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.

Expectation and Envy

I have not posted in nearly three weeks, the longest I have gone since beginning this blog. I feel a little rusty and even somewhat hesitant, as if it has become unfamiliar. I also feel a bit guilty, as if I have neglected a duty rather than just taken a break from something that is, in the final analysis, a recreation. More about that later....

I have this tendency to think I have gotten to the point where there is little left to learn about myself or about my relations with other beings. I am, so the thinking goes, 57 years old, set in my ways, unchanging and set in stone. What a crock. How is it that this lesson I have learned nearly every day for those 57 years, that each moment shows me a new perspective on myself and the world, how is it that I can believe somewhere in my addled mind that this is not so? The mind is odd in this way always. It seems incapable of believing that a future that doesn't look anything like the present is possible.

I bring this up in the context of how I have been feeling in my interactions with my fellow human beings: my family, coworkers, people I meet on the street. I am undergoing a sea change in my attitude toward myself and it's not all that comfortable. I thought I understood a few things and have come to realize recently not only how wrong I was but how counterproductive it is to believe this.

I have very high expectations of myself and others. A mantra I like (not original with me) is this: "Expectations are premeditated resentments". Let that sink in for a moment. Everything I expect to happen is a set up for disappointment and its attendant sense of betrayal, especially when that expectation includes other human beings. I will be rewarded, I will be applauded, I will be reinforced in my opinion of myself. Even the idea that I will receive feedback of some sort is an expectation. Another aphorism: "You would stop worrying so much about what people think of you if you came to realize how very rarely they do". I have heard it said that expectation is a craving for things to be other than they are. Kathy points out that expectation can only be for the past or the future, since if we are truly living in the present, regret or worry (expectation for a different past or future) are not possible.

Thus my guilt about not having written here in three weeks. Circumstances made this inevitable (trips and obligations and obsessions, oh my!), yet I have an expectation that I will write every week (at the beginning of the blog it was every day—talk about unrealistic expectations!), and when I don't fulfill that expectation, I am somehow a failure as a human being; not just as a blogger (which would be silly enough). The efficacy of my very existence is called into question. A bit out of proportion, eh? As if you, those who read these words, hang on every output of my fertile mind and go into collapse without them. I suspect you survived intact. But my expectations extend to you, as well. You are to respond in a particular way. You are to recognize my essential correctness. You are to acknowledge my inimitable contributions to the world. Let me just tell you, you are not living up to these strictures. You are falling woefully short.

Of course, I don't think this consciously—I'm not quite that psychotic or quixotic or narcissistic. But somewhere in the murkiness of that part of my subconscious that determines my attitude toward the world, I I think I really do believe these things. I feel aggrieved much of the time. You are not responding as you should and it reflects badly upon me. I worry and plan and regret, never realizing, it seems, that my life has become these things. The mind has this idea that if I just fine tune this thing and tweak that one, my life will finally be perfect and I can then begin to live, to relax into it all. The biggest problem with this approach to life is that by the time such a well-adjusted life happens, if it ever does (highly doubtful), my life will be over and I will have lived as a tweaker and a fine tuner rather than as a fully awake human being.

Joseph Goldstein points out that expectation is not the same as aspiration. They both look forward to a future that is not the same as the present in some specific way, but expectation is an aspect of craving (the source of all suffering), whereas aspiration is a letting go of craving, a gentle placement of my spiritual boat into the stream. He also wishes us to understand that the practice of the Dharma is not the gaining of anything, but the letting loose of all things; gradually, but steadily and inevitably. Only there does freedom lie. He quotes a simple mantra which originated with Buddhadasa: : "Nothing to do, nothing to be, nothing to have." Liberation is that simple, if we let it be. Letting go is the answer, but it's damn hard to do, I must say, as if a great master said, "All you must do to achieve Nirvana is stand on the ceiling". The ceiling is right there, waiting to be stood upon, yet I cannot seem to figure out how one does it.

Envy is another aspect of this same egocentric complex of belief. One more saying I ran across: "Envy is a hostile form of self-pity". Yes, it is. When you get something good, my first response is "Where's mine?", not "I'm so happy for you". This feels like a sickness, yet it is my default response. I truly do wish to wish you well, to practice the ancient Buddhist principle of mudita, which is usually translated as "sympathetic joy". Mudita is not just the idea that we ought to feel good for others, but that since we are all interconnected, any joy you feel is also my joy, not just in some theoretical, spiritual way, but as literally as if you shared out your joy among all of us. There is no separation between us, but that's very difficult to feel sometimes.

I said to my soul,
Be still, and wait, without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.
Wait without love, for love would be the love of the wrong thing.
There is yet faith;
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought,
For you are not ready for thought.
So the darkness shall be light
And the stillness, the dancing.

—TS Eliot

Judith Ragir once said that the key to freedom is to "allow the universe to satisfy me". Everything I need is here. It is enough.

---------

P.S. I cannot include photographs in this blog the way I did before because, as part of their misguided attempt to bring everything under the banner of their operating system (which is obnoxious), Google made most of their images unreproducible on any other platform. Of course, this is their right and I wish them well, but I miss being able to break up the unremitting text a little with visual accents that have some relevance. I have a passion for photography, though, so I hope this will motivate me to include more of my own photos here. The problem, of course, is not so much having photographs to hand as having any that are relevant to the text. I will do what I can. All of the photographs in this post are mine.

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.

Put the Lime in the Coconut

My visit to the doctor last week yielded some fairly ambiguous results. I am, despite my best efforts, getting older (go figure). I have nothing seriously wrong with my shoulder, which is, of course, good news, but also means that all I can do about it is work hard with a physical therapist. Damn. One can always hope for a quick fix, eh?

My labs told me pretty much what I already knew. I am what I call "pre-pre-diabetic," meaning the labs that measure such things say I am not yet there—in fact not even very close—but am trending in the wrong direction. Whereas my fasting glucose was just barely outside the range of normal, I would not consider myself in no danger whatsoever unless my result were smack dab in the middle of normal. I find little consolation in a result that was just barely on the other side of desirable. As I mentioned in my last post, my HDL was also slightly low. That does not bode well for the future, either. I am only 56 so must assume that, if nothing changes, I will eventually be facing larger problems.

*Sigh*

Of course, my immediate response is panic. I must eliminate all bad foods, all sugar, all fatty foods, all saturated fat....Silly, of course, especially the elimination of saturated fat, at least a small amount of which is essential to my physical well-being. When the small mind is in charge, nothing will do but an all-out assault on the Problem, whatever it may be.

But what is most fascinating for me is the shift in my relationship to food in a broader sense. This has been the theme of much of this blog. It is clear that I, that most of us, do not use food merely for sustenance. It is a social force, a source of comfort, a pleasure, a joy. Fat and sugar are two of the surest sources of pleasant food experiences. Nothing inherently wrong with any of this, of course. But when one's health is impacted, whether that health be spiritual or physical, different choices must be made. And from the point of view of the Dharma it is in facing those choices that the rub comes in.

The questions become these: am I living my life in full awareness of my relationship to food? Or do I wander through life trying to use food to solve insoluble problems? Is my response to discomfort (pain, undesired emotions, stress, unhappiness) to reach for food, as if it could take this away? Am I, in other words, hungry for something other than food and trying to use food to feed that hunger? Am I eating with mindfulness or eating to mask things of which I ought to be mindful? In response to these realizations, am I going overboard in the other direction, into the heedlessness of obsession over "healthy" foods? (I put that word--healthy--in quotes because if I run after bodily health at the expense of my spiritual growth, that is far from any kind of health I truly desire).

The even more significant question is this: why am I doing all this? Why should I struggle to achieve any understanding of this or any mastery over these impulses if the outcome is nothing other than more struggle at the next level? The Buddha had a vital and unequivocal answer: spiritual attainment is possible for all of us, in this very lifetime. The impression is sometimes given that in order to achieve anything like enlightenment, one must strive for lifetimes upon lifetimes. This may be true. On the other hand, there are many stories in the life of the Buddha where he speaks a few words and people are struck enlightened, just like that.

Perhaps it would be helpful to define what is meant by enlightenment, at least in the way I am using it. Enlightenment is a state of being in which there are no preferences, no reactivity either for or against, complete and utter acceptance of the way things are. It is ultimate peace and serenity. But it is not passive; far from it. Enlightenment is total engagement in the ways of the world with a loving heart that does not judge but seeks to nudge others toward the ways of peace, justice, and harmony, all in the service of guiding them toward their own enlightenment and toward the enlightenment of yet others. The Bodhisattva (an enlightened being) does not sit idly by when violence, injustice, or prejudice rears its head, but works in ways that are loving and kind to change them, reflecting back their opposites (gentleness, justice, inclusion) as an antidote to the poisons that threaten well-being and peace. Enlightenment sees these unskillful mindstates and actions not as evils but as unwitting barriers to ultimate joy. Both victim and victimizer are struggling in a darkness that can be illuminated.

To get back to the question of whether it is possible (or even desirable) to achieve enlightenment in a flash, or whether it takes lifetimes: the answer is yes. Either is possible. Any time span in between is possible. But here's the kicker—as can be deduced from the definition above: one of the keys to enlightenment is not desiring it. Since striving toward this state is antithetical to the state itself (even the idea of "toward" is inaccurate), it is impossible to set a goal of being enlightened and then to work diligently for it. At this point, the small mind wants to throw in the towel and give up. What? A pot of gold at the end of a rainbow that I cannot work toward? Isn't enlightenment like the PhD of spiritual growth; I jump through enough hoops and pass sufficient trials and then am awarded the crown?

Well, no. In fact, desire is one of the barriers to enlightenment. So, what's a human to do? I believe with all my heart that the journey toward this ultimate mindstate beings with acceptance. We start there and work from that solid base. (A dictionary definition of acceptance I like: "to receive something offered, especially gladly"). We are as we are. Life is as it is. Reacting against (or for) any of it only creates suffering, divides the world into the camps of "wanted" and "unwanted", with us as both the arbiter and the one who strives incessantly to have the one and reject the other. The state of acceptance is a radically different way of viewing the world.

In my mind's eye I see a man who imagines himself in a pit. Out of the sky food is constantly falling. As they fall into his pit, the man immediately evaluates these foods as good and stores them away or as bad and throws them out. He does this constantly. He does this so assiduously and unceasingly that he never has any time to enjoy those tasty morsels he has stored away. His judgment is so clouded by prejudice and ignorance he often throws away the very best that is offered. What the man in the pit doesn't realize is that he is not in a pit. He is on a vast plain, infinite in its scope. He is in no danger of being overwhelmed by what falls his way; he can let it be. He need not judge what is good or bad, but can taste of each and find that which is pleasing or instructive or freeing. Some of what he tastes is bitter, but he need not reject anything on this basis. He can ask one simple question: is this nourishing? And he will find that all of it is. It is enough.

(P.S. If you find the title of this post perplexing, that's the prescription the doctor gave in a Harry Nilsson song).

Sugar

I have mentioned in this blog before the concept of renunciation, which is the Buddhist cosmology has a special meaning. Unlike the temporary giving up exemplified in Lent for certain Christians, renunciation in the Dharma is neither an abasement nor a sacrifice. Rather, it is a way of bringing to the forefront the ways in which we attempt to escape from the present moment into the trap of diversion. This form of renunciation can be permanent, such as my renunciation of meat and alcohol, or may be temporary, as a way of bringing these ways of thinking into sharper relief. A good example of this is a renunciation once taken on by the teacher Sylvia Boorstein in which she gave up purchasing fresh cut flowers for a full year. She truly loved buying these flowers, but had recognized the attachment she had to this practice and wished to come to a deeper understanding of this urge.

Over the years I have done some of what I call special renunciations, too. I once gave up ice cream for a year. Other of my renunciations have been more personal and private, but most have revolved around food. Recently I realized how much sugar has become a part of my life and have been contemplating a year-long renunciation of it.

First of all, it is important to realize that there are no rules to such a renunciation beyond those which are self-imposed. The Buddha did not say anything about the details of such a practice. For instance, though I say I intend to renounce sugar for a year, I understand that this can only be done within certain parameters, because naturally-occurring sugars exist in all fruits, vegetables, grains, and other food. It would be silly and possibly fatal to do away entirely with carbohydrates in my diet. What I use as my guide in such situations is a return to the reason for my renunciation. I must ask the question: to what, exactly, am I addicted?

Because addiction is what I'm really talking about here. This term can be overused, I know, but a definition of I like is this: an addiction is anything used as a way of avoiding the truth of one's existence. When thought of this way, one can see that such things as television, the internet, sex, shopping, focusing on the problems of others, exercise, gossip can all be addictive. I have certainly used sugar this way. This blog began as a quest for the meaning behind the reality of my inability to keep my weight within a range that is normal for a man of my age and size, and sugar has been a huge part of that struggle. One certain sign that this is an addiction for me is that the consumption of any processed sugar inevitably leads to a craving for more.

On April 13, 2011, Gary Taubes wrote a provocative article in the New York Times Magazine identifying sugar as a toxic substance. He paraphrased the pediatrician and specialist on pediatric hormone disorders Robert Lustig as saying that our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them." He refers to sugar as literally poisonous. Both Lustig and Taubes define "sugar" in this context as any source of sucrose (brown or white sugar) and high-fructose corn syrup. They argue that the problem isn't merely that these substances are empty calories, but that the way our body processes them is entirely different from the way we process other sugars, and that the difference is inherently toxic.One of the ways in which this toxic reaction may happen is that the liver cannot easily process the fructose in these compounds at the rate at which they enter the blood stream. This inability in turn induces insulin resistance, which is a problem in both diabetes and obesity, both of which have seen a meteoric rise over the last two decades. Sugar may also be implicated in some cancers and heart disease. A pretty damning indictment.

My own addiction to sugar does not take the predictable form of sodas or pastries or such things. I am more likely to get my sugar fix from ice cream or candy, from cookies, candied ginger or cocoa, lattes and mochas. No better for me than those others, certainly, but a bit more subtle. Which is part of the problem.

Another issue is the degree of comfort I get from these foods. If I am suffering from insomnia, there is nothing that works better for me than to have a big cup of cocoa. Never mind that there is caffeine in chocolate and the sugar is more likely to rev me up than calm me. Mine is clearly a psychologic rather than a physiologic response. The same applies to ice cream. It is for me the ultimate comfort food, as can be deduced from the fact that I felt the need to do a year's renunciation of it.

When I first contemplated doing a year-long sugar renunciation I thought it would be fairly simple. Cut out the candy and the cookies entirely and voila! it's done. Not so fast, bucko. The more I looked, the more I realized how much added sugar there is in so much of what I enjoy. Which brings up another question: at what point is the risk of possible toxic effects worth the pleasure it gives me? Clearly, if one is consuming a six pack of soda a day, the risks are far too high. But a dish of ice cream once a week? What could be the harm there?

(Then I went to the doctor this week and had my blood drawn. Mostly things are fine, but my HDL cholesterol is low and the first thing I thought to myself was, "Do I have to be freaking perfect just to be healthy? *Sigh*)

The answer for me, and for many such contemplations when the Dharma is applied to them, is what I referred to earlier: to what spiritual use am I putting these foods? Am I trying to (ahem) sugar-coat my experiences as a way of not having to actually live them? For me, the answer is clearly, yes, quite often that is the case.

I'm afraid it will take me a while to figure out exactly how to proceed with this renunciation plan. I will share my process with you as I go. This won't be easy but, as has been observed by those wiser than I, very few things worth doing are.

Lost

Not sure where to begin. I feel so lost sometimes, as if the core if who I am gets called into question. I know I have written about this feeling a great deal lately. But this is, for me, the most profound of all experiences, this contrast between my reality as a being that does, after all, exist in some form (however ephemeral)  and the truth of the constantly dissolving, crumbling nature of that beingness.

Does this sound very foreign and strange? Contradictory and a little nuts? Yeah, it feels that way to me too, quite often. Yet it also feels more entirely truthful than the next largest truths there are. I want for things to be certain and comfortable, always. Yet because I desire the certainty, I cannot have the comfort; there's a Catch-22 for you! It's as if I had hitched my happiness to the sun always shining—at least once a day for half the day (or thereabouts) my hopes would be dashed.

My parents are old and becoming gradually less able to care for themselves. Contemplation of the inevitability of aging, decay, and death is one of the Buddha's primary instructions to us, an entry point to the holiest of understandings, that all things are of this nature, the nature to arise and pass away. We can understand this intellectually with great profundity, yet have no capacity to face the reality of it in the form of our own illness or injury, or the slow diminution that is the inexorable march toward the end of life as it is experienced by those we love. Because it is deeply uncomfortable, of course. Death is one thing, but gradual loss is quite another. Here's the Buddha's take on this, though: suffering is my resistance to the truth; the experience itself is entirely neutral.

Easy for him to say.

There is another factor in this situation with my parents: we cannot afford to provide them with everything that might make this journey as comfortable as it could be. This precipitates us into hard choices and difficult conversations no one wishes to contemplate.

So much comes down to humility, it seems to me. In the contemplation of the great mysteries, even in thinking of the smaller ones, the minor questions, an honest survey reveals how entirely helpless I am in the face of these forces. Not merely the forces of old age, disease and death, not just the forces of nature that destroy homes and lives, not only the forces of economies and injustice and misplaced societal priorities, no, even in the contemplation of the smallest realities of my existence I am almost entirely powerless to change things. I can choose which shirt I wear today and, perhaps (if I am willing to be uncomfortable) not to wear a shirt at all. But I can choose neither the nature of the body upon which I place the shirt nor the need it feels to be clothed. I cannot willy-nilly decide to disregard decades of conditioning and wear a dashiki instead, not with any level of comfort. I must humble myself to know that I am the sum total of the causes and conditions that brought me to this point. Far from being a free agent, I am at the mercy of that which led to this time in my existence. I must, in the words of the old phrase, "dance with him what brung me".

I am tired today, without any identifiable reason. I have goals and plans and schemes, but I am tired. I probably won't do most of what I had in mind. I must listen when my body tells me to halt. I need to make myself a steward of this body and this mind in order to move forward into a deeper understanding of what it means to have a body and a mind.

There is no easy solution to my parents' situation, of course. There are complexities piled on top of complications. Also to be considered is the fact that the grooves of the relationship between my parents were first laid down over 70 years ago when they first met and have been worn and deepened every day since. We may be as logical, sensible, rational, caring, loving, and reasonable as we wish, yet this will be no proof against these well-worn patterns of love between them. Because it is love, that's clear, even when (especially when?) they bicker or disagree or grow impatient.

I began this post by saying I was lost. And I am. But lostness is the truth of our lives. It is when we consider ourselves found that we are living most in delusion, if only because even if this feeling is true it cannot last. Where I have found myself will change, I will change, and once again I will be lost. We are all wanderers in this wilderness of being alive and human. It is not easy. But it sure beats the alternative. It is enough.

Overcome any bitterness that may have come because you were not up to the magnitude of the pain entrusted to you. Like the mother of the world who carries the pain of the world in her heart, you are sharing in a certain measure of that cosmic pain, and are called upon to meet it in joy instead of self-pity.

  Pir Vilayat Khan

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."