All wisdom is rooted in learning to call things by the right name. When things are properly identified, they fall into natural categories and understanding becomes orderly. - Confucius in the Zen Calendar (February 22, 2003).
Day 210. My mudra spoke to me during zazen last night. I am forgoing a witty and engaging opening line to hasten my description of it. Besides, a dinner of popcorn, chocolate chips and three cups of Chai tea has my thought processes revved up just a little bit. Clearly, I am becoming a real writer.
Zazen was especially poignant last night. I repeated the Metta meditation I learned from the guest teacher on Sunday. In summary, Metta meditation involves three specific segments of directing loving kindness to self, a benefactor of self, a neutral person, and a difficult person. On Sunday, Arpita led us through the meditation aloud, though last night I chanted the words inwardly. I began with Self, repeating internally: "May I be healed; may I be physically, emotionally, and spiritually healed. May I be happy. May I be free from suffering and the causes of suffering." Next, I repeated the three affirming statements while saying the name of a benefactor, then a neutral person, and finally a challenging person in my life. The internal words synchronized themselves with my breath, which became slow, rhythmic and effortless. I remember thinking, "I'm not a bad breather after all!" I became deeply centered and peaceful. Not a sound out of the Primates. I felt clear, focused and purposeful.
Prior to the Metta meditation, Arpita had guided us on a "body scan" visualization. She asked us to simply scan through our bodies, slowly, beginning with the crown of our head and working our way down to the tip of our toes. It was suggested that we might become aware of sensations like tight, heavy, tingling, tense, relaxed, cold, warm, etc. The beautiful thing was Arpita's reminder that we remain in a position of loving kindness and acceptance toward all of the sensations we came across. She suggested that we refrain from trying to change anything, rather that we gently register it with loving kindness and move on. Arpita is a memorable teacher. During meditation on both Sunday and Monday, the body scan was a powerful experience. I was astonished at how vividly I could mentally travel throughout my body, gently resting awareness on specific sites. Quietly directing compassionate, accepting energy to each body section was like honey flowing in my veins. A sweet, golden, viscous sensation of healing.
The sequence of a body scan followed by Metta meditation last night opened me to a significant insight. While scanning sensation in my wrists and hands, I registered a familiar, disquieting feeling in the middle finger of my left hand. On many occasions, that finger feels displaced, uncoordinated, and asymmetrical with the other fingers comprising my mudra. It won't lay flat; it curls up a little at the middle knuckle. Attempts to force it down make both wrists tight and sore. In my internal body sense, the knuckles of that finger don't align properly with the finger lying underneath. My mudra feels unnatural and wobbly. The errant finger disrupts the energy centered within that important component of my meditation posture. The breath entering and exiting through my mudra gets hung up, like dragging a shoelace through a hole without the eyelet. My whole Zen process was being interrupted by one oppositional finger.
Deeply centered within my Metta meditation, and recalling Arpita's instruction to remain compassionate toward our bodies, I halted the ridicule and judgment I have been directing toward that finger on my left hand. Without consciously directing the action, I felt the equivalent finger on my right hand shift ever so slightly. With a movement so subtle as to be almost imperceptible, the finger straightened and lifted a fraction of a centimeter. It had been the tiniest bit too relaxed, such that it was not supporting the left finger. With an infinitesimal increase in tension of the right finger as it lay underneath the left, my mudra righted itself. It felt perfect: symmetrical, strong, balanced. My breath flowed evenly again. Beautiful Zen was restored.
I was stunned. An epiphany stung my mind like a wasp in honeysuckle. My initial explanation of what was "wrong" with my mudra was utterly incorrect. I had faulted the defective left finger, blaming and judging it as the culprit for my sore wrists, sagging mudra, and frustrating cushion time. In reality, the explanation for my struggles derived from the underlying hand, my dominant hand, the supportive infrastructure on which my left hand rested. Correcting what lay underneath solved the problem. My left finger simply needed more support. It had become fatigued and crooked from trying to hold itself up alone. The finger was misaligned and bending because it lacked an adequate foundation. Strengthen the foundation, and the whole mudra was healed.
This is the exact process by which we fail to solve major difficulties in the world. We blame the wrong thing. We label people and systems that are weak, out of alignment, and struggling as the actual problem. If they would just shape up and act right, everything would be fixed. Unconsciously, by default, we accusingly point to the effects of defective foundations rather than the foundation itself. Two examples come to mind. First, the simplistic, erroneous conclusion that poverty is the result of lazy, worthless freeloaders looking for an easy handout rather than a complicated infrastructure resplendent with bias, prejudice, ignorant historical precedent, and a tendency to generalize a small percentage of malingerers to entire populations. I frequently see a second example in my practice. It is common for women with histories of sexual assault and/or abuse to sexually act out. They are subsequently labeled as whores, sluts and a host of other derogatory terms. The accurate understanding is comprised of extremely complex psychological dynamics, not the least of which is a society that blames victims rather than challenge the innumerable systemic flaws that continually allow men to perpetuate violence against women.
Too many words distracting from my mudra message, which is this: Look carefully, with loving kindness, at that which first appears to be the cause of a problem. Breathe deep. Breath deep again. Observe closely, with compassion. Chances are, something is lying underneath what you thought was the problem. Fix that, and you'll have a real solution.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Kissing Feet
Knowledge is the reward of action . . . For it is by doing things that one becomes transformed. Executing a symbolical gesture, actually living through, to the very limit, a particular role, one comes to realize the truth inherent in the role. - Heinrich Zimmer in the Zen Calendar (January 26, 2003).
Day 209. I just returned from my mother's 75th birthday celebration. She would be vehemently opposed to me disclosing her true age, especially in a public forum. I chose to post it anyway because: a) she doesn't own a computer and b) in case I haven't mentioned it before, I love anything easily represented in fractions. Three-quarters of a century is far too splendid a fraction to refrain from commenting. Remind me of that on my next birthday . . . . I printed out and read the recent blog titled "We Will Eat the Fruit" as part of my gift to her. I indulged a lot of ego when I elected (without an invitation) to read it aloud for the family. No worries. My mom has enough ego to love hearing anything in which she is the star.
A client shared the most lovely memory with me today. Almost thirty years ago, she was teaching in India and found out that the Dali Lama would be appearing in a village nearby. Resplendent with that delightful brashness granted to beings in their 20's, she and a friend went to the village and gained an audience with the Tibetan monks hosting His Holiness. Informing one of the senior monks that they taught at a school visited by the Dali Lama when he first fled Tibet, they formulated their desire to meet him. The monk gently, kindly suggested that perhaps it would be best if they spent some additional time studying Buddhism before they met the Dali Lama.
As luck would have it, the Dali Lama was making a public appearance a couple of days later. My client described the hundreds of Tibetans streaming down out of the mountains for Darshan - the "beholding of a deity." I read a little about Darshan and found two phrases that I particularly liked: "to see with reverence and devotion" and " an interaction in presence between devotee and guru." The people coming in off the mountains were true herdsmen and their families - long-haired, unkempt commoners consumed with worshipful devotion for His Holiness. Undoubtedly, this opportunity for Darshan with their most revered holy figure was the chance of a lifetime.
My client and her friend joined the teeming crowd lining the streets for an interaction in presence with the Dali Lama. She observed with some consternation that the fervored peasants were hitting the ground, bowing and kissing His feet as He passed by. Well-socialized Westerners that they were, both young women felt reluctance at mimicking this particular cultural expression of adoration. At the last second, one of the monks seamlessly intervened, explaining in perfect English who the women were, including their association with the school His Holiness had visited. In the perfect gesture of loving kindness, the Dali Lama shook hands with my client and her friend (talk about a Peak Experience!! I was speechless just hearing the tale recounted!)
This is the essence of Buddhism - of all spiritual practices emanating from One Great Love. The monks had no attachment to my client and her friend acting like anything other than what they were: two young women from the West with sincere intent and desire to participate in Darshan with the Dali Lama - without lying on the ground and kissing his feet. No judgment, no criticism, no expectation that they behave like the natives ("You are in our country; revere like the rest of us!"). Instead, accurate empathy and a timely, perfect show of compassion. "We recognize who you are and what you desire. We will assist with making that possible for you in a manner in which you are comfortable." Thus, an introduction and a handshake with His Holiness.
Loving kindness extends far beyond those acts that are effortlessly congruent with that which we prefer and agree. At its highest, compassion guides actions that are grounded in what is best for the other. Accurate empathy and anticipation of another being's feelings and needs is the foundation upon which loving kindness emanates. Oftentimes, this makes the action significantly more difficult than the concept. That's probably why most of us aren't monks.
Before I shave my head and relinquish my bike shorts for a robe (though I am contemplating doing just that at some point in my future), I am going to follow the monks' original advice to my client and her friend: Learn more about Buddhism. Study it. Practice it. Live it. Act with loving kindness as earnestly and consistently as possible. Even when it is difficult. Especially when it is difficult. And one day, maybe even Westerners will understand the beauty of kissing feet.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Day 209. I just returned from my mother's 75th birthday celebration. She would be vehemently opposed to me disclosing her true age, especially in a public forum. I chose to post it anyway because: a) she doesn't own a computer and b) in case I haven't mentioned it before, I love anything easily represented in fractions. Three-quarters of a century is far too splendid a fraction to refrain from commenting. Remind me of that on my next birthday . . . . I printed out and read the recent blog titled "We Will Eat the Fruit" as part of my gift to her. I indulged a lot of ego when I elected (without an invitation) to read it aloud for the family. No worries. My mom has enough ego to love hearing anything in which she is the star.
A client shared the most lovely memory with me today. Almost thirty years ago, she was teaching in India and found out that the Dali Lama would be appearing in a village nearby. Resplendent with that delightful brashness granted to beings in their 20's, she and a friend went to the village and gained an audience with the Tibetan monks hosting His Holiness. Informing one of the senior monks that they taught at a school visited by the Dali Lama when he first fled Tibet, they formulated their desire to meet him. The monk gently, kindly suggested that perhaps it would be best if they spent some additional time studying Buddhism before they met the Dali Lama.
As luck would have it, the Dali Lama was making a public appearance a couple of days later. My client described the hundreds of Tibetans streaming down out of the mountains for Darshan - the "beholding of a deity." I read a little about Darshan and found two phrases that I particularly liked: "to see with reverence and devotion" and " an interaction in presence between devotee and guru." The people coming in off the mountains were true herdsmen and their families - long-haired, unkempt commoners consumed with worshipful devotion for His Holiness. Undoubtedly, this opportunity for Darshan with their most revered holy figure was the chance of a lifetime.
My client and her friend joined the teeming crowd lining the streets for an interaction in presence with the Dali Lama. She observed with some consternation that the fervored peasants were hitting the ground, bowing and kissing His feet as He passed by. Well-socialized Westerners that they were, both young women felt reluctance at mimicking this particular cultural expression of adoration. At the last second, one of the monks seamlessly intervened, explaining in perfect English who the women were, including their association with the school His Holiness had visited. In the perfect gesture of loving kindness, the Dali Lama shook hands with my client and her friend (talk about a Peak Experience!! I was speechless just hearing the tale recounted!)
This is the essence of Buddhism - of all spiritual practices emanating from One Great Love. The monks had no attachment to my client and her friend acting like anything other than what they were: two young women from the West with sincere intent and desire to participate in Darshan with the Dali Lama - without lying on the ground and kissing his feet. No judgment, no criticism, no expectation that they behave like the natives ("You are in our country; revere like the rest of us!"). Instead, accurate empathy and a timely, perfect show of compassion. "We recognize who you are and what you desire. We will assist with making that possible for you in a manner in which you are comfortable." Thus, an introduction and a handshake with His Holiness.
Loving kindness extends far beyond those acts that are effortlessly congruent with that which we prefer and agree. At its highest, compassion guides actions that are grounded in what is best for the other. Accurate empathy and anticipation of another being's feelings and needs is the foundation upon which loving kindness emanates. Oftentimes, this makes the action significantly more difficult than the concept. That's probably why most of us aren't monks.
Before I shave my head and relinquish my bike shorts for a robe (though I am contemplating doing just that at some point in my future), I am going to follow the monks' original advice to my client and her friend: Learn more about Buddhism. Study it. Practice it. Live it. Act with loving kindness as earnestly and consistently as possible. Even when it is difficult. Especially when it is difficult. And one day, maybe even Westerners will understand the beauty of kissing feet.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Sunday, August 29, 2010
So Many Paths
"I could never be a Buddhist. I don't see how you can sit still for so long!" - My dear friend Chylene, after attending a meditation retreat with me today.
Day 208. I just returned from a six-hour Vipassana (clear seeing) meditation retreat. Five periods of sitting meditation, including a period of Metta meditation, which is the practice of cultivating loving kindness and compassion in ourselves and others. We alternated sitting meditation with ten to fifteen minutes of kinhin (walking meditation). Dharma talk followed by a question and answer period. Good stuff. Gassho, Arpita, for your wisdom and experience.
It was delectably powerful to sit in the presence of twenty-odd other people. Other than Chylene, I did not know anyone personally. It was a silent retreat, so we were not conversing aloud. There is, however, a unique communal experience when you sit silent meditation with others. Verbal exchange is rendered entirely unnecessary. Showing up, sitting with intent, breathing together in respectful silence is a profound mechanism for connection. Even if the retreat was not a silent one, I doubt there would be much to say.
I first practiced kinhin many years ago with my teacher Frank. He instructed our small sangha in a very precise method of walking meditation. Our hands are held in a specific mudra balanced carefully in front of our belly button (thumb tucked in one fist with the other hand wrapped around, thumb resting on top). The movement of walking is slowed to the point that a minute can lapse between the placing of one foot and the lifting of the other. Attention is focused on every nuance of the lifting, swinging forward, and placing of each foot. When my consciousness is particularly acute, I can draw a parallel between the moment when one foot is raised, balanced in the air before I touch it down in front of me, and that magical pause between an inhale and exhale. I believe that those moments are where Life resides.
Then and now, I adore walking meditation. I inhabit my body so fiercely, movement is an indelible fit as a form of meditation. The energy discharge is just enough to effectively silence the Monkeys. I ease into deep meditation during kinhin. Place, time and people fade away. My mind focuses like angels on a pin head; all that exists is the feel of my foot as it lifts, suspends, and gently touches down on the firm, solid earth. Mind and body almost fall away, save for a little ego marveling at the strength in my core after three years of Pilates.
I was rested, peaceful and clear at the completion of the day. Our teacher mentioned that in her lineage, her teacher had sometimes instructed the students to envision their mind as a "clear forest pool." Something about that phrase "Clear Forest Pool" triggered a deep sense of calm and clarity for me. I liked moving my mind in the direction of a clear pool, surrounded by towering, magnificent trees. Two significant epiphanies arose during the day. I may write about them one day.
I left the retreat feeling rock solid in my "home" as a Buddhist. Validated, energized, centered. Highly motivated for renewed energy devoted to reading, meditating, and participating in a community with others who sit. Imagine my surprise when the first words out of Chylene's mouth were, "I could never be a Buddhist! I don't see how you sit still for so long!" I chuckled and replied, "Yep. Buddhism ain't for the wimpy!"
Funny thing is, Chylene regularly sweats for all four rounds in a traditional Native American sweat lodge, where the temperature far exceeds 100 degrees. On the slightly cooler earthen floor, she crouches, sweaty skin to sweaty skin, with other women of the lodge as they sing, chant, pray, and commune with ancestral visitors. With respect for refraining from comparing spiritual practices, I must observe that this form of worship ain't for the wimpy, either. The essence of both forms of spirituality is their welcoming attitude and unconditional respect for alternative practices. Chylene and I show up for one another, teaching and learning and mutually exchanging what we believe in our hearts. We believe the same thing. We all find our home in the One Great Love.
Sitting, walking, sweating, chanting. So many paths. Infinite journeys. All of them leading us home.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Day 208. I just returned from a six-hour Vipassana (clear seeing) meditation retreat. Five periods of sitting meditation, including a period of Metta meditation, which is the practice of cultivating loving kindness and compassion in ourselves and others. We alternated sitting meditation with ten to fifteen minutes of kinhin (walking meditation). Dharma talk followed by a question and answer period. Good stuff. Gassho, Arpita, for your wisdom and experience.
It was delectably powerful to sit in the presence of twenty-odd other people. Other than Chylene, I did not know anyone personally. It was a silent retreat, so we were not conversing aloud. There is, however, a unique communal experience when you sit silent meditation with others. Verbal exchange is rendered entirely unnecessary. Showing up, sitting with intent, breathing together in respectful silence is a profound mechanism for connection. Even if the retreat was not a silent one, I doubt there would be much to say.
I first practiced kinhin many years ago with my teacher Frank. He instructed our small sangha in a very precise method of walking meditation. Our hands are held in a specific mudra balanced carefully in front of our belly button (thumb tucked in one fist with the other hand wrapped around, thumb resting on top). The movement of walking is slowed to the point that a minute can lapse between the placing of one foot and the lifting of the other. Attention is focused on every nuance of the lifting, swinging forward, and placing of each foot. When my consciousness is particularly acute, I can draw a parallel between the moment when one foot is raised, balanced in the air before I touch it down in front of me, and that magical pause between an inhale and exhale. I believe that those moments are where Life resides.
Then and now, I adore walking meditation. I inhabit my body so fiercely, movement is an indelible fit as a form of meditation. The energy discharge is just enough to effectively silence the Monkeys. I ease into deep meditation during kinhin. Place, time and people fade away. My mind focuses like angels on a pin head; all that exists is the feel of my foot as it lifts, suspends, and gently touches down on the firm, solid earth. Mind and body almost fall away, save for a little ego marveling at the strength in my core after three years of Pilates.
I was rested, peaceful and clear at the completion of the day. Our teacher mentioned that in her lineage, her teacher had sometimes instructed the students to envision their mind as a "clear forest pool." Something about that phrase "Clear Forest Pool" triggered a deep sense of calm and clarity for me. I liked moving my mind in the direction of a clear pool, surrounded by towering, magnificent trees. Two significant epiphanies arose during the day. I may write about them one day.
I left the retreat feeling rock solid in my "home" as a Buddhist. Validated, energized, centered. Highly motivated for renewed energy devoted to reading, meditating, and participating in a community with others who sit. Imagine my surprise when the first words out of Chylene's mouth were, "I could never be a Buddhist! I don't see how you sit still for so long!" I chuckled and replied, "Yep. Buddhism ain't for the wimpy!"
Funny thing is, Chylene regularly sweats for all four rounds in a traditional Native American sweat lodge, where the temperature far exceeds 100 degrees. On the slightly cooler earthen floor, she crouches, sweaty skin to sweaty skin, with other women of the lodge as they sing, chant, pray, and commune with ancestral visitors. With respect for refraining from comparing spiritual practices, I must observe that this form of worship ain't for the wimpy, either. The essence of both forms of spirituality is their welcoming attitude and unconditional respect for alternative practices. Chylene and I show up for one another, teaching and learning and mutually exchanging what we believe in our hearts. We believe the same thing. We all find our home in the One Great Love.
Sitting, walking, sweating, chanting. So many paths. Infinite journeys. All of them leading us home.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Elemental Union
These days human beings have forgotten what religion is. They have forgotten a peculiar love which united their human nature to Great Nature. This love has nothing to do with human love. Standing in the midst of nature you feel this love of Great Nature . . . . Zen students must experience this peculiar love. This is religion. Sokei-An in the Zen Calendar (November 11, 2007).
Day 207. This EZ Rider rides again! I rode with my team for the first Saturday in almost three months. It was sixty-eight mild, delectable degrees when we rolled out of the parking lot. There were only six of us, since the bulk of the team is hammering out the epoch Hotter Than Hell One Hundred ride at Wichita Falls. I felt resoundingly content to finish a Smokin' and Screamin' Sixty mile ride with my club. In the interest of ego reduction, details of the ride will be omitted. Suffice it to say that Fast Mike grinned at me as we stood in a circle for the customary congratulatory phase of the ride and said, "You're riding like you haven't lost a bit." I grinned back. In that instant, the hundreds of miles I pounded out alone this summer were totally worth it.
Friday was a momentous day; I am dedicating two blogs to it. As if a lake frolic with my two favorite dogs wasn't sublime enough, I also had a spontaneous encounter with a friend I've known since elementary school. As only a gracious, abundant universe would have it, we were reunited through a mutual friend, Tim, whom I just met this summer through Lorene, the friend with whom I was reunited in April (that was a rather convoluted sentence, but entirely accurate. Try to keep up!) Less than an hour in to our first meeting, Tim said I reminded him of someone who went to my high school. Naturally, I asked, "Who?" When he said Lynn's name, I burst out laughing, exclaiming, "I've known her since second or third grade!" She lived five blocks from me. We were good friends. Lynn and I (comrades in OCD) memorized our multiplication tables through the twelve's, when every other third grader was content to accomplish their ten's. She also taught me to spell: a-n-e-s-t-h-e-s-i-o-l-o-g-i-s-t, which I can spell to this day (seriously - I did not look that up!). This was relevant knowledge to Lynn, since it was her dad's profession. My dad's job was much less glamorous. I never taught anyone to spell F-i-r-e I-n-s-u-r-a-n-c-e I-n-s-p-e-c-t-o-r.
So the message from Tim early Friday night said, "Julie, I want to see if you recognize this laugh . . . . " and Viola! I heard the lyrical guffaw of my good friend Lynn. She and Tim were finishing dinner at a friend of Lynn's. With utter disregard of social etiquette, I impulsively invited myself over. Radiating social genteelness, Lynn promptly provided directions. Half an hour later, I joined them on the front porch of Patty's lovely home in one of my favorite historical areas of central Oklahoma City. Soft light from the spheres of paper lanterns randomly strung from the porch roof rained down on us. The night air was summer soft rather than the suffocating stickiness of the past several weeks. Lynn poured wine. Conversation flowed.
The content of catching up didn't take long. When four intelligent, lively, well-traveled minds gather at the same table to mingle and meander, content succumbs to process fairly quickly. There was such implicit understanding, volumes could be communicated in a few sentences. Somewhere in the lightening fast succession of associations from mine and Patty's sons being football players to Lynn and Tim's meeting in Athens to Lynn and me completing a semester of college while we were still in high school (our OCD proclivities were truly a match!) we landed on the topic of higher consciousness, the importance of evolving, and the differences between religion and spirituality. Mind you, we hadn't yet opened the second bottle of wine. Talk about overachievers!
It was at this juncture that the topic of birthdays and astrological signs emerged. Lynn is a Taurus, Tim a Leo, Patty a Cancer, and I am the quintessential Aquarian. Peak Experience! In a nanosecond, I registered that we each represented one of the primary elements: Earth, Fire, Water, and Air, respectively. No wonder the evening felt magically symmetrical, balanced, and synergistic! When exactly four people are gathered together, it is a rare phenomena indeed for each of the four elements to be singularly present. The real Peak Experience occurred when I blurted out my observation, and my three friends immediately understood - and were similarly excited and appreciative. High fives all around! (As of Tim's birthday this month, we are all 49 and therefore too old to remember that the current hip gesture of connectedness is the knuckle bump!)
Mysteriously, I know that the four of us have NOT forgotten the peculiar love that unites our human nature to Great Nature. Basking in the midst of the elemental union of Earth, Fire, Water and Air, we lived the love of Great Nature. We would probably agree that this is a religion we can stomach. I will remember this evening in my being for that most cherished of feelings: Belonging. A sense of connection having nothing to do with the presence or absence of shared history (I hadn't been in contact with Lynn for over 10 years, met Tim in June, met Patty last night). Not shared history in the traditional sense, at least. We shared something far more precious: loving hearts, open minds, evolving psyches, compassionate souls. Kindred spirits brought together with a spontaneous synergy that only a loving cosmos could orchestrate.
Gassho Tim, Lynn and Patty. It was a marvelous night.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Day 207. This EZ Rider rides again! I rode with my team for the first Saturday in almost three months. It was sixty-eight mild, delectable degrees when we rolled out of the parking lot. There were only six of us, since the bulk of the team is hammering out the epoch Hotter Than Hell One Hundred ride at Wichita Falls. I felt resoundingly content to finish a Smokin' and Screamin' Sixty mile ride with my club. In the interest of ego reduction, details of the ride will be omitted. Suffice it to say that Fast Mike grinned at me as we stood in a circle for the customary congratulatory phase of the ride and said, "You're riding like you haven't lost a bit." I grinned back. In that instant, the hundreds of miles I pounded out alone this summer were totally worth it.
Friday was a momentous day; I am dedicating two blogs to it. As if a lake frolic with my two favorite dogs wasn't sublime enough, I also had a spontaneous encounter with a friend I've known since elementary school. As only a gracious, abundant universe would have it, we were reunited through a mutual friend, Tim, whom I just met this summer through Lorene, the friend with whom I was reunited in April (that was a rather convoluted sentence, but entirely accurate. Try to keep up!) Less than an hour in to our first meeting, Tim said I reminded him of someone who went to my high school. Naturally, I asked, "Who?" When he said Lynn's name, I burst out laughing, exclaiming, "I've known her since second or third grade!" She lived five blocks from me. We were good friends. Lynn and I (comrades in OCD) memorized our multiplication tables through the twelve's, when every other third grader was content to accomplish their ten's. She also taught me to spell: a-n-e-s-t-h-e-s-i-o-l-o-g-i-s-t, which I can spell to this day (seriously - I did not look that up!). This was relevant knowledge to Lynn, since it was her dad's profession. My dad's job was much less glamorous. I never taught anyone to spell F-i-r-e I-n-s-u-r-a-n-c-e I-n-s-p-e-c-t-o-r.
So the message from Tim early Friday night said, "Julie, I want to see if you recognize this laugh . . . . " and Viola! I heard the lyrical guffaw of my good friend Lynn. She and Tim were finishing dinner at a friend of Lynn's. With utter disregard of social etiquette, I impulsively invited myself over. Radiating social genteelness, Lynn promptly provided directions. Half an hour later, I joined them on the front porch of Patty's lovely home in one of my favorite historical areas of central Oklahoma City. Soft light from the spheres of paper lanterns randomly strung from the porch roof rained down on us. The night air was summer soft rather than the suffocating stickiness of the past several weeks. Lynn poured wine. Conversation flowed.
The content of catching up didn't take long. When four intelligent, lively, well-traveled minds gather at the same table to mingle and meander, content succumbs to process fairly quickly. There was such implicit understanding, volumes could be communicated in a few sentences. Somewhere in the lightening fast succession of associations from mine and Patty's sons being football players to Lynn and Tim's meeting in Athens to Lynn and me completing a semester of college while we were still in high school (our OCD proclivities were truly a match!) we landed on the topic of higher consciousness, the importance of evolving, and the differences between religion and spirituality. Mind you, we hadn't yet opened the second bottle of wine. Talk about overachievers!
It was at this juncture that the topic of birthdays and astrological signs emerged. Lynn is a Taurus, Tim a Leo, Patty a Cancer, and I am the quintessential Aquarian. Peak Experience! In a nanosecond, I registered that we each represented one of the primary elements: Earth, Fire, Water, and Air, respectively. No wonder the evening felt magically symmetrical, balanced, and synergistic! When exactly four people are gathered together, it is a rare phenomena indeed for each of the four elements to be singularly present. The real Peak Experience occurred when I blurted out my observation, and my three friends immediately understood - and were similarly excited and appreciative. High fives all around! (As of Tim's birthday this month, we are all 49 and therefore too old to remember that the current hip gesture of connectedness is the knuckle bump!)
Mysteriously, I know that the four of us have NOT forgotten the peculiar love that unites our human nature to Great Nature. Basking in the midst of the elemental union of Earth, Fire, Water and Air, we lived the love of Great Nature. We would probably agree that this is a religion we can stomach. I will remember this evening in my being for that most cherished of feelings: Belonging. A sense of connection having nothing to do with the presence or absence of shared history (I hadn't been in contact with Lynn for over 10 years, met Tim in June, met Patty last night). Not shared history in the traditional sense, at least. We shared something far more precious: loving hearts, open minds, evolving psyches, compassionate souls. Kindred spirits brought together with a spontaneous synergy that only a loving cosmos could orchestrate.
Gassho Tim, Lynn and Patty. It was a marvelous night.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Friday, August 27, 2010
Intrinsic Nature
Man knows that he springs from nature and not nature from him. This is an old and very primitive knowledge. - Loren Eiseley in the Zen Calendar (December 17, 2007).
Day 206. I spent the day torquing round in the midst of some weird state of maniacal energy. I can only attribute it to planetary alignment, and/or proper dosing of thyroid medication. I'm going with the former; it sounds much more glamorous.
Like an official Disneyland Mom, I picked up my two dogs this evening and took them to the lake. After parenting my son alone for 19 years, I must confess that it is a blast to be the person who just shows up for the fun stuff. My super ego is far too developed to truly shirk my share of pet owner responsibility, however, so I bathed both squirmy, swamp smelling canines when we got home. They grudgingly indulged me. I'm pretty sure they were cognizant that I am the person who will be chaperoning them in future visits to puppy paradise.
The lake shore had vastly changed since our last visit. The water is so low, I fear the lake is precariously close to being reclassified as a pond on Google Earth. I was awed by the tenacity of nature in adapting to the various whims of humans, including the random emptying of a decades old body of water. A splendid variety of flora has sprung up along the shores, looking native and robust and like it has been there much longer than the two months it took to flourish. I was struck by how brash and bold nature can be, when left unimpeded. The grand scheme of things is not deterred by attachment, opinion, preference, or plan. Nature just unfurls her green tinted perfection with effortless abandon. How humans have strayed so far from such intrinsic flawlessness is beyond me.
I observed Ruby and Katy the Border Collie as they careened through the prolific new growth, emerging occasionally to splash headlong into what remains of the lake. Their temperaments are so different, it's sometimes hard to believe they harken from the same species. Katy's intellect is honed so specifically that she could be mistaken for an idiot savant. At first glance, she has no sense whatsoever. Every day is a new day for her - nay, every second unravels as though nothing occurred the second before it. She is that in the moment. Like "Ten-Second Tom" in the movie "Fifty First Dates." He was the guy with the head injury that caused him to retain information only 10 seconds at a time before it was lost.
While chasing a butterfly, Katy will become distracted by a bird, which holds her attention fleetingly until the next dragonfly crosses her visual field. All this while scanning relentlessly to maintain me in her perceptual awareness. Border collies are bred to direct and protect their flock. Historically, predators were abundant, and innumerable dangers awaited the creatures entrusted to the collie's care. The dog's frenetic vigilance could literally mean the difference between life and death for both herself and the sheep/cattle/goats/small children(?) she was herding. Reading about the history of Katy's breed and understanding the origin of her irrepressible urge to herd turned my confusion and frustration surrounding her behavior to compassion and respect. She is uncannily good at what her ancestry prepared her for.
In addition to being an old soul and a Bodhisattva, Ruby has an IQ exceeding most of our elected officials. She forgets nothing. It takes exactly one trial for her to master any task she deems relevant (Ruby defines relevancy as any act that elicits a bacon treat). She has the receptive vocabulary of a precocious nine-year-old. When I focus too much attention on Katy, Ruby will go to the toy pile, select one of Katy's favorite carcasses (no toy older than 15 minutes has any stuffing left in it), and dangle it in front of her to distract her from me (even Ruby has figured out how to work Katy's ADD to her advantage). I have never seen such forethought and planning in a canine. Ruby will work to extract treats from her Kong for upwards of thirty minutes. I've known grad students with shorter attention spans. Witnessing the acrobatics and laws of physics Ruby utilizes to eject those square treats from that round hole is more entertaining than listening to Science Fridays. And every bit as intellectually stimulating.
While watching these two boisterous beings manifest their true nature on the shores of that receding lake, it dawned on me that creatures are most blissful when they are unselfconsciously congruent with their intrinsic nature. Absorbed in the moment, Katy skitters around the shoreline, fleetingly attending to each miniscule detail as though her life - or the life of those in her "herd" - depended on it. Ruby methodically disappears into the woods at predictable and consistent locales that only hold meaning for her. She sights things far off in the distance, and patiently keeps an eye on them, accumulating data before she determines a response. As antithetical in personality as two beasts can be, they manage to derive a singular joy while sharing an outing at the lake. They have no reason, or capacity, to question their nature. They are who they are. No attachments, and therefore no suffering. At least, as long as there are bacon treats around.
Cushion time has been useful in connecting with my intrinsic nature. I think I embody aspects of both Katy and Ruby. Sometimes the Monkeys chatter relentlessly and my mind skids and squirms like Katy during a visit from the triplets. Other times, my mind is quiet, patient, and contemplative like Ruby planted at the base of the tree containing her most recent failed squirrel conquest. Busy mind, quiet mind. Intrinsic to my nature. Congruous with my being. Synonymous with Zen.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Day 206. I spent the day torquing round in the midst of some weird state of maniacal energy. I can only attribute it to planetary alignment, and/or proper dosing of thyroid medication. I'm going with the former; it sounds much more glamorous.
Like an official Disneyland Mom, I picked up my two dogs this evening and took them to the lake. After parenting my son alone for 19 years, I must confess that it is a blast to be the person who just shows up for the fun stuff. My super ego is far too developed to truly shirk my share of pet owner responsibility, however, so I bathed both squirmy, swamp smelling canines when we got home. They grudgingly indulged me. I'm pretty sure they were cognizant that I am the person who will be chaperoning them in future visits to puppy paradise.
The lake shore had vastly changed since our last visit. The water is so low, I fear the lake is precariously close to being reclassified as a pond on Google Earth. I was awed by the tenacity of nature in adapting to the various whims of humans, including the random emptying of a decades old body of water. A splendid variety of flora has sprung up along the shores, looking native and robust and like it has been there much longer than the two months it took to flourish. I was struck by how brash and bold nature can be, when left unimpeded. The grand scheme of things is not deterred by attachment, opinion, preference, or plan. Nature just unfurls her green tinted perfection with effortless abandon. How humans have strayed so far from such intrinsic flawlessness is beyond me.
I observed Ruby and Katy the Border Collie as they careened through the prolific new growth, emerging occasionally to splash headlong into what remains of the lake. Their temperaments are so different, it's sometimes hard to believe they harken from the same species. Katy's intellect is honed so specifically that she could be mistaken for an idiot savant. At first glance, she has no sense whatsoever. Every day is a new day for her - nay, every second unravels as though nothing occurred the second before it. She is that in the moment. Like "Ten-Second Tom" in the movie "Fifty First Dates." He was the guy with the head injury that caused him to retain information only 10 seconds at a time before it was lost.
While chasing a butterfly, Katy will become distracted by a bird, which holds her attention fleetingly until the next dragonfly crosses her visual field. All this while scanning relentlessly to maintain me in her perceptual awareness. Border collies are bred to direct and protect their flock. Historically, predators were abundant, and innumerable dangers awaited the creatures entrusted to the collie's care. The dog's frenetic vigilance could literally mean the difference between life and death for both herself and the sheep/cattle/goats/small children(?) she was herding. Reading about the history of Katy's breed and understanding the origin of her irrepressible urge to herd turned my confusion and frustration surrounding her behavior to compassion and respect. She is uncannily good at what her ancestry prepared her for.
In addition to being an old soul and a Bodhisattva, Ruby has an IQ exceeding most of our elected officials. She forgets nothing. It takes exactly one trial for her to master any task she deems relevant (Ruby defines relevancy as any act that elicits a bacon treat). She has the receptive vocabulary of a precocious nine-year-old. When I focus too much attention on Katy, Ruby will go to the toy pile, select one of Katy's favorite carcasses (no toy older than 15 minutes has any stuffing left in it), and dangle it in front of her to distract her from me (even Ruby has figured out how to work Katy's ADD to her advantage). I have never seen such forethought and planning in a canine. Ruby will work to extract treats from her Kong for upwards of thirty minutes. I've known grad students with shorter attention spans. Witnessing the acrobatics and laws of physics Ruby utilizes to eject those square treats from that round hole is more entertaining than listening to Science Fridays. And every bit as intellectually stimulating.
While watching these two boisterous beings manifest their true nature on the shores of that receding lake, it dawned on me that creatures are most blissful when they are unselfconsciously congruent with their intrinsic nature. Absorbed in the moment, Katy skitters around the shoreline, fleetingly attending to each miniscule detail as though her life - or the life of those in her "herd" - depended on it. Ruby methodically disappears into the woods at predictable and consistent locales that only hold meaning for her. She sights things far off in the distance, and patiently keeps an eye on them, accumulating data before she determines a response. As antithetical in personality as two beasts can be, they manage to derive a singular joy while sharing an outing at the lake. They have no reason, or capacity, to question their nature. They are who they are. No attachments, and therefore no suffering. At least, as long as there are bacon treats around.
Cushion time has been useful in connecting with my intrinsic nature. I think I embody aspects of both Katy and Ruby. Sometimes the Monkeys chatter relentlessly and my mind skids and squirms like Katy during a visit from the triplets. Other times, my mind is quiet, patient, and contemplative like Ruby planted at the base of the tree containing her most recent failed squirrel conquest. Busy mind, quiet mind. Intrinsic to my nature. Congruous with my being. Synonymous with Zen.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Cushion Chagrin
Remember thou must go alone; the Buddhas only point the way. - The Buddha in the Zen Calendar (February 13, 2002).
Day 205. Sometimes I love to blog. Sometimes I love to sit. A few times I love to blog and sit. Tonight I love neither. I don't even like them a little bit.
I was miserable while meditating last night. Not maturely, bravely, insightfully miserable. It was more like crappy, inpatient, infantile misery. I couldn't summon an iota of the naive optimism that my Beginner's Mind usually produces. Couldn't tap in to a speck of humor, perspective, emptiness, or non-attachment. Nary a crumb of compassion or kindness. Mounds of frustration, negativity and suffering accumulated on my cushion like garbage at the curb during a trash collectors' strike. My legs went beyond cramped, beyond tingling, beyond numb; the sensations shot right past discomfort and fixated on intolerable pain. I straightened one leg out to the side to reduce the severity of the pain, and was promptly consumed with loathing at my weakness. Sheesh. Have I learned nothing in the past 204 days?
Since February Third, it was the closest I have come to abandoning a zazen session in sheer disgust. I would like to report that I stuck it out because of commitment and integrity and strong moral character, or some other such horse poo. Alas, those admirable traits had no bearing whatsoever on sticking out the 40 minutes. Honestly, I was unwilling to face the self-recrimination that I would have unleashed on myself had I foreclosed on a sit. Nothing more. The disappointment would have been unbearable. Guess this means I am All In. Or a complete coward. Probably some of both.
Sometimes it seems like an unfathomably bizarre thing to have thrown down the gauntlet of this endeavor. When I analyze last night's zazen, I become entangled in a labyrinth of agitated Zenisms. My thoughts swirl, previously contemplated concepts ring hollow and nonsensical in my ears, comfort and compassion orbit outside my grasp. It is like betrayal by a best friend: my most reliable source of reassurance and stability quizzically morphed into the agent of my distress. I am flattened and demoralized.
The blog is failing me as well. For the moment, the desertion is complete. I am forlorn and befuddled. What is my recourse? Hair of the dog; thread of the cushion. I will return to the source of my misery. And I will sit on it.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Day 205. Sometimes I love to blog. Sometimes I love to sit. A few times I love to blog and sit. Tonight I love neither. I don't even like them a little bit.
I was miserable while meditating last night. Not maturely, bravely, insightfully miserable. It was more like crappy, inpatient, infantile misery. I couldn't summon an iota of the naive optimism that my Beginner's Mind usually produces. Couldn't tap in to a speck of humor, perspective, emptiness, or non-attachment. Nary a crumb of compassion or kindness. Mounds of frustration, negativity and suffering accumulated on my cushion like garbage at the curb during a trash collectors' strike. My legs went beyond cramped, beyond tingling, beyond numb; the sensations shot right past discomfort and fixated on intolerable pain. I straightened one leg out to the side to reduce the severity of the pain, and was promptly consumed with loathing at my weakness. Sheesh. Have I learned nothing in the past 204 days?
Since February Third, it was the closest I have come to abandoning a zazen session in sheer disgust. I would like to report that I stuck it out because of commitment and integrity and strong moral character, or some other such horse poo. Alas, those admirable traits had no bearing whatsoever on sticking out the 40 minutes. Honestly, I was unwilling to face the self-recrimination that I would have unleashed on myself had I foreclosed on a sit. Nothing more. The disappointment would have been unbearable. Guess this means I am All In. Or a complete coward. Probably some of both.
Sometimes it seems like an unfathomably bizarre thing to have thrown down the gauntlet of this endeavor. When I analyze last night's zazen, I become entangled in a labyrinth of agitated Zenisms. My thoughts swirl, previously contemplated concepts ring hollow and nonsensical in my ears, comfort and compassion orbit outside my grasp. It is like betrayal by a best friend: my most reliable source of reassurance and stability quizzically morphed into the agent of my distress. I am flattened and demoralized.
The blog is failing me as well. For the moment, the desertion is complete. I am forlorn and befuddled. What is my recourse? Hair of the dog; thread of the cushion. I will return to the source of my misery. And I will sit on it.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Waxing Nostalgic
The invariable mark of wisdom is seeing the miraculous in the common. - Ralph Waldo Emerson in the Zen Calendar (November 27, 2007).
Day 204. I just returned from the Mother of all Walks. A Forest Gump after Jenny died kind of walk. An "if I get to Elk City I may have gone too far" walk. At one point I even broke into a jog, until, after about a quarter of a mile, the curvature in my spine sternly reminded, "You are a cyclist, not a runner. Stop this nonsense." I also found a coin on the darkened pavement. Heads up. It is much more rewarding to make a discovery while groping in pitch darkness than in the light of day. No wonder I am a serious student of Zen. The air was so clear, the moon so full, it seemed a shame to reverse my direction and return home. However, the blog called and the cushion beckoned. Sometimes I feel like Cinderella - only with much bigger feet.
After reading yesterday's post, I found myself filled with a melancholy nostalgia. I took a four-minute shower and rapidly opened and closed the refrigerator door for old times' sake. I realize that waxing misty for the 1960's is contraindicated for a person committed to living in the here-and-now, but it does seem like a kinder, gentler time. It is comically reassuring to remember that I can still watch Andy Griffith and Bonanza several times during the day. Obviously, I am not the only person with fond associations to that time period.
I am steeped in the mind of the writer. The Monkeys have chattered throughout the day. Seems they have taken up the role of Narrator of my life. Their commentary is eloquent and colorful; I only wish I could capture it as it streams, unbidden, through my consciousness. This is the first day since beginning the blog that I wanted to abandon my day job to seriously pursue writing. The desire is innocent enough, right up to the point where the mortgage is due and the bursar account at a certain private university bellows. For now, the "doc" part of CycleBuddhaDoc must remain intact. In other words, I won't be quitting my day job any time soon.
I feel boringly, prosaically, unremarkably content tonight. Everything ordinary feels miraculous, like extracting euphoria from a paper towel. The cooler temperature, the brilliant full moon, the stiffness in my legs from a rambunctious walk, the windows flung open to the night air - all of this seems keen and peaceful and right. Like lying in the den with my nuclear family in 1968. I think I'll indulge these momentary nostalgic memories. I'm going to lie on my bed, upside down like when I was seven, and feel a soothing south breeze waft across me through the window screens. It was good then, and good now. How's that for living in the moment?
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Day 204. I just returned from the Mother of all Walks. A Forest Gump after Jenny died kind of walk. An "if I get to Elk City I may have gone too far" walk. At one point I even broke into a jog, until, after about a quarter of a mile, the curvature in my spine sternly reminded, "You are a cyclist, not a runner. Stop this nonsense." I also found a coin on the darkened pavement. Heads up. It is much more rewarding to make a discovery while groping in pitch darkness than in the light of day. No wonder I am a serious student of Zen. The air was so clear, the moon so full, it seemed a shame to reverse my direction and return home. However, the blog called and the cushion beckoned. Sometimes I feel like Cinderella - only with much bigger feet.
After reading yesterday's post, I found myself filled with a melancholy nostalgia. I took a four-minute shower and rapidly opened and closed the refrigerator door for old times' sake. I realize that waxing misty for the 1960's is contraindicated for a person committed to living in the here-and-now, but it does seem like a kinder, gentler time. It is comically reassuring to remember that I can still watch Andy Griffith and Bonanza several times during the day. Obviously, I am not the only person with fond associations to that time period.
I am steeped in the mind of the writer. The Monkeys have chattered throughout the day. Seems they have taken up the role of Narrator of my life. Their commentary is eloquent and colorful; I only wish I could capture it as it streams, unbidden, through my consciousness. This is the first day since beginning the blog that I wanted to abandon my day job to seriously pursue writing. The desire is innocent enough, right up to the point where the mortgage is due and the bursar account at a certain private university bellows. For now, the "doc" part of CycleBuddhaDoc must remain intact. In other words, I won't be quitting my day job any time soon.
I feel boringly, prosaically, unremarkably content tonight. Everything ordinary feels miraculous, like extracting euphoria from a paper towel. The cooler temperature, the brilliant full moon, the stiffness in my legs from a rambunctious walk, the windows flung open to the night air - all of this seems keen and peaceful and right. Like lying in the den with my nuclear family in 1968. I think I'll indulge these momentary nostalgic memories. I'm going to lie on my bed, upside down like when I was seven, and feel a soothing south breeze waft across me through the window screens. It was good then, and good now. How's that for living in the moment?
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
We Will Eat the Fruit
We grew up knowing the simple arithmetic of scarcity. - Barbara Kingsolver in "Animal Dreams."
Day 203. The temperature is below 80 and the north wind is a-blowin! I am unduly and disproportionately elated. All that ails me has been healed!
I planned to write about my bike ride this evening, but upon typing the quote I discovered in Barbara Kingsolver's novel last night, a flood of blog-worthy memories washed over me. The "we" in the quote is referencing two sisters who are the main characters in the story. When I read the quote, I thought about me and my brothers.
We grew up in a caricature of the middle class home. The middle of the middle. The mean, median and mode of middle America was probably derived from our family statistics. The five of us lived in a three-bedroom, two-story house in the middle of Oklahoma City. It had around 1,500 square feet. Detached garage at the back of a single driveway. Dishwasher we rolled back and forth to the sink after dinner. A wood-paneled den measuring ten by twelve in which the five of us, layered upon one another to allow room for dad to stretch out in his recliner (within easy reach of his scotch), watched Bonanza and Bewitch and Andy Griffith and the first steps upon the moon. A half bath downstairs, and one full bath - negotiated by the five of us - upstairs. Window units for air conditioning and two floor furnaces downstairs for heating. Ancient, miniature natural gas "stoves" in the bedrooms upstairs. If memory serves, these were never lit for fear of explosions and inhalation of toxic fumes. Probably a good call on the part of our parents.
Mom and dad were born just this side of the Great Depression (I am referring to a significant era in U.S. history, not a condition that can be eliminated through Prozac). They were alive during the very years Steinbeck plunked down the Joads in Dust Bowl Oklahoma and challenged them to survive. Their formative years overlapped with World War II; to this day neither of them can throw away foil, twist ties, string, rubber bands, or nylon hosiery. Like many members of their generation, the combination of these two historical events indelibly influenced my parents. They have lived the simple arithmetic of scarcity.
With the AAA travel book fervently clutched in one hand and ardent frugality clutched in the other, my mother planned remarkable family vacations each summer. One of my most salient vacation memories occurred at the state line between California and Arizona. We had purchased fruit in Arizona to go with the wax-paper wrapped peanut butter sandwiches my mom prepared on top of the hotel dresser each morning before we hit the road in a station wagon eerily similar to the one the Brady Bunch drove to the Grand Canyon. Middle class vacation budgets in the 1960's did not include eating out. Then, as now, California had its own unique laws and regulations, which in the mid-60's included prohibition against transporting fruit from other states across the state line. Something about introducing fruit flies to their golden landscape.
On this particular family vacation, there were actually border patrol officers inspecting cars entering California along Interstate 40. They politely asked my mother if we were transporting fruit, and she, with equal politeness, replied, "Yes, we are." The border patrol informed her that the fruit must be confiscated: California Law. Without a moment's hesitation, my mom said firmly, "No, you can't confiscate our fruit. We'll just eat it." As me and my brothers looked on with growing horror, my dad pulled the car to the side of the highway, where we were instructed to devour the contraband. We were mortified, but had learned long ago it was never prudent to challenge my father with something as insignificant as our feelings and the accompanying trauma infiltrating our psyches. We ate the fruit. Peaches, plums and apples. Pretty sure that regularity was not an issue in the family for the remainder of the trip.
The simple arithmetic of scarcity. We did not waste. Not because it was environmentally correct,but because it was necessary to survive. My mom fed a family of five on $35 every two weeks. Splurging consisted of the occasional bag of Oreos and club crackers (in lieu of saltines) that my father brought home once a month or so. If my brothers and I didn't reach into the refrigerator and extract what we wanted within 3.25 seconds, my father shouted (from any remote location in the house - how did he do that?), "Close the refrigerator door! You're letting the cold air out!" Same thing with showers that lasted more than four minutes: "Get out of the shower! You'll use all the hot water!"
The window units were turned off at 10:17 p.m. in the summer - just after the weather man reminded my parents that the low for the night was going to be 88 degrees. My brothers and I, sent upstairs at 9:00 on weeknights, would lie together in my bed (the windows faced south and were therefore most likely to produce a faint breath of breeze), sweltering in anticipation of that magic moment when my parents would trek up the stairs and - Presto! Flick the switch on the attic fan. Salvation. In my acoustic memory, I can still hear the glorious sound of that switch being flipped; my body recalls the sagging relief triggered by the first intake of outside air, as if the whole second story had hiccuped. Strange now to think that muggy, humid, August air sucked through screen windows by a gigantic fan housed in the attic was a luxury. The simple arithmetic of scarcity. Moving air, even if it felt blasted from a furnace, was better than no air at all.
I have no recollection of feeling deprived in my girlhood. That was our life. We took short showers, hastily shut the refrigerator door, and laid perfectly still at night while hot summer air waffled across our sticky bodies. We savored a couple of Oreos like exotic pastry. My brothers and I were perfectly primed to go Green when it became vogue in the past few years. Without knowing it, we'd been Green our entire childhoods. And there weren't even tax credits then.
History cycles. Scarcity is a distinct reality. Our culture has grown lax and complacent during prolonged years of excess. This has created fertile ground for ego to flourish. Surviving scarcity requires dropping your ego at the California state line. When there is precious little, the arithmetic is simple, because the numbers are small. Do the math. By my calculations, you'll arrive at some surprising totals. When we shed our egos, there is plenty to go around.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Day 203. The temperature is below 80 and the north wind is a-blowin! I am unduly and disproportionately elated. All that ails me has been healed!
I planned to write about my bike ride this evening, but upon typing the quote I discovered in Barbara Kingsolver's novel last night, a flood of blog-worthy memories washed over me. The "we" in the quote is referencing two sisters who are the main characters in the story. When I read the quote, I thought about me and my brothers.
We grew up in a caricature of the middle class home. The middle of the middle. The mean, median and mode of middle America was probably derived from our family statistics. The five of us lived in a three-bedroom, two-story house in the middle of Oklahoma City. It had around 1,500 square feet. Detached garage at the back of a single driveway. Dishwasher we rolled back and forth to the sink after dinner. A wood-paneled den measuring ten by twelve in which the five of us, layered upon one another to allow room for dad to stretch out in his recliner (within easy reach of his scotch), watched Bonanza and Bewitch and Andy Griffith and the first steps upon the moon. A half bath downstairs, and one full bath - negotiated by the five of us - upstairs. Window units for air conditioning and two floor furnaces downstairs for heating. Ancient, miniature natural gas "stoves" in the bedrooms upstairs. If memory serves, these were never lit for fear of explosions and inhalation of toxic fumes. Probably a good call on the part of our parents.
Mom and dad were born just this side of the Great Depression (I am referring to a significant era in U.S. history, not a condition that can be eliminated through Prozac). They were alive during the very years Steinbeck plunked down the Joads in Dust Bowl Oklahoma and challenged them to survive. Their formative years overlapped with World War II; to this day neither of them can throw away foil, twist ties, string, rubber bands, or nylon hosiery. Like many members of their generation, the combination of these two historical events indelibly influenced my parents. They have lived the simple arithmetic of scarcity.
With the AAA travel book fervently clutched in one hand and ardent frugality clutched in the other, my mother planned remarkable family vacations each summer. One of my most salient vacation memories occurred at the state line between California and Arizona. We had purchased fruit in Arizona to go with the wax-paper wrapped peanut butter sandwiches my mom prepared on top of the hotel dresser each morning before we hit the road in a station wagon eerily similar to the one the Brady Bunch drove to the Grand Canyon. Middle class vacation budgets in the 1960's did not include eating out. Then, as now, California had its own unique laws and regulations, which in the mid-60's included prohibition against transporting fruit from other states across the state line. Something about introducing fruit flies to their golden landscape.
On this particular family vacation, there were actually border patrol officers inspecting cars entering California along Interstate 40. They politely asked my mother if we were transporting fruit, and she, with equal politeness, replied, "Yes, we are." The border patrol informed her that the fruit must be confiscated: California Law. Without a moment's hesitation, my mom said firmly, "No, you can't confiscate our fruit. We'll just eat it." As me and my brothers looked on with growing horror, my dad pulled the car to the side of the highway, where we were instructed to devour the contraband. We were mortified, but had learned long ago it was never prudent to challenge my father with something as insignificant as our feelings and the accompanying trauma infiltrating our psyches. We ate the fruit. Peaches, plums and apples. Pretty sure that regularity was not an issue in the family for the remainder of the trip.
The simple arithmetic of scarcity. We did not waste. Not because it was environmentally correct,but because it was necessary to survive. My mom fed a family of five on $35 every two weeks. Splurging consisted of the occasional bag of Oreos and club crackers (in lieu of saltines) that my father brought home once a month or so. If my brothers and I didn't reach into the refrigerator and extract what we wanted within 3.25 seconds, my father shouted (from any remote location in the house - how did he do that?), "Close the refrigerator door! You're letting the cold air out!" Same thing with showers that lasted more than four minutes: "Get out of the shower! You'll use all the hot water!"
The window units were turned off at 10:17 p.m. in the summer - just after the weather man reminded my parents that the low for the night was going to be 88 degrees. My brothers and I, sent upstairs at 9:00 on weeknights, would lie together in my bed (the windows faced south and were therefore most likely to produce a faint breath of breeze), sweltering in anticipation of that magic moment when my parents would trek up the stairs and - Presto! Flick the switch on the attic fan. Salvation. In my acoustic memory, I can still hear the glorious sound of that switch being flipped; my body recalls the sagging relief triggered by the first intake of outside air, as if the whole second story had hiccuped. Strange now to think that muggy, humid, August air sucked through screen windows by a gigantic fan housed in the attic was a luxury. The simple arithmetic of scarcity. Moving air, even if it felt blasted from a furnace, was better than no air at all.
I have no recollection of feeling deprived in my girlhood. That was our life. We took short showers, hastily shut the refrigerator door, and laid perfectly still at night while hot summer air waffled across our sticky bodies. We savored a couple of Oreos like exotic pastry. My brothers and I were perfectly primed to go Green when it became vogue in the past few years. Without knowing it, we'd been Green our entire childhoods. And there weren't even tax credits then.
History cycles. Scarcity is a distinct reality. Our culture has grown lax and complacent during prolonged years of excess. This has created fertile ground for ego to flourish. Surviving scarcity requires dropping your ego at the California state line. When there is precious little, the arithmetic is simple, because the numbers are small. Do the math. By my calculations, you'll arrive at some surprising totals. When we shed our egos, there is plenty to go around.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Monday, August 23, 2010
Gifts From the Day
The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away. - Ralph Waldo Emerson in the Zen Calendar (December 30, 2007).
Day 202. Past blogs have hinted that Monday is generally not my favorite day of the week. Especially Mondays when the Xterra temperature gauge reads 111 degrees. Today was an exception.
Even before reading Mr. Emerson's quote, I managed to recognize some gifts the day brought. A client who, over a year ago, took a courageous leap to leave a stifling and oppressive job at a nearby university phoned to say she had been offered a job at a prominent company in our area and would be leaving for several weeks to train in another state. My client was elated. What a gift that company is receiving; she will be a valuable asset to them.
A second gift from the day followed when my company was taken out to lunch by the new medical directors of a prestigious eating disorders inpatient facility to which we often refer. They said they had heard, " . . . nothing but good about (us)." If their hospital was hurting for patients, I might have been tempted to dismiss the comment as superfluous marketing. The fact that they are internationally known and usually have a lengthy waiting list suggested that the compliment was genuine. Positive feedback from a credible source is one of my very favorite gifts. When graciously received, they don't even have to be unwrapped.
Perhaps the greatest gift was discovering a little bit of energy left at the end of my work day. A rare event indeed! I was taking a day off from the bike, and seized the opportunity to clean out a couple more orifices in my home. The longer I sit zazen, the more important it seems not to own much. Empty drawer space is incredibly liberating. As I sorted tonight, I kept thinking about the devastating floods in Pakistan. I suspect that many of Greg Mortenson's schools were washed away. If you can imagine having absolutely NOTHING - NOT a THING - it makes it much easier to part with stuff. So much of what occupies space is nonessential. What we keep speaks volumes about who we are. So does what we give away. This year is teaching me that emptiness - within and without - may be our highest virtue.
I am preoccupied with an obsessive need to "get stuff where it belongs." No doubt my OCD neurons are a-clanging, but I want to believe that I am also bringing some mindfulness to my cleaning projects. There are about four major recipients of my donations, and I invest a hefty amount of energy in determining who gets what. I donate anonymously, so I don't think my obsession is about recognition for what I give (my ego continues to make pronounced cameo appearances, but I don't think this is one of them). It feels more like a sincere desire to direct things where they can be put to the most use. Excess and waste are antithetical to Zen practice. "Fit" and "just the right amount" seem to be at the heart of it.
Be mindful about what you keep and what you part with. Be observant of these same practices in the people around you. Hanging on speaks volumes. Letting go says even more.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Day 202. Past blogs have hinted that Monday is generally not my favorite day of the week. Especially Mondays when the Xterra temperature gauge reads 111 degrees. Today was an exception.
Even before reading Mr. Emerson's quote, I managed to recognize some gifts the day brought. A client who, over a year ago, took a courageous leap to leave a stifling and oppressive job at a nearby university phoned to say she had been offered a job at a prominent company in our area and would be leaving for several weeks to train in another state. My client was elated. What a gift that company is receiving; she will be a valuable asset to them.
A second gift from the day followed when my company was taken out to lunch by the new medical directors of a prestigious eating disorders inpatient facility to which we often refer. They said they had heard, " . . . nothing but good about (us)." If their hospital was hurting for patients, I might have been tempted to dismiss the comment as superfluous marketing. The fact that they are internationally known and usually have a lengthy waiting list suggested that the compliment was genuine. Positive feedback from a credible source is one of my very favorite gifts. When graciously received, they don't even have to be unwrapped.
Perhaps the greatest gift was discovering a little bit of energy left at the end of my work day. A rare event indeed! I was taking a day off from the bike, and seized the opportunity to clean out a couple more orifices in my home. The longer I sit zazen, the more important it seems not to own much. Empty drawer space is incredibly liberating. As I sorted tonight, I kept thinking about the devastating floods in Pakistan. I suspect that many of Greg Mortenson's schools were washed away. If you can imagine having absolutely NOTHING - NOT a THING - it makes it much easier to part with stuff. So much of what occupies space is nonessential. What we keep speaks volumes about who we are. So does what we give away. This year is teaching me that emptiness - within and without - may be our highest virtue.
I am preoccupied with an obsessive need to "get stuff where it belongs." No doubt my OCD neurons are a-clanging, but I want to believe that I am also bringing some mindfulness to my cleaning projects. There are about four major recipients of my donations, and I invest a hefty amount of energy in determining who gets what. I donate anonymously, so I don't think my obsession is about recognition for what I give (my ego continues to make pronounced cameo appearances, but I don't think this is one of them). It feels more like a sincere desire to direct things where they can be put to the most use. Excess and waste are antithetical to Zen practice. "Fit" and "just the right amount" seem to be at the heart of it.
Be mindful about what you keep and what you part with. Be observant of these same practices in the people around you. Hanging on speaks volumes. Letting go says even more.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Pausing on the Ridge
Quote to follow. I need time to search for it.
Day 201. Welcome, two new followers! That makes 18! I am stunned and delighted. When I began the blog, my hunch was that not very many people would be interested in a pedaling, sitting, shrinking, mildly-feminist, nearly half-a-century old, vegetarian Buddhist. Wow, when I view those characteristics in writing, one would predict a small readership, indeed! I am not sure how many original followers Buddha had, but now I have six more than Jesus' first twelve. Not that I'm counting. Not that I'm attached. Not that I have any ego invested in my writing actually being read.
It is an honor and a privilege to make my living as a therapist. As I've mentioned before, when I meet someone new and they learn that I am a psychologist, their inevitable first comment is, "How do you sit there all day and listen to people's problems?" This is a reflexive misconception about my profession. I don't sit all day listening to people's problems. I participate in an engaging process in which courageous individuals search for answers. We laugh and cry and explore and discover, and - best of all - we sometimes waltz into some eye popping powerful metaphors. Like the one I shared with a client on Friday.
I have worked with this amazing woman on-and-off for over seven years (I know; the insurance companies expect me to cure my patients in six sessions. I prefer therapeutic work at the infrastructure level). For five of those years, her husband was in a deep depression after being laid off from a job he loved. The couple have two children, including a newborn. For five years, my client did what was necessary to hold her family together. She parented, cared for the house and yard, managed rental property as a source of income, compassionately tended to her ailing mother and stepfather, and - most impressive of all - left her beloved baby and young son every single day to go to a public school teaching job she loathed. This client remained steadfast in her marriage at a time her husband contributed almost nothing to the household. Not surprisingly, she developed a deep depression of her own. Not surprisingly, she couldn't indulge in the luxury of ceasing to function, which was her husband's response. Surprisingly, and amazingly, she kept her family together for five long years.
About a year ago, her husband found employment, which catalyzed a vast improvement in his depression. Unfortunately, the marriage could not be salvaged; there was too much carnage. Following a divorce, my client entered a relationship with a man who loved her and her children deeply and treated them well. Her husband began to contribute - both financially and in caring for his children. The stress and anguish that enveloped my client for over half a decade appeared to be drawing to a close.
During our session on Friday, she sat down and told me that she had arrived at her school for the first of several teachers' meetings before the students returned. Two hours into the meeting, she was consumed with a panicked terror, the likes of which she had never endured before. Her entire being reverberated with a visceral opposition to another year of teaching. "I left," she told me. "At the first break, I walked out of that school building and knew I could never go back."
It is quite common to observe the cumulative toll exacted by prolonged stress and hardship in my clients. For those of us able to exhibit hearty resiliency during trying times, it feels bewildering to come undone precisely when things seem to be getting better. Shouldn't that be when we relax and celebrate and thrive? I suspect it is human nature to experience a delayed reaction to extremely difficult circumstances. It makes sense that we are equipped with an automatic defense mechanism that helps us dissociate - sort of step out of our skin and experience pain with a couple of degrees of separation - so that we can continue to do what is being required of us.
Fulling experiencing thoughts and feelings while in the midst of despair carries the risk of failing to function at exactly the time we need to keep it together. Like my client, who ran on autopilot every day of the workweek so that she could survive being away from her young children and performing at a job she hated. Like me during all those weeks in hospital ICU's. You do what you must - often right up to the point when the crisis abates and - BAM! - all those feelings you kept at bay leap from the wings and pin you to the ground.
Metaphors come to me more frequently and in exquisite detail since I began sitting zazen regularly. As we processed my client's life-changing decision to leave her teaching job, a picture formed in my mind and I shared it with her. I envisioned her climbing up a long and treacherous path. There were many impediments along the way: sliding rocks, huge boulders, incredibly steep pitches, stormy weather, slippery mud, hidden holes and trenches, prickly brambles and bushes blocking the trail, which twisted wickedly and climbed eternally up. She moved up the trail propelled by blind faith, for there was no endpoint in sight.
At the top of this precarious mountain, I saw my client step from the path into brilliant sunshine. She was standing along a towering ridge, with a spectacular view of a lush valley spread before her. The valley was green and golden and rippled with blue streams weaving their way across the fertile land. Shady country lanes connected dappper farm homes surrounded by thriving fields and crops. After a grueling and precarious journey, she had reached the promised land.
My client resonated with the metaphor, filling in literal content associated with the steep and dangerous climb up the mountain. She similarly named resources symbolized by the valley, including financial help from her significant other, a bit of savings from the rental properties, and her mother's willingness to supplement her income while she looked for meaningful employment. At this juncture, the essence of the metaphor emerged in my brain.
"Take your time to stand on the ridge," I told my client. "I know you have the urge to immediately hurtle down into the sun-dappled valley, putting the treacherous trail as far behind you as possible. It feels like a good idea to pause at the top. Recall the arduous trek up the trail, the danger you encountered, the courage you summoned, the ordeals you survived. Own it. Learn from it. Then take you time gazing down upon the valley. Observe the lay of the land. Pay attention to where the streams and lanes meander. Watch for who comes and goes from the farmhouses. You can inhabit the valley more fully if you get to know it from up there on the ridge. Take your time. You've earned it."
Like all good metaphors, intricate layers of meaning pulsated in my office like palpable truths. My client gently smiled, letting the images permeate her consciousness. She got it. "I understand," she quietly told me. "It feels really good to pause at the top of the ridge. I want to take my time. There is a lot to get to know about that valley."
The metaphor has remained with me this weekend. This world is moving so fast, it is easy to forget to pause at the top of the mountains we climb. We hurtle through our lives at breakneck speed, neglecting to own our stamina and courage and failing to recognize and make good use of the glorious bounty that is sometimes spread at our feet.
I am immeasurably grateful for my sitting practice. It's as though my cushion is the ridge, and every single night I pause to experience my bounty.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Day 201. Welcome, two new followers! That makes 18! I am stunned and delighted. When I began the blog, my hunch was that not very many people would be interested in a pedaling, sitting, shrinking, mildly-feminist, nearly half-a-century old, vegetarian Buddhist. Wow, when I view those characteristics in writing, one would predict a small readership, indeed! I am not sure how many original followers Buddha had, but now I have six more than Jesus' first twelve. Not that I'm counting. Not that I'm attached. Not that I have any ego invested in my writing actually being read.
It is an honor and a privilege to make my living as a therapist. As I've mentioned before, when I meet someone new and they learn that I am a psychologist, their inevitable first comment is, "How do you sit there all day and listen to people's problems?" This is a reflexive misconception about my profession. I don't sit all day listening to people's problems. I participate in an engaging process in which courageous individuals search for answers. We laugh and cry and explore and discover, and - best of all - we sometimes waltz into some eye popping powerful metaphors. Like the one I shared with a client on Friday.
I have worked with this amazing woman on-and-off for over seven years (I know; the insurance companies expect me to cure my patients in six sessions. I prefer therapeutic work at the infrastructure level). For five of those years, her husband was in a deep depression after being laid off from a job he loved. The couple have two children, including a newborn. For five years, my client did what was necessary to hold her family together. She parented, cared for the house and yard, managed rental property as a source of income, compassionately tended to her ailing mother and stepfather, and - most impressive of all - left her beloved baby and young son every single day to go to a public school teaching job she loathed. This client remained steadfast in her marriage at a time her husband contributed almost nothing to the household. Not surprisingly, she developed a deep depression of her own. Not surprisingly, she couldn't indulge in the luxury of ceasing to function, which was her husband's response. Surprisingly, and amazingly, she kept her family together for five long years.
About a year ago, her husband found employment, which catalyzed a vast improvement in his depression. Unfortunately, the marriage could not be salvaged; there was too much carnage. Following a divorce, my client entered a relationship with a man who loved her and her children deeply and treated them well. Her husband began to contribute - both financially and in caring for his children. The stress and anguish that enveloped my client for over half a decade appeared to be drawing to a close.
During our session on Friday, she sat down and told me that she had arrived at her school for the first of several teachers' meetings before the students returned. Two hours into the meeting, she was consumed with a panicked terror, the likes of which she had never endured before. Her entire being reverberated with a visceral opposition to another year of teaching. "I left," she told me. "At the first break, I walked out of that school building and knew I could never go back."
It is quite common to observe the cumulative toll exacted by prolonged stress and hardship in my clients. For those of us able to exhibit hearty resiliency during trying times, it feels bewildering to come undone precisely when things seem to be getting better. Shouldn't that be when we relax and celebrate and thrive? I suspect it is human nature to experience a delayed reaction to extremely difficult circumstances. It makes sense that we are equipped with an automatic defense mechanism that helps us dissociate - sort of step out of our skin and experience pain with a couple of degrees of separation - so that we can continue to do what is being required of us.
Fulling experiencing thoughts and feelings while in the midst of despair carries the risk of failing to function at exactly the time we need to keep it together. Like my client, who ran on autopilot every day of the workweek so that she could survive being away from her young children and performing at a job she hated. Like me during all those weeks in hospital ICU's. You do what you must - often right up to the point when the crisis abates and - BAM! - all those feelings you kept at bay leap from the wings and pin you to the ground.
Metaphors come to me more frequently and in exquisite detail since I began sitting zazen regularly. As we processed my client's life-changing decision to leave her teaching job, a picture formed in my mind and I shared it with her. I envisioned her climbing up a long and treacherous path. There were many impediments along the way: sliding rocks, huge boulders, incredibly steep pitches, stormy weather, slippery mud, hidden holes and trenches, prickly brambles and bushes blocking the trail, which twisted wickedly and climbed eternally up. She moved up the trail propelled by blind faith, for there was no endpoint in sight.
At the top of this precarious mountain, I saw my client step from the path into brilliant sunshine. She was standing along a towering ridge, with a spectacular view of a lush valley spread before her. The valley was green and golden and rippled with blue streams weaving their way across the fertile land. Shady country lanes connected dappper farm homes surrounded by thriving fields and crops. After a grueling and precarious journey, she had reached the promised land.
My client resonated with the metaphor, filling in literal content associated with the steep and dangerous climb up the mountain. She similarly named resources symbolized by the valley, including financial help from her significant other, a bit of savings from the rental properties, and her mother's willingness to supplement her income while she looked for meaningful employment. At this juncture, the essence of the metaphor emerged in my brain.
"Take your time to stand on the ridge," I told my client. "I know you have the urge to immediately hurtle down into the sun-dappled valley, putting the treacherous trail as far behind you as possible. It feels like a good idea to pause at the top. Recall the arduous trek up the trail, the danger you encountered, the courage you summoned, the ordeals you survived. Own it. Learn from it. Then take you time gazing down upon the valley. Observe the lay of the land. Pay attention to where the streams and lanes meander. Watch for who comes and goes from the farmhouses. You can inhabit the valley more fully if you get to know it from up there on the ridge. Take your time. You've earned it."
Like all good metaphors, intricate layers of meaning pulsated in my office like palpable truths. My client gently smiled, letting the images permeate her consciousness. She got it. "I understand," she quietly told me. "It feels really good to pause at the top of the ridge. I want to take my time. There is a lot to get to know about that valley."
The metaphor has remained with me this weekend. This world is moving so fast, it is easy to forget to pause at the top of the mountains we climb. We hurtle through our lives at breakneck speed, neglecting to own our stamina and courage and failing to recognize and make good use of the glorious bounty that is sometimes spread at our feet.
I am immeasurably grateful for my sitting practice. It's as though my cushion is the ridge, and every single night I pause to experience my bounty.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Saturday, August 21, 2010
No Plan to Speak Of
There was no shame about it, she wanted to tell them. She imagined quoting that passage from Darwin at them, explaining that there was room in this world even for certain beings who could not eat or speak, whose only purpose was to find and call out the other side of their kind. She had been called here. There was no plan to speak of. - Barbara Kingsolver in "Prodigal Summer."
Day 200. Day Two Hundred. Day TWO HUNDRED?!? How did this happen? How could there be only 165 days left of my Blog and Sit Year? I thought I would have been to Nirvana and back several times by now. Put up a few billboards advertising my company along the way. Ooze Enlightenment like oil from my pores after an Italian dinner. Not so much. I've seen some dark shades of blue and black from behind my eyelids, silenced the Monkeys for a second or two, and momentarily washed along the ecstatic shores of a celestial sea of Love. Which was pretty amazing, by the way. I have always enjoyed the beach, though I haven't yet found my way back to that particular shore.
Plans of lesser grandiosity have also failed to come to fruition. I don't have a parental pass to all of the football games at my son's university. There has been no hardware from high-placing bicycle finishes added to the collection hanging from my dresser mirror. Curiously, home improvement at the country place ground to a halt around the time I quit living there, as did satisfaction with my love life. My autumn Durango mountain bike trip has been canceled. Book deal isn't signed; screen play hasn't been cast (or written, for that matter). I still wait far too long to repaint my toenails and color the gray in my roots ( for some mysterious reason, I don't have much gray since my son moved out and is fast approaching the final weeks of being a teen). My grass is dead, my garage still cluttered, my attic a darkened inferno unfit for human trespassing. Why was it that I dedicated myself to so much butt-on-the cushion time??
Oh, yeah. Absolutely no reason at all. There is nothing to attain. I imagine if there were a Division One meditation team within the NCAA, I would be on the Third String. Scout team. Junior Varsity. C-Squad. Always on the bench (though, come to think about it, the starters would be sitting down as well!) A measure of my two hundred days seems to be an utter and complete lack of concern about the current status of the aforementioned aspects of my life. So far, I feel amazingly successful. There was no plan to speak of; I simply made a commitment to engage in formal zazen every day for a certain length of time. And I have. Every single day. Two hundred sits. In different houses and several hotels, on a variety of sofa cushions, with legs numb from stoking the tandem and screaming from long rides alone, even while hurtling down the highway (twice!) Two hundred sits. In a row. Yeah, me.
I don't go back and read previous blogs. I am waiting until the final one is posted, and then plan to spend a year reading what I've written. I know that my experience on the cushion is not stagnant. In the beginning, I exuded a lot of effort on Proper Meditation Form. This is not to be confused with the rituals I perform at the start and finish of all zazen periods. My sequence of stretches and bows and compulsive timer behavior remains intact. Inwardly, however, things have shifted. I ask much less of my mind. It used to churn frenetically, neurons lighting one another up like the District in Amsterdam after sundown. Counting breaths, fixating on images like a distant horizon or slick cerebral cortex, consciousness journeying down to dwell in the lizard brain, burning through mantras like the songs in the Methodist hymnal with eight verses.
It is much easier now. I try to sit still and breathe. Watch and wait. Feel my butt bones on the cushion. Listen to crickets and train whistles and the whoosh of the central air conditioning. Allow room on the cushion for everything that drifts by and through and over me. Suspend judgment, goals, effort and expectation. Transcend time. Forget my name. Trust the timer. Surrender.
Oh, the Monkeys still chatter. A couple of times since sitting for forty minutes, I was certain I had fallen off the edge of the universe and snuck a peek at the timer. Two minutes and twenty-something seconds remained both times I looked. Sheepishly, I refolded my mantra and returned to breathing. Sometimes forty minutes feels like fourteen; others it feels like a day and a half. Every once in while I sense an ethereal calm followed by an engulfing feeling of loving connectedness. Most nights I just sit there. Meditation has become familiar and necessary and as intrinsic to my life as my heartbeat. Simultaneously, I could skip it in an instant and fall sound asleep. Such is Zen.
It sounds mystical and momentous and like maybe, if I tried out again, I might actually be a starter on the Meditation Team one day. I couldn't tell you what the coach is looking for. He just sits there on his cushion, smiling serenely over his nice round belly.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Day 200. Day Two Hundred. Day TWO HUNDRED?!? How did this happen? How could there be only 165 days left of my Blog and Sit Year? I thought I would have been to Nirvana and back several times by now. Put up a few billboards advertising my company along the way. Ooze Enlightenment like oil from my pores after an Italian dinner. Not so much. I've seen some dark shades of blue and black from behind my eyelids, silenced the Monkeys for a second or two, and momentarily washed along the ecstatic shores of a celestial sea of Love. Which was pretty amazing, by the way. I have always enjoyed the beach, though I haven't yet found my way back to that particular shore.
Plans of lesser grandiosity have also failed to come to fruition. I don't have a parental pass to all of the football games at my son's university. There has been no hardware from high-placing bicycle finishes added to the collection hanging from my dresser mirror. Curiously, home improvement at the country place ground to a halt around the time I quit living there, as did satisfaction with my love life. My autumn Durango mountain bike trip has been canceled. Book deal isn't signed; screen play hasn't been cast (or written, for that matter). I still wait far too long to repaint my toenails and color the gray in my roots ( for some mysterious reason, I don't have much gray since my son moved out and is fast approaching the final weeks of being a teen). My grass is dead, my garage still cluttered, my attic a darkened inferno unfit for human trespassing. Why was it that I dedicated myself to so much butt-on-the cushion time??
Oh, yeah. Absolutely no reason at all. There is nothing to attain. I imagine if there were a Division One meditation team within the NCAA, I would be on the Third String. Scout team. Junior Varsity. C-Squad. Always on the bench (though, come to think about it, the starters would be sitting down as well!) A measure of my two hundred days seems to be an utter and complete lack of concern about the current status of the aforementioned aspects of my life. So far, I feel amazingly successful. There was no plan to speak of; I simply made a commitment to engage in formal zazen every day for a certain length of time. And I have. Every single day. Two hundred sits. In different houses and several hotels, on a variety of sofa cushions, with legs numb from stoking the tandem and screaming from long rides alone, even while hurtling down the highway (twice!) Two hundred sits. In a row. Yeah, me.
I don't go back and read previous blogs. I am waiting until the final one is posted, and then plan to spend a year reading what I've written. I know that my experience on the cushion is not stagnant. In the beginning, I exuded a lot of effort on Proper Meditation Form. This is not to be confused with the rituals I perform at the start and finish of all zazen periods. My sequence of stretches and bows and compulsive timer behavior remains intact. Inwardly, however, things have shifted. I ask much less of my mind. It used to churn frenetically, neurons lighting one another up like the District in Amsterdam after sundown. Counting breaths, fixating on images like a distant horizon or slick cerebral cortex, consciousness journeying down to dwell in the lizard brain, burning through mantras like the songs in the Methodist hymnal with eight verses.
It is much easier now. I try to sit still and breathe. Watch and wait. Feel my butt bones on the cushion. Listen to crickets and train whistles and the whoosh of the central air conditioning. Allow room on the cushion for everything that drifts by and through and over me. Suspend judgment, goals, effort and expectation. Transcend time. Forget my name. Trust the timer. Surrender.
Oh, the Monkeys still chatter. A couple of times since sitting for forty minutes, I was certain I had fallen off the edge of the universe and snuck a peek at the timer. Two minutes and twenty-something seconds remained both times I looked. Sheepishly, I refolded my mantra and returned to breathing. Sometimes forty minutes feels like fourteen; others it feels like a day and a half. Every once in while I sense an ethereal calm followed by an engulfing feeling of loving connectedness. Most nights I just sit there. Meditation has become familiar and necessary and as intrinsic to my life as my heartbeat. Simultaneously, I could skip it in an instant and fall sound asleep. Such is Zen.
It sounds mystical and momentous and like maybe, if I tried out again, I might actually be a starter on the Meditation Team one day. I couldn't tell you what the coach is looking for. He just sits there on his cushion, smiling serenely over his nice round belly.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Friday, August 20, 2010
Luvin' Like a Sophomore
The truth is where the truth is, and it's sometimes in the candy store. - Bob Dylan in the Zen Calendar (August 26, 2004).
Day 199. I helped move my son into his apartment for the upcoming academic year. Through yet another flaw in logic, which seems to be the modus operandi of all present day institutions of higher learning, the new apartment was NOT the same dwelling in which he resided over the summer. The Xterra, historically reliable as the Timex Cinderella watch I received for my tenth birthday, overheated as I pulled into the parking lot of the apartment complex. Perhaps we had exceeded its hauling capacity; there was an awful lot of XBox 360 paraphernalia being transported. It was 108 degrees on the turnpike today. I felt humbly apologetic for putting the Big X through such an ordeal.
I cooled her off, unloaded the heap of electronics, added water, and whispered sweet nothings into her radiator cap. We did fine driving home. It was 11:30 p.m., and the temperature had dropped to a crisp 95 degrees. I am pretty sure there is a direct conduit between the external temperature and my compassion reservoir. As the temperature climbs, the reservoir runs dry. Every time I glanced at the temperature gauge on my console, I wanted to run the nearest passing motorist off the road. My compassion cup definitely does NOT runneth over. Fortunately, neither did my radiator.
The trip was absolutely redeemed through getting to watch my man/child son with his girlfriend over several hours. They are both sophomores in college. She is the diminutive five foot tall coxswain of the varsity rowing team. He is a muscular six foot three former safety on the football team. The size difference is bridged by a mutual adoration that blinds the naked eye. Sophomore love is a sight to behold.
Rosie the Rower accompanied us to Sears to purchase a bed for my son. When we mentioned the nature of our errand in route, she exclaimed, "Oh, good! I love to try out different beds!" Super. Just the characteristic one wants in her son's first college girlfriend. A California King was the obvious choice for a being exceeding six feet in length, but it was absurdly out of our price range. Undeterred, the young couple proceeded to flop down on the dozen or so queen size mattresses laid out in symmetrical precision across the Sears showroom.
Meanwhile, I conferred with the saleswoman. It took her all of 90 seconds to resurrect my long slumbering Sears credit card. "Wow!" she observed, "I wish I had your credit limit!" I looked down at the temporary card that miraculously shot out of her computer and marveled that in less than two minutes I had been handed $4,000 worth of credit. I seized the opportune teaching moment to tout the advantages of a good credit score to my son. He wondered why we weren't purchasing the California King. I answered that knowing the difference between Queens and Kings was exactly why my credit score is so good. I hope he didn't register my wistful glance at the treadmills on our way out of the store.
Basking in the afterglow of a Queen Sealy Posturpedic for half-price-less-$150-rollback-plus rebate for free delivery, no-interest-for-twelve-months, you'll-have-it-by-Friday shopping coup, we headed to Target. Under blazing fluorescent lights, surrounded by the dizzying overstimulation of back-to-school retail excess, sophomore love blossomed like cacti in the dessert after a spring downpour. The theme was blending. I have never witnessed such a display of co-mingling in my life. Every decision, every purchase, every push of the shopping cart was shared. It was probably the purest example of evaporating boundaries ever experienced by humankind - on or off a cushion.
Through some mystic, implicit agreement on the part of these two madly in love psyches, all thought, feeling and action emanated from a singular, conjoined consciousness. "Yours" and "mine" was usurped by "ours." Two separate wills coalesced into a seamless cooperative process. The merger was complete. Normally, I would find such an amalgamation of two formerly separate beings nauseating, but this was different. There was such sweetness, such genuineness, such lack of self-consciousness on the part of those moonstruck sophomores that all I could feel was reverence. Probably a little jealousy. And fierce protectiveness of it lasting as long as young love can.
What an awesome reminder of Beginner's mind. For the moment, Rosie and my son appear oblivious to the strategic defensiveness and jaded cynicism that tragically envelopes most people over the age of twenty-one. When hearts are fused so completely, egos are vanquished. In the presence of the beloved, there is only the Now - liquid and shimmering under a veil of adoration.
As the country western song goes, "This ain't no thinkin' thang." Through love, effortless enlightenment. And they've never even sat on a cushion.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Day 199. I helped move my son into his apartment for the upcoming academic year. Through yet another flaw in logic, which seems to be the modus operandi of all present day institutions of higher learning, the new apartment was NOT the same dwelling in which he resided over the summer. The Xterra, historically reliable as the Timex Cinderella watch I received for my tenth birthday, overheated as I pulled into the parking lot of the apartment complex. Perhaps we had exceeded its hauling capacity; there was an awful lot of XBox 360 paraphernalia being transported. It was 108 degrees on the turnpike today. I felt humbly apologetic for putting the Big X through such an ordeal.
I cooled her off, unloaded the heap of electronics, added water, and whispered sweet nothings into her radiator cap. We did fine driving home. It was 11:30 p.m., and the temperature had dropped to a crisp 95 degrees. I am pretty sure there is a direct conduit between the external temperature and my compassion reservoir. As the temperature climbs, the reservoir runs dry. Every time I glanced at the temperature gauge on my console, I wanted to run the nearest passing motorist off the road. My compassion cup definitely does NOT runneth over. Fortunately, neither did my radiator.
The trip was absolutely redeemed through getting to watch my man/child son with his girlfriend over several hours. They are both sophomores in college. She is the diminutive five foot tall coxswain of the varsity rowing team. He is a muscular six foot three former safety on the football team. The size difference is bridged by a mutual adoration that blinds the naked eye. Sophomore love is a sight to behold.
Rosie the Rower accompanied us to Sears to purchase a bed for my son. When we mentioned the nature of our errand in route, she exclaimed, "Oh, good! I love to try out different beds!" Super. Just the characteristic one wants in her son's first college girlfriend. A California King was the obvious choice for a being exceeding six feet in length, but it was absurdly out of our price range. Undeterred, the young couple proceeded to flop down on the dozen or so queen size mattresses laid out in symmetrical precision across the Sears showroom.
Meanwhile, I conferred with the saleswoman. It took her all of 90 seconds to resurrect my long slumbering Sears credit card. "Wow!" she observed, "I wish I had your credit limit!" I looked down at the temporary card that miraculously shot out of her computer and marveled that in less than two minutes I had been handed $4,000 worth of credit. I seized the opportune teaching moment to tout the advantages of a good credit score to my son. He wondered why we weren't purchasing the California King. I answered that knowing the difference between Queens and Kings was exactly why my credit score is so good. I hope he didn't register my wistful glance at the treadmills on our way out of the store.
Basking in the afterglow of a Queen Sealy Posturpedic for half-price-less-$150-rollback-plus rebate for free delivery, no-interest-for-twelve-months, you'll-have-it-by-Friday shopping coup, we headed to Target. Under blazing fluorescent lights, surrounded by the dizzying overstimulation of back-to-school retail excess, sophomore love blossomed like cacti in the dessert after a spring downpour. The theme was blending. I have never witnessed such a display of co-mingling in my life. Every decision, every purchase, every push of the shopping cart was shared. It was probably the purest example of evaporating boundaries ever experienced by humankind - on or off a cushion.
Through some mystic, implicit agreement on the part of these two madly in love psyches, all thought, feeling and action emanated from a singular, conjoined consciousness. "Yours" and "mine" was usurped by "ours." Two separate wills coalesced into a seamless cooperative process. The merger was complete. Normally, I would find such an amalgamation of two formerly separate beings nauseating, but this was different. There was such sweetness, such genuineness, such lack of self-consciousness on the part of those moonstruck sophomores that all I could feel was reverence. Probably a little jealousy. And fierce protectiveness of it lasting as long as young love can.
What an awesome reminder of Beginner's mind. For the moment, Rosie and my son appear oblivious to the strategic defensiveness and jaded cynicism that tragically envelopes most people over the age of twenty-one. When hearts are fused so completely, egos are vanquished. In the presence of the beloved, there is only the Now - liquid and shimmering under a veil of adoration.
As the country western song goes, "This ain't no thinkin' thang." Through love, effortless enlightenment. And they've never even sat on a cushion.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Point of No Return
Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached. - Franz Kafka in the Zen Calendar (August 13, 2004).
Day 198. I've reached my point of no return. How fortuitous it was to discover the quote from Mr. Kafka.
Lately I have been over-thinking the blog content. My as yet unconquered ego occasionally indulges in wonderment about the book and movie version. The Big R pointed out, ever so harshly, that the Julia/Julie movie was made possible because the script included vastly entertaining segments about the life of Julia Child, played delightfully by Meryl Streep. Hello. What would be the counterpart to my blog? Buddha/Julie? Julie/Buddha? Julie/Lance? Lance/Buddha/Julie? I suppose Lance could play himself alongside Kate Hudson, but Buddha may be a bit more difficult to cast. For some reason, Cuba Gooding, Jr. is who I envision for that distinctive role. Interesting association, especially since I don't recall ever seeing the Buddha depicted as African American. No worries; I'm fairly confident these are not dilemmas that will ever (ever!) have a basis in reality.
I also spin out thinking about the title of the book. Eat Pray Love has certainly done well. I'm confident that I, too, could have written a best-sellling book worthy of Julia Roberts playing me if I had someone footing the bill while I hung out in Italy, India, and Indonesia. And my version would have had some killer action scenes! I could have titled it Sit Blog Ride. Naturally, it's easy to draw these comparisons after someone else has already successfully launched their material into the galaxy. For now, I'm pretty content launching my blog, such as it is, into cyberspace.
Thoughts of a book and movie led to an assessment of the current status of things in my life. Interestingly, the trappings are here for something worthy of the big screen: Scrappy young football player (complete with being raised by a single mom, Celiac disease, and life-threatening head injury) fights and claws his way onto a Division One football roster? Check. Said player gets his hand smashed in his first scrimmage, resulting in surgeon pronouncing a career ending injury before he ever plays in a game? Check. End of three year relationship (including a shared mortgage in the midst of a housing crisis) and being single at the age of 50? Check. Tragic, high profile murder of longtime friend and potential new life partner? Check. Thousands of minutes perched on a cushion while enlightenment remains eternally elusive? Check.
I'd probably buy the book. Because I happen to know that the aforementioned is simply foreshadowing. Mid-way through the year, our heroine realizes that she has reached a critical point in her life. A point of no return. A point in which she can no longer live an incongruous life. A point at which, with increasing clarity, she is able to identify what is authentic for her. A point at which she begins to take action to bring this emerging clarity into fruition. The point of no return requires changes in thinking, perceiving, acting, eating, breathing, relating. The heroine risks conflict, solitude, rejection, and despair. She confronts anxiety, stagnation, and relinquishing the familiar for the unknown. She will leap into the abyss, and flounder in the belly of the whale. Like all beings embarking on a heroic journey, she will emerge transformed.
I don't yet know what the transformation looks like. Keep reading. You don't even have to buy the book.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
River Wisdom
Day 197. Quote will follow. Suffice it to say, I am blogging under duress.
The day I spent with my son in Durango felt about 90 hours long. He noticed it, too. Each minute expanded with a protracted, elongated dimension that was quite remarkable. We posited several theories about the pregnant time phenomena and ultimately went with my supposition that everyone is so happy in Durango - so content and present and engaged in whatever fulfilling outdoor activity they are indulging at the moment - that there is a collective desire for the day to never end. This communal satisfaction is projected into the universe, which kindly obliges by altering the time-space continuum in Durango. The resulting outpouring of gratitude by the population aptly rewards the universe, and a positive feedback cycle is established. I really want to move there. I could do a whole lot of mountain biking during 90-hour days.
On our one full day there, my son and I did Durango proud. The Animas river flows directly through town, and the locals clearly worship their swiftly flowing playground. After our three-hour hike, we went to the river to soak our feet and salve the scratches procured during the "free lance" section of our trek. The water was cold and clear, an absolute elixir to our itchy calves and forearms. We sat on rocks in the afternoon sun and waved to the various floatersby. My son said we should float the river. In theory, I was immediately on board; it looked like a blast. The logistics gave me pause. Slight pause. About two minutes worth of pause.
We climbed back in the Xterra and drove up Main Street, passing a tire repair shop with a marquee reading, "Floating tubes for sale." I turned around and we pulled into the rubber-smelling shop. A brief exchange with the desk guy resulted in the purchase of two 16-dollar inner tubes (as opposed to the $14 tubes, which he assured us were far inferior). Sixteen bucks included the cost of inflation. In under ten minutes, we were headed back to the river.
My son and I are not tourist types. We've always opted to go local. It hadn't required much floater observation to discern that the tourists were floating the river in one of two ways: on very expensive, brightly colored tubes equipped with built-in handles and a net to sit in, or on an even more expensive inflatable raft complete with a hunky guide wielding a kayak paddle, lean biceps, and a dark tan. From our perch on the rocks while we soaked our feet, it took no time at all to surmise the way the locals float. We bought our tubes at the tire shop, dumped my son upriver with them, sans his shirt and slathered in sun screen, while I parked the Xterra about three miles downriver and jogged upstream to meet him. I remembered sun screen, too, but opted to keep my shirt on. Luckily, I had selected running shorts and a tank top for our hike; inadvertently they were perfect attire for river floating as well. Driving clear back to the hotel to don a bathing suit would have totally squelched the mood.
Together, we walked a bit further upriver before sighting the perfect place to put in. Plopped down in our tubes with exclamations and expletives as our undersides sunk into the icy water. The current did the rest. We grinned and giggled (before remembering we were masquerading as locals) as the playful river carried us, bobbing and spinning, downstream. Within a hundred yards, we vaulted up the learning curve. Figured out how to lift our butts when white water signaled the presence of a shallow section with protruding rocks. An instinctive directive, as clear as if a banner from one of the bridges we floated under read, "Surrender to the River!" told us to abandon attempts at paddling or steering. We did. Zen and the Art of Floating the Animas.
Thus, we happily drifted down the river. Sometimes fast and choppy, with white water blasting our faces with freezing spray and a hefty current hurtling us briskly along; sometimes leisurely, with time to lift our faces to the warmth of the August sunshine. Things were going splendidly until just past the place where (next time) we will exit the river. I'm pretty sure the locals know it is best not to float past the Highway 160 bridge. That is where our impersonation of the locals went awry, as we naively floated right on under it. My son was downriver from me, and I watched helplessly as the river slammed him into a large rock, knocking him from his tube while it relentlessly swept him down and away. I registered that he appeared to be all right as he popped up, turned to face upriver, got his feet on the ground, and grabbed his tube.
My relief was short lived as the river smacked me into the same rock. Instead of softly bouncing off and continuing on my way (the sequence of events that had unfolded several times in a gentler current), my tube upended, toppling me into the water and crashing me against the rock. The beastly current then swept me along the bottom of the river, careening my body ruthlessly against submerged rocks. For a couple of moments, I flashed back to the crushing wave that pinned me to the bottom of the Pacific while boogie boarding in the 80's. Perhaps that is why it occurred to me quickly to put my feet down. I couldn't keep my balance because the current was so strong, but I became oriented enough to succumb to the motion of the river rather than fight it. When the current abated, I stood up against the force of the river and walk/paddled over to where my riderless tube was floating. It felt good to be reunited.
My son was close by, attempting to climb back aboard his tube. When we were safely tucked back into our respective vessels, we assessed that both of us were no worse for the dumping, nodding our consensus that perhaps we should have exited the river a bit earlier. We calmly floated to the embankment near our car and exited the river. Declared our float trip a success. Chuckled over the group of 13-year-old girls oggling his ripped abs and perfectly defined upper body (residual football muscles are not a bad thing). Contentedly drove back to our hotel.
That river trip is metaphoric of my year so far. I casually, innocently, naively entered the current of blogging and meditating every day. Sometimes things flow along benignly and effortlessly. Through zazen, an instinctive imperative to surrender emerged. I am learning to abandon myself to Reality, with its fickle direction and variable pace. Just when it feels like I have mastered the art of flowing through my life - CRASH - I am slammed into grief and loss and transition and uncertainty. Hurtled along the bottom of a cold and ruthless force in which I am powerless to stand upright.
In the Animus river, careening along the bottom didn't last very long. In no time at all, I was able to stand up, regain my equilibrium, and reach for something to keep me afloat. I'm not sure how long the Reality River will hold me under, and I don't know how many more rocks I'm going to be smashed against. I do know, however, what I will reach for to keep me afloat. It's a cushion, not a tube.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Aftermath
She left in August after the last rain of the season. Summer storms in the desert are violent things, and clean, they leave you feeling like you have cried. - Barbara Kingsolver in "Animal Dreams."
Day 196. I am feeling like I have cried. Because I have. But it doesn't feel clean. It feels murky and muddy and cloudy. Like those very brief showers in Oklahoma that simply stir up the red dust and leave a smear of brick colored muck on the surface of everything. Afterward the air is sticky, humid, and heavy; drawing a breath feels like sucking air through a sponge.
It rained for the first six hours of our drive home from Durango. As we tore across northern New Mexico, the desert sky was a thousand different shades of gray. Clouds were layered upon one another as though a pile of freshly washed blankets had been tossed up into the sky and got stuck there. Rain in the desert does feel clean. The air was fresh and crisp and sweet smelling. As the sun sunk in the west, peeping in and out of the rain clouds, a dozen different rainbow fragments appeared over the course of almost an hour. I've never seen anything like it. Bits and pieces of that perfect spectrum of colors kept appearing and fading all over the eastern sky. At one point there was half of a double rainbow towards the northeast. It looked like quotation marks opening a highly significant quote. But the words never appeared. The deep, shimmering violet of that double rainbow was so lovely it broke my heart.
I rode with my former bike club tonight, anticipating the Tuesday route we rode every single week back in 2005 and 2006. Times have changed. We rode a grueling 32-mile hill route at over 18 mph. I managed to hang on until the last mile and a half. The sun was going down; I didn't have my light with me; all I could think about was another cyclist killed on Oklahoma roads near Stillwater this weekend. Not the best way to end a ride. I was pretty demoralized; however, I managed to pedal through it. Surviving those last five minutes of zazen during the 35-minute stretches appears to have left me able to endure just about anything.
I hope that includes the aftermath of the trip to Durango. The past ten days or so have been such a roller coaster. I suppose it is not coincidental that shock and anger are often the first stages of grief. You need the numbness of shock and the energy generated by anger to get through that first week. There is so much to do. Planning and executing the trip to Durango, being there for Dana and Tim, trying to model "good" grief for my son. I am worn out.
I'm not sure what to think about the timing of Tom's death in relation to the life of the blog. Somehow the long haul of adjusting to him being gone seems to coincide with the midpoint of the year I've committed to. This is not the fun part of either. The novelty - of sitting, blogging AND grief - has faded. The "beginner's mind" that brings freshness and enthusiasm and energy to an endeavor has shifted to the mundane, maintenance phase of seeing something through and not jumping ship (although mutiny has crossed my mind a time or two).
For now, my life appears to be about sustaining, enduring, abiding. These traits do not come easily to a person with the attention span of a gnat. I am filled with gratitude that I have over six months of strong sitting behind me. I will need it to remain steadfast in this aftermath. I will endure. It is what Reality requires.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Day 196. I am feeling like I have cried. Because I have. But it doesn't feel clean. It feels murky and muddy and cloudy. Like those very brief showers in Oklahoma that simply stir up the red dust and leave a smear of brick colored muck on the surface of everything. Afterward the air is sticky, humid, and heavy; drawing a breath feels like sucking air through a sponge.
It rained for the first six hours of our drive home from Durango. As we tore across northern New Mexico, the desert sky was a thousand different shades of gray. Clouds were layered upon one another as though a pile of freshly washed blankets had been tossed up into the sky and got stuck there. Rain in the desert does feel clean. The air was fresh and crisp and sweet smelling. As the sun sunk in the west, peeping in and out of the rain clouds, a dozen different rainbow fragments appeared over the course of almost an hour. I've never seen anything like it. Bits and pieces of that perfect spectrum of colors kept appearing and fading all over the eastern sky. At one point there was half of a double rainbow towards the northeast. It looked like quotation marks opening a highly significant quote. But the words never appeared. The deep, shimmering violet of that double rainbow was so lovely it broke my heart.
I rode with my former bike club tonight, anticipating the Tuesday route we rode every single week back in 2005 and 2006. Times have changed. We rode a grueling 32-mile hill route at over 18 mph. I managed to hang on until the last mile and a half. The sun was going down; I didn't have my light with me; all I could think about was another cyclist killed on Oklahoma roads near Stillwater this weekend. Not the best way to end a ride. I was pretty demoralized; however, I managed to pedal through it. Surviving those last five minutes of zazen during the 35-minute stretches appears to have left me able to endure just about anything.
I hope that includes the aftermath of the trip to Durango. The past ten days or so have been such a roller coaster. I suppose it is not coincidental that shock and anger are often the first stages of grief. You need the numbness of shock and the energy generated by anger to get through that first week. There is so much to do. Planning and executing the trip to Durango, being there for Dana and Tim, trying to model "good" grief for my son. I am worn out.
I'm not sure what to think about the timing of Tom's death in relation to the life of the blog. Somehow the long haul of adjusting to him being gone seems to coincide with the midpoint of the year I've committed to. This is not the fun part of either. The novelty - of sitting, blogging AND grief - has faded. The "beginner's mind" that brings freshness and enthusiasm and energy to an endeavor has shifted to the mundane, maintenance phase of seeing something through and not jumping ship (although mutiny has crossed my mind a time or two).
For now, my life appears to be about sustaining, enduring, abiding. These traits do not come easily to a person with the attention span of a gnat. I am filled with gratitude that I have over six months of strong sitting behind me. I will need it to remain steadfast in this aftermath. I will endure. It is what Reality requires.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Monday, August 16, 2010
Blah Blog
Day 196. We arrived safely back in Oklahoma early this morning. My son was right. When you walk outside here, it feels like someone IS trying to make stew out of you. I liked how it felt in Durango much better. You could spend all day outside and not feel like an entree.
Tom's service was, indeed, memorable. It included the delightful surprise of getting to see Steve (from the houseboat trip with Tom, Tim, and Dana) for the first time since we floated about on Lake Powell. One speaker acknowledged that Tom certainly wouldn't like the fact that it was held indoors (in an auditorium just big enough to hold everyone), nor would he have felt comfortable in such a large gathering (she mentioned he put a limit on how many people could attend his retirement party). Everyone was certain that he would have been aghast at the amount of media attention. Tom preferred to go quietly about his business of caring for the teeth of children in the world's most under served countries. Gotta love an introvert. I would add that he may have squirmed about the length of the service. I certainly did. Methodists are conditioned to church ending at precisely 50 minutes so we can dash out and beat the Baptists to lunch.
I am going to return my focus to cycling, meditation, and blogging. Focus and action. Both are legacies left by Tom. I have welcomed the structure and constancy of my sitting practice during this challenging time; however, the Monkeys have been difficult to silence in the last several days. So many swirling thoughts. If there was an Olympic event titled Excessive Thought to Avoid Emotion, I would be a strong contender for the Gold.
I spent all evening wrestling with the dinosaur, who won tonight's bout so I am writing in the darkness of my vacated office building. My thoughts and emotions are equal parts mush. I will engage the only reasonable response: get my butt on my cushion.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Tom's service was, indeed, memorable. It included the delightful surprise of getting to see Steve (from the houseboat trip with Tom, Tim, and Dana) for the first time since we floated about on Lake Powell. One speaker acknowledged that Tom certainly wouldn't like the fact that it was held indoors (in an auditorium just big enough to hold everyone), nor would he have felt comfortable in such a large gathering (she mentioned he put a limit on how many people could attend his retirement party). Everyone was certain that he would have been aghast at the amount of media attention. Tom preferred to go quietly about his business of caring for the teeth of children in the world's most under served countries. Gotta love an introvert. I would add that he may have squirmed about the length of the service. I certainly did. Methodists are conditioned to church ending at precisely 50 minutes so we can dash out and beat the Baptists to lunch.
I am going to return my focus to cycling, meditation, and blogging. Focus and action. Both are legacies left by Tom. I have welcomed the structure and constancy of my sitting practice during this challenging time; however, the Monkeys have been difficult to silence in the last several days. So many swirling thoughts. If there was an Olympic event titled Excessive Thought to Avoid Emotion, I would be a strong contender for the Gold.
I spent all evening wrestling with the dinosaur, who won tonight's bout so I am writing in the darkness of my vacated office building. My thoughts and emotions are equal parts mush. I will engage the only reasonable response: get my butt on my cushion.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Memorial Day
Durango has lost a dear friend . . .
. . . and the world has lost a great humanitarian.
- From the two-sided postcard handed out at Tom's Memorial Service.
. . . and the world has lost a great humanitarian.
- From the two-sided postcard handed out at Tom's Memorial Service.
Day 195. Sunrise over the mountains. Not that I was awake to see it actually rise, but it is up at the moment, shining its best Colorado bright, so it seems like a safe assumption.
Tom's memorial service is this afternoon. Dana spoke a little about the slide show and said it was, "Very powerful. . . bring lots of tissue." Like I needed to be told that. The slide show made me reflect a bit more on the "venue question." Thinking about death shines a poignant beam on contemplating life. I've been meandering about in my mind, envisioning the slides at my memorial services. Lots of bike pics, I hope. And definitely the ones from the top of the mountain we climbed yesterday. Mortality is a humbling, but provocative concept. It is tempting to spend a great deal of time contemplating it, though it occurs to me that mortality, like Reality, will march on whether we devote cerebral space to it or not. I think I'll focus on the moments I'm alive instead.
This will be a short blog because we are checking out in the imminent future. It's looking like I'll be sitting zazen in the Xterra again. Most likely surrounded by mountains. I can think of worse places to be.
Gassho,
CycleBuddha Doc
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Redemption
Where did I go wrong?
I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life. -The Fray in "How To Save a Life"
Day 194. An amazing, beautiful, redemptive day that left me figuring out how I can move to Durango. I will elaborate on this blog when I return to Oklahoma. Presently I am on the hotel computer, and the internet service is questionable and fickle. No worries - I am used to indulging the dinasaur back home.
With some general directions compliments of Google, my son and I headed out for a day hike late this morning. As luck would have it, we ended up at the trailhead of a breathtaking trail up a mountain not five miles outside of Durango. We hiked up, up, up until we reached a high ridge with a view over the entire (gotta look it up) mountain valley. Evidently, my son inherited Scottish highlander genes from his mother; he is gifted in climbing and bouldering and fearless at the edge of things. What a delightful hiking companion. He repeatedly treked out to the very edge of several rock bluffs along the ridge, calling out to me to take his picture with his cell phone. I obliged, and will post pictures in the next couple of days. He took several of me as well. We seem to have no qualms about hanging out on the edge of steep dropoffs, high up on a Colorado mountainside. I'm very glad my son, like me, is in his element on the edge of things.
The most spectacular moment occurred just after I had snapped his picture - out on a bluff looking east up the valley. I heard him exclaim, "Mom!" and point to the sky. There, drifting on the high air currents, was a spectacular falcon soaring above the valley floor. From the edge of the bluff where I was dangling my legs, I watched him wafting gently through the warm air. He was dark brown against the dazzling blue of the Colorado sky, coasting, barely moving his wings. I could feel the effortless movement of that magnificent bird, floating through the sky, surrendering to the direction of the breeze. Breathless, I followed his flight until the brown of him disappeared against the mountainside.
Tears welled, and I was awash with a sense of peace. Wherever spirits go, whatever follows death, I am certain that there is peace and grace. The beauty of that moment: a glorious day with my son, a brilliant summer sky, a mountain valley awash with the shades of deep green only late summer can produce - the moment collided with a sense of absolute certainty that Tom is at peace. He is in the realm of the One Love. His spirit resounded throughout the valley. We felt him there. We celebrated his life. We joined him at the juncture where boundaries melt away, and only love remains.
The remainder of the day was every bit as magical, but I want to end tonight's blog with the memory of the falcon. I could never make this up. It was Real and True and Here. I know that Tom would be pleased with how we spent today. After all, he was there with us, soaring through the sky.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life. -The Fray in "How To Save a Life"
Day 194. An amazing, beautiful, redemptive day that left me figuring out how I can move to Durango. I will elaborate on this blog when I return to Oklahoma. Presently I am on the hotel computer, and the internet service is questionable and fickle. No worries - I am used to indulging the dinasaur back home.
With some general directions compliments of Google, my son and I headed out for a day hike late this morning. As luck would have it, we ended up at the trailhead of a breathtaking trail up a mountain not five miles outside of Durango. We hiked up, up, up until we reached a high ridge with a view over the entire (gotta look it up) mountain valley. Evidently, my son inherited Scottish highlander genes from his mother; he is gifted in climbing and bouldering and fearless at the edge of things. What a delightful hiking companion. He repeatedly treked out to the very edge of several rock bluffs along the ridge, calling out to me to take his picture with his cell phone. I obliged, and will post pictures in the next couple of days. He took several of me as well. We seem to have no qualms about hanging out on the edge of steep dropoffs, high up on a Colorado mountainside. I'm very glad my son, like me, is in his element on the edge of things.
The most spectacular moment occurred just after I had snapped his picture - out on a bluff looking east up the valley. I heard him exclaim, "Mom!" and point to the sky. There, drifting on the high air currents, was a spectacular falcon soaring above the valley floor. From the edge of the bluff where I was dangling my legs, I watched him wafting gently through the warm air. He was dark brown against the dazzling blue of the Colorado sky, coasting, barely moving his wings. I could feel the effortless movement of that magnificent bird, floating through the sky, surrendering to the direction of the breeze. Breathless, I followed his flight until the brown of him disappeared against the mountainside.
Tears welled, and I was awash with a sense of peace. Wherever spirits go, whatever follows death, I am certain that there is peace and grace. The beauty of that moment: a glorious day with my son, a brilliant summer sky, a mountain valley awash with the shades of deep green only late summer can produce - the moment collided with a sense of absolute certainty that Tom is at peace. He is in the realm of the One Love. His spirit resounded throughout the valley. We felt him there. We celebrated his life. We joined him at the juncture where boundaries melt away, and only love remains.
The remainder of the day was every bit as magical, but I want to end tonight's blog with the memory of the falcon. I could never make this up. It was Real and True and Here. I know that Tom would be pleased with how we spent today. After all, he was there with us, soaring through the sky.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Friday, August 13, 2010
Razor's Edge
Me: Look at the New Mexico sky. The sky is bluer and the clouds are whiter. It's like being inside an HD television. Even the air feels different here.
My Son: I know. When you walk outside in Oklahoma, it's like someone is trying to make a stew out of you. - Conversation en route to Durango on August 13th.
To my great astonishment, the 12-hour drive went very well. Probably because I only drove five hours of it. Mostly because I could watch the temperature gauge in my car and not have a panic attack. Hugely because I was a captured audience and there is nothing funnier than a college sophomore. Good times. Most of the way.
As we got closer to Durango, the desert became lush as future tumbleweeds gave way to actual trees, and dried up creek beds yielded to flowing streams and then a rushing river. With my son's assistance, I used his computer to burn a road trip CD for us titled, "Durango Bound." It proved to be bittersweet. Inadvertently, I had included songs with lyrics that spoke to me about Tom. My brain began to play a cruel trick on me. For a few miles, I could listen to the music, look around at the gorgeous scenery, and feel excited about meeting up with Tim and Dana. In those moments, my road trip happy feeling would gather momentum and send tingles to my limbs. Then the real reason for our journey would wallop me from the side when I wasn't looking, overwhelming me with sadness. Grief sure throws curve balls. With some sliders stuck in for good measure.
The feeling made me recall a comment from a client that froze in my mind the first time she said it. Together, we were processing the anniversary of the death of her infant son at the age of nine days old. This was several years after he had died. She noted that, around the time of the anniversaries of his birth and death, it felt like she was "living on the edge of a razor blade." The edge of sanity was that slim for her, and for a few days before and after those terminally important dates in her life, she never knew what side of the blade she would land on at any given second.
That is how this afternoon felt for me. From second to second, I came down on different sides of that razor's edge. I could get caught up in the moment, with the vast sky and the backlit mountains rising around me, basking in my son's company and wicked, clever humor and then - Wham! I'd slide down on the other side, tears would well up, and I would be reminded that I wasn't coming to Durango to mountain bike and talk about Afghanistan, Nepal, or other exotic foreign lands. I am here to say good-bye to a friend. To honor a life that has touched so many.
There is a poignancy and vividness unique to grief. As much as I can bear, I am trying hard to be mindful and present on this trip, because there is nothing like Death to bring Reality into crisp, clear focus. I spoke with Dana when we arrived in town, and she was working with Tim and some close friends to prepare the slide show for Sunday's memorial. Talk about crisp, clear focus. I noted previously that both Tim and Tom could be professional photographers. They have mammoth archives of photos, and I cannot imagine what the production memorializing Tom will be like. I can, however, anticipate what watching the slides will be like.
Like standing on the edge of a razor blade.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Intervals of Life
The important matter of life and death, everything is impermanent. - Inscription on a wooden temple bell from the Zen Calendar (December 31, 2001).
It was too hot to ride outside today, so I did my interval DVD on the trainer. I concluded that interval training is the best life preparation there is. I further concluded that cycling can provide a metaphor for EVERY - bar none - life circumstance that has ever been or ever will be.
After a ten minute warm-up, this particular DVD has three five-minute "power intervals" during which you pedal all out - at a cadence and intensity that is higher than you could possibly sustain for a second beyond five minutes. It's supposed to prepare you for time trialing, which I doubt I will ever do, but it makes me feel like a cyclist to train for it just in case. As I sweated and panted and suffered through the intervals tonight, I thought about surviving this week in particular and this summer in general. It occurred to me that I have endured three power intervals, just like on the DVD.
The first interval was the surgeon's decision not to clear my son to return to football. The interval required support and compassion and patience and a sound listening ear as he grappled with this unanticipated blow. Not to mention finding alternative testosterone discharging mechanisms since he couldn't hit anybody. The second interval consisted of amassing funds to quell his school's insistence that the summer term (the semester where he didn't first procure financial aid - the one required because he planned to play football in the fall) be paid for or his fall enrollment would be dropped. After sharing a household with him for the past two weeks, I CERTAINLY want him to return to college. I thought about selling him on EBay as a fund-raising strategy; however, that would defeat the purpose of paying for his school. Decisions, decisions. The third interval was the loss of Tom. I am pedaling through it.
When pedaling the literal intervals, I try to stay just this side of stroking out. So far I have succeeded. They are painful and effortful and resplendent with suffering. The only thing that keeps me turning the cranks is the knowledge that the interval will end in five minutes, whereupon a five minute easy spin ensues before the next tortuous interval. This is life. It transpires in intervals. Usually they are not conveniently measured out in succinct, symmetrical time periods, but there are intervals nonetheless.
When I think about difficult, painful segments of my life (current and future), they feel survivable when I approach them as intervals. Separate but connected, interrelated, impermanent intervals. Zazen helps tremendously with this approach. I can't count how many times I have been in the midst of a challenging task and bumped into that moment when I wanted to wad it all up and throw it away. I think about the last five minutes of those horrific 35-minute sitting sessions, and - Voila! I am instantly confident I can survive anything. We all have our yardstick of comparison. Mine happens to be sitting still during the last minutes of zazen before the timer sounds - those minutes when the Monkeys chatter incessantly about my numb legs, aching back, and sagging mudra.
I have much more to say about intervals, but need to get to bed at a reasonable hour. I have a long drive tomorrow. I plan to approach it in intervals.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Tuck Your Chin
"It's okay, Grandma. I remembered that they said on Animal Planet to tuck my chin and keep my eyes closed." - Three-year-old boy to his grandmother in the emergency room after being mauled by a chow.
Day 190. This quote was shared with me by a client today. She is a friend of the boy's grandmother, who phoned her from the E.R. Monday evening to tell her about the dog attack. The little boy was badly injured, primarily in his face, but he is going to be all right. Physically, and I have a strong hunch emotionally as well.
When I heard the quote I knew it would open tonight's blog. Not because I am being dramatic or morbid. The quote reverberated because it so powerfully reminded me of the indomitable human spirit. Our capacity for survival is unfathomable. In the midst of the terror of a dog attack, this little guy had the resourcefulness to literally protect his jugular (probably saving his life) and save his eyesight. Gassho to Animal Planet for providing instruction on what to do if attacked by a dog. Especially in a manner understandable to a three-year-old.
I desperately needed to be reminded of the strength of the human spirit. It is tempting to feel overcome with rage and hostility and hatred. Those emotions, however, make me too strongly identified with the people who gunned down Tom and his colleagues. The third credo in my father's arsenal of parenting platitudes was, "Two wrongs don't make a right" (originality was not the man's forte). Hate begets hate. Violence begets violence. These are not inconsistent lessons from history. When I pause to reflect on the revolutionary changes in technology in the past couple of centuries, I marvel at the lack of evolution in humankind's skill set at resolving conflict. At the macro level, we suck at it. The premise remains the same: bite and kick and hit and kill and take. I am pretty sure these methods were firmly established even before the Cro Magnons clashed.
The means through which these ends are accomplished have changed dramatically. Killing implements have certainly evolved faster and more impressively than advances in maternal health care. At the risk of stating the obvious, these improved methods of destruction don't seem to be advancing the well-being of our species very effectively. I doubt they will change until societies attach more value to compassion, patience, negotiation, intellect and compromise than they do to large, uh, guns.
I'm on one of my academic tirades. The ones that signal I am coping by waxing cerebral, i.e. I am avoiding painful emotions by residing in my prefrontal cortex. It's effective, and served me brilliantly while in graduate school, but it's not the kind of writing I want to do on my blog. In the interest of authenticity, I'm stopping myself and heading for the cushion, where it is virtually impossible to dodge what is really occurring within.
Reality bites sometimes. A lot of the time. But I'm going to keep trying to stay in touch with it anyway. Because it's not going anywhere. No matter how hard I try to disappear into my gray matter.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Claritin Clear
She considered this fact as she watched him go, and she felt something shift inside her body - relief, it felt like, enormous and settled, like a pile of stones on a steep slope suddenly shifting and tumbling slightly into the angle of repose. The pounding of What do I want went still in her breast. It didn't matter what she chose. The world was what it was, a place with its own rules of hunger and satisfaction. Creatures lived and mated and died, they came and went, as surely as summer did. They would go their own ways, of their own accord. - Barbara Kingsolver in "Prodigal Summer."
Day 189. These are not easy days. The summer heat is interminable. Intolerable. And yet, what are we going to do? Ride through it. Pray through it. Whine through it. Sit through it. Breathe through it. Whatever it takes. I am so grateful to Barbara Kingsolver for writing a novel that speaks to me so deeply at this moment in my life. I think I'll find her blog and let her know.
I just completed plans for a trip to Durango this weekend to attend Tom's memorial service. It's about a month sooner than I envisioned making that drive. Definitely different circumstances. Dana said she has wonderful help planning the service from the hundreds of Tom's friends who live in Durango. They are worried about finding a big enough venue. That's the kind of man he was. Something for all of us to think about. What size venue will be required for our memorial service? I want to reflect upon that without ego. Challenging, indeed. Interesting that Tom had the least ego of just about any person I know. It is reassuring to observe that, in this case, a large venue is necessary because of someone's kindness and goodness, not frivolous popularity.
Blogging is hard right now. Sitting is not. In fact, it feels like about the only place I want to be. Sitting, breathing, surrendering thought to raw, primal feeling brings with it a dim flicker of hope. Hope that pain passes. Hope that such a powerful reminder of how precious life is will compel us to live our own lives passionately and mindfully. Hope that we can let go of the small things that muddy our relationships and focus on love and connection instead. Hope that we say, "I love you" to the people that matter to us often and with deep sincerity. Hope that a growing commitment to contribute to peaceful solutions rather than violent, fearful reactions will permeate our consciousness. Tom and the other members of the humanitarian convoy didn't die in vain. Their deaths should not be our focus. It's their lives that matter.
I don't understand exactly how grief and my zazen practice are interacting. It feels like a synergistic energy is reverberating between the two. Grief intensifies zazen, which loops around to contain grief. That''s all I know for right now. Zazen is about being mindful, present, and aware. Grief seems to have accentuated these processes for me. On the bike tonight, my sensory input was like an HD television movie with the contrast turned up too brightly and the surround sound tuned too loud. My nerve endings feel exposed without the benefit of skin as a buffer. As I prepared an omelet following my ride, I was stunned by the colors of the vegetables I chopped. The green of the broccoli, the red of the tomatoes, the orange carrots and the smokey gray mushrooms smashed my retina like in those 1960's acid trips we read about. I'm not sure what to make of it. All these months I've been practicing mindfulness and being in the here-and-now. Now that it is happening, I feel funky. It's a little surreal. It feels like that layer of film that peels back in the Claritin commercial keeps lifting and laying back down of its own accord. I have no control over it. Sometimes I am in a haze, and sometimes things are blindingly clear. Unnerving to say the least.
I'm headed for the cushion now. It feels like the safest place to be.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
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