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.

Cutting the cake

A carpenter spent the morning cutting planks with his circular saw. In the afternoon he was called into the house to celebrate a birthday. Someone asked him to cut the cake. His first thought was of the morning's task of cutting, so he ran to the shop and got his saw.

The mind is a power tool. It is very useful. One could not cut the planks of a daily life without it. But it does rather make a mess of cake. And here's the thing: most of life is cake. Which is to say, most of life is not subject to being helped or influenced by the mind. But the mind is seductive. Because it is very effective in solving the mundane, we can end up living in the nearly universal hallucination that it is useful in every situation, when in fact most of the time it is either useless or makes an entire muddle of things, destroys the very cake it had intended to make more palatable.

If you are deciding what to have for dinner or driving a car or planning a wedding, the mind is essential. But if you are contemplating what your life means, the mind is almost entirely useless. One of the primary ways in which meditation is useful is as a reminder that there is more than one tool in your shed.

I had a bit of a crisis last week, and fortunately I had already arranged to speak with a spiritual adviser who has been helping me for several years. She reminded me of the many tools I have available to me, but her most important nudge was to realize that I need not stay in the Small Mind, that a broader perspective, a bigger container, is always available to me. The mind tries to solve problems it cannot solve, tries to use it's power to overwhelm that which is not responsive to this bullish approach. The mind seems to reason that, since it can solve a quadratic equation, it really ought to be able to solve a human life, to resolve the problems of others, and make sense of everything in the world. It blindly thrashes about in these swamps and (most amazing of all) never concludes that it is incapable of doing anything constructive there, despite the fact that it never does.

The essence of the Buddha's teaching is that we live in misery as long as we subject ourselves to the deluded reign of the Small Mind, but that we can be free in any moment. This amazes me. We can actually choose in any moment to be entirely free. We can reach Nirvana right now, if only we are willing to give up our addiction to that small sense of self. But, oh, how powerful the hold of that wily monster! If only I can figure this out just so, if only I persist in seeking my goals, if only I make one more push to make life perfect, I will get over the wall, come out on top, be the man I want to be and then and only then will I begin the work that will lead to freedom. But that day never comes. There is always another day of striving and then another and then we die. And in the Buddhist cosmology (whether we choose to believe in this or not), when we die we get up and do it all over again, until we finally, finally have enough experience of the futility of dependence on the Small Mind that we give it up and reach for the only thing that can give us true freedom, which is immersion in the larger consciousness that does not need to control outcomes or reactions, that can accept this moment as the only time there is, as it is.

Easier said than done, of course. I understand all of this intellectually, yet here I am. There are very few contemporary people who claim to have reached enlightenment, yet there are millions who have a profound understanding of what it would take to get there. Though I believe with all my heart that it is simply a matter of making a decision to live entirely within the here and now that leads to complete freedom, this decision is analogous to leaping off a cliff because you have been told by trusted teachers and have thoroughly come to believe you will fly when you do. It's one thing to believe it with all your heart; it's quite another to jump.

Because to make this leap is to leave this life behind. Not in the flesh, but in the mundane way I live day to day. I would never be the same. I would feel a joy beyond measure and would know no fear. I would have everything I require and want for nothing. I would be free in a way I have never known, or known only fleetingly.

But it's a lot to give up, to no longer believe I can solve the world like a crossword puzzle, to stop believing I can build a successful life on a foundation of profound thought. It can't be done, though. We can't think our way into freedom. Even the wry commentary going on in my head right now about how the Small Mind rushes in to fill every void is the Small Mind rushing in to fill a void. This is why meditation is so important. There is a mistaken impression among many people (some of them quite experienced meditators) that the purpose of meditation is to tame thought or keep it at bay, that thoughts are the enemy of lasting peace. Nothing could be further from the truth. What meditation teaches us about thought is simply that there is something other than thought. We can go entire days, weeks, months, or years—an entire lifetime, even—living in nothing but thought, to the point where we come to believe that thought and the products of thought are all there is. Meditation tells us otherwise. If we can contemplate the fact of thought and allow it to pass, there must be a consciousness that is capable of viewing thought without being thought. This is a profound and necessary realization. This way freedom lies.

Tidal Wave

My, hasn't life gotten interesting, though?

I have been very busy the past month, which is why I haven't been blogging as much. My job is becoming more intricate and demanding by the day. I still visit my California family every other month (I went last weekend) and of course there are all of the other demands life places on one. I used to have every Friday off (never knew how good I had it!) but don't any longer. Not that I'm complaining; this is all good stuff. The job is demanding, yes, but it is a new challenge and one I am enjoying. I love my family and feel comfortable and loved when I see them. Life is grand, really. Just busy.

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I try to follow the news of the world fairly closely while taking care not to become too involved in the emotional content of it. This is, as most of us understand, a very difficult balancing act. I don't want to hide my head in the sand, but also believe that engaging my emotions in every tragedy that comes along (and there are so many, aren't there?) is the road to burnout and ineffectiveness.

One thing I have begun to notice, though, is the capacity we as humans have to compartmentalize and in some cases wholly reject what have been adroitly called "inconvenient truths". I am amazed at our ability to keep calm and carry on no matter what the horrifying reality around us. One of the reasons I so enjoy dystopian fiction and film is the vision the artists behind these works have of humans moving forward to the best of their ability, surviving even in the starkest emotional and physical landscape. Books such as Riddley Walker, The Postman, and The Road, to name but a few, have impressed me with their portrayal of our species as both survivors and the perpetrators of horrors, including those horrors that brought about the apocalypse to begin with. We are both the wisest and most foolish of animals.

When reading the news, what stands out with great clarity for me is that the environmental situation could not be worse. It is hard to believe that my grandchildren's grandchildren will even have a world in which to live. I am very hesitant to even bring this up. I know this is not a topic most people want to consider, which is, of course, my every point. I have no desire to use this blog to grind any political axes. Rather, I am fascinated with what makes it possible for us to keep going in the face of such imminent catastrophe.

If there were a tidal wave coming, most of us would turn and run. This might well be a futile act, considering the speed and power of such phenomena, but we would make the attempt. The effects of environmental degradation are no less certain or powerful, they just move more slowly. Yet we continue to care deeply about things. We do not panic. Are we merely deferring consideration of the facts, or is there something deeper at work?

I read the New York Times every day. I scan the headlines and dip into any article that interests me. In this way I can stay abreast of what's going on without becoming overwhelmed. And with an eye to how much of an emergency our environmental situation is, every day I am amazed by how much we can continue to care about things, about cars and food and sports and books and plays and films and politics and family and friends and bikes and running and fun and each other. We do not despair. Many of us become depressed, of course, but it seems to me we are a species of optimists. We are not built for giving up or giving in.

I find great hope in this. True, much of our doggedness might in fact be denial. We may be assuming that human ingenuity will once again come to our rescue. Or we may have the fatalistic perspective of "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die". But it seems to me much more likely that we are beings who have hardwired into us the need to get on with the business of living our day-to-day lives, love those close to us, eat good food, continue to learn and to grow, have a bit of fun, have a good night's sleep, then get up and do it all over again.

We don't seem to have the power, for the most part, to think in grand terms, to consider the larger context for any appreciable length of time. After all, there are dishes to be done, clothes to wash, sons and daughters to love, lovers to embrace, gardens to sow. How the great world spins is the purview of the philosopher and the saint. What energy I have I will devote to those things in my immediate world over which I have some control or to which I am devoted. Of course, I will reduce my car trips and recycle my newspapers. I will vote for those who have the best interest of the planet at heart. But then I need a nap.

Far from any of this causing me despair, I find in it the seeds of hope. We love, we live, we move forward, we laugh and carry on. Perhaps the end is near. Perhaps not. We will hold our loved ones near and hope for the best. Really, what else can we do?

Making a list and checking it twice

I got back last Saturday from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I went there to visit my son and his wife over Christmas (she is in graduate school at the U of M). Yes, it was cold, though not nearly as cold as it is there today. And it snowed a bit, but not nearly as much as the Midwest got the past few days. Glad to be back in gray, wet, and (relatively) warm Seattle.

It was fun there, though, and not just for family reasons. I lived in Chicago for seven years and, though the

cold and slush and ice and snow could get old, I didn't stay long enough to become entirely jaded about the whole thing. Growing up in California, weather just wasn't much of a challenge (although I could do without temperatures over 100). Living in a climate that can kill you if underdressed is fascinating to a California boy, at least for a while.

And Ann Arbor is a nice, little college town. I have never really lived in one of those—Evanston (near Chicago) and Seattle, the towns where I went to school, have a great deal going on that is not about their universities. My perception of Ann Arbor is that it more or less revolves around the University of Michigan. It makes for a different feel, but very pleasant. An abundance of book stores, coffee shops, and restaurants. Quite lovely, actually. Of course, we were there when most of the students weren't, so we hardly got a feel for what it is like when all those 42,000 people are around. A truly nice place, though.

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I have been reflecting quite a bit recently on what makes me real. I know that sounds odd, but we all struggle with this fundamental idea, that we are a solid reality living within this body, controlled by this mind, stumbling around doing stuff until we collapse into sleep and then wake to do it over again. The question that arises is, when in all of that Doing are we Being?

I am a list maker. My wife likes to say, "Check! Check! Check!" when she sees me marking things off, I suspect because I take such great pleasure in doing so. Of course, there are many reasons I do this. It is practical, for one thing, for me to know what it is I need to get done. And being organized about it is not a bad thing. But there is an inkling in the process that a part of me doesn't quite believe I exist if I am not Doing Things in the world.

Heather Martin, whom I consider to be my primary teacher (I have no idea what she thinks), likes to quote in her dharma talks from a book of tombstone inscriptions. One of her favorites is, "Got Everything Done. Died Anyway". This could easily be my epitaph if I died today. There is in my obsession with lists and getting things done a sneaking idea that if I keep busy death cannot catch up to me, that as long as I am acting in and on the world that my absence would be inimical to survival of the world.

Now, of course, on a conscious level I am not nearly this egotistical. Nor this obsessed. But when I stop to think about how important all this is to me, I realize that there is an element of the fantastical in my thinking. Even when it does not have to do with death, there is the foolish idea that I could actually someday get enough done that I will have some free time to do what I really want to do. And of course this never happens.

If we live our lives as if at some point in the near future we will finally be able to truly live, that we will at last be able to just sit and study French or write our novel or master our camera or read "War and Peace", we will reach the end having done none of these. It is an act of will to get out from under the internal and external pressure to be a Human Doing instead of a Human Being, to be a walking list of things to do. One reliable indicator for me is the frequency with which I meditate. Now, I'm not necessarily advocating meditation, and for God's sake don't go putting it on your to-do list ("Must learn to meditate!") But for me it is a fairly certain barometer of a loss of perspective. It is somewhat akin to cooking but never eating—I am carrying out the deed but missing the point of the exercise, living a life but not being in it. When I think I am too busy to meditate it's a pretty sure sign that I have climbed back onto the exercise wheel in my cage, the one that goes round and round and winds up nowhere.

I have been given more responsibility at work, so I have a whole new source of anxiety about getting things done. If I am not careful, this could take over my life. I will be working more hours, taking on more projects, supervising people, serving on committees (argh!). I hope that having this forum to write out what is going on will keep my honest about my obsessiveness and the degree to which I am able to keep living a life that is not consumed with getting the next thing done. You will be the first to know.

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.

Tigers

Nazradin the Holy Fool was once found outside his house throwing garlic around. His neighbor was incredulous and asked him what in the world he thought he was doing. "Why," said Nazradin, "I am spreading this garlic about to fend off  tigers." "You idiot," replied the neighbor, "there are no tigers in this part of the country." "Ah, ha, so you can see," said Nazradin, "how well it works!"

I do this. My tigers are different beasts—the opinions of others, illness, aging, work stress, concern for my parents, money. And my garlic is worry, habitual behaviors, compulsiveness, the urge to complete tasks I have assigned to myself. And when the outcomes are good, I credit what I have done. When the outcomes are less desirable, well, life is just not very fair.

I have noticed another tendency in myself recently. I began to think that life is full of booby traps. I have plenty of evidence: I pull down a book and another falls down. I walk down the street and the sidewalk reaches up to trip me. I go to work and the ideas that others come up with to help guide my work are intended not to help but to obfuscate. I take the fork from the drawer and a spoon comes with it. I am in a hurry and all the lights are red. But I have a solution: if I can only be meticulous enough in all my actions, I can avoid mishaps. When I can't, the world is out to get me. Or something like that.

One of the most important teachings I have absorbed from the teachings of the Buddha is that It's Not Personal. How odd that I, that any of us, should believe that, out of 7,000,000,000 people on the planet, the forces of the world should be aligned against (or for) any one of us. It is the ultimate egotism. Not to mention the fact that, you know, these things just happen. Gravity is in force. The string from one thing gets caught on the clasp of another and pulls it. It is the nature of strings and clasps. This may inconvenience me (if I choose to think of it that way), but it's not a Worldwide Vendetta Against Me. The Buddha said that this egocentrism, this assumption that we are the center of the universe, even our own personal universe, is a primary source of suffering.

There is no more certain sign of spring for me than when the robins begin to guide me. Surely you have experienced this: a robin will perch on the sidewalk or a nearby fence and allow you to get quite close, closer than at any other time of year. It will then hop away several feet and wait for you to follow. Eventually, you will have followed far enough and it will fly away. What it is doing is pretending to be vulnerable in order to lead you away from its nest. I feel like saying to the silly bird, "As if!" As if, first of all, I am any threat to you or your nest; as if I am stupid enough to be misled by you, as if I walked your direction in pursuit of you. But from the robin's perspective, of course, the subterfuge works perfectly; I do, after all, move on. Just like the dog that barks so you will be frightened away and then, sure enough, you go on past.

I do this, too. I bark to protect myself when there is no real threat. I must be right or I am wrong which, though it seems obvious,  isn't really so. Sometimes things just are and there is no value associated with them.  Like the robin, I manipulate a situation to my supposed advantage, then take credit for it when it would have come out that way in any case. I have a friend who believes the world is essentially an unsafe place. There is plenty of evidence, of course: rapes, murders, gunmen, fires, floods, earthquakes, tornados, stalkers, thieves, con artists and war. But there is more safety here than danger. There is more kindness than cruelty, more love than hate, more courage than cowardice, more openheartedness than greed. When I, when any of us, find ourselves assuming the worst and thinking that way of thinking can make us happy or even safe, we are looking in the wrong place for what we most desperately want. Why would we do this?

There is another story of Nazradin. He was under a streetlight in front of his house on his hands and knees. One of his friends came by and asked what he was doing. "I have lost my keys," he replied, "and cannot get into my house". "Oh, my," said the friend, let me help you." After searching fruitlessly for a while, the friend asked, "So, where exactly did you lose your keys, my friend?" "Oh," said Nazradin, "in that alley over there." "What? What's that you say? Well, then why in the world are we looking over here." "Well," said Nazradin, "the light is better here."

It is enough.

Guest House

This being human is a guest house...

I came into conflict with two people I love over the past week. It caused me a great deal of pain. I struggled mightily with so many different emotions and impulses that I felt half-crazed much of the time, as if all of who I was had been exploded, the foundations remaining but the House of Reid destroyed. I know this sounds like hyperbole but, then again, I am not telling you how it really was, merely how it felt. Whenever threatened, the ego makes the event into The Biggest Thing Ever. It is death. It is disaster.

It's not all that hard to fall into the trap and believe the stories the ego is putting out, either (we do it all the time). When in extremis, the ego is also quite skilled at assigning blame, feeling self-righteous and superior in its suffering (a particular specialty, I think), engaging in rationalization and justification. You will note that I do not use personal pronouns which speaking of the impulses of the ego. As one of my teachers says, what we are dealing with here is THE mind, not MY mind. If it were mine, for one thing, I would be much more in control of what it thinks, which I clearly am not. I speak to it quite often, telling it I am thoroughly done, thank you, with certain memories of shame or remorse, but it has...well...a mind of its own, so they keep arising anyway.

This being human is a guest house

Every morning a new arrival

A joy, a depression, a meanness....

When I give in to the impulse to think that such events are unmitigated disasters, I am forgetting the most basic truth of all: life is change. It is when I can see the leveling of my ego, my pride, my self-image as not only inevitable but a good thing, when I recognize that dissolution is going on all the time and that in times of crisis it just becomes more obvious than at other times, this is when I can choose: on the one hand, to grow into the new being I was headed toward in any case, or on the other to resist the transformation and suffer, inevitably causing those around me to suffer, as well. I could, in other words, use up huge amounts of energy bolstering the crumbling walls of my Self (which is the self of yesterday, of last week, of a former life) or I can choose to accept the dissolving of the barriers as the gift it is. It is truly a gift; this is something of which I must always be aware.

This being human is a guest house

Every morning a new arrival

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

My existence is a delusion of the moment I am in. Of course I exist, I can prove this in any number of ways (Monet kicked a rock). But to think of myself as a solid, unchanging being is sheer delusion. This is no less true of my inner life than of my body. I have the choice to embrace this reality or reject it. The one is the road to joy, the other to suffering. Of course, even my resolve to accept myself as impermanent can be an expression of ego if I am not aware at all times of the impulse to make it so. If I feel that I am in any way superior to others because of this or if I think I have Gotten Somewhere as a result of my understanding, then I am placing myself at the same risk I was in before I ever had the realization. These concepts are by their very nature ego concepts. Put another way, if I truly inculcated this understanding into my being, the concept of achieving anything (being superior, right, accomplished, real, a Good Buddhist) would have no function, since there would be no ego to consider it important or even acknowledge its existence. This is, by definition, the end of suffering.

It is also true, though, and just as true, that criticism of myself is a manifestation of ego. This can be tricky. To justify any and all actions as being mere manifestations of ego and therefore excusable (because they were not done by Me) is also to live in delusion and has the potential to be extremely destructive. But to dwell upon my unskillful actions as the manifestation of who I truly am is just as egotistical as if I only praised myself. And in our culture it is far more common for us to obsess on what is wrong in us than on what is right.

The Guest House poem by Rumi is one of the guides to my life; I try my best to live by it. He goes on to say,

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

We don't know. Nothing is more universal than this not-knowing. Even those things of which we are most certain are subject to dissolution, decay, and death. The great Zen masters make it clear that while there is nothing more important than believing in Zen, it is also and equally true that there is nothing more dangerous than believing in Zen. I believe that what comforts me is essential to my well-being, but this recent conflict with my loved ones and the outcome of that conflict (the growing into a better, more loving human, I hope) makes clear that I am, quite simply and clearly and absolutely entirely, wrong. The end of suffering is renunciation, the renunciation of any concept of who I am or where I ought to be or what I should achieve. Even peace, enlightenment, kindness, openheartedness, love can be sources of suffering if I have some internalized measure of progress toward them or claim to have achieved them. It is part of the paradoxical nature of Buddhism that when we feel we are closest to having accomplished something with the practice, we are farthest from getting anything of true value from it.

Pema Chödrön speaks eloquently of this delusion when she writes that "when you start to want to live your life fully instead of opting for death, you discover that life itself is inconvenient....You have to find the path that has heart and then walk it impeccably...." But, she goes on to say, "sometimes when you just get flying and it all feels so good and you think, 'This is it, this is that path that has heart,' you suddenly fall flat on your face....You say to yourself, 'What happened to that path that had heart? This feels like the path full of mud in my face.'" This is how I felt this past week, as if I had found the path with mud on my face. The key is to know that this is neither a bad thing nor a good thing. It's a thing.

Sometimes I can overcomplicate events (well, OK, quite often, not just sometimes). I require reminders that this is all extremely simple if I let it be. I have the impulse to judgment, which is really just the belief that I know best and the world has nothing to teach me. Yet, as Rumi says further,

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whomever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

He is not speaking of the malice, meanness, or misbehavior of others; Rumi is referring to what comes into my own mind, into my own heart. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that does not have the capacity to open my heart if I let it. Those dark thoughts, that shame, the remorse, the meanness, the hurt, the anger, the vulnerability and the accompanying shame that I am so vulnerable—all of these are my teachers. Sometimes I am just a little slow on the uptake; this is not my teachers' fault. One of my favorite sayings (I call it Reid's Rule #1) is, "If you set your expectations low enough, you are bound to fulfill them." But yesterday, while speaking with friends, I realized that I should restate this (rather cynical) statement to read, "If you set your expectations low enough, miracles are much more likely." I can open my heart to all that is. This is simple. It is also a miracle.

On Friday I had occasion to call a tech support line. The person on the other end was not a native English-speaker. He was doing very well at explaining what I needed to know, but then departed from the script a bit. His grasp of what he was saying in the vernacular may have been a bit imperfect, but it ended up being a lesson I needed to hear and bear with me always. I said that this whole process was pretty complicated, to which he replied, without any sense that he was making a joke or (I don't think) any thought that it might be tactless, "Oh, no, it is very easy. You are just not getting it."

I am just not getting it. The Buddha had great patience, but one wonders if he wasn't sometimes a bit exasperated and wanted to say, "For heaven's sake, this is very easy. You are just not getting it. Stop with the judgment and the breast-beating and let it all go. The only reason you are making such a big deal of all this is because it makes your small mind feel important. Let it go. It is enough."

ADHD? OCD? OK? LOL! TMI? tl;dr

I read a fascinating article in the New York Times last week about autism and how useful the specific characteristics of the autistic person can be to some businesses. It is a mind-bending speculation to think that the recent uptick in incidence of autism might not just be an increase in identification of those who are autistic and others on the same continuum (Asperger's and such) or an insidious development at all, but might actually be a step in the evolution of the species in response to our predilection for technological advancement. This thought is certainly not original; google "autism as human evolution" and you will see a plethora of articles on this subject. (In passing, I should note that due to the somewhat antisocial nature of this disorder, it is difficult to see how those on this spectrum have a reproductive advantage, which would be necessary for this development to truly be an evolutionary change. It has been demonstrated to be hereditary, however, at least to a certain extent).

Now, I know it's de rigueur to consider oneself somewhere on this spectrum, just as a decade or so ago to declare one's affiliation to ADHD was popular and even now OCD remains a somewhat attractive label. One wonders why we should be so quick to embrace these labels, and to do so fairly inaccurately. My brother was diagnosed with ADHD (then simply called hyperactivity) when he was quite young (he was taking Ritalin when it was still experimental) and his life has been made much more difficult by it. Why would we choose to co-opt suffering to ourselves? Why, for that matter, would we want to diminish the adversity faced by those who actually have a disorder by appropriating it in a (more or less) lighthearted fashion? I suspect the explanation is that having a label on which to blame our more antisocial or obnoxious characteristics is comforting and supplies us with a built-in justification for unwonted behavior. ("Oh, honey, I threw out your cockroach collection in a fit of OCD; I'm so sorry. But you know how it goes!")

Which is all by way of me doing precisely what I have just described! Here's the thing: I felt a frisson of identification when I read the Times article. I have quite often in my adult life felt one step removed from the social interchange that seems to come so easily to others. Of course, I know how dangerous it is to "compare my insides to other peoples' outsides," as the saying goes. It could just be that I am introverted (another label, eh?), which I certainly am. But the spectrum characteristic of being contented with repetitive tasks also feels mighty familiar. There is a particular list I maintain at work that I know would be enormously tedious for most people but for me is a true pleasure, and I become faintly irritated when interrupted while working on it. (Maybe I'm OCD? Heh). Just yesterday I spent several hours connecting a new television and all of the wires and cables that go along with having associated electronic components. Loved it. Perhaps I'm just patient.

Another thing: I marvel when witnessing my fellow humans engaging in lighthearted conversation that then, by all appearances, leads to association, which yields, in some cases, real friendship, wherein they voluntarily spend time together. Just being together. Strange. I don't mean to make light of this; I truly do marvel at these behaviors. They seem as odd to me as spontaneous human flight. I would be about as astonished if you stepped off a cliff and just kept walking on air. I scratch my head in perplexity when I witness unforced bonhomie. My interpersonal relationships tend toward banter, which serves the purpose of distancing me from any lasting connection to my fellow humans.

From an article describing Asperger's syndrome:

They are not content to be alone all the time and they long to form friendships with others. Since they cannot read social or emotional cues well, they come off as insensitive, pushy or strange, yet have very little insight into how they are perceived. They have very little idea how to make a friendship work. [Emphasis mine].

Hmmm.

Don't get me wrong; I really do like being around people and can hold my own in social discourse. I am even well-liked in my small social circles; I know this. I have a close, loving, intimate relationship with my wife and with many of my family members. Yet I am also aware of a certain arm's-length orbit around me that keeps most of those I know comfortably unknown unless I make a vigorous effort to bridge that chasm. I also don't want to give the impression that I have no true friends or intimacy. I have both, though these are select and few. Perhaps this is just as it should be, I don't know. But sometimes I envy the (seemingly?) easy affinity I see around me, the crowd of loved ones some people seem to effortlessly gather around them, to attract as adroitly as politics attracts fools. I have even tried to make myself more like a person to whom this might happen, without much success. Oddly enough, I have quite warm relations with a handful of relative strangers I encounter on my round of errands every Friday—the lady at the dry cleaners, the produce manager at my favorite store and others. I love to listen to their stories and even, sometimes, their troubles. Yet, of course, this makes its own kind of internal sense—they are not likely to become my actual intimates and our discourse is limited by time and circumstance to a narrow band of my attention.

I belong to an organization that emphasizes "fellowship". People go around talking about how much this means to them and how they couldn't survive without it. It is something they seem to have gained purely as a perquisite of being a member and take entirely for granted. I once again shake my head in wonder. I have even out-and-out asked what the hell this is all about and how one goes about getting some of this fellowship stuff. I get queer looks. But in this same organization I had the experience just recently, when all this fellowship blather (so it seemed to me) was going on and I was feeling on the outside once again, of wanting to raise my hand and ask, "Is it O.K. if I'm happy anyway?"

That's the thing. Overall I'm pretty happy. I know what your next question will likely be: then why worry about it? I don't know, it just looks like fun to have that warmth and intimacy all around me. Maybe that's only for a certain type of person. I was never destined to be a great basketball player, either; that doesn't make me less-than, just a person with specific abilities, talents and characteristics, none of which are particularly well-suited to a career in basketball. Or to widespread familiarity. I think of it as "the Brussels sprouts phenomenon". I like Brussels sprouts. Some people (OK, most people) can't stand them. I am convinced that I actually taste something different than they do. I don't like walnuts at all, but most people love them. My brother can't stand the taste of any citrus fruit. My wife dislikes anise or black licorice flavors and there are few tastes I like better. For all that we humans are very, very similar to each other in many ways, we also have these quirks of difference that make us interesting. Perhaps my way of relating is like this.


I love deeply where I love. I bestow my affection not easily but thoroughly. I am kind much of the time. I care deeply about the suffering of others. My heart soars in the presence of compassion, openheartedness, altruism and generosity. I am passionately devoted to the Dharma and other philosophies that emphasize kindness and love. I give of myself where I can. I am loved. This is enough; it is enough.

Heritage

It's as plain as the nose on your face and as subtle as an attitude, what we get from those who came before us. The shape of our eyes and the shape of our worldview, the tendency to everything from depression to cancer to obesity, our responses of fear, hope, aspiration, humor, violence and love; in some way or another we inherit all of these from our ancestors.

Yet we know this is not a straight-line correlation. Often the ways we think are shaped by a negative response to what we grew up with. My political beliefs, for instance, are nearly the opposite of my parents', though at depth the motivation behind our beliefs is not all that different. We simply disagree about the appropriate expression of compassion, not the inherent value of it. I have also noticed that my way of communicating in the world is an amalgam of many learned responses coupled with my conscious rejection of some of them. Much more difficult to recognize and change are my assumptions about the nature of the world; it is nearly impossible for me to make a different choice if the basis of that choice is not recognized or even known to me, but feels as if it is simply the Truth. Every once in a while I catch a glimpse of this: my feelings about race, about poverty, about what makes people tick is deeply ingrained. My conscious response to these may be to choose a more or less kind, generous, compassionate way of standing in relationship to them, but the underlying assumptions remain, often unchallenged because unknown.

These thoughts have come more sharply into focus for me lately because Kathy inherited from her parents certain artifacts and heirlooms, physical manifestations of generations of her family. My initial reaction to these was as Cool Old Stuff. (The photos in this post are real examples). There is a table made by her grandfather, a solid desk her mother used for years, chinaware over a hundred years old, a clock that is ticking in my ear right now that ticked in her greatgrandmother's house, in her grandmother's and in her mother's. Some of these are tchotchkes, geegaws, of no inherent value, imbued with meaning by context. There are also writings that would mean nothing in the wider world but mean a great deal to those of us who have the words of our fathers and mothers and others who existed in our lives, some of them who have always been only stories we have heard, illustrated by grainy black and white photos.

I have come to understand, though, that these heirlooms serve a more important function. As we unpack and place them around our house or, in some cases, make the choice to discard or donate them, they are serving as a repository of the ephemeral DNA of our family members and are essential tools in healing from the grief of their loss. That we will never see Kathy's mother again in this life is incontrovertible, but the ticking of the clock is an artifact that was years in the making, the background to all of the joys and sorrows that came to pass in her home over the years. Though it cannot carry memories of her into the present, like a fingerprint this sound has so thoroughly imbued our recollections as to be inseparable from them. As we place a table there, a plate here, as we discard that old towel, we meld into our hearts and minds the person who was, the complex web of body, mind, way of being in the world, posture, response and love that made Jeannette who she was.

Laurie Anderson, on her album "Homeland", tells the story of the birds. Birds were the first creatures, she says. They existed before the Earth was born, when there was only air and birds, "billions and billions and billions of birds." One day, a lark died. This was a problem because, where does one put the body? There is no Earth and thus no place to bury him. His daughter came up with a solution: "she decided to bury him in the back of her own head. And this is the beginning of memory".

This is, in part, how we continue to bury our dead. We put them in our heads. We incorporate them as part of our being. We have this odd belief that we continue on as the same people no matter what happens to us, when in fact quite the opposite is true--everything that happens to us changes us. Large events change us in noticeable ways, but even small things change us subtly. What you choose to have for lunch causes a minuscule shift  in the possibility of who you are and who you can hope to be in the future. How, then, could the death of a mother be anything other than grandly transformative?


But here's the crux of what I am trying to say: in the act of cherishing these keepsakes, Kathy is internalizing and externalizing her grief and loss, tying herself to the recent past and the long past through things that have meaning only (or mostly) within the context of who used them, touched them, honored them. Did her greatgrandmother treasure her cabbage shredder? I doubt it ever crossed her mind. But here it is, hanging on the wall of our kitchen, imbued with meaning from her having handled it, the finish on the wood mellowed by her sweat and the oil on her hands. Her daughter in turn honored and used it, and thus her daughter and now yet another daughter has placed it, not just physically  but psychically, into a corner of her life where each successive generation and the loss of those who are gone exudes from it as certainly as any photograph or letter. They become a part of us and we transform through the inclusion. And through Kathy I, too, am changed. Some of this is personal memory (I have, after all, been a part of this family for over 30 years), but much of my transformation is osmotic, once removed. As she changes I change; love is a form of melding and after all this time she cannot make a seismic shift without my own world tipping toward a new way of being.

It seems to me that we are losing some of this ability to transmogrify loss, the passing through the medium of material possessions into memory. It is doubtful we will proudly pass on our Ikea. "Son, this was your grandfather's iPad" just doesn't seem a very likely death bed bequest. We will not stumble upon a stack of love emails tied with a ribbon. Willing your World of Warcraft character to your daughter is unlikely to evince those feelings of connection that the ormolu clock might. Not that I count myself as one of those who thinks this loss of heritable goods is inherently bad. We are evolving as a species into a different form. The disposability of what we own and the sheer massiveness of information available to us is a manifestation of our new ethos and is morally neutral from the perspective of inherent desirability (the effect on the environment is an entirely different question, of course, not to mention examples of true, lasting craftsmanship). But when considering our ability to incorporate our elders into ourselves, these everyday, carefully crafted items carry with them an aura of those who have used them. Kathy's grandmother's grandmother handled this bowl, used it to knead her bread, perhaps, in the early settlement days in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. In keeping and using it down the years, each successive person incorporated a bit of her being into it, until it comes to us freighted with the spirit of five or six generations of meaning, of grief, of joy, of carrying on, no matter what, with great love.

Skin

Complacency in the resting state of the human mind.

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

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

Not from my portfolio

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

She clearly disapproves

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

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

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

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

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

Complacency may have been the Buddha's only enemy.

Truth

A cartoonist by the name of Ashleigh Brilliant, who was popular a decade or so ago (and still active, I find when I discovered his website just now), once wrote a comic I cut out and saved, the tag line of which was, "I have abandoned my search for truth and am now looking for a good fantasy." I think he may have been on to something.

I had a conversation with a man the other day who was adamant that there are not only rules that should be followed by everyone but that it is his moral obligation to point out to others when they violate those rules. He seemed rather miserable to me. Things weren't going his way. No wonder.

I think it's quite possible that the very definition of freedom is moving beyond the "ought" and "should" to an understanding of the sheer inscrutability and complexity of the human experience. I have had an inner conviction for most of my life that there is something called Truth which is incontrovertible, immutable, and knowable. I still think the first two may well be true. I am not yet prepared to concede that Truth is relative to each person's experience; rather, I think of it as more akin to the blind wise men and the elephant. You know the story: each wise man grabbed a different part of the elephant and then began pontificating on what an elephant Is—the one who got the tail saying it's like a rope, the one with the trunk like a snake, the one holding the leg like a tree and so forth. No matter what the wise men say, there is still an elephant standing there. But the last part, that Truth is knowable, of that I am no longer so sure.

"As human beings, not only do we seek resolution, we feel that we deserve resolution. However, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution. We deserve something better than resolution: we deserve our birthright, which is prajna [wisdom], an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity."—Pema Chodron.

"Sometimes spiritual matters are discussed in a cut-and-dried manner, as thought there were clear principles and one need only follow these principles, whose application is always precise, and all will be well. But life isn't theoretical, theological, or precise, and things are not usually as simple and clear as we would like them to be."—Norman Fischer

No matter what the truth of Truth may be, we must abandon our search for lasting meaning and plump instead for the joyful luxuriance of curiosity and Not-Knowing. But there is one thing I know to be true, and which was also pointed out to me in the writings of Pema Chodron: we must pick a spiritual path and let it take us where it leads. A woman I know is studying the dharma and Christian mystics and nondenominational enlightened beings and other spiritual masters, all at the same time. While I find this admirable in one way, I also recognize the impulse to seek answers everywhere and thus to find them nowhere. Since the only journey worth taking is inward, one must pick a guide and just go there. It's no use choosing a path and then looking for a different one as soon as the first becomes uncomfortable. Of course it's uncomfortable. That's the nature of the inward path. If it were cozy, we would never have left its comforts to begin with.