Struggles

I hadn't realized it has been so long since I last posted here. My father has died since then. I will turn 60 in a bit over a week. I'm having a hard time right now, though I'm not quite sure what the first two statements have to do with the last.

Sometimes it feels like a loss of faith. Not faith in any particular thing, because I did not start out with faith in a god or a system or a plan. I have been an optimist, but no Pollyanna. I am not at all sure that everything will turn out just fine, and I am damn sure things don't happen for a reason. And if you tell me about god's plan one more time....

No, it's more like a loss of faith in the point of it all. I know that sounds very depressed (and depressing), but that's not how I mean it, believe it or not. There is in me the sense of the foundation somehow having been shaken. I know that the political climate in the U.S. and in the world has something to do with it. I have a deep belief in the efficacy of kindness and reasoned thought, but neither of these are much in evidence in the world these days. It's almost as if the majority of people see this as the end times and feel that unless they give their maximal energy to anger and vindictiveness right now, disaster cannot be averted. What they do not seem to realize is that it is the anger that is the cause of the destruction rather than its cure. And I see this from every direction in America's political divide, a nastiness that subsumes and consumes everything in its path.

I also had an experience recently which shook my faith in my marriage. It was a minor tremor, really, but it caused me to realize just how much of my well-being is tied up in the health of that connection. I'm not so sure this is healthy. Because it will end, of course. That is the central lesson of the Dharma, that all things end. Love is a guarantee of loss, because either the relationship will end or one or the other of you will die. Ha! That sounds awfully grim, I know, but is the simple reality of such things. And to have a little off-handed, casual comment cause such tremors in me is pretty frightening. On the other hand, if this is a wake-up call to nurture and heal what we have, then so much the better.

And I know it seems petty in comparison, but some of my perturbation is that most of my technology is rebelling against me. My internet goes down periodically for no reason whatsoever (who knew that going from copper wire slow internet to fiber optic fast internet would be a problem?) and my brand new laptop has a malfunction so bad that it must be returned to the manufacturer for replacement or repair. Crazy-making.

I miss my father. He was a sweet and wonderful man. He taught me a great deal. He was a man of deep faith, and I respected that more and more the older I got, even if I did not share his belief. He died April 7.

But, what the heck! On June 11 I will be 60. I will be in Portland that day, enjoying the city and going to Sweeney Todd with my much beloved wife. We will visit gardens, hiking trails, book stores, restaurants, parks, and coffee shops. All will be well. I love my life and am very fortunate to be living it. So be it.

The Only Power We Have

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deserving

I work very hard. I deserve to have time to myself. I deserve for the work flow to stop long enough for me to catch my breath. What did I do to deserve being worked so hard? At the very least, I deserve to be recognized for the work I am doing.

Wait a minute. I found out last week that I have been nominated for an award to recognize the work I am doing. I don't deserve that. I can tell there are people who resent the fact that I have been nominated and know I don't deserve it. And they are right. I mean, it wasn't my idea, guys! Hey, you don't have to convince me I'm undeserving.

But, you know, now that I think of it, it's about time someone recognized how deserving I am of praise. I deserve it more than anyone I can think of. Bring it on. You're right, I am pretty damn wonderful!

I feel at the same time pleased and guilty about being nominated for this award. It's as if I have done something illicit, gotten away with something. I don't deserve it and, "if you only knew!" (what a rebel I am in my heart). I really deserve this and, "if only you knew!" (how hard I really work). In my small mind, it's all about my deserving, when in fact awards and honors are almost entirely about the need to celebrate or recognize and are, in the final analysis, also almost entirely impersonal. But it sure is difficult to look at it that way.

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I went to a concert last night and when I went to the bathroom, the guy standing next to me was irate (I mean really irate) because they weren't piping the concert into the bathroom. He obviously deserved to hear the whole thing, even while peeing.

I live in Seattle, which is where the most recent mass shootings happened. What did these young people do to deserve being shot? What did the shooter do to deserve being so beset by demons?

What could God be thinking? What does the universe want?

The person who cut my hair yesterday told me the story of a family friend who died suddenly of cancer at the age of 42. He was healthy and strong and nice and did nothing to deserve an early death.

I live near Mount Rainier. Every year, for years on end, people have climbed the mountain safely. Last week, six of them fell to their deaths. Why them? They did nothing wrong; they did not deserve to die.

I know many people, including very close family members, who are struggling mightily, some with physical health, some with mental health, some with money problems, some with alcohol and drug problems, and all manner of problems in between and otherwise. They don't deserve this. It's deeply unfair that they must go through this.

I worked for 10 years in intensive care units. Some people died and some people survived. Some of those who lived would rather have died; nearly all who died would rather have lived. Five-year-olds with 20% burns died and 80-year-olds with 60% burns lived. Who deserved more life?

How is it possible that good people die young and murderers live to a ripe old age? How can I have behaved so badly in my life and still thrive?

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But here's the thing: where did we ever get the idea that we get what we deserve? Where is it written that life is fair? Is there a misconception here? The whole idea that there is a God who predetermines what happens and allows for all this is deeply offensive to me. This is a portrait of God as asshole, and I don't buy it. Of course, I don't buy any kind of traditional concept of God, but this one just can't be right.

Closer to home spiritually is the idea of karma. I once told a friend who was going through a rough patch that she must have done something at some point for her karma to be screwed up like this. She took great offense at this, thinking I was implying that she deserved what was coming to her, when I meant exactly the opposite: how could it be logically correct that such a wonderful person was having to undergo such trials?

Yes, there is a misunderstanding, and I share in it. We think there is some sense to the way the universe doles out its deserving, but there really isn't. Yes, I believe in karma, but it doesn't mean what most people think it means. I have long thought of karma as being at the same time the most and the least important concept in all of Buddhism.

Karma is unimportant because if we are behaving well in order to avoid punishment or gain good experiences, we are in the wrong religious tradition and doing things for entirely the wrong reason. If we are seeking a particular goal by practicing the Dharma, we are not practicing the Dharma. Because the teachings of the Buddha seek to free us from striving, these imagined rules of behavior are a new enslavement.

Karma is vitally important because when we act in accord with moral and ethical principles, it changes everything for the better; in fact, the well-being of the whole world is improved. One little act of unkindness multiplied by millions of people is a huge unkindness. As one teacher put it, "you can't get away with nothin'" In my personal system of belief there is no cosmic scorekeeper, yet the universe responds to our slightest action. The response a single individual might induce may be infinitesimal, but these small impulses add up to a wave of goodness (or badness, if we choose to go that way) that can overwhelm the world. But the goodness might not come to you in particular, not in the way you wish it would, and probably not in any kind of proportion to the goodness of your deeds. The lazy jerk down the street will still probably win the lottery while you struggle to pay your mortgage.

Global warming is a great metaphor for this. We all think it's a problem (well, those of us who are still sane and awake), but we also feel that our actions are too small a part of the whole to make a difference. (Not my SUV!) Yet, it is precisely these individual actions that add up to the big problem. Thus it is with our karmic actions. When I am impatient, this ripples out to others and if they in turn are impatient and the whole world exhibits no patience, eventually we wind up with a harried world where patience has no hope of thriving. Our actions matter. On a smaller scale, we have all experienced the job where one person—sometimes not even the boss—can make for a toxic place to work. No matter what efforts we undertake to counteract this toxicity, we can't make any headway when a person with a strong will to negativity holds sway. On the other hand, one truly positive person can make the workplace a joy to inhabit.

But the idea of deserving is hard to give up. This idea that if I live well I will die well, that if I behave myself I can avoid the vicissitudes of life, or, contrarily, that if I behave badly I will be punished for it, is deeply ingrained in our world view, especially in the Judeo-Christian culture in which most of us were raised. But it just ain't so. On the other hand, it's not totally random, either. We can invite into our lives more joy or more sorrow, more peace or more chaos, more acceptance or more resistance. But in the end, we must recognize that the universe is mostly impersonal in how it acts—it's not about me, not even close. And how could it be? I may feel as if I am the center of the universe, but in fact I am a tiny mote in a brief moment of time. When I can relax into the reality of what is without trying fiercely to justify or change it, then I am free. And freedom is what we truly deserve.

We think we know

My wife almost stepped out in front of a speeding car this week.

 
We think we know what will happen, that from day to day we will continue, that those around us will too, that life as we know it will carry on. But we don't know. Accidents, divorces, finding out something that entirely changes your way of thinking of someone you thought you knew--any of these can seem to explode the world we know.

Telling me about this near miss, Kathy said, "The whole day would have looked entirely different." Yes, for so many people. For the driver of the car, for his family, for me, for Mitchell, for her sisters, niece, nephews, my parents, all of their children and their children's children, concentric circles of relationships with people we have never met and will never know. Our lives would have changed forever because of one moment of negligence on the part of a driver, one second of inattention on Kathy's.

We try to make everything that happens fit into a predetermined frame of reference. I think perhaps this is what people are doing when they say that a tragic event is "God's will". There has to be, so the logic goes, a frame of reference in which all of this can be encompassed. What is beyond bearing is bearable if there is a box big enough to hold it in, and that box can be God. (Though if God wills some of what is going on in this world, I frankly want nothing to do with the guy). Life is more like "The Matrix" than we care to admit. Not that literal kind of explanation for what goes on behind the scenes, but something much more mundane. Life is an uncertain and constantly shifting kaleidoscope. Our impression of a solid reality must be vigorously maintained; this requires a great deal of energy, and if we let our concentration on this task waver for even a moment, it can feel like we are insane, that the whole world is falling apart.

One night I was sitting alone in our house and felt what I assumed was someone coming up the back stairs. The house vibrates just a little when someone comes up those stairs, so that's what I thought I was feeling. Then the vibration became a little more intense, and I thought, "Huh, that's a bit much for anyone I know". Then, as it became yet more vigorous, rather than move on to other possibilities, rather than admitting the possibility that it was an earthquake (which it was), I thought, "Man, that must be some enormous guy coming up those steps". It's not that I was in denial or afraid (I rather like earthquakes). It's just that I had a reality I was not going to let go of easily, no matter what the evidence.

Language is part of the problem. It delineates, measures, defines, limits. We think we agree on what it is being said, but even that is an illusion. What you envision when I say "Buddha" is not what I envision, nor what the next ten people you meet would. We project on to that being whatever we need for him to be. Even with a word less fraught, say the word "apple", there is no agreement. There is a story of a young boy in an elementary school class who, when asked what color apples were replied, "white". At which (so the story goes) his teacher scoffed (though one would hope she would be more skillful than to actually do this). But the little boy insisted. When asked to explain, he asked the teacher to cut the apple open. An apple is, after all, far more white than it is anything else, but that is not what most of us see when we speak of one.

So, every word I put down here has a panoply of meanings, some of which are easy to agree upon ("upon" is not very controversial), others of which might cause us no end of problems (what if I were to bring up "faith", for instance?). And each step away from impression to idea to concept to picture to description obscures rather than clarifies what it is we mean.

As a species, we also have a tendency to recognize only what is present. Our ability to project with any accuracy into the future is extremely limited. This is not just denial (though that certainly is part of it); it is a practical way of dealing with the world. We see what is in front of us, for the most part, and that is plenty for us to deal with. Take global climate change, for instance. We know that humans are largely responsible for this phenomenon, at least the preventable part, and we know further that limiting our use of fossil fuels will go some way toward ameliorating the problem. We are also aware that the urgency of the situation is, as one scientist put it, much as if a meteor was hurtling toward the earth on a collision course. Yet in the day-to-day of our lives, we need to drive to the store. We want electricity when we flip the switch. We want the grocery shelves to be stocked with goods that can only get there with the expenditure of enormous amounts of fossil fuel to process and deliver it, to keep it cold or hot or warm. We want to visit our distant families, no matter the cost in airplane fuel. This is not a criticism of us, but a recognition of our limited ability to do something different today that will have an effect in decades or centuries. We are mammals in survival mode and, to our reptilian brains, tomorrow only matters if we survive today. Thinking into the future, as an integral part of our reality, is not a skill with which we are well-supplied.

Believe it or not, this is all good news.

Noting the intricacies of the web of what truly makes up our lives is the end of suffering. Suffering is trying to close the curtain that shields us from that reality. Not that we can afford to check out of the real world; we do have to shop and drive and cross the street, make love and die and grieve and persist. But there is a substantial difference between living in the world and believing that this is all there is. You have only to begin with yourself. What of you is you? What piece of you makes you who you are? How much could be cut away and have the remainder still contain your essential "youness"? Could a brain, kept alive and thinking in a jar, ever be you? The heart alone? Your finger? Your foot? And even if you could identify what makes you uniquely you, what would happen in the following moment, when that had changed, no matter how minutely? Then who would you be?

What if Kathy had stepped in front of that car?

One of the reasons that films like "The Matrix" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "Abre Los Ojos" hold such appeal for us is that we know somewhere deep in our souls that this is the truth of things, that no matter how substantial we believe our day-to-day lives to be, we still from time to time feel as if we are living a fraud, that the other shoe will drop anytime now.

The Buddha holds the other shoe (though many spiritual traditions speak to these truths). And the great news is that all we have to do is stop trying so damn hard to do the impossible.

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.