Incomplete, Part II

(This is a continuation of last week's subject. This post will probably make more sense if you read that one first, if you haven't already).

What this really speaks to is the failure of egocentric thought. The word "egocentric" here is taken not as a judgment but literally, simply the self being the center of the universe. From this perspective, there is no denigration of this literally self-centered view as wrong or bad. But in the way of thinking and being I am proposing here, there is an essential recognition of this mode of thought as a failure, at least if one is seeking happiness, well-being, peace, joy, wholeness, or freedom.

This is all fine and well in theory, intellectually I thoroughly understand it, but when life comes up, when push comes to shove, I return to the same selfish attitudes I have fostered all my 57 years.

"If not me, whom?"
 "No one else has my interests at heart."
"If I don't protect myself, I will be taken advantage of."
"If I don't speak up, they will get away with it."
"They have no right to judge me, exclude me, not acknowledge my goodness, find fault, or seek inferior ways of doing things. If I don't say my piece, I have allowed them to persist in error."
"I only have enough time and energy to take care of my own needs. If I had extra, then I would certainly devote it to the well-being of others."

And on and on and on. The question is not whether these are failed strategies for living a joyful life—they are, both from the teachings of every spiritual tradition I know of and from personal experience—but how do I break the chain of these obsessive, self-centered thoughts and truly enter on a more fruitful path?

The Third Zen Patriarch said this:

The Great Way is not difficult

For those who have no preferences.

When like and dislike are both absent,

Everything becomes clear and undisguised.

Make the smallest distinction, however,

And Heaven and Earth are set infinitely apart.

To set up what you like

Against what you dislike

Is the disease of the mind.

But I keep wanting to say to all these great teachers, "Yes, but, how? Release myself from all preferences? What, are you nuts? I know this sounds like a good idea, but how does one get there? And what is the difference between having no preferences and being indifferent? Look (I want to say), when I hurt my shoulder, the physical therapist said, 'Do this, and eventually you will feel better,' and I did. Then she said, 'Oh, and do these exercises for the rest of your life and you will continue to feel better', and that's what I intend to do. Where is the pith spiritual instruction that will break through the delusions that rule my life?"

Now, don't get me wrong; I have done a great deal of work in this direction and it would be dishonest and self-defeating to say I am nothing but a selfish bastard—I'm not and know it. But Selfish Bastard can and does rear his head on a fairly regular basis, particularly in times of stress (and most especially when I am afraid). This is the default I would most like to change, to find the magic word that would unravel the tightly wound skein of my self-concern and remind me that the path of joy, as well as the path of goodness, lies elsewhere. Because I know it does, but knowledge alone will not guide me to that place.

Next week I will address what I have learned (and what I have still to learn) about the answer to these questions.  

Order

I am a person who likes order. (Those who know me well are rolling their eyes at this understatement. Eyeballs back on the screen? Okay, then. Moving on). Yet life is chaotic. Note I do not say my life; that's because it is just life that is chaotic, by its very nature. I don't like to accept this fact. I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time struggling against it. My work life, my daily life, my computer life, everything mitigates against order and I struggle and struggle to make it otherwise.

I know beyond doubt that I crave order because without it I feel unsafe. But safety is a delusion. "Anything can happen anytime" is a mantra I learned from Joseph Goldstein. This is not fatalistic, simply a fact. That a meteor is unlikely to fall from the sky and flatten me is no very sure evidence that it could not. I could be brewing cancer or a cerebral aneurysm. My life could end ten minutes or 40 years from now and I have no way of knowing which.

The problem with craving order (safety) is not the impossibility of achieving it. The real problem is that this craving is the very heart of suffering. I know I have written on this subject before, but I need to hear this often for it to begin to sink in. St. John of the Cross said,

Disquietude is always vanity because it serves no good. Even if the whole world were thrown into confusion, and all things in it, disquietude on that account would still be vanity.

This is very important for me to hear because he is saying that it is not I alone who suffer when I create conflict in this way, but all beings. Why? Because not only does my attitude create disquiet for others, but when my energies are spent in pursuing the impossible, I have none left for the pursuit of the goal of the end of suffering for all beings. This is why he chooses the word "vanity" and not, say, "futility" or "sadness". "Disquietude is always vanity".

Not Heather Martin

Yesterday I spoke with my teacher Heather Martin. She reminded me that this feeling of dissatisfaction is a result of living in the Small Mind, the part of my consciousness that is ruled by these ideas of finite orderliness rather than the vast spaciousness of the open heart. I think of the Small Mind as being controlled by a Jack Russell terrier. It is a bundle of nerves that believes it knows what should come next and that it must be done Right Now. But, just like a nervous little dog, my Small Mind has only the vaguest idea of what would serve me well and rather a one-track mind.

This sounds innocent enough, cute even, but my life and, I would argue, the lives of most people are run by this unwise little dictator. One of the most important lessons the Buddha had to teach was that the larger mind exists; most of us have no clue about this unless it is pointed out. What Heather was trying to remind me was that in the spaciousness of the broader consciousness, there is room for everything, with vast  quantities of real estate to spare. I need not avoid the toxicity life brings my way because it can be placed in this space and will cause no harm, will barely be noticed. When I am living in the Small Mind, every little problem threatens to suffocate me, or so it seems. When I am living in Large Heart, love is the predominant force, it scents the very air I breathe.

All of this, I must realize, is a matter of choice. I can choose to be in one mind or the other. Why do I choose the more painful? Once again, I have to believe it is because it is familiar, is what I have believed for most of my life was the only world there was, the only world in which I was safe. Even when I have been shown the doorway to Oz, why do I hesitate? Just because there's no place like home doesn't necessarily mean it's a good place to dwell.

I would like to live in the place that Hafez describes in his poem "With That Moon Language":

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me."

Of course you do not do this out loud,

Otherwise someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this,

This great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one who lives with a

Full moon in each eye that is always saying

—with that sweet moon language—

What every other eye in this world is dying to hear.

Who, me?

When I describe someone, I sometimes wonder how that person would in turn describe me. The hope is that it would not suffice to say, "You know, that asshole". I'm pretty sure that's not it. But is has occurred to me that "intimidating" might be an adjective one would choose. I remember once (not long ago) I said to a boss, "I don't think of myself as the least bit intimidating". "But," she bluntly replied, "you are". I have suspected for some time that, especially at work, I am more respected than liked. Not a bad thing (it could be neither!), but not the most desirable condition.

I don't know what to make of all that, but I do know that I have discovered, by being more aware of how people respond to me, that I am most certainly not the person I wish to be. I view myself as open, kind, loving, and generous. I'm not, though. This is not a morbid reflection, just an observation. I was in conflict with a family member not long ago (I wrote about it before) and what became most evident was how very unclear I was (and am) about the effect of what I say and how I am. In many important ways I am entirely blind. What a discovery to make this late in life.

I suppose that in some ways this is quite good—what it implies is that I both care and am noticing how what I do ripples out into the world. I have to assume that prior to this awareness I was blundering through and creating wreckage everywhere I went while thinking I was doing pretty damn well. I have a coworker who, it seems to me, believes she is a benign force in the world, a person who is both doing well and doing good. But my perception of her is of a steamroller, flattening those who don't agree with her perception of what is good and truly perplexed that anyone could disagree with her vision of how things should be. After I get over being annoyed with her, with a jolt I realize I do exactly the same thing! I am not accusing either of us of malfeasance; I think we're both just clueless about our impact in the world. I'm trying to get a clue here, that's all.

I have always distrusted the idea that we abhor in others qualities we dislike in ourselves, either consciously or unconsciously. It seems to me a concept too smug and simplistic. And yet, when I look around me, that idea seems to conform to what I see. Another example: there is a meditation teacher in my town who I really don't much care for because he is self-satisfied, cranky, aloof, and intellectually arrogant. Hmm...sound a bit familiar?

This could easily begin to seem like unstinting criticism, but that's not what I'm getting at, not at all. I am pretty fond of myself (odd how in the West this sentiment has come to be seen as vanity, whereas in most cultures it is simply assumed that people think well of themselves). On the other hand, as Suzuki Roshi said, "You are perfect just as you are...and you could all use some work".

There is also a place for full-hearted acceptance of myself as I am. But I admit to being a bit confused about where acceptance leaves off and complacency begins. I don't want to be a jerk and leave it at that. "Oh, well, I broke your toes stepping all over you, too bad, that's just how I am". On the other hand, I can't and won't be eternally subject to the opinions of others in how I shape my actions and attitudes. That way madness lies.

Compassion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No.

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

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

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

The 14th Dalai Lama

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

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

Who We Are

Last week, there was a shooting in my neighborhood, this one just a block away, a drive-by that may have been gang-related. I don't think this means I live in a dangerous place, at least not more so than any city and much less than many.

I was in California visiting my family this weekend. Circumstances sensitized me to the many acts of kindness, large and small, that go on around us every day. They are many and often, from the person who donates millions to promote the well-being of strangers half a world away to the man who held open the lid to a garbage can for me. In fact, our society runs on consideration and kindness. One example: driving would be warfare if we didn't yield right-of-way, make way for merging traffic and drive at somewhat sane speeds. Oh, I know, there are lunatics and rude people on the road, too, but the level of civility implied by millions of miles of 65 mile-per-hour driving without constant altercation and mayhem is a monument to a deeply grounded ethic.

Governance in this country has been reduced to a cruel hoax, with entrenched interests playing off against one another for pieces of a shrinking pie which ought not, by all rights, be theirs to divide. The most vital questions of our era, of any era—global climate change, entrenched societal racism and sexism, economic inequality, systemic disenfranchisement, unchecked and increasingly futile militarism, macroeconomic senescence—are not even under discussion, while what passes for seriousness is empty posturing and deeply ignorant moral certainty.

With the exception of a vocal minority, the country has embraced the right of gay men and women to marry, parent, work and live without harassment or legal barriers.

The internet is an annoying rabble of scrabbling self-interest while being full to bursting with millions of people putting forth enormous amounts of time and effort to provide content, guidance, information and shared knowledge with no thought of return.

Fear—of personal economic ruin, poverty, otherness, violence, abrogation of freedoms—has led to a poisoned atmosphere of suspicion and hatred in a powerful minority of Americans.

Every devastating event—tornado, earthquake, flood, forest fire, drought—brings with it an outpouring of heartfelt generosity.

War has been a staple of the human species since Og first struck Oog with a rock in a dispute over mastodon steaks.

Considering its history of contention and bloody strife, the efforts of Europe to unify is amazing, fraught with peril and misguided provincialism, perhaps, but nonetheless a testament to the great, deep well of forgiveness and grace of which we are capable.

All over the country, every day, small groups gather—little Tea Party cells—to revile and feed their hatred of everyone who's not like them. All over the country, every day, small groups gather—little 12 Step cells—to collectively reach the realization that only when we love, honor and help others will we find fulfillment and joy.

Which is all to say that we are a surprising, frustrating, kind, mean, generous, selfish, fabulous, revolting, gentle, violent, hopeful, hopeless, intelligent, clueless, informed, ignorant, dumb, damned, doomed, delicate, decisive, disastrous, determined, dithering delight of a species.

What to make of us, eh?

Deep Water

I absorbed a disappointment at work the other day. A situation I thought would probably go a certain way took a twist that left me with a painful choice. What I decided, though I am sad about it, seems like the right way to go for the peace and well-being of the clinic. But what I really want to explore is this feeling of disappointment. It served to coalesce several lines of thought I have been focusing on recently. The first is a question I have been pondering for about as long as I can remember pondering anything:

Why does it seem to be impossible for us to be born happy, live happily and die the same way?

Let me first say that I have always had a certain mistrust for the idea that unhappiness is a necessary precursor to happiness. This seems to be a concept which many people take as a given, that in order to appreciate joy we must have sorrow and that the capacity for one is roughly proportional to the other. I find this, at best, reductive and facile. To my mind, it is akin to saying that one must live in the Third World to appreciate living in the developed world, or one must be divorced to appreciate marriage. And once we think about it seriously, are we really suggesting that the more we suffer, the more capacity we have for happiness? I find this ridiculous on the face of it. If I had a burn over 90% of my body would I therefore inevitably have an absolutely enormous capacity for joy (redcutio ad absurdum)? Of course, it's perfectly possible that this idea of the need for suffering in order to comprehend happiness might nonetheless be true, but I have never seen any convincing evidence to support it. (Though it is essential to the development of compassion, there is no denying that).

To my mind, the more important question is this: is it theoretically possible to live a life without emotional pain? I know it's not likely, but is it possible? We have all known people who seem to have a greater than average capacity for finding what is pleasant in life. Is there a place on the far end of that continuum where a person goes through an entire life without suffering?

I would contend that the answer is no. But why is this? I think it must be because in order to be living beings we must grow, and the capacity to grow comes about through butting up against our limitations, either external or internal. When this happens, we become frustrated and unhappy. We seek a solution or response that will alleviate this suffering. But the suffering must come first.

Let's take an early-in-life example. An infant is perfectly content to be fed, changed, burped, held, and put down to sleep. (I know, I know, they also cry a lot, but mostly they are brought back to contentment fairly easily). But at some point the baby "aspires" to something more, wishes to see more or move more. This is a frustrating impulse when the child does not yet have the capacity for controlled voluntary movement. The frustration leads to repeated attempts to get past the frustration by developing the skill required to overcome the barrier to the fulfillment of desire. A more subtle example from adulthood is when we wish for things to be a certain way in a milieu (work, for example), but the reality of personalities, administrative limits, and many other factors makes this impossible. This frustration is compounded by the fact that each person with whom one works (or lives, or whatever) also has a vision of a perfect environment which inevitably does not coincide with yours. Thus the development of a physical skill or the persuasion of language will not suffice in these situations to overcome suffering. Instead, the growth must be in the emotional and/or spiritual realm, where we learn to choose between acceptance, confrontation, or escape. As one of my mentors said, in every difficult situation there are only three constructive actions: change it, leave it, or accept it. We can all think of several other responses (bitch about it, get angry, hate the perceived perpetrator), but these are more or less purely destructive.

Another source of suffering to consider: when we love we will suffer. The Loved One will leave or disappoint or die. This is inevitable unless you die first, in which case the other person (or animal or whatever) in the love equation will suffer. Suffering is simply part of love. To my way of thinking, this fact deepens and reifies what passes between two or more people. But this is probably a subject for a post all its own.

So suffering is essential to our growth as thinking, feeling, loving human beings. Though some people seem to be born wiser than others, it still is true that every one of us must go through this process of emotional growth (anger, frustration, consideration, formulation of a possible response, trying out that response, evaluating and deciding on a future course if that one doesn't work). Wisdom simply isn't possible without it.

But wisdom is not the only outcome of suffering tempered by wisdom. I have been dealing with grief in several forms lately and while, if given the choice, I would have selected some other state of being, there is a distinct upside. Wednesday, when I was actively grieving the lost opportunity at work, I realized that the feeling of grief seems to open up a trap door to a reservoir of comfort. This is hard to describe, but I suspect most if not all of us have experienced what I am talking about. In Sailing Home, Norman Fischer speaks eloquently of seeing "to the bottom of the feeling, through the turbulent waters caused by your stickiness, to the calm clear depth". It is as if we have been living in the parched top six inches of our lives and only by going to depth, miles down—which requires sadness, anger, grief, pain, despair, betrayal, some strong stimulus—can we find the cool underground stream of our selves, a flow of being we hadn't even guessed existed. This is why, as I said in my last post, the way out is down. We must discover what is down there in order to go on; we cannot survive on bread alone, but must have the water of our deepest emotions to thrive. I suspect this is why, no matter how intelligent and well-informed they may be, young people (except those who have suffered out of proportion to their age) still seem rather callow in the view of those who are more mature. I'm still not recommending suffering as a hobby, but it does seem to have its uses.

Which leads back inevitably to the Four Noble Truths the Buddha propounded. The first is that there is suffering (or dissatisfaction). That reflects the discussion above, wherein suffering is an essential part of the human experience. The Buddha is not saying that all suffering is unnecessary, but that it exists for all of us. He could have stopped there; perhaps the Third Noble Truth might then have been, "So get over it". But instead he proposed a radical idea, that there could be an end to suffering. Considering what I have just been saying, doesn't this mean that we would stop growing at the point we stopped suffering? Not necessarily. What I think the Buddha meant is that suffering is useful to a point and then no further, that, in fact, there comes a time when we must transcend suffering in order to continue to grow. This reminds me a bit of how one must treat orchids; once the flowers have finished blooming, the entire stalk must be cut off so a new one can grow. But if you also cut off all the leaves and dig the plant up by the roots, it will just die. So a certain degree of pruning (suffering) is essential to our flowering, but then we must leave well enough alone and go deeper. This is the core of what we are doing in meditation and in studying the Dharma. True wisdom is coming to the point of no preference, where grief is not bad and joy is not good, but all is acceptable. That, I believe, is nirvana. 

Blessings

Recently I have been practicing blessing those around me. I know, this sounds a little odd, pretentious even. But those thoughts, that I am somehow unworthy of handing out blessings or incapable of pulling them off, are precisely what I need to look at with great penetration. It seems to me that most of us live in a more or less constant state of inadequacy, of thinking that right around the corner is our perfection, but we somehow never quite get there. It's like hanging a carrot on a stick in front of a donkey; we pursue it as if it were reachable while always putting the goal further away by exactly the amount that we come closer to it.


Here is the real truth: we are already there. There is no "there" to get to. We have arrived. Oh, sure, we have some flaws to iron out. As Suzuki Roshi once put it, "All of you are perfect just as you are...and you could use a little improvement." Just because we have some residual impurities does not mean we are not already perfect. How is that possible? In the first place, we cannot be other than perfect if we consider that this moment is the only moment in which we can actually be alive. We cannot be alive in the past or the future. So, the persons we are in the moment are the only persons we could be in this moment and are therefore perfect for this moment. How could it be otherwise? 


I have mentioned before the Sylvia Boorstein response to the question, "How are you?", which is, "Couldn't be better." We couldn't be better. We may be in pain; we may be grieving; we may be angry; we may be an absent friend; we may be an inadequate (by our standards) son, daughter, wife, husband, father, mother, yogi. But in this moment we couldn't be better because if we could be, we would be, and since this is the only moment we have, how we are is perfect within it.


So, who am I to doubt the efficacy of my blessings? I walk down the aisle of a crowded airplane and bless everyone on board. I stand in line in the grocery store and pass out blessings like free samples in the cereal aisle. I walk down the street and bless everyone I meet and all of those in the houses on my route. I sit at work and bless all those hostile, crazy, wonderful people who walk through the door. Why not? For one thing, I have found that it is very difficult (though, sadly, not entirely impossible) to be angry with someone I am blessing. Those toward whom we might feel anger need our blessings more than anyone.


I also bless bugs and dogs and houses and streets and cats and cars. Who's to say I cannot? I bless food and babies and assholes and saints.


But is this all just a fantasy exercise? I firmly believe it is not. It changes me, for one thing, changes the way I think about and relate to the world. But I also believe that putting such energy into the world changes it for the better. After all, why would we cram ourselves into an enormous stadium to share space with the Dalai Lama? Why do we wish to be near Pema Chodron? Why, if not to bask in their blessings? Yet, both of these worthies would be the first to tell you that their capacity to bless is no greater than yours. The difference is that they believe in that power and actively use it.


So, give it a try. Every now and then, go so far as to extend your arms out like the pope and take in a whole crowd of people; don't worry, they'll just think you're stretching your shoulders or something. Place your hands on the head of someone you love and give them a benediction. Go ahead. Bless them. Bless everyone. Look around you. Don't you think we could use some blessings?

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.

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.