SHORT STUFF

Walking the Crooked Path   

For ten years of my life I spent an average of five weeks yearly in silent meditation retreats.  Seven years of these were in Zen practice.  The purpose of the practice is to learn to deal with life differently --- to develop an equanimity that will allow you to experience all situations with wisdom and good judgment.  We do this because human emotions can be so difficult to handle.  In our daily lives we encounter fear, panic, hatred, and other extremes in ourselves that can drive us away from our normal good sense and into behaviors and reactions that cause us trouble.  All meditation practices, whether they be Transendental Meditation or Zen, Tibetan or Christian, are there to help you teach yourself to bypass those reactions even though you can’t avoid the emotions.

While I’ve changed my practice through the years, moving away from extensive hours of sitting mediation, I still continue practice.  After learning the reasons and basics of practice, the task became very personal.  There is both a matter of searching and also of settling to let the practice ripen and bloom.  Patience is as necessary as consistency.

 Great teachers like the Dali Lama are often quoted about the individuality of a person’s path.  One wonderful quote is “if your road is straight, you are on someone else’s path.”

All I can write about is my personal experience on the Buddhist way.  I know why I’ve meandered about in the directions I’ve taken, I learn my faults and strengths as I go.  But the ways of friends and teachers, while instructive, are not necessarily mine, which means they may not work for me.  I’ve had to find a percentage of my guidance by touch, like a blind person, with plenty of trial and error.  What is miraculous is that while I essentially failed at Zen and no longer do retreats necessitating ten hours on the pillow each day, I’ve never ceased to have a personal practice.

 Every day of my life is guided by my willingness to observe and purify my intentions and to come face to face with me, not as I wish to be, but as I simply am at this moment.

 Watching yourself as you are can be very frightening.  It can also be very beautiful, but our critical nature tends to bypass the beauty and dwell on our ugly parts.  Allowing both to surface fully combined with the willingness to be present with the results is exactly what we do.

 The point of sitting meditation is vowing not to rise from the pillow no matter what until the allotted time period ends.  We are supported in keeping this vow by having companions and a time keeper.  The vow usually includes no intentional movement – no scratching the itches, wiggling for a more comfortable position, etc.  No where to run, no where to hide is the base purpose for this vow.  To truly understand what this life is we need to stop running.  We need to face the deepest of our fears, our worst reactions, our most unacceptable thoughts and allow them to simply be.  These are part of us, along with our greatest kindnesses and most bountiful gratitude’s, and we need to own them fully.

 Those who come newly to meditation practices expect to “improve”.  They grab at the carrot of enlightenment thinking they will both become perfect and really happy, that their old life will fall away and the new one will be wonderful.  With sufficient experience the practitioner discovers that that is just a fairy tale, that instead they are removing the lipstick and rouge from life, leaving it bare and raw.  It’s the plain reality of who we are and how we act we’re forced to face.  When I sit in meditation I get to be with all my warts, my hideous thoughts, along with the shining intentions I carry within me.

 Once you’ve spent sufficient time staring at a wall (and yourself) in the company of other meditators, it becomes a habit that spills into your life on your feet.  As you go through life you stop fearing your mistakes.  Instead you take note of them and look for sources.  Fear can initiate yelling or a trip to the wine bottle, hatred spawns criticism and withdrawal, physical pain is accompanied by a story line that compounds suffering.  These have been some of my experiences and I know I share them with some others.

 Mindfulness is a matter of attention.  It’s the key exercise we use to create focus on the present.  Taking time to experience the taste and touch of food, the feeling the water and soap as we wash our hands, being aware of how our clothes touch the body --- and just going through the day watching these little things carefully --- this is mindfulness.  The purpose of mindfulness is the same as sitting meditation --- to be there for what is real and actually happening and to get us out of our heads where we create a false story.

 Life is both very simple and very complex and the same is true with Buddhist practice.  Watching yourself wash your hands is easy, watching yourself have a panic attack is really difficult.  But if you can be present with both, eyes open with a non-judgmental heart, little changes begin to happen.  Life develops a subtle tone.

 It’s hard to walk on sharp rocks.  But if you gradually break down the rocks they eventually become sand, and it’s comfortable and even pleasant to walk on sand.  This is what we do with practice.  We get rid of the sharp edges.

======================================================

 

 What is Love?

The milk I poured into my tea this morning has soured --- and sometimes I do the same, going a bit sour and out of sorts.  Love, too, has it's bum points.  And what the heck is it, this love thing?  The one we have in intimate relationships, that's the love I question.  The other types of love --- respect, admiration, appreciation, all those --- there is a subtlety in those sorts of love.  We love our children, our dogs, our friends and the emotion of that love doesn't overwhelm us but nourishes us sending us into the world with joy.  But then there are those engulfing feelings that follow with intimate relationships, feelings we call love that flood us with strong emotion and sometimes cause great pain.  I wonder if those are actually love, or are they just emotions as dangerous as fear or anger or hatred?

 It's the lack of sustainability in that "love" emotion that bothers me. There is that grand experience, the genuflection of the spirit to the other, the offering of your will.  But that can erode. One expects attention and maintenance, and that love seems dependent of a two way street of participation.  And when this love isn't kneaded and watered, it tends to wither.  Then some mornings I simply wake to sour milk and there is this delicious equanimity which draws me neither towards nor away from my object of affection.

 Obviously we've misnamed this emotion, and as far as I can tell genuine love itself is not an emotion.  The one I question goes way beyond infatuation, it is passionate and swirls around the heart as though it is the product of the heart, but then is it?  Or does this sort of feeling, the one generated by physical attraction, simply masquerade, leaving us devoted to the emotion itself.  Perhaps all positive emotions should be as suspect as the negative ones.

 So I'm in the process of teasing out the nature of love, sorting the emotional state from the durable part of a heart connection.  Removing the stimulants that produce the wild, blasting ride is necessary to clearing the confusion.  The lover goes away.  Communication is slight.  And the emotion, the one we've been labeling as love, subsides to a gentle warmth, that one mixed with respect and appreciation but lacking the fireworks that overwhelm in his presence.  Then we are down to the kindness and gratitude we feel for our friend or dog, and only then do we give the lover the freedom he needs to be.

 Physical intimacy so confuses us.  It is perhaps the most complex relationship we have.  In sharing our bodies, an act to which we give huge importance, we can become more involved in self and less in other, thus building walls where we'd hoped to tear them down.  It's no wonder the monks retreat from sexuality.  The puzzle of a physical relationship is confounded by a blindness that arises from personal need --- the needs of gratification both in body and mind, the results of which we tag as love, but which are not.  As delicious as these feelings may be, they are simply one person seeking enjoyment from the body and mind of another person.

 Monks draw a big circle around the word desire and designate it forbidden fruit.  Like fruit desire has a nourishing quality, but the sweetness leaves a craving for more.  Fulfilling your wants mostly leads to more wanting.  And nowhere is this more obvious than with the act of physical love.  When it's good, very very good, you just want to have much more.  Yet the satisfaction is only temporary.  And that's the core of the question.  This temporary satisfaction is what we Westerners call "love".  But what is it really?

While monks find their freedom in the removal of desire, I seem to have taken the opposite path.  I indulge in desire and then seek to find all it's warts, it's rough edges and bumps.  Withdrawing from worldly temptations only works for some people.  Others choose the tar pits and tripfalls as they look for the nature of reality.  We are really no different from the monks.  We want the same gentle heart combined with an open sight.  When the emotions arrive we want to greet them all with the same careful curiosity, not fleeing from them nor attaching to them.  We want to learn how our emotions are not us, they are just feelings not much different from those our skin gives us about cold, heat, and pain.  Humans simply overload emotional feelings with importance.  But emotions ebb and flow and as the sun rises only to disappear at night, that emotion needs to be released to the empty place we call equanimity.  This is the balanced spot where we find ourselves on a rainy morning when the milk has gone sour and the lover is far away and out of touch.

==================================================

With Dog's Eyes

My dog and I agree on several basic life principles, which may be why we get along so well.

It’s really nice to get up early in the morning.
Neither of us like dog parks, but a long walk in the woods is divine.
We don’t like food out of cans unless it just a small part of a very good meal.
Treats are great, but not often.
Naps are wonderful.
Hanging around the house is a great pleasure to both of us.
Fur can make you itch.
Our sense of smell is proof that there is a god.
We both run away if someone drops the leash.
Petting is a joy to both parties.

Of course each of us has a few tastes the other doesn’t share.
Sniffing butts really isn’t my thing.
Drinking zinfandel isn’t hers.
I don’t mind getting my teeth cleaned, but with her they need anesthetic.
I’ve never peed on the carpet.

================================================

Old Fart

I’m getting old.  And while I feel I’m doing this more gracefully than many --- I’m agile on a computer and in a yoga class, I have friendships among younger people, and I like cell phones --- yet I’ve hit the wall on some aspects of our current times, much like other old people who send me those silly lists, the ones recalling the great old days of poodle skirts and necking on a dark street.

For example, I like books.  I mean, I like actual, physical books, the ones with paper pages and musty smells.  And although I genuflect to the environment by buying only used ones, I still want to read my print in real books, not on a screen.  I’ll admit that when traveling a lot, an electronic book might be a great asset.  But in my home I want a library containing all the friends that have entertained me in quiet moments.

I don’t like TV.  Now, mind you I watch a movie nearly every night, but I never did think much of mediocre programs with advertising punctuation as a form of entertainment.  It was boring in 1950 and despite HD and BlueRay and 50” screens, it’s only gotten worse.  The interactivity of social sites on the computer is more entertaining and leaves less room for big brother in my head.

Dating at age 67 is not viable.  Despite my best intentions, I’ve arrived here once again single.  But the idea of rubbing my wrinkling, snoring body against a man with heart problems and an assortment of daily medications is odious.  If I still had a living husband, it would be just fine.  But to go seeking a mate at this age is a silly form of denial so I’ve abandoned the chase.

I do not, however, like to reminisce.  While I occasionally am nostalgic for the rabbity behaviors of my forties, I do not miss most of the past.  Returning to the drug smudged, monetarily deficient days of yore is not seductive.  I do miss people I’ve lost, but find that acceptable.  But I’m content to accept global climate change and iPods in order to have the present.  This biggest advantage is that this is where I am, for which I am grateful, thinning hair, painful hip, funky smells and all.

===================================================

All By Myself

The social development of dogs is a subject well explored.  Any dog breeder can tell you that there is short window during which a puppy must have good encounters with both young and adult dogs and an only slightly larger window for good interactions with humans.  After the age of three months if the pup hasn’t been properly socialized, odds are it will never happen.  Talk to anyone with a bit of dog rescue experience about the results.  When puppies are isolated in puppy mills or raised by punitive or absent owners, they develop strangely and can never be coaxed or trained in a way to replace bad socialization.

If there is available psychological information about humans that compares with the abundance offered for those raising puppies, I’m unaware of it. (I am not, however a student of psychology, just a writer.)   But since humans and dogs are both group oriented animals, it might be expected some similarities in their youthful needs exist.  Horror stories occasionally have surfaced of children raised in locked rooms or basements with almost no human interactivity and it was found that no amount of re-education can replace what was missing in early life.

Of course, it’s been more than thirty years since I had any concerns about the early socialization of my children and more than sixty since it was my parents’ turn.  In my childhood the emphasis was on the provision of broad reading choices and the importance of music and dance lessons.  I suspect the prevailing thought then was that anything missing in early childhood would be quickly made up through schooling.

Enter now the problem of a child born solo to a disinterested and preoccupied couple.  Required to self-entertain, deprived of sufficient interaction with adults and other children, it’s likely that by a certain age --- five? seven? maybe the age she/he begins school? --- that the opportunity for good socialization has already passed.  It’s possible that like the dog there is also a window of development that snaps shut and while the child can later learn the steps of the social dance, it may never feel comfortable there and eventually choose to choose a solitary and hermetic life.

The difficulty for one of those children in current society is that while we seem to now understand the needs of an assortment of differences resulting from birth defects, accidents, and even self destructive tendencies, there is no category nor understanding of the effects of poor socializing.  The human is so group oriented that anyone choosing a solitary lifestyle with a minimum of inter-human interaction is faulted for not changing his ways.  Never is it considered that he might be locked by fate into a way of living that has become his personality and is not his choice to change. 

Being one of these children, raised by a mother with sparse affection and a need for a plentitude of private time, I am finding myself late in life preferring solitude over most social endeavors.  I found the cacophony of raising a family emotionally difficult, and now I find groups of chattering children or gabbling adults to be stressful.  I prefer silence to any type of noise, one on one conversation tolerable and sometimes pleasant, but panic in groups, particularly ones with people I hardly know.

My complaint is that there seems to be no tolerance for my deficiency.   Had I a big birthmark, a crooked leg, or Down’s syndrome people would excuse my behavior and, more importantly, not expect and even require me to change.  They would simply accept me as I am:  a person for whom fate delivered a defect.  Instead, my unwillingness to endure long dinner parties or discomfort with unfamiliar people is greeted as insulting or as a sign of depression. 

My favorite experiences with groups of people are the times I’ve spent on silent retreats.  There I’ve enjoyed the safety and happiness being with a group of people, without having to interact with them.  I learned to drop my eyes and live in quietude and there found a freedom I’ve never enjoyed by either being alone or being with a group that talks.  Were I able to accept any religion, joining a monastery would have been likely.

What I’d like people to understand is that I’m not anti-social.  I’m non-social.  I simply was improperly socialized as a child and now late in life I have the privilege of surrendering to that which is comfortable to me, the avoidance of social groups.  It’s not that I don’t like people, it’s that I’m uncomfortable in most social situations and now that my family is raised and I no longer have to work for a living, I’d rather be alone.  While socializing is normal in human relationship, it’s isn’t normal for me. 

I would request that people resist thinking that I should or even could change.  Becoming a social butterfly isn’t on my list of things I’d like to do with my life.  I’d rather join an order of mute monks.

=================================================

What Else Would You Expect?

When dealing with the insane, it’s best to pretend to be sane.
Herman Hesse

It’s my conclusion that the planet on which we live is totally insane.  I’m not talking little lapses here and there, to me it’s completely whacko.  To assume that there is a kindly god who cares about us is proof of the insanity.  Why would any god allow this planet to be both incredibly beautiful and hideously unacceptable, sometimes at the same moment?  Are we worshiping a sadist? 

God: “Let’s see what happens if I let her husband die suddenly and then follow it with a case of cancer.  Oh, and maybe burn down her house.”

Possibly you’re thinking about a god who cares totally but is helpless to do anything.  Now does that make sense?  It’s a god, for heaven’s sake, he/she could do something if he/she wanted.

Last night I had a clear dream that answered one of my questions about the madness.  Times have been so furious, accelerated mayhem, white collar crimes of incredible proportions.  How does a person do some of these things?  How do they feel during and after the crime?

So last night I was a financial wizard working my way up the ladder.  I had mowed down thousands of investors while being undetected and things looked very bright indeed.  I was determined and, being it was a dream, I had the experience of being “me” --- being in Barbara’s skin.  Then a deal came along that was noticed by a couple of people likely to squeal.  I pulled out a gun and sorrowfully shot them.  My experience was of both regret and absolute necessity.  It was the way I would have felt if I’d had to defend my child from danger.  “I hate to do this, but my allegiance is to my child.”

It’s possible the only satisfying way to live is to just ignore the madness.  Eat, drink, be merry, and as helpful to others as possible.  Ignore the past.  Don’t fret about the future --- it’s gonna get here and, trust me, there are parts of it you really won’t like.

I’ve been a practicing Buddhist for a number of years.  The heart of the practice is aligning all one’s attention on the present, dropping the past away and only dealing with the future on an “as needed” basis.  I live in a nice little space of safety with diminished worry and fear plus a less prolonged experience of emotion.  It’s nice for me.

Expert practitioners tend to attract pupils since the peace of the teacher is tangible. 

This is a really agreeable way to live, but it doesn’t change the nature of this nutso planet.  It remains a crazy place to live. So I repeat  --- the world is quite insane ---butterflies and blight, diamonds and blood.

All Buddhist sects, of which there are more than Christianity, have explanations for why things are so unacceptably strange.  They range from blaming everything on an abundance of deities and spirits to blaming the individual who obviously did something wrong in a past life.  The Buddha actually had the best answer.  “Don’t even think about it” he said.  The practice only works if you stop trying to explain everything.  All that conversation about “is there a god?” or “what did I do wrong?” shuts down the peace of the practice.

While I call myself a Zen student, I don’t want you to get the impression that I’m any good at it.  I only get three parts of this practice:  Do meditation to increase the ability to “let go”.  Arrive in present tense constantly.  Do as little harm as possible.   The rest of Zen alludes me.  It gets dropped in present tense.  I suspect this might be what Zen really is, but I can’t say that out loud to my teacher or fellow practitioners.  It’s like opening the curtain on the Wizard. You’re supposed to be awed by the practice and I’ve lost my sense of awe.  In a crazy world awe gets smeared with the ugly.  If you just think about where you’re about to place your foot, you’re safe.  Try to understand the marriage of sacred and hideous and you’re lost.

Streets of mud and stoves fired by coal were the norm when my Father was born.  When my Grandmother was an 18 year old bride a horse ran away with her buggy speeding four miles before stopping in exhaustion.  My Mother was fourteen when the stock market crashed in 1929.  Throughout the depression my Grandfather tried tomato farming only to see the price fall below the cost to produce them.  He drank heavily and didn’t change his ways until World War II made farming a successful endeavor.

From the cradle my ears were filled with tales of poverty and scrabble.  I accepted it as the way life had been.  But Doris Day and Pat Boone promised me a that things had changed.  Dad now had a paycheck and drove a new Chevy with scratchy seats.  Mom bought a dress of heavy copper satin for the Beaux Arts ball.  I grew up with lots of playmates and no siblings.  My cocoon remained safe through teen belligerence, my disgust with Mr. Sandman, and continued warnings from my parents that the depression could happen again.  I married.  I hatched a tot.  In 1968 I lost my remaining faith as Bobby and MLK Jr. were murdered.  I went back to the land.  I bought goats.  I enjoyed the denial of pot.

Life seems to have been a spiral --- up or down, take your pick.  Repeatedly I return to the land where nourishment and warmth are available if your back holds.  Barter is looking good.  The elusive tug of a warmer climate is losing ground to the precious jewel of 1 ½ acres in my name --- acres without mortgage, soon in need of a fence.  I’m thinking of buying a twenty two and a block in tackle.

I truly wish I could buy into a religion.  I’ve been trying to do so for twelve years and have finally seen it only as a refuge for the frightened.  My wish is to walk boldly off the precipice into the abyss of unknown as I can’t accept a God who can idle while there is suffering, sorrow, and murder.  Don’t think of this as suicide.  I’ve way too much curiosity to leave of my own free will.  I want to see how this comes out. 

My true innocence was lost in the Bay of Pigs.  The king of Camelot wished to push the button to toast his worshipful followers.  Bobby died, defacto segregation gripped us for 40 more years, Bernie Maddox and Milton Friedman milked us dry as we arrived at the bold new future with the wrong resources.  It’s back to goats and chickens. 

The horror is that the doom sayers, the Cassandras, will be right.  We’re winding down, crashing down, tumbling to near or total extinction.  The human experiment has been truly interesting but at the bottom, a failure.  We are a clever species.  But we lack compassion and center around our own precious person, saving ourselves and perhaps, our own precious child.  But every time the carrot is prettier than the stick, we’ll choose the carrot.  The other guy gets stuck with the stick.

In another dream I asked a friend in the know the names of a few isolated monasteries, hoping one would accept me.  With no desire to say litanies or bow to wooden carvings, I needed to tunnel into the woods, join hands to forget the plunging destination to which greed and ignorance has sent us.  It’s not that I think I could avoid the results.  I just don’t want to think anymore about the future.  It will be here, I’m certain, in all it’s stunning glory --- a future without water, a future torn by war, a future where murder wins out and skill loses.  What else would you expect?

====================================================


Lost on a Strange Planet

So I sit down to write.  But wait, I need to change my clothes, so I do that, go wash the dishes and then sit down to write.  Up on the blank page goes a title.  No, that's not interesting today, change the title.  Stare at the blank page.  Blow my nose.  The chime with incoming email rings and it just might be important, so I read and answer that.  Then I remember the unmade bed.  Make the bed.  Look out the window at the weather.  Scratch the dog.

So, again, I sit down to write. Blank page with a title.  Below that I haultingly make a feeble sentence.  Ugh!  Doesn't say anything significant so I paw through old snippets of writing hoping for inspiration.  I get up to collect Roget's and Strunk & White.  Lovingly I place them at my elbow.  Stare at the single sentence.  Add another useless line of type.  Blow my nose again.  Sip tea.

So why is this so difficult --- this calling up of the muse, this soliciting for interesting language --- why is it hard?  I get my best ideas while driving or shopping, so must pull over to drag out my notebook to drop a few decent ideas on a page.  Anyone who writes has to wrestle with the clean slate.  Staring at the paper. Waiting. 

I spent a number of years doing Natalie Goldberg's writing/meditation practice.  The writing part of it involved not stoping.  Choose a topic, start writing, don't stop.  Don't think, just rattle it out.  Set a clock, don't stop 'till it rings.  Then later, maybe even next week, go back over it to see if anything is worthwhile.  Maybe not, maybe you trash it.  But sometimes you surprise yourself.  Fabulous things can start their blossom on this practice.

So back to the blank page.

========================================================

© Picottee Asheden