up, then return it where you found it. The only problem is that if you use a Zip Car for more than about five hours, renting a car from somewhere like Budget for the whole day is actually cheaper.

But what we have discovered since dropping our auto insurance is that coverage when one rents a car is actually very tricky (insurance is included with Zip Car, though there is a deductible). Most credit cards provide some coverage, but when we looked a little more deeply into this, it turns out that most of them, including ours, cover only the rental car itself, not the other car or any persons in it and not the persons or property in the rental car. The rental company offers supplemental insurance, but this only covers the other car and its property and costs $11 a day. Though this doesn't sound like all that much, it really adds up over time. It was beginning to look like car payments and maintenance and such might actually be cheaper.

Yesterday I came to something of a crisis about all this. I don't want to own another car. I don't want to spend all this money. I don't want to add to the carbon emissions in our atmosphere. But if I am spending money and using gas and all of that as if I still own a car; which is to say, if I don't actually change any of my behaviors to match up with the idea of being a person who doesn't own one, what has actually changed? Not my carbon footprint. Not the financial obligation.

Another wrinkle: a good friend has offered me the use of her car as needed. She doesn't use it much and would rather it be driven. This is, I am convinced, a genuine offer from her heart. So why have I been so reluctant to take her up on it? I know, of course, what it is. I want to be in control of the situation, of my own life. I don't want to be dependent on anyone else to get me where I want to go to do what I want to do when I want to do it. Which begs a couple of questions, actually.

First of all, what part of interdependence and dependent origination do I not understand? The Buddha was very clear that all these assumptions of my clearly demarcated and entirely separate self are poppycock and a major source of my suffering. Second, a wise teacher of mine once pointed out that one of the primary attributes of a generous person is allowing others to be generous to him. Am I robbing my friend of the opportunity to be generous through the selfishness of my inability to tolerate feeling obligated?

So...I have a new plan. I will borrow my friend's car, when it works for me to do so, about every other Friday. When I cannot borrow hers, I will get a Zip Car for just a couple of hours to do essential stuff. On the alternate Friday I will do any shopping I need to do on foot. If I have a special need for a car on those alternate weeks, I will ask to borrow hers or get a Zip Car. I will take a bus to my evening commitment and ask for a ride or take the bus home (another opportunity to ask for help, something at which I suck). It will take some organizing to do a major shopping trip every two weeks rather than a less major trip every week, but these are merely logistics and can be worked out. Not only does this give my friend the chance to be generous, it decreases by half the number of trips I will make in any car. Not to mention the fact that it saves me lots of money in rental fees and keep me healthier. I am writing about it here not only because it is part of my spiritual development (that's how it feels, anyway), but because putting it out there gives me a sense of accountability for these choices. I will keep you posted, whether you like it or not.