Skin

Complacency in the resting state of the human mind.

We would rather not be bothered by the thousands of events of cruelty, suffering, bigotry, despair, violence and casual dismissal of our fellow humans. In part this is certainly protective; too much goes on, we cannot absorb it all without ourselves falling into despair, which is perhaps the most destructive of all emotions, as it freezes us, makes us incapable of movement in any direction.

The other day I got in the mail a whole sheaf of photographs of myself. Naked. Yep, that's right, a pile of pics of yours truly in the buff! You won't be seeing them on the internet. Because I derive from Northern European stock (or, with less grandiosity, because I am a pasty-faced white boy),
my dermatologist (it feels odd to think I have my very own dermatologist) asked that I have high-resolution, full-body photographs taken of my naked body. She wanted to have something against which she could compare any new moles or blemishes, to make sure they were new and not just the same old, same old eruptions of dermis. The photography session itself was not particularly traumatic; I have no hang-up about my naked body and no delusion that the sight of it will be titillating. It is the body of a man of late middle age with lots of moles and lots of hair, pretty much average in pretty much every way. So, posing for a photographer, while it felt oddly like a fashion shoot (including the white umbrella-reflectors and striking poses as directed by the picture-snapper) was not in itself disturbing. But when my copy of the photos came in the mail, I felt a visceral reaction I had not expected, combined of dread and curiosity. Until this morning I had avoided looking at them.

Not from my portfolio

The Buddha taught that we should consider our bodies carefully: "In this fathom-long body, equipped with sense organs and faculties, I declare to you is the world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the world and the path leading to the cessation thereof." The entire philosophy of suffering and the end of suffering can be found in the body. Many have insisted that the Buddha intended to denigrate the body, asking us to see it as foul and the source of our cravings and distractions from the path of purification which could lead to the end of suffering. I find no such sentiment in the teachings, or at least not wholly so. I have read and heard the teachings on revulsion toward the body, but have also absorbed the teachings of the glory of the body. This may sound inconsistent, but it is more truly the evocation of the body as the teacher of all things, both "the origin of the world" and "the cessation of the world". To cling to the idea that the body is only to be reviled is to miss the point. Reviling the body is an exercise, just as celebrating it is. To cling to either image is to invite suffering into our lives.

She clearly disapproves

I went to see an exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum yesterday called "Elles", a tribute to women artists from the Pompidou museum in Paris. I expected to see the usual canvases of Kahlo, Cassatt  O'Keefe, Morisot and their ilk; there was very little so predictable as this. What I had not expected at all was the video installations, one of which was a naked woman (the artist) holding a live chicken by the legs until the chicken became calm, then having the head of the chicken chopped off and the same woman holding the chicken as it died, spewing blood over her and the floor. Just one example. The reason I evoke this disturbing image and the exhibit is to emphasize how clearly the show was designed to show our overwhelming disaffection and objectification toward our bodies and, in particular, the bodies of women (and to recommend to all Seattleites that they go see it).

Looking at the photos of my skin, there were few surprises. I thought my posture was better than that. Yep, there's that little inner tube around my middle that has been the subject of my most fervent hopes for weight loss. My, I have begun to sag! (Come now, Reid, you are well beyond mere beginning). What it did cause, though, was a crack in the skin of my routine image of myself and the world. We all carry with a certain version of our bodies that is notoriously inaccurate. Some of the paintings I admire the most are self-portraits that are honest and straightforward; the artist must have had to study his own body closely and in great detail (sometimes disheartening detail, we must believe) to paint such a portrait.

Both of these, as well as some other events in my recent life (A book by David Foster Wallace, a talk by Amy Goodman) have done is shake up my complacency, a necessary disturbance of the surface normality of my day-to-day life, a wake-up call of what the world is, both inside and outside my head.

I work with wounds, disturbances of skin integrity and its healing. One of the enemies of wound healing is what is called "biofilm", a glaze of bacterial matter on the surface of the wound that is fairly benign but prevents the wound from moving forward on the trajectory toward intact skin. It seems to me that our complacency serves the same purpose, this benign glaze that covers our eyes as we watch our televisions and stare into our omnipresent technoboxes. The best of art, of commentary, of actions by the outrageous, puncture our safe surround and bring us face to face with the reality—often ugly, as often gorgeous, sometimes both in a swirling admixture—of our daily lives.

This is precisely what the Buddha advocated. He did not wish for me to recoil with revulsion or swoon with delight at the sight of my own skin or the contemplation of my guts or my death. He had no desire for me to find the naked chicken woman disgusting or titillating (though of course she was a bit of both). He would have me give up neither my delight in escape nor my deeper seeking. What the Buddha asked of me is that I look at them and see what they are, truly are, in this moment, in my perception, right now. Really, the Buddha didn't advocate much of anything beyond WAKING UP.

Complacency may have been the Buddha's only enemy.

Weight loss reflections

I started this blog with the intention of tracking my efforts to lose weight. A couple of posts back, when I was talking about what I eat and why, I said that I would revisit this topic, if only briefly. As those of you who have been following this blog for awhile are aware, I have shifted my focus more to the Dharma side of things and have de-emphasized the weight loss angle. Why?

Well, it's not because I no longer think that losing some of this excess weight would be wonderful. I am aware of the health consequences of carrying even a relatively small amount of extra poundage. But here's the thing: I am simply not willing to live my life under some sort of cloud, constantly concerned about every extra pound or calorie. Put another way, I would rather die a fat, diabetic, hypertensive mess than spend the precious hours of my life worrying about my weight. Whenever I hear myself, internally or aloud, speaking in martial terms (fighting weight, struggling with it, wrestling it), I recoil. I don't want to live my life in any more struggle than is called for. Just day-to-day living is hard enough.

On the other hand, I treasure discipline and commitment. And by saying I treasure them, I mean that I find great pleasure in them, a greater pleasure than I do in eating junk, for instance. Because of this, in a normal, average week I follow the strictures of my 1800 calorie regimen six days, giving myself Sundays off. When I do this, I steadily lose weight. But many of my weeks are not "normal". When I go on vacation or to visit my parents I find it very difficult to measure and parcel out everything I eat, especially since much of the time is taken up in social eating. Not that I am one of those who, when I feel released from obligation, go buy a box of Twinkies and eat the whole thing; I have never been that kind of binge eater. But a few chips here, a latte instead of drip coffee, a cookie or cinnamon roll or two and pretty soon I have put on an extra pound or five. And since I am now visiting my family once a month, when I factor in my vacations and other time off, my "abnormal" days begin to outnumber the "normal" ones. With the decreased metabolism of a 56-year-old, I have found that, even with moderate eating, if I am not ever-vigilant, I can gain up to 10 pounds in a week.

My friends Barbara and Jim say that when they decided to take off some extra weight they always took their own food wherever they went, even out to dinner with friends or on vacation, if they thought they would not be able to calculate accurately the "cost" of the food they would otherwise be eating. That would be very difficult for me, but I get the point. When I eat with my parents, for instance, we tend to eat at places that specialize in meat and potatoes types of meals. Nothing wrong with that, and they like pretty decent places, but for a vegetarian, lean meals are hard to come by in these restaurant. I'm not complaining, but it does make me wonder how to deal effectively with such times.

Kathy and I just came back from a mini-vacation to Doe Bay on Orcas Island in Washington state.

Doe Bay

It was beautiful and restful and damn near perfect, at least for us. We didn't do much, really, though we went on a couple of hikes in two different state parks on the island. I did not pork out while we were there. We had a couple of meals in the restaurant attached to the resort, but mostly cooked and ate moderately in our own little cabin. Still, I would not be at all surprised to find I gained between five and ten pounds over those five days.

Our sweet little cabin, Chakra

Don't get me wrong. This is not a "problem" for me. I refuse to let it be. But it is a curious conundrum and one with which my thoughts are often taken up. I wonder what kind of alternative strategy I could use for those times when I am out of town or relaxing that would not make these times less interesting or fun but would still allow me to remain on the path to good health? I guess I will find out.

Walkin'

I am, both by necessity and inclination, a walker. I don't own a car and while I can rent or borrow one (and do from time to time), for the most part I try not to. Given the other options, walking is my choice both for mode of transport and exercise. Though I live in a city with a better-than-average transit system (some would disagree with this assessment), I still prefer walking for several reasons:

• The bus doesn't go everywhere. Even when I take the bus, I must walk to the closest stop, then from the arrival stop to my final destination. In many cases, I might as well just walk the whole way.
• It can be something of a hassle to wait for the bus and accommodate to those times when it is not on schedule. When I am walking, I know pretty much exactly how long it will take.
• It's a bit expensive to ride the bus. If I am going to downtown Seattle, it is well worth the $5 to get there and back, but if I am travelling to a closer destination, it doesn't make as much sense.
• Walking just plain feels good.

Seattle is a pretty good city for walking. There are sidewalks in most neighborhoods and many interesting things to see, many of which would be missed from a car or bus. It's a pretty hilly place, though, which can be a challenge, but can also be good if you are up for that kind of workout. It depends on where you are, but most places in Seattle have hills to them or away from them. Going from the waterfront to the top of First Hill, for instance, is an epic hillclimb (the original Skid Row is here, so named because logs were skidded down to the water from the top of the hill). Going from University Village to the University District or Northgate up to Roosevelt is somewhat daunting. There are trails that are more level, such as the Burke-Gilman and around Green Lake, but these are crowded and less interesting (to me, anyway) than the neighborhood walks. Besides, I treasure the feeling of my legs working against so much gravity and my lungs taking in vast quantities of air.

There is also the opportunity to make walking into a meditative pursuit. Though walking meditation is usually taught as a slow-paced, concentrated focus on each movement, there are no rules about this and often a faster walk or even running can be just as meditative. I quite often turn my walks into an opportunity to listen to dharma talks; these tend to be about an hour long, which is how long I walk when I am going out for a pure exercise walk (as opposed to walking to get somewhere). Walking home from work at night has become my time to listen to audio books.

I am also fascinated with the physics of walking. It is truly the science of controlled falling, throwing oneself slightly off-balance with each step and then stopping the fall with the other foot, doing this over and over again. I love the feel of muscles responding to a grade and the lean I take on when it is steep, the better to recruit the major muscle groups in my thighs and butt and back. I love, too, that the whole body is involved in walking, not just the legs. When I pay attention I can feel how the arms and chest and abdomen add their voices to the chorus.

Many studies have shown that brisk walking is one of the best forms of exercise there is, giving the benefits of cardiovascular work without the high-impact damage of running or other more vigorous forms. Which is not to denigrate any other kind of workout, merely to advocate for the benefits of my favorite type. The other huge advantage I see is that I can continue to walk for the rest of my life. I am already anticipating that I will still walk an hour a day when I am 90, the only difference being that I won't go nearly as far.

See you out there....

What I Eat and Why II

So, last week I started detailing what I eat on a daily basis and why I make the choices I do. One of the most important things I discovered in this process is how much is involved in the choices we make about food, and we make these choices every day. These are political, economic, spiritual, physiological, psychological and emotional in nature. There is nothing simple about eating.

I was visiting my extended family in California over the weekend and was reminded how much of the social there is in eating, how we gather around food to celebrate anything and everything, from birth to death and everything inbetween. When we don't know what else to do for someone in grief or pain, we know we can cook for them, drop off some cookies or a casserole. There is something consoling, joyful, reassuring about food. Yet this can also contain the seed of addiction with which so many of us struggle.

My mother's mother was addicted to food in an entirely different way: her self-worth was caught up in how successful she was in feeding others and took it as a personal affront if you were not willing to be plied by her with food. This became more problematic the older (and more mentally feeble) she became. Food, it goes without saying, is complicated.

I left off with breakfast. Lunch, then: when I work I eat homemade lentil soup. I make a large batch every two weeks and refrigerate it. I find it unnecessary to freeze or otherwise preserve my soup—it lasts just fine for two weeks. This is one of the pleasures of being a vegetarian; without meat in my soup, I can worry less about what might make me sick in the things I keep in the refrigerator. I also eat a piece of fruit for lunch. Midmorning, I have half a granola bar each work day. I have another piece of fruit about 2:30 each day. This is why I eat this way: first of all, as stated in last week's post, I need a diet that is predictable in both calories and protein. My lentil soup is rich in protein. I have also discovered that my blood sugar drops between meals unless I eat something, thus the granola bar and fruit. This is especially true when I am working, because my work is physically and emotionally taxing.

When I am not working, I have a bit more leeway. I still track my calorie and protein intake, but can make choices within those requirements. I usually make fairly healthy choices because these have fewer calories and therefore I can eat more of them! I like cheese quite a bit. I usually eat some cottage cheese, as this contains more protein per calorie than nearly any other food. I always have a glass of V-8 to give me more vegetables in my diet (on work days, I treat lentil soup as my vegetable, since it has a healthy amount of spinach, squash, and potatoes in it).

In the evening I don't have a full meal. I tend to concentrate my calories and protein in the morning and afternoon hours; I really don't require all that much energy in the evening. But if I have not yet used up my 1800 calories for the day, I usually eat right up to that allowance. I don't think it is healthy for me to drop too far below that number of calories. I always include plain yogurt as part of my evening, both for protein content and for the probiotics contained therein, which at a minimum help with digestion and may also aid in immune function. Otherwise, I favor chips (Sun Chips, pretzels, that sort of thing), licorice (the real, black kind, none of that namby-pamby red stuff—ick) and a small amount of white chocolate, if I have the calories to afford it.

I take some more supplements in the evening: more vitamin C, a multivitamin, more garlic.

That's about it for My Day in Food. Next time, I will write a bit more about how this all fits into my original intent to have this be a blog about my attempt to lose weight and how this whole thing fits into the principles of Buddhism.

What I Eat and Why

This blog began as a discussion of food and our attitude toward it, with particular emphasis on how the teachings of the Buddha (the Dharma) gives us insight into our eating (and vice versa, as far as that goes). I thought it might be interesting (to me, at least) to tell you a little bit about how I eat and why I eat what I do. If this holds no interest for you, please feel free to skip this one!

A few notes first:

• I am a vegetarian. Why: the first precept taught by the Buddha (I have written on the precepts here) is not to kill. You will recall that the precepts are not commandments and we must each make our own determination as to what these mean to us, if anything. To me, this precept means that no creature should die for my convenience or to satisfy a mere desire. You will note that this prohibition would exclude any circumstance where the death of another creature was essential for my survival (which is to say, I would not refuse meat if that was the only food available, nor would I eschew insulin or exogenous skin products derived from pigs or other animals). I admit to being conflicted about the use of animals for essential medical research, but in general I am not opposed to this use if it leads to the saving of human lives. I am aware that this is a moral quagmire, as I am thus placing the value of human life above that of other creatures, but the fact is that I do place more value on human life; that's just the way it is for me. I am not a vegan, as I have no problem with taking milk and other products from animals. As noted below, it would also be very, very difficult for me to get adequate protein intake without dairy. I also love it (especially good cheese—yum!) and have no intention of giving it up.

• I monitor and supplement my protein intake. Why: I was experiencing very low energy states a few years ago (more about that later) and one of the discoveries I made at that time was that I (like many people the world over) do not digest soy well. Not that it causes particular digestive issues, I just don't get the protein benefit others do from it. This is pretty common, actually. In combination with my vegetarianism, this makes it more of a challenge to get enough protein into my diet. I found I had to monitor my protein intake closely and every day.

• I believe in the use of supplements. Why: I am a scientific guy at heart and like evidence-based practices, but I think there is something to be said for the use of products with a long history of efficacy that nonetheless cannot be conclusively proven to be effective (I am thinking of such things as vitamins and certain herbs). This is an age-old debate—must we have proof of something before we can declare that it might have some usefulness? Are we simply wasting our money on these products or are they truly an adjunct to our better health?

So, here's what I eat:

For breakfast I eat some kind of cold cereal, usually. I eat something that is not too sugary, but still has some taste without adding any sugar or other sweetener. Now, I should say at this point that what I have done is figured out how many calories and how much protein I am consuming when I start the day with a particular cereal, since all the cereals vary somewhat on both metrics. This is easy to do in my case because (as you will see below) I eat essentially the same thing each day, with some variation built in. The reason I bring this up is because a lot of people think it is just too much hassle to track calories and protein. But, by having a chart of what a typical, basic day's measures of these two are, it is much less of a hassle for me.

I put about a quarter cup of bran cereal on my cereal, for the purposes of colonic health. There is pretty strong evidence that increased consumption of fiber helps prevent colon cancer. I also put a handful of blueberries on my cereal each day. The anecdotal evidence of many centuries suggests that berries in this family can boost immune function. 

I eat nonfat milk on my cereal. I also mix a scoop of whey-based protein powder with some more milk. As noted above, I cannot use soy-based protein powder, and a boost to my total protein is essential. My goal is to consume one gram of protein for every kilogram of ideal body weight. I have done quite a bit of study around this figure and, although studies and experts vary widely in their recommendations for protein intake, for me, 80g per day seems about right. This is also tied into the fatigue I was feeling a few years back—the measured protein intake is one of my responses to this.

I also eat a piece of fruit with breakfast. I am not so compulsive that I get all hung up on the calorie difference between different pieces of fruit. This is counted into my daily tally at a particular level and doesn't vary. Fruit is actually not all that nutritious, by the way, but does provide a complex carbohydrate to keep my blood sugar up. It also provides an extra amount of fiber (see above). The superiority of fruit over juices or even other sources of sugar has been exaggerated, though. Over-consumption of fruit can be a source of empty calories if one is not judicious.

With breakfast I take many supplements. I take 1000 mg of vitamin C. I know, I know, this has come in and out of fashion and recent science suggests that there is very little efficacy to vitamin C either as prophylaxis of common viral infections such as colds or as a scavenger of free radicals (purported to prevent cancers). Still, there was a time not long ago that I was getting sick at the rate of five or six times each winter, sick enough to take a day or two off work each time. When I complained to my doctor, she suggested that I try vitamin C and garlic. So, after doing some study on the subject, I started taking a total of 4500 mg of vitamin C per day as well as four tablets of garlic. I spread the vitamin C out throughout the day (it is water-soluble and taking too much at any one time means you are just urinating out the excess; it can also cause diarrhea at high doses). I also take two of the garlic tabs in the morning and two in the evening, hoping to spread the effects from that intake. And I have gotten sick much, much less since I started doing that. Granted, there are many other factors that could have caused this change to come about, but the temporal relationship between these measures being taken and the improvement in my health is suggestive to me of some causal relationship.

I also take vitamin D, 5000 IU every other day in the winter (less sun exposure) and three times a week in the summer. This was suggested by my naturopath after I went to him with my complaints of fatigue (my regular physician was at the end of what she could do for me). One very important proviso to supplementing with vitamin D, though: you must have your vitamin D levels checked at least yearly and more often when starting supplementation or substantially increasing your dose. Vitamin D can accumulate in your body (it is fat- and not water-soluble) if you take too much and cause much worse problems than the ones you are solving with it. You will also need to do your homework to determine the ideal blood level for you; traditional medicine tends to set the acceptable levels quite low. Recent studies have suggested that nearly everyone could benefit from some degree of vitamin D supplementation.

I also take a vitamin B50 tablet, which provides about 50 mg of most B vitamins, and a selenium tablet. These two were suggested by the LEVITY study conducted at the University of Washington about ten years ago as being efficacious for improved mood (along with exercise and exposure to as much natural light as possible).

These days I am also taking 1000 mg of organic American ginseng daily. I know, that's pretty specific, but here's why: an Australian study demonstrated that this type of ginseng was efficacious in providing feelings of more energy and improved stamina in a particular group of patients. So, I am running an experiment on myself, taking 1000 mg every day for a month, then 2000 mg (the dose recommended on the bottle) for two months, to see if I detect any improvement. Though my fatigue has improved a great deal, it is an issue that is far from entirely solved. I doubt this type of ginseng is better than any other kind, but am trying to replicate the study conditions to the best of my ability. I am nearly through the first month (1000 mg) and have seen no change.

Well, I got pretty wordy describing all that, and I'm only up through breakfast! I will tackle lunch, dinner, and my other food in my next post. I will also talk about my weight loss (the original purpose of this site) and where I stand in relation to that.

God

I don't exactly disbelieve in God. Is that vague enough for you? If I have gained any wisdom in my nearly six decades of life (a debatable proposition), that wisdom may well be summarized in this mantra: "It is more foolish to assert certainty than doubt in a world as uncertain as this".

Consider the evidence, such as it is: evolution is a fact, though as time goes by we realize how very limited Darwin's original theory is (even he acknowledged this). Still, evolution is the way we came into being. All things natural are explicable through the science of evolution. Creation cannot explain away things like entirely useless hipbones in whales or other vestigial traces of the evolutionary progress of species. (Yes, yes, I know, God has no need to explain Himself or Herself or Itself. There are mysteries and this is as it should be and all that. Still...). Then there is the trump card often put forward by the atheist; do you really want to believe in a God that would allow things like Darfur or the rape of a child? The Holocaust or Kim Kardashian?

I just looked at a few philosophical website entries about this question, so my head is spinning a bit, but I don't feel any clearer than I did before. Arguing about the subject from the perspective of logic isn't really very useful, is it? Atheism, whether they believe it to be so or not, is a form of belief; since the non-existence of God cannot be proved, there must be a degree of faith involved in the argument. On the other hand, the non-existence of anything cannot be proved, when you get right down to it (incontrovertible proof of a negative being impossible, in philosophical terms). Though I cannot conclusively prove there is no Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy, it does not require faith for me to be pretty certain they don't exist (my apologies to those of you still getting a buck under your pillow). The burden of proof, argue the atheists, is not on them, but on those who believe in God.

Which is where I exit the whole debate. It seems to me that taking this question as an exercise in logical thinking is precisely the wrong tack. God is a feeling, God is an understanding at the depth of our beings that defies explanation. God is that sense that only the existence of something beyond our human understanding explains the nature of how the world flows in a certain way. Of course, I acknowledge that this could easily be a soothing fantasy, like the child who believes that Dad looking under the bed dispels all the demons that normally live there. Life is too frightening, the argument goes, to carry on without God.

To throw up my hands and say, "I don't know" is to many on both sides of the debate the pinnacle of cowardice, a fecklessness beyond the pale. Yet that is precisely where I find myself. Raised in a firm belief in God, converted to wholesale atheism in my young adulthood, then confronted with evidence of the miraculous in my recovery from alcoholism (and witnessing the recovery of hundreds of others), I have come to a place of entire comfort with the uncertainty of my belief. I can't believe in a creator God, unless with my mother I were to believe that God created the universe by setting the work of evolution in motion and then sat back and let it do its work, an attractive melange, I think. Still, there are too many inconsistencies and redundancies in the whole operation to believe in a creator God, unless we were also to posit God as a well-meaning bungler. Do you really want to attribute the creation of sickle cell anemia to an omniscient being?

But I can't give up my belief in the miraculous. Miracles happen daily, if our eyes are open to them. This, perhaps, is my most firmly held argument against those who would philosophically debate the issue: while their noses are stuck in books and their voices are raised in epistemological wrangling, both theists and atheists are missing what is right in front of them. There is a Flow to the world, and we are either of it or standing in opposition to it. The former is a source of joy, the latter a source of suffering.  I have experienced this from both sides and am certain of the truth of at least this much.What is the nature of this Flow? I haven't the slightest idea. But it is not entirely human in origin, at least not on the scale of the individual. Perhaps it is the result of the combination of all human souls (another loaded word) or even the souls of all beings who have ever been and ever will be. How should I know?

But I do know this: if a person is determined to do right in the world and enters into the work of each day with this desire, good is more likely to come to that person. If, on the other hand, one expects evil of the world, evil will come to him in disproportionate quantities. If one uses prayer not as a grocery list for God, our errand boy, to do for us, but as a way of realigning with the Flow of being a human living in a finite body in a finite world that nonetheless has infinite possibilities and extent in a spiritual sense, true happiness is more likely. Is this some sort of brainwashing or Pollyanna view of life? Am I merely fooling myself in order to feel better about the disorder and cruelty in the world? God knows.

Shifting Sands

I can't recall the film in which I saw it, but I have a distinct memory of a world that seems perfectly real, but that dissolves behind you as you walk through it, as if it were real only in the moment you are in it, but then devolves back into chaos (or nothingness) as soon as its usefulness to you (or the plot) is past.

I have been having a similar feeling the past few months. I feel my role changing at work. My role as a husband has changed. As a father, a son, a person in recovery—all of these roles are shifting and transmogrifying. And I don't like it. This is very striking at work: in their insecurity, the younger workers assert their superiority and seeing this so sharply in them, I perceive it ever more clearly in myself. Don't they know how very hard I have worked to get where I am? (I can hear the whining in my head). Don't they know who I am?

One of the clearer messages of the Buddha's teachings is that such change is inevitable. Not only is our house built on shifting sand, the house itself is made of insubstantial stuff, of spun sugar and clouds. (Just ask our plumbing, which is disintegrating and needs replacement, but that's an entirely different subject!) I have thoroughly accepted this intellectually; of course life is all about change, who doesn't know that? Of course we all grow old, sicken, die, get hurt, become feeble, lose our faculties, our memories, our abilities. Of course the young come up behind us with more energy and new knowledge and displace us. This is all as it should be! Of course. But emotionally I find myself ill-prepared for the new realities springing up around me.

I'm not complaining, really. I feel more bewildered than hurt by these things. The illusion of solidity is nonetheless a very comforting fantasy and change usually happens so slowly that it is easy to believe that there is a solid reality here. There isn't, in case you persist in this delusion. This is not bad news, of course. It is what it is. The Buddha's message is one of thorough acceptance of this reality, that there is, paradoxically, no reliable reality. In fact, if we are looking for substantiality, we can never be anything but insecure (which is why there are so many destructive actions in our world motivated by fear and insecurity).

I am studying Wagner recently, specifically the Ring Cycle, in preparation for seeing it next year. (For those of you not familiar with it, this is a cycle of four operas, three of which are in excess of three hours long). I wanted to be more familiar with these masterworks in order to better appreciate them. One thing I was surprised to learn is that Wagner was influenced by the proto-Buddhists of his day. The conclusion they seemed to draw (or at least the one that Wagner incorporated) was that there was no God and that any drive to perfectibility was futile. I'm not sure that's what the Buddha had in mind, but it is interesting that Wagner should assert this.

What this has to do with the subject at hand (other than the fact that they are both rattling around in my head together just now) is this idea, which Wagner incorporated rather late in his career: we must come to terms with the idea that our lives will never reach an ideal state and remain there. The opera cycle is fairly explicit in the vagueness of its conclusions (if that's not too much of a contradiction in terms). Pretty much everyone dies in these operas, which is rather odd. Usually there is one hero left standing (think the final scene of Hamlet). But Wagner was telling a different kind of tale, one full of allegory and intended more to assert a point of view than to entertain: no matter what our status in life—hero, lover, god, or mere mortal, stumbling along to our measly destiny—we are fated to encounter our mortality and the frustration of our desires. The Buddha was explicit that the problem in this scenario is not the frustration but the desires, not the death but the expectation of ongoing life, not the change but the thought that life can be anything but change.

This feels like cold comfort today. I want security and certainty and the warm, cozy feeling of knowing my role and doing it well. I work hard and deserve a reward. I have earned a certain position in the world and expect to be acknowledged as such. As the saying goes, good luck with that. One of the primary problems with this system of belief is that everyone else is asserting their own right to be considered and treated in a light that is complementary to them, too, so that our day-to-day existance can begin to feel like a constant jockeying for position rather than just living our lives.