Being dissed

It is sometimes difficult for me not to think apocalyptically. The environment, government ineptitude, SARS, MERS, Ebola, intractable internecine and international wars, the rise of radical factions of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and even Buddhism; all of these threaten my equanimity and sense of peace. Not to mention the normal day-to-day ravages of aging, illness, and impending death; family struggles, traffic woes, dueling egos, and overwrought colleagues.

I have become disenchanted.

Hmm...quite a lovely word, disenchanted. What we take it to mean is that once upon a time (in a country far, far away, perhaps), things were wonderful, or meant to be wonderful, and now they are no longer so, and this is sad, sad, sad. But it seems to me that this word is much more informative than we give it credit for. What it truly means is that I was once living in a fantasy world, I was enchanted, as if by a sorcerer or a fairy queen, and now I am disenchanted, no longer blinded by fairy dust.

I have become disillusioned.

The Buddha was very clear that the cause of our suffering is our illusions, the resistance we exhibit in response to the normal vicissitudes of our lives. It is not bad or wrong that there are wars or disease, old age or death, struggles and hatreds, shame and remorse. This is the way of things—perhaps not as we would wish them to be (and there are tools we can and ought to use to change what it is possible to change)—but as they are, nonetheless. I have stepped out of my illusions into the light of reality. I have ceased (to the best of my ability) feeling resentment, hatred, and fear in response to things being other than as I want them to be.

I am disappointed.

I am no longer the self-appointed judge of what you do and who you are. I have experienced a profound realization (ah, if only I could always remember this) of the nature of things as they are, of people as they are. We are all the result of conditions which have accumulated over centuries, millenia even, to result in this one unique being. Our DNA is packed with instincts and understandings arising from the experiences of our forbears (and which are the mirror image of those who did not survive to pass their inheritance on). Our psyches are stuffed with the emotional and physical experiences not only of our lives, but of the lives of thousands upon thousands who came before us. What you bring to the table across from me is the sum total of all this, and our paths have been different, so how is it possible that I should believe you are just like me, will react and think as I do, will see the world as I do?

I no longer have this disability, this disadvantage, am no longer disaffected or disagreeable. These have disappeared, been disarmed (well, I wish). Things may be in disarray, but this no longer disobliges me. I can discontinue the behaviors that lead to distress. I need not be the source of discord, in me or in the world around me; I need not be disgruntled. There is less and less a discrepancy between my beliefs and my actions. I can discriminate between the true and the false.

I am disencumbered.

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.

Delight

I think I missed the point of my own post last week. I knew what I wanted to say when I started, but then lost sight of it. It goes something like this:

What we need to work toward is taking delight in the everyday. This is the very nature of nirvana. When we think of the mundane as a drag, as things to be gotten through so the Real Living can begin, we miss out on the treasure hidden within every moment.

There is a story of a man who went all over the world seeking riches, yet when he came home, broken and old, he was told by a deity to dig beneath his house, where he found a box full of the greatest treasure he could imagine. At which (so the story goes) he promptly died. A little heavy-handed, perhaps, this tale, but you get what it's saying. When we ignore the treasure in our midst we live our lives in the grasp of greed, the constant seeking for something other than what we have. The treasure of meditative awareness is contained in every minute detail of our lives; it is always and forever available to us.

Nothing could be more mundane than the breath, yet this is what many of us choose as the focus of our meditation. It is prosaic and boring, ever-present and mostly unvarying (at least we hope so!) Yet think of where we would be without it (well, we wouldn't be without it, of course). Another story: a young Zen monk sitting by the shore of a river with his master was complaining that the breath was boring, that he couldn't imagine spending the rest of his life contemplating something so unbearably common. Without a word, the master grasped the young man and thrust his head under water (in these stories, Zen masters are always incredibly strong), holding him there just long enough to make his point, then asking, "Now, my brother, what do you think of the breath?" Which also reminds me of the comic in which a young monk is sitting next to an old monk and the latter is saying, "What do you mean, 'what next?' This is it."

Which is not to say we should set out to glorify the breath. It truly is simply a part of being, with us from birth to death, constant as a metronome and about as interesting. What we need to do, though, it take this as our cue to elevate everything we experience to the level of valued teacher. Every meal we eat, every heartbeat, every step we take, each tick of a clock, every horn honking in the street; sitting, standing, lying down, toileting, bathing, brushing our teeth, walking down stairs, taking out the garbage—all are grist for the meditative mill, if we allow them to be. I have seen this shift occur in me in the middle of doing something I consider boring or merely necessary—when I wake up to the meditative possibilities, it transforms the event into something holy. Pretty neat trick to play when picking up trash or washing the dishes. Suddenly my every motion becomes a dance, where every step is known, not just taken.

Instead, what we most often do is dismiss these as the bridge between meaningful activities, missing the value of the breath, the treasure under our floor, right under our noses. While we wait for the gift to be delivered, we fail to unwrap the hundreds we already have. But how does one do this? In any moment, we can stop. Unless the house is literally on fire, we can stop, just for the moment it takes to bring awareness into what we are doing. It changes everything.

This is, I think, what I was trying to say about meditation in my last post. When I think of myself as too busy (or too tired, bored, or important; what have you) to sit in meditation, I am exhibiting this very dismissal of the gifts in front of me. It's not that meditation is a brief foray into the spiritual; rather, it is a training ground for all of life, a reminder that the normal, the everyday, is where enlightenment lies. The most significant moment in my meditation is the moment I decide I will sit, for in that moment I have come to a recognition of the value of the practice and have shaken off the imperious voice of my mind telling me I have more important things to do.

This does not mean that all of  life must be mundane in order to find awareness; on the contrary, few things could be more meditative than those that are exciting or daring. The concept of "flow" teaches us that some of the most clearly concentrated moments of our lives are when we are thoroughly engaged with an activity, and nothing demands this of us quite so clearly as the extremes. You had damn well better be thoroughly concentrated when rock climbing or hang-gliding, or you might not survive the experience! But to seek these adrenaline rushes as the be-all of our lives is also to miss the point. All of life has the mundane in it, and all of the mundane has the Buddha in it. It really is no more complicated than that. We would like it to be more complex, because that would make us Important, but, truly, one may find ultimate peace and harmony while dusting the furniture. It's up to us.

Evil and it's Opposite

I just finished a wonderful book, The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert. This is not the place for a book review (the book is excellent, though), but there is one aspect of it that has captivated and held my attention, namely the main character's assertion that there is a flaw in the theory of evolution because it cannot account for altruism in the human (and in some cases non-human) species.

I find this odd. It seems to me clear that we are a cooperative species because we would have died out long ago if we were not, simple as that. I know that many acts of kindness or heroism have nothing to do with the survival of one's offspring, but I don't think evolution needs to be quite so literal. Birds, for instance, evolved wings because it made it more possible for them to survive, but they swoop and soar sometimes simply for the pleasure of it. There is no evolutionary adaptation there; it is more or less a side effect of a desirable trait. Just so, the extremes of altruism may not have anything directly to do with evolution, but the trait itself is highly adaptive. Or, so it seems to me.

Of more interest to me is the nature and persistence of evil. Here we truly do have a human characteristic that would seem to fly in the face of evolutionary theory. While it's true that the mass extermination of others (for instance) would seem to lead to the perpetuation of one's own offspring, such extreme acts go far beyond the level necessary for evolution to take place. Indeed, such extremes (history suggests) will eventually rebound upon the perpetrator and make the survival of his or her offspring less likely.

Caligula

I am thinking of the big evildoers here: Hitler, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Caligula, Torquemada, King Leopold. What could possibly have motivated these men (and it's worth noting that they are all men) to the heights of murder, rape, and torture? To simply call them evil and leave it at that seems disingenuous. These were men like any others; they were not substantially different in form from any of us.

This addresses what I believe Hannah Arendt was getting at when she coined the term "the banality of evil". It is both a disservice to humanity and an untoward exaltation of the evil one to think of Evil as something exceptional or outlandish. This way of thinking can lead to an attitude that can serve to sanitize or even romanticize evil acts. Just think about how we sometimes speak of a man like Rasputin, as someone extraordinary and mystical instead of just one more normal man gone bad.

Closer to home is the thorny situations where neither good nor bad is entirely clear. Take, for instance, the aversion most of us have for lying. We nonetheless engage in this vice on a fairly regular basis—and a good thing, too! Part of the social contract is those lies that make life possible ("Does this dress make me look fat?") On a deeper level, there is the thought experiment dreamed up (I believe) by Kant: a man who believed that lying was always wrong was sheltering his brother from a man who wanted to kill him. The potential killer came to the man's door and asked if his brother was there. What does the man say? It seems clear to me that one must always consider the greater good. To be a moral absolutist is to be a moral idiot.

I ran across two linked philosophical thought experiments the other day that also challenge the way we think about such choices. Here they are:

An out-of-control trolley is careening toward a large crowd of people and will undoubtedly kill dozens of them if it continues on its way. However, you have access to a track switch. If you throw the switch, the trolley will divert to a different track where only a few people stand; they will surely be killed in the collision. You only have time to throw the switch but not enough time to warn anyone. What do you do?

Usually people recognize in this scenario that the greater good takes precedence and, even though your action will lead directly to the death of some people, it will also save many others. But what about this?:

The same scenario as above, but this time there is no switch.You are on an overpass above where the trolley will pass. The only way to stop the trolley from killing all those people is to push the fat man standing next to you onto the tracks below, which will stop the trolley. (And, no, you are not adequately hefty to serve the purpose). You don't have time to warn anyone, including him, and you have the necessary strength to do the deed. Do you do it?

For most of us, this is a much more difficult scenario. Interestingly enough, in the latter scenario, you are responsible for the death of only one person versus "several" in the first one. Yet because you must actually put your hands on someone and directly cause his death, this is much more difficult for most of us to imagine doing. (Another twist on the scenario is that the fat man is responsible for the trolley being out of control—he rigged the controls and you know it. Is it easier to contemplate throwing him in the path of the trolley now? Why?)

I don't pretend to have facile answers to any of these questions, but I find them interesting. I think the only way we can survive is through a bit of moral relativism. Yet when we take this relativism to an extreme it can lead to horrendous injustice and indifference.

Which brings us back to altruism. It is essential that we feel compassion and openheartedness toward all of those beings in our world in order for us to survive. With all that is going on around us, this can be extraordinarily difficult. How can I hold in my heart every last refugee and starving person, every whale and polar bear, and still lead a life joyful enough to be worth living? The Buddha would say that our hearts have an infinite capacity to consider and address the problems of the world, but it doesn't always feel that way, does it?

I wish you all wonderful holidays. I will write here again after the New Year. Watch out for those trolleys.

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.

Happy Day!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cafe Racer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A poem seeks me out

So much depends
upon

A red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

It is rare for me that a poem comes to mind and will not be denied my attention. I must assume there is some meaning in the fact that the poem has sought me out.

This poem is by William Carlos Williams and is one of the most famous of the Imagist poem, the school of poetic thought which holds that the object itself is the subject of poetry and not an allegory or metaphor for another object (or feeling or event) altogether. Which is not to say there is not deep meaning to the poem, but that the objects themselves—wheelbarrow, chickens, rain—carry all the meaning there is to be found there.

There are those who claim to have deciphered the code of this poem, but I think they are suffering from a basic misunderstanding. There is no code. The images are evocative in and of themselves and the fact that the poem evokes so much for so many is the measure of its "success". Here is what it means to me:

The first four words make the whole poem work. We are not merely being given an image to look at (though that can be very effective, as in the best haiku), but told that so much depends on this object, which causes us to look more closely than we might otherwise.

The object in question is a red wheelbarrow. Notice that the word "wheelbarrow" is broken into its two constituent parts, which breaks up our assumptions about the object and causes us to look at it more closely. And a wheelbarrow truly is a rather remarkable thing, an inclined plane with a wheel. The fact of the inclined plane makes it possible for us to lift much heavier loads than we would otherwise be able to (think of a flat cart with the same load and having to lift it over an obstruction, for instance, and how much more possible the lifting is with a wheelbarrow). Then, the presence of an angled front panel combined with the incline plane makes it possible for us to dump those loads rather than have to transport them with a shovel or other tool from the cart to the ground. The fact that we have taken all this for granted does not make it any the less remarkable; Williams is asking us to notice this fact. He may not have had inclined planes and such in mind when he wrote the poem, but he had noticed the enormous utility of the tool and how much depends on it.

But what is such a trusty tool doing abandoned out in the rain rather than safely stored in a shed? It seems a rather sad oversight, but we have all done similar things through our carelessness or distraction, forgotten to put the tool away or to tell someone we love them or to notice our life passing until it is too late and the damage has been done: the wheelbarrow is rusted and worn, the relationship is dead, our lives are over. Not that we are to believe that this wheelbarrow is beyond repair—it is much more resilient than that. Nonetheless, for something upon which so much depends, it is rather cavalier treatment for us to leave it sitting in the rain.

But since we have left it sitting in the rain, let's notice how it looks with the rain streaked on it. It provides the barrow with a glaze that makes it more beautiful than it would have been otherwise. This is not a brand new, shiny wheelbarrow, after all, but a well-used, worn, trusty companion that benefits from the glaze the rain gives it.

Then, as if the beauty of the object were not sufficient unto itself, this shiny, red, beloved tool is set off against the stark whiteness of the chickens, its loveliness thereby accentuated to an even greater degree. This brings it that much more into the foreground of the image and of our thoughts.

This, then, is the gift Williams gave us, but what it means is entirely individual. For me, it brings to mind the idea, first of all, that poems are often quite adept at doing what dharma teachers try so hard to do: it asks me to pay attention and notice that the miraculous is happening in every moment, that objects have meaning to the degree that I pay attention. How many red wheelbarrows have I entirely ignored, or ran to put away before they were ruined, without truly seeing them? How many people have I entirely dismissed as beneath my notice without reflecting that they are or were someone's son or daughter, perhaps beloved, perhaps not, but miraculously borne in someone's womb and birthed from them to be loved, despised, scorned, and esteemed by many people throughout their personal history? How often have I reflected on what is mundane to me but is truly astonishing? (One example: every now and then I just have to stop and marvel at the amazing ingenuity which lead to water, gas, electricity and telephone signals showing up at my house regularly, without my having to do much of anything but pay the bills for them. Truly flabbergasting when I come to think of it). How does food get on my table? Why does anyone ever do something so inherently painful as love another? How can so much information get onto something as small as a microchip? How does that tiny sunflower seed know to grow such a gargantuan, majestic creature? What ever gave this species the idea to build buildings as high as 2700 feet in the air and how in the world is such a thing possible?

For these things are worthy of notice; above all this is what this poem says to me. So much depends on my paying attention to them. The Buddha would not be confused by this. He understood how much depends on giving our whole and undivided attention to everything that comes within our perception; a wheelbarrow, a fear, a meanness, a cockroach, a joy, a puppy, a viper. Nothing, absolutely nothing is more important than this. Why should this be? Because the Buddha taught the end of suffering and understood, perhaps more clearly than anyone before or since, that to project ourselves into a place or time other than this place and time is to create suffering. Period. Such a causal relationship cannot be subverted. Yes, of course we must think of the future in order to plan, must think of the past in order to avoid the errors we may have made there that exacerbate our current suffering, but these are the activities of a moment. Most of the time we spend in these times-that-are-not-this-time is entirely fruitless discursive thought that is our ego's attempt to take control over the uncontrollable. This is suffering. It is not possible to have such control, yet we quite nonetheless often expend all our energy trying to make it happen. How could this be other than suffering?

The past is, plain and simple, past. Lily Tomlin said that "forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past." The future is a complex welter of possibilities, the strings of which are too tangled with chance, the behavior of others, the actions of nations, the movement of planets and who knows what mysteries, that to think we can plan for all of its eventualities is like the mouse trying to run the cheese factory; he may eventually get the output he desires, but it was never his doing.

Look! What do you see?

Jacob's Children: Chapter Ten

Because I have not returned to this chronicle for several weeks, it may be well worth reviewing for you that the four Januarys, my grandmother and her sisters, were born to Mackarias the Butcher and Naomi his wife and that they were born in sequence on January 1, 2, 3, and 4 each in the year subsequent to the prior. They became prodigious healers. For ten years they roamed the countryside healing both illness and sorrow when they felt it beneficial, but refusing to do so when they did not.

Rose, the youngest and most beautiful, was fiercely independent in her thoughts, though no less melded in spirit than any of her sisters one to the other. But she expressed herself in terms that were not always considered maidenly or proper in one of her age or station. My grandmother vividly recalled their conversations.

"What do I care what they think?", she would say when my grandmother, Sarah, would chide her gently. "We do for them a great service and they think us their slaves. Well, I for one am not that, nor will I pretend to be. Though joined together with you three for all eternity, or so it seems, I will not be subject to any other lord, not ever."

"But my dear Rose, we must make our way in the world. It does no good to alienate those who depend on us. They already fear us...".

"And well they might. I tell you, that pig farmer last week, I almost smote him. Such arrogance in one so thoroughly smelly!"

"They already fear us and it will do neither you nor us any good to antagonize them. We are girls on our own and even you cannot protect us against all ills. We depend upon the good nature of those around us."

"Bah! We are sacrificing all so they can evade what comes to all people. Tell me this, sister, why do they deserve our offices any more than, say, a tribesman in Africa?"

"Oh, sister..."

"Don't say 'oh, sister' in that tone, as if I were a moral cripple. Tell me! Why?"

"There is no why, dear Rose, it just is, don't you see?"

"I do not nor will not. I care not a jot for anyone or anything that is not us four and our parents. They can go hang for all I care. If I were the one making the judgments rather than January..."

"And I say 'thank God' your are not", my grandmother murmured.

"And I say if it were me, one would have to pay us in the coin of decency and kindness before they got one whit of help. That's what I say."

On and on and on. The impetuous Rose and the sensitive Sarah wrestled unceasingly with the nature of their gifts and the correct way to bestow them. Rose annoyed and angered many people, but they dare not touch her, for her powers were legendary (in truth, greater in legend than in fact, though she could do sufficient harm if pushed to it).

Despite these minor disagreements, though, and the increasing separation from reality Clara experienced, the foursome were devoted to their calling. They may grouse and complain from time to time (and who would not?) but were compelled to carry on with it by a force none of them understood.
***********************************************************************

When Rose was 14 January was 17 and a budding young woman, full of the same desires and questions any young woman has. Because their rounds always led them back to home, at least one day each week was spent in the family home and January could find the comfort of her mother's arms and her wisdom, as did my grandmother. Clara was not enough present to benefit by this and Rose, well, about Rose....

I must give Rose her own chapter to explain herself. We are fortunate that Rose lived long enough to tell her own story and leave it in my hands, so I can pass it on to you. You may question her objectivity or her veracity but as one who knew her, I can tell you with all certainty that her sincerity was never in doubt.

Chapter 11 is here.

What is true?

As a beginning of the investigation I spoke of in my last post I intend to make this blog more personal and less theoretical. Not that the Buddha's teachings as I understand them aren't important, but I think I need to look a bit more closely at my own struggle. So, below are the things I believe to be true. I don't claim to know anything special, this is just what I believe, for what it's worth:

♦ Increasing complexity does not confer greater proximity to the truth. Some questions have simple, correct answers that cannot be improved upon, though many will try. Conversely, some questions have complex answers that cannot be simplified, though idiots will try.

♦ Kindness has inherent value, which is to say that kindness need not be in service of anything at all to be worthwhile. Simplicity also has inherent value; it when we veer away from simplicity toward unnecessary complexity that we create suffering for ourselves and others.

♦ Meditation has great efficacy, though I'm far from clear how it does what it does. As far as that goes, the truth or usefulness of anything does not increase or decrease in proportion to my ability to understand or explain it. (By the way, all the recent scientific evidence for the efficacy of meditation annoys rather than convinces me. The proofs they offer are shallow ones that speak only to the most simplistic outcomes of meditation, like relaxation or diminishment of  stress).

♦ I believe there is a flow to the universe that tends to balance, harmony and justice. That our human nature often runs counter to this flow is no evidence it does not exist. If one chooses to call this flow God, I have no objection. If there is such a place as heaven, then Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tsu, Moses, Mohammed, Rumi and a host of their cohorts are no doubt sitting about wondering why we numbskulls can't figure out they were all talking about the same thing.

♦ Fear runs our lives. Almost all our fears are unfounded and of our own creation. Just because a small percentage of our fears come true does not imply that nurturing them makes us safer. On the contrary, it causes us to live in small cages, making it easier for our horrors to find us.

♦ Being right is far more subjective than we wish to believe. Very few things are correct in every circumstance and for each person. Being right is also overrated; it does not give any lasting comfort or peace of mind.

♦ We have a tendency to believe that everyone is just like us, so if they were only to respond as we have they would be doing the right thing, when in fact what appears to be a similar circumstance to one you encountered in the past might be (and probably is) something entirely different to the person who is currently encountering it. This is the Myth of the Continuity of Experience and underlies nearly all of the misunderstandings between human beings.

♦ Guilt is the least effective motivator. Compassion is the most effective.

♦ Goals and dreams are fine but often become anxiety and guilt, which are death to joy. Joy is the ultimate goal and the ultimate dream. It is extremely easy to lose sight of the fact that accomplishment does not yield joy and that our passions can, if not properly directed, destroy the very pleasure which caused us to come to love the object of our passion.

♦ There really is nothing wrong with doing nothing. The concept of laziness is an invention of the Overlords who find a busy rabble easier to control than a thoughtful crowd. Always be ready to ask, "Says who?" There was never an epigramist half so destructive as he who said "An idle mind is the devil's playground." On the contrary, an idle mind is the breeding ground of angels.

♦ "Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain": Danna Faulds.

♦ The day will never come when the circumstances are all perfect and the stars all aligned for you to be free enough to relax and do as you wish, so you might as well go ahead and relax and do as you wish. This is not permission to run roughshod over others, but let's be truthful: you were never going to do that anyway. Compassionate freedom will always be benign and helpful, much more so than forced charity.

♦ Despite knowing all this, nothing is easier than falling back into anxiety and expectation. These are intricately grooved into our experience of the world and do not fall easily away. They are worthless but very powerful. They do not stand up to scrutiny but we have learned not to question them. We seem to believe that feeling anxious about what we must do and having expectations for the future, for things we must live up to, are the natural conditions of life and that we must accept these as our lot. This is poppycock, but this fact does not diminish their power, at least not by much. Perhaps we need a Poppycock Guild to stand against them, to shout from the rooftops their perfidy and shallowness. "Anxiety" our orator would say, "is a false goad and a false God. It leads to false goals and false failure. Since its aims are always unachievable it guarantees only its own survival. Poppycock!" he would shout, "Poppycock!" and once again, "Poppycock!"

♦ I just unsubscribed from all of my "guilt" emails. I am tired of being informed of events and movements I can do nothing to help. If I find myself in need of an outlet for my energies I am quite certain I will be able to find one without their help.

♦ The Buddha and all great teachers were and are trying to say something extremely simple: freedom is not so difficult and nothing stands between you and it but you. So get out of the way, already. But beware; all of what you have learned to think will bring you freedom is actually building your prison, yet giving up the idea that you will eventually become free by building it will be extremely difficult.

Wanted

I visited this weekend with a friend who has a meningioma, a "benign" brain tumor. It is called benign because it is not a metastatic cancer, but I doubt she would call it benign in any meaningful way. Her struggle and my grief are fairly personal; that's not the reason I bring this up. Rather, it caused me to reflect how my brain gets taken over by my mental and emotional meningiomas, how hijacked I often feel. Right now I am sitting in the Sacramento airport nervous and out of sorts, yet there is no proximate cause for all this. What I seek is to be in control and there are few things more out of my control than flying on a jet. Yet this is familiar territory; nothing unusual here. I am safe. I am protected. But I cannot fly the plane.

Despite all the study I do and commentary I write, I find myself tied up in the same knots as always, really. Though I aspire to spiritual motives, I still want to look good, seem good, be thought well of. Not that these are in themselves base motivations, but with the ego in charge they can run my life and make me miserable. I don't just want to lose weight, I want you to notice. I don't just want to write about my experiences here, I want you to think I am brilliant; I want thousands of followers and hundreds of comments. I don't just want to be the best son, brother, friend and uncle I know how to be, I want some sort of credit from those parents, siblings, nephews and such and to be considered a cut above all others, holier or some such nonsense. I want to go immediately to my rental car on arrival in Sacramento and am feeling all peaceful and serene until it turns out that the rental car company screwed up my Fastbreak reservation again, at which point I turn into the same judgmental fool who always emerges when I am tired or hungry or stressed or in anything but an absolutely pristine frame of mind.

When I say that I want these things, though, that is a very confused statement. The best part of my consciousness doesn't want them at all, recognizes that these desires are a source of suffering, are, in fact, the source of suffering. That egotistical, small mind which seems to have the upper hand much of the time, though, wants these things very much, does not feel safe unless it has the reinforcement, the reassurance of praise, fame, pleasure and gain without any of their counterparts: blame, disrepute, pain or loss. These eight factors are called, in Buddhist parlance, the Eight Worldly Winds, so called because they can blow us about if we allow them to and because they are in essence both insubstantial and inescapable. The Buddha recommended being like a great tree in the midst of them all. The winds blow and I may bend this way and that but, all in all, I stand steadfast and unchanged by them.

Part of the problem, for me at least, is that all of this Buddhist stuff can complicate things rather than simplify them. Everyone seems to have an opinion and there is no consistent teaching that is simple and infallible. I know, it's unrealistic to expect such simplicity, but at the same time something in me (and in the Buddha's own teachings, for that matter) says that this whole thing really is quite simple and it is us who complicate it.

What is wanted here, then, is an investigation of what this all boils down to, what is the essence of what the Buddha taught and what makes a life worth living. I think perhaps the first is much less important than the second. The Buddha himself recommended rejecting his teachings altogether if they did not make sense to each of us, if they did not tend, over time, to bring true joy. For me, though, they are the closest I have ever come to that state, so for the time being I intend to stick with them.

Do I sound a bit impatient? I suppose I am. I am 55 years old and wiser than I used to be, but far from wise. I am more serene than I used to be, but far from serene. I am kinder, but not consistently kind. I feel as if I have to reinvent the wheel every time someone pisses me off and I'm tired of that fact. I am tired of my ego taking control and suffering because of it. I have an inkling that somewhere in all of this is a kernel of truth, a jewel in the manure pile that would cause this path to be much, much simpler than I am making it. Unfortunately, if such a jewel exists I suspect someone would already be teaching it and what I see out there is a bunch of opinions and complex teachings that only leave me more confused and feeling as if I can never be erudite or learned enough to get it, whatever it might be. I'm not really asking for much, just peace and contentment. Is that really so much to expect? I don't ask that life not be a challenge and full of grief, confusion and pain. God knows I have seen enough of that to be convinced. What I do ask, though, is the serenity to accept it as it is without adding anything to the story, because those additions only exacerbate the pain and do nothing to ease it, despite my mind's idea that they will. But such serenity cannot lead to passivity, because to be passive in this world is to be complicit in the injustice, hatred, violence and greed that are rampant here.

Any suggestions?

Jacob's Children, Chapter Eight

The chronicle becomes a bit more murky at this point, for while we may trace the offspring of Naomi, it is uncertain whether Lemuel fathered any children (he may not have known the truth of this, in fact) who may have expressed the traits of Jacob. There is no record of any such and one would think there might be some mention of it in the histories of the time, for these clearly record the lineage of Jacob otherwise. This fact in placed in this record only as a disclaimer of any hope that we may have captured here all of those who may have received from Jacob his unique response to the world and its suffering.

To the Traveler, then. Though going from place to place is common to us, in the times of which we speak it was rather unusual to simply take to the road. Security was to be found in community and not in one's individuality. Even a misanthrope like Lemuel required a symbiosis with those he shunned. So the Traveler, in the very fact of his traveling, was an oddity. He arrived in the village unheralded and asked for hospitality at what appeared to be the richest of the hovels, which belonged to the community's butcher who, as we know, was Samuel. He was willingly taken in, for not only were they spontaneously, unaffectedly openhearted but the allure of a stranger, who would have tales and a life quite unknown to them, was deeply appealing. The Traveler's name was Mackarias. He had indeed travelled the corners of the Earth, and this is the tale he told:

I was born not far from here and was by all reports an average child. I was not distinguished by my learning or my industry. I was but middling strong and middling smart. But my mother reports me friendly, open and sweet. When I neared my teen years, though, I underwent a metamorphosis most strange, for I became surly and unkind to most everyone. Almost immediately I began to grow more and more stout. I was no less active than before but grew heavier and heavier as the days went by. My mother wept a great deal around this time and I didn't pay it much mind, though it seemed to me a bit excessive under the circumstances. But what did I care? It was nothing to me. One day, though, my dear mother packed a bag for me and all but pushed me on to a train bound for the city where my uncle lived. I was mystified by this but she offered no explanation, only cried and cried as if I was going off to war.

Nonetheless I was cheerful enough, for my uncle was a kindly gentleman and quite wealthy, so spending time with him was a treat. At that time I considered myself worldly and the city my natural domain. So it was with a glad heart that I boarded the train. My uncle met me at the station and took me out to a superb lunch, at which the only somewhat embarrassing part was how kind and effusive my uncle was with all of the staff. We then retired to his house and, after we had made ourselves comfortable in the drawing room, I surmised from my uncle's unusually grave visage that some weighty subject was at hand, for he never as a rule appeared anything but cheery. It was with some relief I saw this, for I was anxious to finally get to the bottom of the oddness that had enveloped the last few weeks.

He cleared his throat and began, "My boy...." He hesitated, seemingly uncertain how to begin.

"Uncle?"

"Mmm. Hmm, well. Yes. I...I see you seem to have gained a bit of...girth about the middle, eh?"

My face flushed and I made as if to remonstrate, but he held his hand up to stop me. "No, no, this is not an idle observation, son. For you see...well, in our family there is a rather peculiar trait. Your mother had thought you might be spared and so it seemed, for you never had any sign of any untoward...adiposity, if you know what I mean."

I didn't, but I got his drift well enough. Well, of all the things! Mother sending me to Uncle to tell me off for being portly or some such thing. I was deeply offended. But one thing he said caught my attention and made me pause before an explosion. "An odd trait, you say, Uncle?"

"Yes, rather. Well, you see, the fact is, that in this family from time to time a boy or girl is born with the predisposition to become rather obese, sometimes to quite an extreme, unless they are...well...unfailingly kind to everyone they meet. I know, I know, it sounds fantastic. You do remember your Aunt Beattie, though?"

God, did I. One of the nastiest dispositions on the face of the Earth. And...why, she had been one of the largest women I had ever seen. But, still. "Uncle, you can't be serious. If this a ploy to get me to mend my ways...."

"I assure you I have never been more in earnest than I am at this moment. I know it is something of a shock. While you were young it never manifested, I suspect because you were an uncommonly graceful, kind child. Your mother had hope that you had escaped the inheritance but, alas, it is clear that you have not. That is why you are here, for me to tell you about this from my own experience."

"You, uncle?" I asked incredulously. "But you are always so...and you have never been.... Oh."

"Yes, oh, indeed. Please, my boy, there is no need to absorb this all in one go. Let's us go to bed and discuss it more in the morning. After a good night's sleep you may see things in a brighter light." For I fear my face must have betrayed my deep misgivings about either my uncle's sanity or my own fate. I was not able to sleep much that night and when I dropped off toward dawn could only dream of emaciated renunciates and corpulent gluttons until I woke more exhausted than I had gone to bed.

It did not take many days before I began to see the truth of what my uncle had told me. When I was kind to all and sundry (a rather unpleasant undertaking for such a surly lad as me), I could consume to my heart's content and had nary a change in my belt loops. But a day of meanness put me well on the way to needing a whole new wardrobe. Soon it was undeniable. I was doomed (so it seemed to me at the time) to a life of kindness.

Chapter Nine is here.

Jacob's Children, Chapter Seven

The twins Samuel and Lemuel were born on a blustery fall day. The village was scandalized, of course, and skeptical of their stated paternity, but as with all such things these feelings soon passed; the family was enfolded in the embrace of the community with only the mildest disapprobation. The boys were quite similar in many ways, though not identical, but after they reached the age where they could speak all resemblance in their personalities dissolved. Sam was sweet-natured and given to a sly grin when found to have erred. Lem, however, was surly to the point of being antisocial and seemed particularly allergic to the confidences of others. He spent long hours alone in the forest and, though his mother feared for him at first, soon concluded that the creatures of the forest were likely more at risk from her fierce son than the other way 'round.

So they grew. Samuel the Wise became the village butcher when the old, childless couple who had done this work before him willingly gave way. True to his nature, he offered to keep them supplied with meat and other staples for their remaining lives in exchange for their shop, an offer they were only too happy to accept. Lemuel the Fierce was a feared and respected hunter who supplied his brother's shop with venison, rabbit, squirrel and from time to time the more exotic boar or other wild game. Lem lived alone in a sturdy hut of his own manufacture deep in the forest. Samuel married a lovely, plump, merry woman named Sarah; they had many children. As one may guess, Lemuel never married and seemed happiest that way. Though rumors abounded of women finding their way to his hut and its bed, none would confess to this. His flashing eyes and native aloofness were as an aphrodisiac to many, though, so these rumors would seem to be at least plausible.

There are those who say that Sarah succumbed to Lemuel's charms at some point, though this seems most likely a calumny, for she was devoted and loyal. Though she was generous to the surly young man, they were never close in any way that would lead to this conclusion. Though over the years her sensitivity to his need to be left alone led to a certain familial love growing up between them, and he could some nights be found in companionable silence in his brother's house, it is doubtful he and Sarah were ever physically intimate. Those who claim that this do so from the spurious fact that Lemuel almost certainly inherited what has come to be known as the Curse of Jacob and that, as he was childless, the curse should have ended with his death. That one of the children of Samuel and Sarah had the traits of Jacob is no way argues for infidelity, however. Even a cursory knowledge of the curious ways of genetics will allow that Sam could easily have carried the trait without expressing it and thus passed it on to a child of his. But, no matter. These are the quibbles of historians and would no doubt bore you if carried further.

Let it be said, then, that Samuel's daughter, Naomi, came into possession of Jacob's birthright. Unlike Lemuel, who had reacted to this with a reflexive avoidance of the cause of suffering, Naomi, truer to the memory of her grandfather, was an open, charming, cheerful, willing recipient of the secrets of others. As Miriam died soon after the birth of her granddaughter and as she was the only one in whom he had confided, she was not there to note the similarity between the little girl and her progenitor and draw the inevitable conclusion, issue the necessary warning. But Sarah was perceptive and as a village child had grown up with the story of Jacob; after her marriage, this was even more deeply imbedded as part of family lore. She saw clearly the resemblance between the two and guessed at the likely consequences. Though she tried her best to shield her young daughter from those who were drawn to tell their troubles to her, there was only so much Sarah could do, and the consequences soon became apparent. Sarah wept and prayed over her little girl, for the life of suffering she was sure to lead, while Samuel comforted her with the knowledge that Naomi was destined to do much good for those about her. And so it was.

Naomi grew (and grew and grew) to be a trusted confidant to every man, woman and child of the village in direct proportion to the quality and quantity of their sins. She was as loved as her grandfather had been, perhaps more so, but her increasing girth and the likelihood that she would bear them similarly afflicted children made her anathema as a prospective mate. She was well into her third decade and her 22nd stone (or 300th pound, in more modern terms) when the Traveler came to town and entirely changed her life and those of many of the children of Jacob.

Chapter Eight is here.

The three characteristics: impermanence

One of the pillars of Buddhist thought is the recognition of the three characteristics of all things that exist. In the Pali language (the language in which these teachings were first written down), these are known as anicca, dukkha, and anatta. These have been translated as impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and non-self. I would like to spend some time considering these three and see if I can make some sense of them for those who are new to these concepts. They can seem very foreign at first, perhaps even frightening, but are in fact so thoroughly universal that their recognition can come to be very comforting.

First of all, then, annica or impermanence. What lasts? What can we say is here, has always been here and will always be here? Intellectually, it is rather a simple task to answer that there is in fact nothing that has always and will always exist. Every mountain arose from the conditions that created it and is slowly eroding away to nothing but dust. Even that dust will not exist in its dust-ness for long, but will be further broken down to component parts and passed along on the wind or in the water to exist in another form in another place. It is interesting to note that the principle of the conservation of mass states that (essentially) nothing comes from nothing and mass can neither be created nor destroyed. In any closed system (of which the earth is, more or less, one) everything that comes into being does so using the elements that exist and have always existed in this system. Thus, it is not only undeniably true that nothing can be continuously existent in its present form, but also that the dissolution of the current form is essential for any new thing to come into existence. You are kicking up the ashes of Napoleon as you walk down the streets of Seattle. You are breathing air that was not so long ago in the lungs of a llama in Argentina. The water you drink contains elements of the blood of the victims of the Holocaust. This is inescapable.

OK, OK, I know that sounds very philosophical and challenging, but let's look only at ourselves for a moment. What can we say does not change in us? What part of us is permanently real? Certainly not our bodies, which change radically and decay over time, as those of us over thirty are all too acutely aware. But even in the short term, all the cells of our body are constantly dying and being replaced, so that we are not the same person we were ten years, two days, or one second ago. Red blood cells last about four months and their ubiquity and constant breakdown give color to all of our waste products. So much for the permanence of our bodies, then. But what about our minds? Don't we carry over our thoughts, our memories, our opinions, our feelings from one moment to the next? This is where meditation can be particularly helpful, because it is clear that the answer to this question is a resounding, "No!" Watching these things arise and pass away can be highly entertaining once we get over the thought that they should be permanent. Like fireworks they rise, burst and fall with great fanfare, but still are ashes in the end.

Then there is the ego, the self we carry with us from day to day, but that is a construct, something we have built as a response to the fear of ceasing to exist. The ego is neither real nor permanent, not in any substantial way. The self-creation of the ego is designed to protect us from the fear that we don't exist in any permanent form, but the end result of the perpetuation of ego is instead to cause the much greater suffering of clinging to something which is constantly shifting and changing, that does not in fact exist.
Christina Feldman says it this way: we suffer from a "recurrent mismatch between how we imagine ourselves and others and the world to be or how ourselves or others or the world should be and how things actually are." We suffer when we do not see clearly "the intrinsic instability of all experience." What we are seeking in meditation and the contemplation of the dharma is a recognition of this fact, the fact that suffering comes from our clinging to what cannot last and not from the fact of insubstantiality itself. As the saying goes, you can't change the waves, but you can learn to surf. We can surf on the waves of the realization of the fact of impermanence and in that way rise above that form of suffering. To do so in a permanent way is to realize Nirvana.

Of course, we do exist in a practical way; we haven't disappeared from the face of the earth. Someone has to pay my mortgage, after all, and someone will eventually die. But that topic can wait for the discussion of anatta, or non-self.

On retreat

I will be on meditation retreat this weekend and will therefore not post anything to this blog on Saturday or Sunday. Though I am on a non-residential retreat (more about that later) and will therefore not be staying overnight at a retreat center, part of retreat is leaving the concerns of the world behind for a time and that includes this blog. I will write more about this retreat and retreat in general on Monday. I hope your weekend is wonderful.

Foundations: Pema Chödrön

"As we train in unblocking our hearts, we'll find that every moment contains the free-flowing openness and warmth that characterize unlimited joy."

 Pema Chödrön (nee Deirdre Blomfield-Brown) was born in the United States and had what might be termed an average American life until the breakup of her marriage and a broken heart pushed her to the brink. She sought relief and found the Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa. Through his teaching she found great inspiration and release. She became the abbess of a monastery in Nova Scotia and, fortunately for the world, a renowned teacher.

"What keeps us unhappy and stuck in a limited view of reality is our tendency to seek pleasure and avoid pain, to seek security and avoid groundlessness, to seek comfort and avoid discomfort."

Pema has not yet written a book in which she explicitly lays out all of her philosophy in a linear fashion (though Start Where You Are probably comes closest). Rather, she publishes mainly works that are pithy segments of her teachings, based on the teachings of Trungpa and the Buddha. For me this is a very helpful, because it gives me the opportunity to take in a piece of information or a new concept and then stop to digest it. In my opinion the best of these is Comfortable With Uncertainty, a compilation of 108 teachings, each of which is a page or two long. These can be read as a daily inspiration to think in a way that goes counter to our usual way of thinking, which, as we know, leads to suffering.

"Resistance is the fundamental operating mechanism of what we call ego...resisting life causes suffering....We can use everything we do to help us to realize that we're part of the energy that creates everything. If we learn to sit still like a mountain in a hurricane, unprotected from the truth and vividness and the immediacy of simply being part of life, then we are not this separate being who has to have things turn out our way."

The core of Pema's teachings are three fundamental practices: meditation, tonglen, and lojong. We have discussed meditation quite a bit here. Tonglen has been mentioned in this blog before; this is the practice of sending and taking: we breathe in all that is negative and breathe out all that is positive. This goes against our usual habit of trying to cling to what we like and discard what we do not. It breeds a natural compassion in us because it increases our appreciation of what others suffer. It helps us to practice lovingkindness as we give what is the best and most joyful in our hearts outward to others rather than hoarding it for ourselves. Here is a wonderful, brief teaching on Tonglen by (who else?) Pema Chödrön.

"Tonglen takes courage to do, and interestingly enough, it also gives us a lot of courage, because we let it penetrate our armor. It's a practice that allows us to feel less burdened and less cramped, a practice that shows us how to love without conditions."

A brief teaching by Pema on lojong is here. Briefly, lojong is the use of one line slogans from the ancient teacher Atisha which help us to open our hearts and look at the world in a different way. An entire list of the lojong slogans is here, although many of them are impenetrable without insight from a teacher. Pema provides such guidance in her book Always Maintain a Joyful Mind. Some examples of lojong teachings:

Always meditate on whatever provokes resentment.

Don't be swayed by external circumstances.

If you can practice even when distracted, you are well trained.

Be grateful to everyone.

Whatever you meet unexpectedly, join with meditation.

This time, practice the main points.

Don't try to be the fastest.

Don't make gods into demons.

Overall, I consider Pema Chödrön one of the great Western teachers. Her writings and recorded teachings

strike a chord in me that no other teacher has been able to match. Though I do not practice in the Tibetan tradition, where universal spiritual values coincide I find that Pema has a greater insight, compassion, and wisdom than nearly anyone I have studied.

"This moving away from comfort and security, this stepping out into what is unknown, uncharted, and shaky--that's called liberation."

(This is part of an ongoing series detailing the sources of my inspiration. The list, which will be updated whenever I post a new one, is here).