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.

We think we know

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Believe it or not, this is all good news.

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

What if Kathy had stepped in front of that car?

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

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

Delight in the Difficult

While walking home from the grocery store today I dropped a gallon of milk. The plastic split and all of the milk spilled on the sidewalk and into the street. I was grumpy about this as I walked back to the store until, fully formed and without my volition came into my head, "Don't cry over spilt milk," which made me laugh.

This is a minor unpleasantness, of course. It is just milk. I have enough money to buy more. It's a hassle and a waste, but it's no big deal. But we all have experienced much more bitter disappointments, failures, and disasters. The challenge of delighting (a subject I began last week) is much greater with the difficult things we must face than those that are wonderful or neutral. This is where the grist for the mill of mindfulness resides.

It is easy to say that one should merely accept all things as being as they are. While this is true as far as it goes, the problem is that some things really do feel very odious. Pain is by definition unpleasant. The death of a loved one feels as if it will rip us apart. Loss of our dreams, hopes, aspirations or good fortune digs a deep pit of despair. To say we should accept these things with equanimity seems more than just a bit facile, the breezy recommendation of one who has never experienced them. (I wrote a post a few months ago about The Happy Bird, who asked that everyone "sing a little happy song when every little thing goes wrong". The point of this story is that everyone wants to strangle the little shit).

A good friend of ours has a young friend (only 20 years old) who was in a terrible car accident a few weeks ago and may not have much of a recovery. When my friend went to a coworker and said, "This just isn't good", her friend immediately said, "Oh, we don't know it's not a good thing!" Well...yes, we do.

Acceptance is not denial. Acceptance is the idea that everything is as it is. There is no judgment of good or bad in acceptance. Everything must be as it is because if it could be otherwise, it would be. Wishing it were different cannot make it so. Wishing it were different, inveighing against how bad things are, how those who don't deserve such suffering should not have to go through such things, and how those who are evil sometimes get much more of the good than they should, does not tip the scale one way or the other.

What such thinking does is increase the suffering in the world. The Buddha spoke of two darts; the first dart is the original injury, which he acknowledged is not a pleasant experience. But the second dart is this insistence that the first dart should never have injured us, that it's not fair that we should be hurt by a dart when so many go unhurt, our demand for justice. We read all the time about families who carry bitterness and a desire for revenge for years after a loved one has been hurt. I see them as bristling with darts, weighed down by the poison of them. And only the first of those darts was put there by someone else.

How much more wonderful would it be if we could find it in our hearts to accept what is, not to believe that all things are "as they are meant to be" or "part of God's plan", but merely that they are as they are. We can delight in the difficult because it gives us the opportunity to practice what we know of the Dharma, to look to the Buddha and ask how this can be the road to enlightenment. There is an answer in who he was, in what his teachings are, if we open our hearts to them.

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.

Observations II

As I did last year, I come to you, hat in hand, with observations gleaned from the world and the scary place inside my head that wonders about such things, things that in the past 12 months have made me go, "Huh!" Enjoy! (Or not, as you choose).

*I am utterly confused by people taking airlines up on the offer to board early if they are not using the

overhead bins. As far as I can tell, the passenger's thinking is this: "Yes, please, I would like to sit in a tight, confined space the size and shape of a coffin for an extra 15 minutes for no reason whatsoever". Good thinking, folks.

* Why does every credit card scanner have to have different rules? Sometime I swipe the card, sometimes the clerk does. Sometimes I sign on the screen, sometimes I sign a piece of paper; yesterday I signed on a tablet with my finger (!). Sometimes I must sign for over 25 dollars, sometimes over 50, sometimes no matter what. Can't they all just agree on one system?

* Who exactly buys all those records Bjork sells?

* How do public radio pledge drives work? I know that as soon as I hear the pitch I switch to another station or put on a CD or something. The way I figure, there are three kinds of people who listen to public radio: those (like me) who already support it, who are annoyed that they have to hear the sales talk anyway; those who have no intention of supporting it and are annoyed by the intrusion; and those who are wavering. Does this third group really tip over into the support category because they are hectored and badgered? Do they sit there and listen to the importuning until they enter one of the two other categories? That's a fairly sad statement on the human condition, if you ask me.

* My phone has a program that syncs my iTunes with the phone's mp3 player. In order to do this, it reaches out through the Wi-Fi and opens iTunes on my computer. I think this is way cool and a little creepy.

* Traffic lights are primarily a technological expression of our sense of fairness. If you don't think so, just

watch and see how quickly we ignore them if they are unfair (too long, in an absurd place, etc).

* Has anyone else noticed how common it is these days for cars (and trucks and buses) to have one headlight out? It seems to happen all the time. Weird. (I assume this is not a Wallflowers homage).

* Didn't there used to be a courtesy understanding about how early in the morning it was OK to start doing noisy stuff? My brother's neighbor mows his lawn as early as 6:45 on Saturdays or has loud conversations in his driveway at about the same time of day. I have noticed construction going on as early as 6:00 on weekdays in residential areas. We shouldn't need laws to tell us that's just too damn early to be doing these things. I mean, jeez....

* I like to think that I can get inside of people's heads enough to understand even the strangest behavior and the motivation behind it, but I admit to being entirely flurmuzzled by people who let their dogs poop just anywhere and don't clean it up. I can't even imagine being that person. I'm not saying I disapprove (though I do), just that being them would be about as weird as being a Sontaran. Unfathomable.

* I have had three or four encounters with people in parking lots, on ferries, and places like that where cars are parked close together, who get all bent out of shape when my car door touches theirs. I am talking about the lightest touch, just enough for me to get out of my car. C'mon folks, get a grip. These are cars, they encounter one another. I am being careful, I promise, but the surface of your car is not a sacred space.

* Rather than taking umbrage all the time, I'd really like to give it now and then (I know, I know, I do, don't I?). Speaking of which, why do we always go back and forth? I would like the option to go forth and back sometimes (which really makes more sense, anyway, since I must go forth in order to come back). I would prefer, now and then (then and now?) to go fro and to. And is something any less clean because it is span and spic? Just wondering.

* I have an earring that is the symbol for "Om". If I wear it upside down is it the symbol for "Wo"?

* Why are all drinking fountains everywhere adjusted so only the merest trickle escapes? Is this a prostate issue? If drinking fountains have prostates, we are all in much more trouble than we ever knew (and I am certainly going to stop using them!).

* Why do shoe manufacturers ship shoes out laced in such strange ways? And who comes up with these bizarre lacing patterns, anyway? Are there professional lacers? Are they tatty dressers? (OK, I admit it, that's an obscure joke).

* Pedestrians: please don't push the crosswalk button if you intend to jaywalk. Here I sit waiting for the light to change, and you are already a half mile on your way.

* Why can businesses sign you up instantly for their stupid email "alerts" but it can take up to 10 business days to unsubscribe?

* Why can't we just eliminate the numbers 0 & 1 and the letters O and I from all serial numbers, confirmation codes, coupon verifications and such, so there's no possibility of confusing them? There would still be plenty of number and letter combinations left. We could think of it as a digital homage.

* What exactly am I supposed to say when you knock on a locked bathroom door? Isn't that fact that it's locked information enough?

* Isn't it odd that the word "cervical" refers to two such divergent anatomical structures? I can't imagine two body parts with less in common (well, yes, I can, but let's not go there).

OK, that's it for another year. Admittedly not particularly profound, but a little peek inside my mind. Sorry if you are frightened by the glimpse. We will now return to our regularly scheduled programming....

Anicca

As I walk to work, I pick up trash. Why I chose to start doing this is lost in the mists of time, but now it is simply part of what I do—I would no more leave the house without my trash-picking gloves than I would without my pants.

As I walk to work, I practice metta (lovingkindness). I first list all those whom I wish to include in my good wishes: friends, family, neighbors, pets, coworkers, difficult people. I include a broader and broader range of beings as I go, eventually including in my well-wishing all beings, everywhere. At the end, I include myself.

I am somewhat limited in the routes to work, but I have a few options. Some of them are more trash-strewn than others. Most days, these feel like the right place to be, where I can do the most good. On some days, it is far too discouraging to walk there, in places where I have, over the years, picked up a ton or two of trash, yet are sometimes still blanketed with it.

When I have completed my litany of those in my circle of loving wishes, I wish for them these things:

May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you be free of suffering.
May you know the end of pain and fear.
May your hearts be open.
May you live in unconditional friendliness.
May you live with ease.
May you know peace.

It would be a miracle, of course, if even one of these came to anyone in its totality. The idea that we could be thoroughly happy or entirely well, eternally free of suffering or that pain and fear should disappear entirely, are devoutly to be wished, but hardly to be expected. Yet it is to be hoped for nonetheless, with all our hearts.

Today I am planting bulbs for flowers that will appear in the spring.

Today I am beginning to pack for a trip to California to help celebrate Debbi's life and the release of her death.

I remind myself that the cleanliness of a place is not the point of what I am doing. I am working to open my heart and be of service to all beings everywhere. I do my best to refrain from parceling out my assistance based on my perception of merit. The trashy street is just as worthy of my attention as the nearly pristine—and is clearly more in need. Still, there are days, especially dark and gloomy days, when I cannot bring myself to go those neglected routes.

I wish these things with all my heart—well, to the best of my ability, anyway—and equally. My wife is in the list, but so is Osama bin Laden's family. My son is here, but so is Dick Cheney. As far as that goes, "all beings" includes all beings, no matter how loathsome. So mosquitoes are here, and Congress, Barak Obama and George W. Bush, the coworkers who drive me nuts and those I am drawn to. I wish them all the best of everything, always. For reasons I am not sure I understand, I do not include the dead, so there are gaps where people used to be. We arise and pass away, that is the teaching there. My list changes as there are births and marriages and divorces and death.

Sometimes I pick up pieces of trash that were part of something that was at one time, perhaps long ago, lovingly acquired, or I like to think so. The beauty or utility of a thing arises in our minds and we take it into our lives. Then it fades and becomes less useful or attractive until we entirely forget why we desired it in the first place. Then it becomes trash. And sometimes, with the heedlessness of the distracted or the misguided flip of a garbage can, it becomes litter, trash on the ground, my fodder.

Everyone is working toward the end of suffering. Hitler thought he was working toward the end of suffering, Idi Amin thought so, as did Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein. Their means were unskillful in the extreme, but their goal was the same as mine—to end suffering in this life and always, so that we might have true and lasting joy. It is difficult to bring this realization into my heart, the more so with examples that are less remote and affect me more directly: does my boss really have my best interest at heart? Does the government of this country really care about the well-being of the poor? The answer is, it doesn't matter. They all wish, as I do, for the end of suffering, and I wish this for them. I wish them peace and happiness and harmony. Wishing them ill does nothing to punish them and only harms me.

Just as we all seek the end of suffering, so, too, there is nothing created by humans in this world that someone, somewhere didn't think would be useful, if only in a limited way. Junk mail, rotting food, plastic bags, old mops, hard drives, broken lamps, bottle caps, cigarette packs, napkins, drink cups—all had their day in the sun. Sometimes I imagine them with preferences, glad to have been of service and now resigned—proud, even—to be sent back into the stream of reuse and decay. They were purposeful, then discarded, their constituent elements recommitted to usefulness.

Which is not to say that it is right to allow wrong to happen in this world. Those who are so unskillful as to create suffering for others in the process of attempting to find an end to their own must be confronted, and the greater the harm, the more urgent this need. But even this can be done with love in our hearts, not only for those who are victims of harm or threatened with harm, but toward the perpetrator. If we proceed with hate, we will inevitably cause more harm.

And the lesson is contained in this: tomorrow there will be yet more trash. In the worst places, it is never completely clean, for I can only spare a small amount of time to the effort and it seems that few others are making any. This is impermanence (known as anicca in the world of Buddhism), the knowledge that all things arise and pass away. Even trash arises and passes away...and then arises again in a different form. These streets will never be clean, and this is as it should be. My job is to be of service, to do what I can, to stoop and bend and take that one piece of paper to the recycle bin. And then another.

This is the lesson of metta. The practice of asking that good come to all beings is not a process of wishful thinking or a form of magic. These are not incantations that will bring about goodness through some esoteric process. This is an inclining of our hearts toward goodness, toward kindness, generosity and love. Though we may feel as if our contribution to the whole is minuscule, imagine what could come to pass if millions of us, billions, even, were actively hoping for good to come to pass for all beings! War would be impossible, murder would cease, rape would be a thing of the past, cruelty a fever dream. We would not tolerate evil among us and would smother it, not with swords, but with our hearts. 

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.

A Spiritual Giant

I sometimes feel as if I am misrepresenting myself in this blog as some kind of spiritual giant, perhaps giving the impression that I am serene and peace-loving, that I never create discord and am never in conflict in my heart. None of this is true. I struggle a lot. I am very judgmental and believe myself to be right most of the time. I think your opinion is based in ignorance and that if I can just educate you adequately you will change your mind to my way of thinking. (Arrogant much?) Anger seems to be on my back burner much of the time. I am frustrated by work and family struggles.

If only you knew how ____________ I am! (Take your pick: sad, clever, intelligent, loving, bad, angry, depressed, wonderful).

I am confused. A lot. When I feel confused or frustrated I resort to anger. Quite often. I am deeply imperfect. I sometimes feel deeply guilty about all this. So what gives me the notion that I can write a blog about things like spiritual awareness? I struggle with this question, not so much as it regards me (I already know how imperfect I am so am not too worried about it; besides, you can choose to read it or not), but as it pertains to other spiritual teachers. I look at them and see, in some cases, anger, in others, intolerance, in yet others, egregiously bad behavior and think, what business do they have being teachers?

This reminds me of a story I heard about Sharon Salzberg, a prominent American meditation teacher. When she was seeking to be ordained as a teacher by her master (I think it was Sayadaw U Pandita, but I'm not sure), she was very young (in her early 20s) and he noted that, asking something along the lines of, "Surely at your young age, you could not have realized the end of suffering." To which she responded, "No, but I know with great certainty that there is an end to it", which answer fully satisfied him.

I know there is a path. I know that the terminus of the path is the end of suffering. I also know that every waystation along the path is a place of greater peace, filled with light, kinder, less judgemental. I (like everyone else, I suspect) wish the end of the path would arrive sooner, or at least that I could get close enough to be less of a grump, less uncertain, less sad. But that's not the way it works. I am on this path. This path is a good path. I hope with all my heart that others will want to pursue this path. That is why I write about it. Not because I am near the end of it, but because I know where it leads and that it is a place of peace, harmony, balance, caring, openheartedness, kindness, generosity, and deep faith in the rightness of the world as it is. And because I have seen progress, in myself and in others. 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."

Empathy for the shooters

On Thursday I was angry, disappointed, fearful and frustrated. My bosses were talking about taking away some of my Fridays off, a schedule I have had for 12 years and around which I have organized my life. Still, weighing some days off against the death of a room full of six-year-olds makes what I was experiencing infinitesimal. But to me it was a very real and present pain and caused me deep suffering, if only briefly.

I bring this up only in order to open my heart to those who suffer mightily every day and for years upon years. Take my pain and multiply it by ten and fill an entire life with it; only then would I have any clue to what could drive a young man to take up an assault rifle and shoot little children. This act is so far in violation of everything we as human beings stand for that we must believe that only an entire disconnection from one's humanness could make it possible. What suffering, what inner and outer torture, what pain, confusion and rage must have been present in Adam Lanza's mind for him to contemplate the deed, nonetheless act on it. Not only is the mass killing of others unthinkable to most of us, but the pure innocence of children this age brings the meaninglessness of it into even sharper focus.

But here we must pull ourselves up sharply. It is far too easy to disassociate ourselves from Adam Lanza, to make of him a monster with no relation to us. This is the very impulse, the creation of Us versus Them, that keeps certain people and even whole swaths of people out of our hearts. I find myself vilifying "gun nuts" and the NRA, thinking of them as monolithic entities rather than as convocations of like-minded human beings. I find it far too easy to assign blame; to Lanza, his mother, those who missed his mental illness, a society which didn't treat it, those who use the Second Amendment as an excuse to own the means to kill hundreds of their fellow humans. I, too, have the knee-jerk impulse to lock down every school, arm every teacher, put sharpshooters on the roofs. I have the desire to take away from every person in the world their guns and other weapons. I want, in other words, to do anything but feel that Adam Lanza was me. He was and is each of us. To think otherwise is to let ourselves off the hook. We are responsible. For one thing, to deny this association is to claim that we never feel a murderous rage, even rarely and briefly. Where we fail to empathize we cannot help but fail to understand.

I know there are those who will excoriate me for suggesting that we should in any way feel badly for someone who would murder children, that I am somehow condoning the act or aligning myself with who he is. This is an odd perspective which would seem to argue that hatred is the only moral response to a hateful act, that finding someone to blame or placing Those People beyond the reach of being full members of the human race is an effective response to our confusion and pain. Part of the punishment for a heinous act is to be utterly reviled and to fill my heart with contempt and venom.

The Buddha was unambiguous in his renunciation of the impulse to divide ourselves. We are one. We are so thoroughly interdependent that not one of us could exist without the efforts of us all. The post-apocalyptic stories of the lone man or woman making a go of it on this Earth are simply silly fantasies, not to mention the fact that without bacteria, bugs, rodents and other creatures we wouldn't be here. With every breath we take, oxygen molecules that have been in and out of billions of other beings and forms enter our lungs. The stuff which makes our bodies has been stars, Rottweilers and bacon. The border between us is artificial, porous, a chimera, without substance or form in the real world.

It is only useful to see into the hearts of those who suffer and cause suffering. Or, more precisely, it is only useful to see into the Heart that is the center of us all. The more I inveigh against the NRA or those who sell assault weapons without recognizing their connection to me, the more I encourage the very divisiveness that drives someone like Adam to abandon his humanity to rage and revenge, encourage the deep-seated fear at the center of the impulse to stockpile weapons to defend against unknown terrors. I am these people. They are me. Only beginning there can we even begin to understand.

Don't get me wrong. I oppose the private ownership of most weapons. As I am devoted to the Dharma, I am philosophically opposed even to the use of guns for hunting. (In response to those who say that deer and other animals must be thinned to avoid their becoming a nuisance, I recall the Gary Larson cartoon with two deer speaking, one saying to the other, "Why don't they thin their own damn herd?"). At a minimum, if suddenly in charge of the world, I would ban assault weapons and handguns (the latter designed for the sole purpose of killing other people), except for the military and police. If we must have them, how about gun clubs, where guns for hunting and target practice are kept in a central location and locked up, only to be accessed for licensed, planned activities, then locked up again? (And, if the end times come, where the militias would know where to find them, just to reassure that faction).

I would ban first-person shooter video games. Yes, yes, I too have seen the studies denying a link from these games to gun violence in the real world. But should we really be breaking down the moral horror that (one would hope) comes over us at the prospect of pointing a gun at another human being and pulling the trigger? Would we condone a video game in which we practiced the fine points of rape? When I visited them a few years ago, I was horrified to see my sweet greatnieces and -nephews calmly mowing down bad guys with assault rifles. This sort of game also reinforces the divide between Us and Them. When we depersonalize those we view as Other, it becomes much simpler to take them out without qualm. Think of the degrading epithets used to describe our opponents in war: gooks, krauts, japs, towel-heads, filth, Charlie. If we downgrade them from fully human to something less, we need not feel quite the same dismay when we end their lives. We may, in fact, feel that we are doing our holy duty by killing the Other, much as the Nazis did the Jews and others they demeaned. I read of the recent shootings in Pennsylvania on Yahoo and was more devastated by the comments on the article than the article itself. These mostly centered in "now the state will come for your guns, be ready to kill them" and, most chilling of all, "You are next". We have hammered out ideological bulwarks and are hunkering down behind them for the long fight. This can only lead to more and worse violence.

The Buddha's message was clear: it is the creation of suffering to leave any person or any creature whatsoever out of your heart. It is the source of personal suffering, societal suffering, the suffering of the whole world. In fact, there is no other source; this is the wellspring of all suffering. We can choose, instead, to turn to the wellspring of all that is good, the understanding that we are all one--the deer and the hunter, the NRA vice president and the pacifist, the shooter and the shot. Adam Lanza is that cute six-year-old girl he killed and she is he. It cannot be otherwise because it is the core truth of our existence. There is no other place to begin to heal and transform our world into one of love, harmony and understanding. This is possible. It is never too late to begin. 

God

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shifting Sands

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who We Are

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What to make of us, eh?