Indifference?

As I was walking past a fenced-in area near our home a few minutes ago, I saw some curious behavior on the part of some geese. A flock was feeding on the grass when four geese flew in from the west. Four of the geese who were on the ground flew up to meet the four newcomers. Three of the newcomers landed with the flock, while one of them stayed in the air with the ones who flew up to greet them. These five flew around the field three times, seeming to vie for some sort of position, then flew away to the west and did not return.

I have no idea what this means. I'm sure in High Goose, or whatever language they speak, this all made perfect sense. And it occurs to me that I probably have just about that much understanding of what most humans do. I think I understand the motives of others in some significant way, but I am not at all sure that's true. Just because they resemble me in some ways and speak more or less the same language does not mean I have any idea of why they do what they do.

I work in an HIV clinic and got a call from a patient yesterday who was convinced that his wife's medical provider was actively trying to kill her. It turns out his wife had been on two different regimens of HIV medications, both of which adversely affected her liver. While this was all being sorted out, the woman had been taken off medications completely. To us, this made perfect sense; better to take the very low risk of being off the medications briefly than the very high risk of permanent liver damage. But to her husband, not being on HIV medications when one has HIV is tantamount to a death sentence. We were speaking Goose and he was speaking his language and no one had bothered to translate.

What this brings to mind for me is the concept of equanimity. This is one of the Ten Perfections taught by the Buddha. In fact, many teachers have said that if one develops the qualities of patience and equanimity, the path to enlightenment is smooth. So what is equanimity?

Equanimity is quite simply the quality of mind in which we do not react to either the negative or the positive in any long-term way. At least, that's how I define it. The fact is that we will all face the pleasant and the unpleasant, and will react to them, at least until the day we are enlightened. But our reactions need not be incorporated into our being, or even into our day. We can choose to recognize them for what they are, accept them, and move on.

I know this sounds like indifference, but the two are qualitatively as different as geese and humans. My role model for equanimity is always the Dalai Lama, who said, "I try to treat everyone I meet as an old friend." The Dalai Lama cannot be said to be indifferent; far from it, he engages with everyone and everything at all times. How can he pull this off without burning out? I also think of the sage, Amma, who is well-known for sitting for hours upon hours and hugging every single person at her gatherings who chooses to approach her. But the energy to engage with the world at this level comes from the ability to entirely open their hearts in a non-judgmental way, to not feel that this engagement in any way depletes them, that in fact they gain more than they give, by far. This is one way of living in equanimity.

The Third Zen Ancestor said, "The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences." No preferences? Now, hold on, now we must certainly be speaking of indifference. Not so. What he means is that we can acknowledge that both the pleasant and unpleasant will come to us but we need not react to them with aversion or desire. They can roll on through. The Buddha himself said, "As long as there is attachment to the pleasant and aversion to the unpleasant, awakening is impossible". This is equanimity.

But how can we practice this in our day-to-day lives? How can we not get caught up in the busyness or things, or resist a reaction to a slight? And why should we even try to question the pleasure we feel when praised or when things go our way? The most important thing to recognize, it seems to me, is that everything arises and passes away. It is in our natures to believe that all bad things which come to us will last, that the unpleasantness of this moment is how it will be from now on. And it is also inherent in us to believe that we deserve to have the good in our lives and it's only natural that we would want to cling to what is pleasant. But all of this, the good, the bad, and the indifferent, is simply of the nature to arise and pass away. This is the core of what the Buddha taught. All things arise and pass away. We can appreciate them while they are here, or grieve while they are here (no need to be indifferent), but then we must let them go on their way. Because they will. Always. As will we.

Overwhelmed

I must confess that I am feeling overwhelmed by events right at the moment, so I won't be blogging for long today. Why do it at all? I dunno; I guess I feel a mild sense of obligation, if only to myself. Though I am generally a pretty disciplined guy, there are many things in my life I feel I have let just slide into decrepitude, and I don't want this blog to be one of those.

So, here I am, with a few things to say, mostly personal and not all that Dharmic, but there you have it....

First of all, I continue on the Abascal Plan, as I described in the last few posts. I am not trying to sell you on this, by the way. I couldn't care less if no one else ever does it. But it sure has helped me and is helping a bunch of other people I know. Enough about that. Oh, and I found out by doing this that wheat is not my friend. Without further investigation, I am not willing to say it's gluten that bugs me, though that seems pretty likely. Fortunately, I have never been a big bread eater. And I can still eat it if I want to, I just might suffer some consequences.

I also want to put out there that Kathy and I are going to Ann Arbor next weekend and staying a week to celebrate our daughter-in-law's graduation from graduate school. Yes, by the way, since you asked, it does feel strange to be old enough to have a daughter-in-law who is finishing graduate school. And—good news—she will be coming to Seattle to continue her studies, working toward a PhD at the University of Washington (which is also one of my alma maters, by the way). So, we will have Jamie and my son, Mitchell, here for at least three years! Yippee!

After Ann Arbor, we will be home for about a week and then take off for a week at Disneyland with Mitchell, Jamie, and some friends from California. It's been a long time since I have been there. A little known fact about me: I absolutely love roller coasters. The faster, more dangerous-looking, turn-me-upside-downish the better.

Anyway, there you have it, the reasons I am not furiously blogging away right now, but will instead try to get my life together enough that it doesn't entirely fall apart with all of this gallivanting around. I wish you all well and will write again when I can. Take care.

Abascal Dharma

[A note: this is a continuation of last week's post and parts of it, in particular my references to the Abascal Diet Plan, might not make as much sense if you haven't read that one.]

For one who wishes to take up in earnest regular meditative practice, it will be very desirable that he should be moderate in eating.

--The Buddha

For eight years, I worked as a burn ICU nurse. I encountered hundreds of badly burned patients in that time. What struck me as most remarkable is that a certain proportion of them, say a tenth or so, told me their lives were better, had more meaning since they were burned.

A study some years ago looked at people who had won the lottery and attempted to determine if they were happier since having become millionaires. What the researchers discovered is that if the winner was happy before getting all that money, they continued to be happy; if they were miserable before, the money did nothing to change that.

I have worked with some paraplegics and quadriplegics and heard stories of many others (and you probably have, too), who said that their lives had more meaning and purpose after the accidents that paralyzed them than they did before and that they were, for the most part, happier than when fully able-bodied.

For 15 years I have worked as a nurse in an HIV clinic. There is a subculture of deep emotional and material support for those who are positive that many never felt before they contracted the disease. We surround them with help that they could not have gotten prior to having the disease and their community often gives them a level of understanding that was absent before.

It is a fact that nearly all persons who survive a suicide attempt report regretting the choice and having more pleasure in life and less of an impulse to further suicidal behavior afterward.

Of course, I am not saying that one ought to seek out being badly burned, poor, paralyzed, a suicide survivor, or HIV positive in order to find meaning in life. Rather, I raise these examples to point out a very basic reality at the core of what the Buddha taught: we do not know what is good for us. In fact, the Buddha in many places argued that precisely what we believe will bring us happiness is what is most likely to cause suffering. We are certain where happiness lies and we are often absolutely, completely, utterly wrong.

Since food is what this post is about, let's take an example from that realm: sugar. We think sugar makes us happy. It tastes nice, it touches a primitive pleasure circuit in our minds, it feel luxurious. But what we choose to ignore is that it also causes suffering of both an immediate and long-term nature. Almost immediately our insulin goes wild trying to accommodate the overload of sucrose and makes us feel worse. A craving for more sugar kicks in and this can in turn cause a cycle of binging that makes us feel terrible. Long-term, as we all know, it can cause many ills, including dental caries and weight gain out of proportion to the calories consumed as sugar. It is implicated in the development of Type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, stroke, and heart disease.

Yet, knowing all this, we continue to consume an enormous amount of it. I am not speaking out here against any and all consumption of sugar: I am a fan myself and intend to have it every now and then once I am off the strict part of this diet plan. But I am trying to make the point that we are more or less clueless when it comes to what will make us happy, and sugar is a pretty good illustration of that.

I called this post Abascal Dharma, not because Kathy Abascal had this in mind when she came up with the plan, but because it fits so neatly into the idea behind the Dharmic principle of Renunciation. The Buddha did not believe in self-punishment or deprivation. In fact, he was a proponent (and an example) of the Middle Way between self-indulgence and asceticism.  But he also recognized the basic fact I have been pointing to here, that our intuitive sense of what will make us happy, what will bring joy to ourselves and to others, is misguided. We could speculate endlessly about why this is, why our most basic impulses are so off course. The theory most tossed about (and which has the greatest appeal to me) is that these predispositions are hard-wired into our primitive brains as a mode of survival that no longer serves us well. For instance, our strong affinity for sugar might be a residual impulse from a time when sweetness in food made it highly desirable for survival because it supplied sorely needed calories. Much as the fight or flight instinct in us was useful when we were a young species but now causes untold suffering, our desire for sweetness often leads to a sourness our hunting and gathering forebears could never have imagined.

There are many teachings of the Buddha, but the one with which he began, and which constitutes the core of his philosophy is that of the Four Noble Truths, which, stated simply, is that there is suffering and there is an end of suffering. He went on to say that the source of all suffering is craving, which is the desire to have that which we do not, or to not have that which we would rather not. This is where Renunciation comes in. Renunciation is in a very real way an experiment. Something deep down in us believes that if we do without something, a certain food, tobacco, sex, a shopping trip, alcohol, that we will feel worse. It seems intuitively true: something that makes me feel good in the short term must be good for me overall. But we know this isn't always true. What the principle of Renunciation asks us to do is to be scientific about it, to do without something and see if our joy increases or decreases. The Buddha bet his spiritual life that we would discover, as he had, that it would increase.

Abascal Dharma is understanding that during this three week elimination phase of the diet, when I asked myself not to consume sugar, wheat, peanuts, dairy, or dried corn, as much as it at first felt a bit like deprivation, is actually the source of a sense of freedom. Though I have made many good food choices over the years, I feel as if I am coming (slowly, gradually) to a true wisdom about those choices and how they influence my life. And how they can lead to the end of suffering.

Abascal

Those of you with long memories may recall that the original intent of this blog was to explore my relationship to food and what it meant to be a person who embraces the Dharma and is also overweight. I hasten to add that this was not a personal judgment, but an exploration. The question was not (and is not) whether or not it was somehow wrong to be overweight and a practitioner of the Dharma, but what the connection is between the two.

I suppose the first question really must be whether or not is in unskillful to be heavy. Does that seem like an odd question? To put it in context, one might ask a similar question: is it unskillful to be angry? At first blush, one might say that it is clearly unskillful to be angry, since it disquiets us so badly and often does damage to ourselves and others and the relationships between us. But what underlies the anger? Why is it there? What does it feel like in our bodies? What is the real meaning of the anger? In other words, what precisely about anger makes it an unskillful emotion in this particular instance?

What I was trying to do, way back then, was explore similar questions in my relationship to food. So, rather than asking whether or not it is unskillful to be a fat guy (it clearly is not), what I was asking is, does the fact of being overweight speak to a larger reality? Am I dodging something that I would rather not face and using food to do it? That, of course, would be unskillful, because it is resistance that leads to suffering and this kind of suffering leads us away from the path to ultimate freedom.

It's a complicated thing. As I have written many times here, food is packed with emotion and memory and history and comfort. Food is the first comforter, straight out of the womb, and it doesn't really change much for the rest of our lives, as far as I can tell. Though we begin with breast milk, we soon branch out to creamed peas and French fries, a trajectory that has the potential to end in the booze aisle. We continue to seek comfort and if we can't find it where we are, we will go on seeking it until we do. And because most if not all of these things cannot provide the comfort we crave, we are setting ourselves up for failure and further suffering.

Which all comes back to the question of Renunciation. This is also tricky to talk about because it can feel very Catholic, as if we are giving things up in order to be good (an appropriate thought for this time of year). But that is not what the Buddha was talking about. When we renounce things in this context, we are letting them go so they don't stand in the way of our happiness. Or, put another way, the very things we think will give us comfort actually have precisely the opposite effect. By distracting us from squarely facing what stands in our way, they exacerbate our suffering, somewhat like pretending a rapidly spreading cancer is just a few aches and pain, which leads inevitably to yet greater suffering.

And so, the Abascal Plan. Kathy started doing this a few weeks ago and had such good results that I decided to give it a try. Here's the basic deal: first of all, all crap goes, which really just means sugar, chemicals and overly-processed foods. Then, for the first three weeks, the elimination phase, you also delete dairy, wheat, dried corn, and peanuts. After the three weeks you add these back one by one to determine if you have a problem with any of them. If you do, they should stay out of your diet forever. And throughout (which is to say, for the rest of your life) you eat proportionally, two thirds fruit and vegetables to one third protein and/or grain.

The basic idea behind the Abascal Plan is that inflammation causes many of the health issues we experience and that quieting this inflammation by eating the right foods for our bodies will help us have more energy, less pain, and will lead to natural weight loss. Though I remain skeptical, I am hopeful.

So, I have begun (I am on my sixth day of the elimination phase). This post has already gone on long enough, so I will close here. But next time I will go into more detail about how this relates to my relationship to the Dharma, because that connection is very cogent for me, and I hope to make it so for you.

Embodied

I just got off the phone with my father. His body is wearing out. He is 86. He is sad and distracted. I honestly don't believe he fears dying. But his mind is consumed with the actions of his body.

The other day I drank some sour milk. Not on purpose; it was just a bit off and before I determined it was too far gone to drink, I already had. Not long after, I had a feeling of anxiety in my gut. I couldn't figure it out.

A few weeks ago I got an Americano with four shots of espresso, which I often do because I like the stronger flavor and, since I drink decaffeinated coffee, it doesn't really matter. Except this time they screwed up and used caffeinated espresso. For a moment, before I realized what had happened, I felt as if I was having some sort of emotional epiphany or psychological breakthrough.

We were talking the other day at work about the fact that when we are tired or hungry (god help us if we're both), we quite predictably feel irritation and anger. The state of having low blood sugar or inadequate rest imitates these emotional states to such an extent that we don't even think about the fact that there need be no cause for the emotions to arise except the body's need, that the mind has taken no part in the change. (If it happens because of not eating, there is even a portmanteau word for it: hangry. I really like that).

My point here is that we are embodied beings. Contrary to how we often think of them, our bodies are not merely vehicles for carrying our heads around, and recalcitrant vehicles at that. That's not the way it works. The Buddha spoke very clearly about the fact that the mind exists everywhere within us. Though it feels odd to consider it, there is as much of consciousness in my big toe as in my head. There is nothing to say that I could not reach an enlightened state from the bottom up rather than the other way around.

A few years ago, Stephen Levine was giving a talk (I listened to it on tape) titled, "The Heart of the Womb" about living our lives from this place inside us, even those of us who are not equipped with one. (It's a beautiful talk, if you get a chance to hear it). At the end, he said that he was considering making his next talk about "The Heart of the Bowel". Everyone listening live laughed, but Levine was absolutely serious. "Why not?" he asked. Why not, indeed?

Joseph Goldstein tells two wonderful stories about embodiment. (I feel the need to say that these are my versions of these stories and are not verbatim).

A young man came to him complaining of neck pain, then proceeded to tell Joseph how very uptight he was and the ways in which his life was a wreck. To which Joseph replied:

You mean you have a pain in your neck.

Yes, said the man, I do, and I have always carried my tension there, ever since I was young, and I think it has to do with the way my mother treated me. To which Joseph replied:

You mean you have a pain in your neck.

Well, yes, and I have such a difficult job and I wonder if I should change professions or perhaps become a Buddhist monk; wouldn't that perhaps be the wisest thing? To which Joseph replied:

You mean you have a pain in your neck.

You see the point he was making. We are embodied. Just like my sour milk anxiety and my caffeine epiphany, we forget that the chemical soup in which we swim influences us in ways big and small. The error is to see our "selves" as being the controlling entities and all the rest of this as within our control, when by and large it is not.

The second Joseph story: once, fairly early in his practice, he was at a retreat and doing walking meditation, when a feeling came over him that could only be called existential despair. He wasn't sure he belonged on retreat and perhaps even the path itself was the wrong one. He was uncertain about his own efficacy and whether or not he could accomplish anything in life...and then he burped, and everything was fine.

When we point to ourselves, we point to our hearts. "This is me, I live here". We could just as well point to our ears, our fingernails, our knees. We are embodied beings, and can free ourselves from the shackles of our suffering beginning with the small of our backs or our tight shoulders. Far from being a mere vehicle for our minds, this is a vehicle for us to awaken. What a precious gift.

Selfish

I spent much of the week (selfishly) reflecting on how selfish people are, how self-centered and self-motivated. Why can't they just realize that if we all pulled together, everything would be easier for everyone? Why is everyone so predisposed to be so selfish?

To which my teacher, Heather (this is why I have a teacher) had a response that surprised me: they aren't. People are, by and large, helpful and kind. We watch out for each other and obey rules we don't need to obey simply because it is the right thing to do and makes the world a better place. Driving anywhere, at any time, would be virtually impossible if people really were entirely selfish. Working, buying groceries, taking a walk, going to the theater—all of it would be entirely impossible. (Hmm...I sense an allegorical novel coming on).

Now, I can give you a hundred examples of how selfish people are, how that selfishness makes my life more difficult, how I know the right way to go about things, dammit, and if they could only....

Oh.

I think what I have mistaken for selfishness (most of the time, anyway) is a failure to comply with my idea of what is right and workable. As a boss, I also sometimes confuse acquiescence with being kind. I mean, I really do have the authority to simply say, "No. No, you may not take that day off. Sorry, that doesn't work for us". And I have, sometimes. But when I find myself becoming angry because people are doing things that serve them well but might not serve the whole, if these instances are things I could control if I chose to, well, then, I either have to cowboy up and risk their displeasure or accept the consequences with a full and open heart. Which isn't nearly as much fun as fuming, which makes me feel righteous and superior.

I just went for a long walk today and encountered no fewer than three Little Libraries, and I wasn't

even looking for them. Do you have those where you live? They look like the ones in this picture (though all of them are a bit different from the others, which is one of the things that makes them charming). People buy them (or make them), mount them outdoors and fill them with books. Why in the world would they do that? There is no reason except that they wish to share something they love with others. It is anonymous. It is effortful. And they do it because of the love in their hearts.

My teacher is right. There is more evidence for the goodness of this race than there is evidence of its opposite. Oh, I know. Don't tell me about Boko Haram and bigoted police officers and ISIL and canned beets—I know there is evil in the world; I am not naive. But there is beauty and love and helpfulness and joy and generosity and more love in abundance. I just have to remember to look for it.

Quiet

I tend to explain myself at great length. I loathe being misunderstood and misunderstanding is perhaps more common than understanding, especially in writing. Even face-to-face, it is difficult to make ourselves clear. So, the more the merrier.

But words don't work that way, do they? Words are symbols for thoughts and feelings and concepts that cannot be understood through words. Try defining love. Good luck. Using more of the damn things doesn't seem to clarify anything at all. When they don't obfuscate, they bore. Often both.

Yet I go on and on and on. Some part of me believes that the more words I use, I closer I may be to that breakthrough moment when what is going on inside my head matches what you perceive. I know better, but I can't seem to help myself.

No wonder the Vulcan mind meld (while also horrifying to contemplate) has a certain appeal. OK, then, there you have it, the inside of my head. Now that we have that out of the way....

I have been in conflict with many people to one degree or another several times in the past few weeks. Many of these are people I love. I have tried to make myself understood. And failed. Not utterly, of course. I may have communicated a fair portion of what I was thinking. But when we get into the realm of feeling and pure, unadulterated thought—fuhgidabowdit. Yet I keep trying. Try to express ooph. or ouch or kerwilikers in real words. Good luck. We hurt each other. We don't say what we mean because we can't.

This is the nature of poetry, isn't it? The poet says: this is what I intend to convey, and these words are the way I choose to do so. I may have no idea what exactly they mean and you may not think they mean anything even remotely similar to what I was thinking or feeling. Yet if my poem is good, it sends a message across the void. And you just might get it.

To wit:

Beannacht

("Blessing")

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets into you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

~ John O'Donohue ~

And we know what that means. Even if we don't. Know what I mean? I think I will try quiet.