FUNK

 I woke this Monday morning in a horrible blue funk, dreaming of fire lines approaching a city with a mayor who could or would do nothing, and images of a patio covered with fresh dog shit that no one had picked up. Sound familiar? The profound depression in my mind was matched by a body in pain everywhere, mostly (age-related!) aches in every joint, and muscles that felt depleted of all physical strength. 

Not a good way to wake up!

Meditation was a challenge, with words darting everywhere in my head--words trying to describe what it was I was feeling as I sat. Well, "writing." It's my mind's way of dealing with what's troubling it. Namely...

... a country in chaos, with one political party mindlessly obstructing every effort of the other to reach out and help the millions of Americans who are out of work, hungry and, too many of them, sick and dying; with a leader coming in from the golf course to issue senseless and unhelpful executive orders in an attempt to project the impression of powerful action; a leader who so badly needs adulation that he calls in dozens of his hundreds-of-dollar annual fee golf club members to applaud him loudly at a "press conference..."

... a country riven by discord, mutual hatred and mistrust, one-third of them fed on a day-by-day, hour-by-hour diet of misinformation and outright lies, and driven by a hateful fear of the invented specter of "liberals" and "socialism..."

... and a personal sense of dislocation and disorientation: what am I even doing here, in this, my adopted country, that now feels so alien? Where do I belong...? 

I breathe in, I breathe out. That's one saving grace. The other is more mundane: it is that I have enough "English" left in me to get up from my chair and head off to the kitchen to brew up the solace of a morning cup of tea.

A VERY ODD NIGHT

I tried a couple of Tramadol pills last night before bedtime, thinking to ease the neck pain that has persisted despite all efforts to dispel it--and the result was a very odd night indeed.  I went off to sleep just fine, and woke what seemed like many hours later, only to discover that I'd been asleep for less than an hour.  That heralded a night in which I woke at least once an hour, and seemed only to doze in between times.  Time seemed to stretch out immeasurably.  Minutes went by like hours.  I kept expecting the clock to show a much later time, but no, only minutes had passed since I last looked.

To add to this strange temporal experience, I had none of the fretful wakefulness that I normally have with time moving on in its usual inexorable manner.  I felt gently euphoric the entire time, released from the kind of anxiety that often accompanies sleeplessness.  My mind kept moving in and out of very pleasant dreams, seeming to connect them from one to the next; perhaps they were not sleeping dreams, but waking ones.  I scarcely know.

Clearly, this was a drugged state.  It was, though, nothing like a "high"--more like a persistent sense of cocoon'ed warmth and comfort.  Drug addiction has always puzzled and disturbed me, but last night's experience led me to understand a little better that a person who experiences this kind of pleasure and release from physical (or emotional!) pain might want to repeat it.  For myself, I'll avoid taking Tramadol again before going to bed.  Pleasant though the experience was, I'd not want to repeat it.  I'll get back to things like Aleve and Ibuprofin, which help with the pain but result in none of the effects I describe.

I wonder, do Buddhist monks allow themselves an aspirin once in a while?  After all, the practice is about learning to live with suffering.  Does that include headaches?  I know that pain is inevitable as one ages.  X-rays show that the pain in my neck is caused by arthritis--a condition that is not going to improve or disappear with the years.  Better than drugs is a practice that teaches the avoidance of attachment to that inevitable pain--a skill that has obviously eluded me as yet!

ANGER

You know how it goes. You think you understand the mechanism, you've been meditating for many years, you've done your best to follow the teachings of the Buddha--but then it happens. Something or someone comes along to trigger you, and you lose it all. You get mad.

Here's what happened yesterday: I had just stepped outside the front door for our morning walk when our neighbor and fellow-walker hurries up and says, You'd better take a look at what they're doing to your hedge. Alarmed, I looked around the north side of the house and found workers slashing down the few last remnants of the fine green hedge that had separated us from our immediate neighbor's driveway and acted as a secure backing for the platform we built many years ago to hide our trash cans.

I was outraged. I made no attempt to hide my anger from the workers, who claimed to be acting on instructions from their employer. Why was she doing this? Why had she not at least consulted us before tearing down our hedge? "Our" hedge, so we thought. The leader of the work gang assured me that the hedge belonged to our neighbor. He pointed, with something of a smirk, I thought, to a pink line spray painted on the curb. I did not appreciate the smirk, and made no bones about telling him so.

We felt violated, exposed. Something of "ours" had been stolen from us--as had the privacy we had always enjoyed between our houses, along with protection from the street. We called our neighbor, who was already at work. We let her know of our anger, our sense of violation. We wanted her to understand just how outraged we were. She told us she had not known they were about to do this work, that she had intended to consult us. Too late for that. She promised to share her plans to build a fence and a wall, to replace the hedge...

The anger stayed with me all morning. After the initial explosion, I usually get very quiet when I am very angry. The anger roils around inside. Not matter the justice of the initial cause, I understand that the suffering is my choice. Still, I attach to it--as though, because my gut assumes it's justified, it were somehow helpful. It's not. It served only to poison my day.

I think I was able to let it go in meditation this morning. I explored that sense of violation and the anger that it triggered. The sense of exposure, the loss of something that was "mine", the rupture in the proper order of things on which my sense of security depends, my inability to control events in the external world. Then moved on into the practice of compassion--first for myself and then for all those who have experienced violation. I thought, particularly, of those who had suffered from far worse injury than the loss of a hedge: those millions in Syria, for example, whole families robbed of their entire home and their means of living... So many human beings violated by their fellow human beings.

Next, a much harder but necessary step: to practice compassion for the violators, most immediately for my neighbor and her workmen who had been the target of my anger; then for all those human beings who rob others of their livelihood, their home, their very limb and life...

I know there are those who scoff at what they believe to be the overly compliant, docile quality of Buddhism; there is a powerful ego part of me that wants to agree with them. Why should I be the enabler for those who wish me harm, or inflict it with impunity on others? Am I not a fool to accept insult or injury without returning them in kind? But then I remind myself that to practice compassion is not a passive act, but a powerful means to address the suffering we all experience in our lives. If I want to avoid the suffering that anger causes me in both body and mind, this is the best, perhaps the only way I know to let it go.

THE BOAT

Re-reading "Reflections on Silver River" in accordance with my promise to myself, (the link is to my review,) I have worked through the Invocation, the Homage and the Intention, and have arrived at Verse I, where I meet a daunting challenge.

I'll paraphrase the predicament  briefly, and far less eloquently than the author.

I am standing at the end of a pier, looking out over the dark ocean.  A well-provisioned boat  is tied up at my feet, ready to carry me out on the great adventure into the unknown, the realm of total freedom and, perhaps, eventually, enlightenment.  Behind me lie all the enticements of the life I have built for myself, all the things I like to think I own, all the experiences I treasure, the identities by which I have made myself known, my pleasures, my relationships, my addictions...

What will it take to step into the boat and cast off, on a voyage with no return?

(Is this, I wonder, Rimbaud's Drunken Boat?)

I think I'm honest in saying that there's not much I could not give up at this stage of my life.  I have come to understand that the "possessions" are all temporary anyway, not truly "mine."  I am fortunate indeed in having acquired so much in the way of material comforts along the way and they are not unappreciated.  But I think it's true to say that it is not these that prevent me from stepping into the boat.  I could let them all go.

The same with pleasures.  In meditating on this challenge, I could think of nothing in the way of all the worldly pleasures that I would not be ready to sacrifice for the adventure of complete, unfettered freedom.  I pondered long and hard about my most valued identity, the one I cling to most obstinately, the writer, and concluded that I have reached a point where even this is something that I'm able to release.

What, then, would it take to step into that boat?  What's the attachment that still holds me back?  It was clear to me, as I reflected on the image of the boat and the great ocean out ahead, that the one thing I am not yet ready or able to surrender is the attachment to family and friends, those closest to me.  It's the love I have for them, and the sense of obligation that I feel I owe them still that I can't let go.

I returned, in meditation this morning, to the understanding that death will come along to resolve this issue for me--and that, in view of the accumulation of years to date, it will not be overlong in coming!  Still, in the meantime, while not yet ready to step into that boat, I am happy to have been challenged to find the clarity in this, and I take it that the point of the exercise was to work toward that clarity rather than step headlong into the boat.  The more I am clear about the attachments that keep me on the shore, the more I'll be ready for the inevitable voyage when it's no longer an invitation, but an imperative.

Reminding myself of the subtitle of Reflections, "Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva"--the title of the original 14th century text that it translates, I harbor no illusions about achieving that eminence myself.  The true bodhisattva would have no hesitations about the sacrifices his dedication requires of him--sacrifices that the Buddha himself made in setting out on his own journey, leaving family along with everything else behind.  At least I have the clarity of knowing what I find myself unable to give up. 

Meditation/Contemplation

Very

This very
morning
as I sat
in meditation
I heard the very
first tiptoe
of the rain
drops as they
fell, a very
lovely sound


Sangha, yesterday. Always a joy, to sit in the company of our band of meditators on a Sunday morning. It's a different feel from the lone weekday sits, a common energy generated in that hour of delicious silence.

Afterwards, in our discussion, I picked up a useful piece of guidance, relayed on to us by one of our number from a conversation with our teacher. There are times when the contemplation of an issue becomes an important part of a meditation sit; it's not always just a matter of training the mind to steady its attention on the breath, because we each have hindrances that stand between us and that desired goal. Sometimes it becomes necessary to examine what it is that distracts the mind and prevents us from achieving the serenity and the equanimity we strive for.

At such moments, a focused, thought-ful contemplation is what's needed to help sort things out, to come to an understanding that can release us from the grip of unhelpful patterns of mind activity. Now, I have made a practice of starting right in on that process after my few minutes of metta--sending out goodwill. Not the best way to go about it, says Than Geoff (that's Thanissaro Bhikkhu). Better to prepare the matter for examination before the sit and have it in mind as one goes about the meditation in the normal way, excluding thought where possible and, when the matter at hand comes up, postponing it gently with a simple "Not now," as one redirects the mind's attention to the breath. Then, later, toward the end of meditation only, one can allow the thoughts to surface and explore the associated thoughts and insights them at will.

A fine clarification. What is likely to happen, of course, in following this process, is that the unconscious mind will get to work while the consciousness is observing each movement of the breath. Much of the work, then, will have been done by the time I get around to that contemplation I have determined in advance to be needed, and insights are more likely to follow effortlessly when the moment comes. The hard part of course, as always, is the "Not now," because the mind is a stubborn faculty that delights in going its own way, no matter what I ask of it.

A Sunday Sit

What a pleasure to be sitting once again with Than Geoff (Thanissaro Bhikkhu) late yesterday afternoon, after a long period of absence. Than Geoff (more properly Ajahn Geoff, since he has been for some time now not just a monk, but the abbot of the Metta Thai Forest monastery in Valley Center, north of San Diego. Long-time readers of The Buddha Diaries may recall that he comes up to Laguna Beach on the second Sunday of each month to lead and teach our little "Laguna sangha." Ellie and I have been away so much in the course of our remodel, and often simply unable to spend our weekends down here, that we have missed his regular sessions, as well as his occasional weekend retreats. And while I have been able to maintain my own daily sits, the sangha sits each Sunday and the monthly sessions with Than Geoff have been an important part of my practice since the mid-90s, when I first joined the group.

A glorious pleasure, then, to arrive at sunset for our hour-long sit and to be enchanted, first, by the lovely spectacle at the wide window across from where I sat, of the red glow of the setting sun over a deep purple ocean. Dark clouds and the outline of the eucalyptus trees gave depth and contour to the vista--a sight to rouse the soul before even closing the eyes for meditation. Eyes closed, I found it easy to be guided by Than Geoff's steady, familiar voice, the depth of his calm, and the knowledge of his long dedication to the practice. As usual, he guided us through the observation of the breath for a half hour, then left us in silence for the remainder of the time. It has been quite a while since I reached so intense a meditative state and so profound a relaxation.

Our hour's sit is followed by a question time, and I led off with a question about healing. During meditation, my mind had wandered off frequently to a friend who is fighting off a severe attack on her health, and had been formulating my question despite my best efforts to keep it focused on the breath. Addressing it to Than Geoff, I gave that context, along with the memory of my father's powerful (Christian) belief in the laying-on of hands and my understanding of the Tibetan healing practice of tonglen, and asked whether, in his own tradition, there was any similar healing ritual and, more particularly, whether there was anything I could do in my practice to be of benefit to my friend.

I could actually have predicted Than Geoff's response before I heard it. To his way of thinking, it's more about the state of mind than it is about the illness. Healing, then, is about developing a state of mind that serves to reduce the suffering rather than cure the disease. The practice of metta--sending out thoughts of goodwill--can facilitate the more peaceful state of mind required for a return to health. I responded that it felt somehow impertinent, to me, to wishing happiness for a person experiencing so much pain, but he reminded me that "happiness", in its broader context, embraced the notion of physical well-being, of health itself.

Still, I wondered, were there any rituals in his practice related to the healing of the sick, as in so many other spiritual beliefs? Had he himself had any personal experience of healing? Than Geoff smiled as he recalled an episode when, during meditation, he felt the pain of a bite on his finger. In the dark, he was not able to see what creature had bitten him, but within a few minutes his finger began to swell, then his wrist, then his arm... In some alarm, he consulted with his abbot, who gave him an amulet blessed by his teacher, Ajahn Lee, to place against the wound. In short order, the swelling was reduced.

Amulets, then. I suppose it is the blessing that infuses such ritual objects that is the source of their power.

As usual, though, Than Geoff had neatly turned my question back into myself. The mind, certainly, is the most powerful weapon that we have in and and all contingencies--a weapon that we too often forget when pain comes along and we turn to others to relieve it for us. It happened, yesterday, that I had put my back out earlier in the day, and I found the meditation period useful in relieving the pain. It was afterward that it began to make its presence known again. Ironically, I have found that sitting is the very thing that is the worst for a bad back--especially when the time comes to attempt to stand! Better to keep it warm, I find, by keeping it in motion. Thus it was that I decided to leave the session before the whole two hours were up. But I was extremely glad that I had decided to go.

Blogging: The Buddha Diaries

A couple of responses to my entry yesterday (thank you!) set me to thinking, not for the first time, about what I'm doing here on The Buddha Diaries. I have thought about it primarily as a "writing practice," not unlike my meditation practice: something I just do (almost) every day without having to worry too much about what I'm doing or whether I have anything "to say." It has been a great way to be the writer I have been throughout my life, minus the concerns about publishing: where to publish, who the readers are, how much to get paid--most often barely, or not at all. The Buddha Diaries--and The Bush Diaries that preceded it--have given me the opportunity to be the amateur, in that good, old sense of the word: a person free from any and all obligations, who does it simply out of the passion for getting it done.

But yesterday the word "wondering"* came to mind. I like the two associations of the word: To wonder means not only to ask questions but to stand in awe. I have known since leaving academia twenty years ago that I am not a teacher--or only incidentally. I do not set out to tell anyone what I know, or think I know, because they don't know it. I tend instead to marvel at the world and the fact that I have some small place in it and ask my questions not out of existenial angst, I think, but out of curiosity about my own humanity and that of those with whom I share this planet; and out of the sense that, through honest and scrupulous self-examination, I can become a better, perhaps even a wiser human being and thus live a fuller, more rewarding life.

What appeals to me about Buddhism is less what it teaches than what it asks me to learn. I love its practicality and practicability. For me--and perhaps this is why I resist embracing it as a religion--it's not about shoulds and ought-to's, beliefs and tenets, but rather about what works and what doesn't, what produces healthy results and what leads to more unwanted suffering. As I suggested yesterday, there are realities with which I continue to struggle: even though I "know" the answers, I keep struggling with questions. I learn, and something comes along to remind me that I have forgotten what I learned, and I have to learn it all over again. It seems to me that this is simply human.

The Buddha Diaires, then, at its best--for me, at least--offers me a place where I can look out at the world and my own place in it, and ask those questions, and learn those things about myself and about the world, and forget them, and learn them over again. It's a place where I don't want to pretend to "know" anything, but where I can find provisional understandings that serve me for a moment; a process that uses medium (language) to find out what it is I need to say, with the understanding that I may easily contradict myself the following day. It pleases me more than I can say to know that I have friends out there who want to read this stuff and who take the time to think about it and respond. It's the ultimate reward for any writer, and I am happy to have found a place where I can be true to myself without constraint or embarrassment and still find those who are willing to go along the path with me.


*In this context, a note: My nephew, Naftali, now approaching his mid years, has just started a blog called The Wandering Jewish Dreamer. It was originally called "The Wondering Jewish Dreamer"--I suspect a typo, but I liked the confusion of the two ideas, one an old cliche, the other perhaps a truth about the author... Naftali, an Israeli sabra by birth but American since schooldays, has always been a wanderer. At present, he's in Prague, thinking about returning to Israel for a spell, then back to Prague before coming "home" to the United States. I'll be interested to see where his wandering--and his wondering--takes him!

Mumbai--and Beyond

This Mumbai thing has me thinking, once more, about death. A father and his thirteen year-old daughter sit at dinner at a restaurant and death comes crashing through the door in the form of madmen with assault weapons, firing at random among the tables. He's a former art teacher, a long-time meditator, visiting the country of the Buddha's birth in search of spiritual enlightenment. She is, well, just a teenager. Barely a teenager, who came along on her father's quest because she thought the experience would give her good subject matter for an application essay to qualify for entry to a private school. The last thing either expected was this encounter with violent death. So, too, the rabbi from Brooklyn and his young, attractive wife... And dozens of others like them.

And then... five human beings set off in a SUV for some unknown purpose and drive off an overpass somewhere in Colorado, crashing forty feet to their death on the concrete below; a store clerk leaves for his job at a Walmart store, and dies shortly after the store opens, trampled to death by the stampede of post-Thanksgiving shoppers...

It's not only the randomness of these deaths, and the countless others in Mumbai, that got me thinking: it's the seeming finality that accompanied them. As an atheist and a not-quite Buddhist who finds the whole notion of multiple lives too hard to swallow, I read about these deaths with little to comfort me. I would like very much to believe that this one life is not all there is, and I do have some inkling that the life-force or the energy that I feel within will persist in some form after my death. My struggle really is with the ego part, the ME that clings to the peculiarly human individuality that is the current manifestation of my being and on which I hang the story of my life. I am hung up by that face I see in the mirror, and by which others recognize me for who I seem to be.

I realize that my meditation practice has not yet brought me to the point where I can let go of these appearances. No matter how much I may "understand," up here, that clinging and aversion bring with them equal suffering, that understanding fails to register with the same power in the heart and the gut. The fact of the matter is that I really like being who I am, and the thought of not being me any more is a painful one.

Readers of The Buddha Diaries will perhaps remember that other little problem I have with death: I'm really hung up on the story, all stories, any stories, and I have a lot vested in knowing the end of them. Thw father and daughter started their dinner that evening in the full expectation that they would get up and leave the table at the end of it, continuing their journey. The store clerk, perhaps, had had a row with his girlfriend the evening before, and went to work in anticipation of the opportunity to repair the damage before the day was out. As for me, there are multiple strands of story going on in my life right now, and I realize there are many whose end I will not know. I'm absurdly grateful to know the end of this past election story--especially since it ended in precisely the way I would have written it, had I been so empowered. But now I have to wonder how much of the continuation of the political story I'll be given to know; and it's unlikely that I'll ever know if the planet we live on will survive the abuses we have inflicted on it. That this particular and current story should even have a foreseeable end is pretty scary. Then the events in Mumbai come along to remind me of the fragility of our global balance and the real possibility of human history ending in a forest of mushroom clouds.

In this context, of course, my own little life seems small indeed... but I cling to it none the less for the knowledge of its relative insignificance. So this morning I sit and try to bring my wandering attention back to the breath. For too few moments, I manage to bring my mind into the present and breathe past the gravitational mass of my own body. I acknowledge the unique wisdom of the Buddha and the path to happiness he has laid out for those of us who try to follow it. And yet I find it impossible, today, to reach anything that comes near serenity...

Contraception

(But... before we start, I loved this picture on the front page of the NY Times:




It's actually the detail of a larger image, which features the "brain cells of a laboratory mouse glowing with multicolor fluorescent proteins." And I thought it was a painting!)

NOW...

I have been thinking about contraception since reading the Nicholas Kristof op-ed piece, also in yesterday's New York Times. It's a disgrace that our current administration, driven by its sadly literal-minded "pro-life" ideology, "is quietly cutting off birth control supplies to some of the world’s poorest women in Africa." "Thus," Kristof continues, "the paradox of a 'pro-life' administration adopting a policy whose result will be tens of thousands of additional abortions each year — along with more women dying in childbirth."

The moral issue, I agree with Kristof, is less to do with preventing birth than with causing death--and incidentally promoting the spread of disease and the persistence of poverty. Birth control, clearly, precedes conception, and therefore sidesteps all arguments about when human life begins--unless there are those who want to argue that it begins at the moment of that gleam in the eye that precedes the sexual act. Given the absurd notions of creationists, I suppose that those people might exist, but to allow them into this argument is to give them too much credit.

What are the objections, I wonder, to contraception? That it frustrates the laws of nature--and thus, perhaps, of God? That it encourages promiscuity? I'd hazard a guess that our consumer society, presumably with the blessing of our free market conservatives, does much more to promote sex among the young--and the not-so-young!--than the availability of condoms. And the teaching of abstinence in our own schools, here at home, has done little to prevent the advance of teenage pregnancy, so far as I can tell. The morally righteous folk who so fervently preach abstinence--think no further than the Governor of Alaska--look more than slightly foolish in the context of a world in which their fine advice and proscriptions are routinely ignored by the young.

And that's here at home. Who are we to be preaching the fringe values of the more repressive of our own religious fanatics to the poor in other countries? Who are we, indeed, to impose them by administrative fiat on countries where hunger, disease and poverty are rampant, and where population growth threatens the fabric and stability of whole nations--while their inhabitants themselves are asking for nothing better than education and material support to back it up?

(This is another excellent reason, by the way, to support Barack Obama, who opposes the Bush policies in this matter. John McCain has consistently supported them, and is even shockingly indifferent to the suffering they cause. Kristof writes, "when a reporter asked [McCain] this spring whether American aid should finance contraceptives to fight AIDS in Africa, he initially said, 'I haven’t thought about it,' and later added, 'You’ve stumped me.'” Really?

Since the actions of the Bush administration are based primarily in religious convictions, I spent some time yesterday searching through Buddhist sites to ascertain what teachings on the subject are available. They are sparse, and such as they are they dovetail neatly with broader teachings on sex: the central principle, for lay people at least, is not to abstain from sexual activity but to do no harm--either to oneself or others. The teachings call for skillfulness and awareness of consequences, not for abstention. Thus, "Contraception is accepted by Buddhists. According to Buddhist tenets, the life cycle of a sentient being begins when consciousness enters the womb, and traditionally this has been considered the moment of conception. Therefore, there is no objection to contraception which prevents conception without damaging sentient life."

This, like most Buddhist teachings, is profoundly sensible, compassionate toward humanity and its foibles, and practicable without harm. How very different from Christian teachings, ranging from Vatican Catholicism to Protestant Fundamentalism, whose harm in this regard is widespread and, in view of the rapidly expanding population of the planet, even potentially catastrophic! And how much more realistic and humane. Once more, I find good reason to go with the Buddha...

Angry? Why Not?

Okay, I make a point of accepting a challenge when it comes along. A comment on my past entry has me wondering whether I'm in fact as "frustrated" as the writer says, and whether I'm too "caught up in the tumultuous world." Am I a part of what the current occupant of the White House described, in his absurdly short address to the Republican convention last week, as "the angry left"? You bet I am. It seems to me the only rational response to what he and his administration have wrought, these past (nearly!) eight years. I'm mad about pretty much everything to do with politics. I'm mad, particularly, that the American voting public seems willing to be led about by its me-first nose, allowing the spinmasters to twist every evidence of corruption, incompetence and failure to their advantage.

I'm mad, this morning, in the knowledge that blame the Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac debacle and the attendant bailout will be cast on "government" and "Washington"--not for the truly reprehensible laissez-faire deregulation that for too many years catered to corporate and homeowner greed alike, but for bringing the bill to the door of the almighty "taxpayer." So who gets blamed? Not the free-marekteers, who have obscenely profited, but those who believe that government has a responsible role in exercising due vigilance over the economy.

I'm mad, this morning, about the "bounce" for the McCain campaign as a result of his selection of a person as unqualified to be president as anyone who has ever stood the proverbial heartbeat from that office. I'm mad that the "family values" gang are now ecstatic about the kind of unmarried teenage pregnancy that has previously aroused their ire and condemnation, despite their fanatical opposition to the kind of education that could help prevent it. I'm mad that this governor of Alaska has commanded so much media attention, as fodder for the consuming public's childish need for novelty and excitement, while the important issues that confront this nation go ignored.

And while I'm at it, I'm mad about the senseless war in Iraq and the deceptions that led up to it; I'm mad about the sheer incompetence of its conduct. I'm mad about the seven-year neglect of every other pressing issue in the Middle East including, especially, of course, the simmering conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians that is at the heart of it all--along with the demand for oil. I'm mad about the disgracing of America in the eyes of the world, and about the public shredding of its constitution. I'm mad about the coddling of the rich and the neglect of the poor. I'm mad about the denial of scientific evidence and the shameful delay in addressing the issue of global climate change. I'm mad that vast numbers of citizens in this richest nation in the history of the planet lack adequate access to health care. I'm mad that cour children's education lags so far behind that of children in other developed countries, and that we are so busy attending to our own needs and defending our own rights that we lack the will to make the improvements that are needed.

So, yes. I'm angry. It seems to me the only sane and reasonable response to what is happening in this country. And yes, I confess to being "caught up in this tumultuous world." I was gifted by my parents with a social conscience that will not allow me to walk away from what I see to be madness, injustice, abuse of power and economic exploitation. As for being one of a "frustrated bunch of Buddhists"... well, call it frustration if you will. And yet I have said repeatedly that while I learn immeasurably from the teachings of the Buddha and the meditation practice they inspire, I am not (yet?) able to call myself "a Buddhist."

So far as I understand them, the teachings here would not have me deny the anger that I feel. They would ask me to conscientiously explore the source of that anger, and the ways in which it might be relieved. They would not have me ignore the suffering of the world around me, nor my own. Skillfully practiced, though, they would help me to establish the kind of equanimity that might in some measure alleviate the suffering of myself and others. They would urge the kind of goodwill and compassion that is much needed in the world--and in our country--at this time. We would all be getting on very much better if we could remove our own prejudice from the equation and listen with mindful attention to the views of others. I recognize that I myself am not very good at doing that, but at least I'm aware of the need to try.

That said, to reduce Buddhism to the catch-phrase "all is dust" is to seriously misunderstand the wisdom that it teaches. Perhaps, as I understand it, the alternative construction, "there is dust, and then..." might be a little closer to the mark.

I'm Back...

... and taking this weekend to get reoriented. The Laguna cottage is just barely livable. We came down here yesterday, after a night in Los Angeles, to find it--who'd have guessed?--less far along than we had hoped. We created a small space for ourselves in the living room...


... surrounded by stacked furniture and boxes.


Of course, we can't remember exactly what we put in which boxes, and the scrawled notes on the side--"Kitchen," say--don't help us to locate the box where we keep the tea bags. It's trial and error--and mostly the latter. The kitchen is nowhere near completion, as you can see...




... but we have a tiny fridge in what was once the dining room...



... and have hooked up the microwave. No stove, no tea kettle. In a few minutes, I'll be trying to make a decent cup of tea in the microwave--a new adventure.

Meantime, more serious and much more distressing, Ellie's injured ribs have started to cause her terrible pain. Her work yesterday at the cottage to make it slightly habitable--lifting and moving things--may have contributed, but the pain last night was such that I had to help her into bed. This morning, then, when she wakes, it's a trip to Kaiser for x-rays and examination. We did manage to sleep some during the night, having cleared a space for ourselves on the bed--it was piled high with clothes and linens, and covered with a plastic sheet to protect it from the dust--and rigged up a temporary bedside electrical supply with the aid of industrial sized extension cords left by the contractor.

In a word, all is not yet right on the home front in Laguna. Today, Saturday, after that Kaiser visit, we will likely return to Los Angeles and leave the cottage to the contractor for the next couple of weeks. The Buddhist teaching, of course, is the practice of equanimity--and for Ellie, the difficult art of non-attachment to the physical sensation. Much harder for her than for me, when the pain is so intense. It's annoyingly easy for me to exhort her to breathe and focus the attention elsewhere. And next to impossible for her.

I'll probably be slow in getting back to The Buddha Diaries, given all this distraction. A big thank you to those who joined me on Travels With George. I hope you enjoyed the trip. I'm planning to tidy up that site and beef it up a bit with more recollections and reflections, with a thought to publishing it in book form, if I can ferret out a more coherent "story" and its meaning. Apologies for not having responded to comments, and for not having visited other sites this past month. As I've said before, I do very much appreciate this community of bloggers, and look forward to getting back in touch. I personally have some thoughts about politics...

A Movie...

... we just couldn't bear to watch, even though I suspect that it's a very good one: The Savages. It had been sitting on our Netflix shelf for a few weeks, neglected for reasons unknown to myself but better known to Ellie, who had read about it, and we took it down last night and slipped it into our DVD player. Twenty minutes later, we pushed the eject button on the remote. Too raw. Too close to the bone. It nettled all our fears about growing old and dependent on others for our care.

I understand that the movie is really about the brother-sister relationship between the younger characters, but the first twenty minutes, at least, were devoted to their aging father and his "girlfriend," who in one memorable early scene sits rigid in front of the manicurist who is pandering to the last vestiges of her vanity. "Very sexy," the manicurist declares, delighting in the color she has just applied to a fingernail and looking up at the wrinkled face in front of her... just as the old woman topples over and dies. Ah, eros! Ah, thanatos! The old man, her boyfriend, the father of the squabbling siblings at the center of the story, is rapidly approaching dementia. Incensed by the insolence of his care-giver in scolding him for not having flushed the toilet, he returns to the scene of the crime and smears the word "PRICK" in his own feces on the bathroom mirror.

We did not reach for the remote, however, until the scene where the old man is strapped by airline officials into a wheelchair to be loaded unceremoniously onto the airplane to return him from Sun City, Arizona, to the nursing home facility his son has chosen for him. (Great exterior shots, by the way, of the Sun City location: curiously symmetrical homes and landscaping, almost surreal, overly bright, and distinctly scary.) Caught short on the plane, the irascible old geezer preremtously yells "Bathroom!" at his accompanying daughter, and again, "Bathroom! Now!" Struggling with tiny, painfully slow steps down the narrow aisle in the crowded plane, both he and she are ignominiously shamed as his pants fall down around his ankles amid the pitiless stares of fellow passengers.

Well, it happens to be my birthday in a couple of days. Not a Big One--no zeros. But the first number in the double digit figure is higher than I'd like it to be. A friend pointed out yesterday at the gym that she still manages to feel young when the second digit is a low one, as mine is. A nice conceit. Still, I have been feeling the weight of years. I notice that my steps are sometimes slower, lacking the energy of youth, and I consciously make the effort to appear more sprightly. I notice with aggravation that those things I liked least about myself--my impatience, say; a tendency to testiness--become more pronounced, and harder to contain. I think much more often about the inevitable end of life. My greatest fear about growing old is the dependency depicted in that movie, the loss of simple dignity, the need for others to take care of me, prop me up when I walk, feed me, clean up after my eliminations...

Which is why the most meaningful part of my metta practice, the first and last moments of my daily meditation, is that line from the chant on the sublime attitudes that comes after "May I be happy" and "May I be free from stress and pain": May I look after myself with ease. It's not often that a film is just too intense for me, but this one was. I never even learned the end of the story--a loss that, as those familiar with The Buddha Diaries know, is a serious one for me. But at least a fine metaphor for the experience of life itself, whose end we are rarely privileged to know.

I'm sure I'm not alone in any of these feelings. I'm hoping you might share your own...

Le Tour: Suffering

It's a word that's constantly on the lips of every rider interviewed, every coach and trainer, every commentator on the television coverage. Suffering. It's hard to imagine how much suffering those men incur for twenty-one days on their high-tech machines, riding often over one hundred miles a day, and up mountainsides, day after day, any one of which would challenge the strength of most powerful of men on a single day. They must have been grateful, yesterday, to reach the finish line on the Champs-Elysees in Paris. The Spanish rider who won the race, Carlos Sastre, credited a former team manager for having "taught me to suffer."



All of which led me to wonder what the Buddha might have to say about the Tour de France. He didn't own a bicycle, of course--though I enjoy the image of the Buddha on a bike. He walked. He walked great distances, accompanied by his closest disciples, I suppose with many stops along the way to teach what he had learned. Walking such distances may have caused discomfort--the occasional blister, surely, and sore muscles in the legs--but nothing like the suffering incurred by choice in competitive sports events like the tour.

We suffer enough in our daily lives. Is it "right effort" to incur more suffering by choice? Or is it mere human vanity? No doubt but that it's a discipline requiring incredible focus and concentration--perhaps even an extreme form of meditation, and certainly an extreme test of the stuff we human beings are made of. The slightest weakness is laid bare, the slightest vulnerability exploited by the competition. There's no room for self-pity, no room for distraction, no room for excuses.

The Buddha himself completed a marathon of a kind, in the course of those years of ascetic wandering, when he was reputed to have survived on nothing but a grain of rice a day. (An irreverent aside: I've often wondered how that grain was prepared. He can't have eat it uncooked, can he?) His conclusion was that this form of self-inflicted torture was unnecessary to achieve the goal of happiness. It was not necessary, he discovered, to intensify the suffering in order to find the way to end it. On the contrary, suffering is intensified by what we add to it to satisfy our ego-driven needs.

Egos abound, of course, in an event like the Tour de France. It's a daily battle to win--to win the sprint, to win the stage, to win the daily awarded jerseys: white for the best young rider, green for the best sprinter, polka-dotted for the best climber, and the famous yellow for the overall Tour leader. The competition is intense, and it's easy to get hooked on it--as I have been, this year, for the umpteenth time. Team strategy and individual performance are intertwined in plots and patterns that get more complex by the day. Wild surprises and bitter disappointments alternate to compel attention and wrench the emotional response.

Hardly a Middle Way, then. Strangely, though, it's Buddhist values like concentration and persistence--and of course equanimity in the face of suffering--that pay off in the Tour as in any other challenge that life offers. Depending on how you look at it, it's all a teaching.

Bugs

No, not Bunny. Not the cartoon. I mean the live kind, little gnat things, mosquitoes, moths, those little creatures that gather in masses to ruin your quiet evening in the great outdoors. That kind. Well, yesterday, Ellie came home with a bug-zapper--one of those black wire cage contraptions with an eerie blue light in the center, to which flying insects of all kinds are attracted to their instant, sizzling extinction.

It was a kind thought--at least where I'm concerned. We have a lovely balcony that overlooks the Hollywood Hills. At sunset, when the cool ocean breeze (usually) flows in to nudge out the heat of the day, it's a wonderful place to sit and enjoy the gathering dusk. The bugs seem to like it just as much as we humans do, however, and they have a nasty attraction to human flesh. For some reason best known to themselves, they seem to prefer my flesh to Ellie's: I can't sit out there for more than five minutes without that familiar itchy feeling down around the ankles--their preferred target. When I feel one of settle in for a pleasant dinner at my expense... well, Buddhist principles or no, I do confess, I slap 'em. I don't just brush 'em off, I slap 'em. It's instinctive, uncontrollable, a gesture of pure self-defense. Only afterwards do I reflect that I've taken the life of a living being, to whom I should have been sending goodwill and compassion.

But a bug-zapper... That's another matter. That's malice aforethought, a deliberate, coldly conscious intention to instigate death. We debated the issue throughout the evening. This morning, on our exercise walk around the hill, we debated it further with our friend and neighbor, Nancy. She voiced my own opinion, that the sound of death by electrocution is blood-curdling, even when it's "only" bugs that are the victims. The slap is a much more human sound, and one for which one can, after all, accept personal responsibility. The bug-zapper is by comparison, well, inhuman. And there are always those yellow candles with the nasty smell...

So, finally, after much debate and anguished self-examination, the bug-zapper went back, this morning, to the hardware store. What do you say, you good folk who read these words? Do you use bug-zappers? Do you have wonderful alternative remedies to share? Some of you, surely, live in mosquito-infested territories and have patented methods of bug-deterrence. Let me hear from you. Please.

Another Bus

A story from our Sunday sitting group yesterday. (I may get some of the details wrong--the memory does not serve in quite the same way that it used to. But I think I've got the essence and the punch line.)

Two monks, returning from prolonged retreat in some Asian country, the one old, experienced, wise, familiar with the practice east and west; the other younger, less experienced, less familiar with the east-west transition. The younger monk, concerned about his ability to bring the depth knowledge he has gained back to his home country, asks the older one what advice he can offer to help him apply the teachings in this new environment.

Says the older, wiser, more experienced monk: "If you miss the bus, don't panic. There will always be another bus."

Little Things...

I've been noticing an interesting phenomenon recently, and I wonder if others share the same experience. It's the little things that get me going, far less than the big ones. Horrific expenses, global warming, the election campaign, George W. Bush, these things I can take with a certain equanimity these days. They seem to fall easily into the perspective of the larger picture, the long history of humankind on the face of the planet Earth. Perhaps this is the gift of several years of meditation practice, the daily simplicity of sitting quietly and watching the breath.

But the little things... ah, these can enrage me suddenly and without discernable reason: the screw that's lost its thread and won't come out, the light bulb that blows, the trip on a crack in the sidewalk, the damn toaster oven that will neither toast nor ove, the driver in front of me who has not the first idea how to make a left turn at the traffic light, a casual misspoken word, these tiny, meaningless events will cause a surge of rage and a stream of obscenities that takes me by surprise--and justifiably offends my wife!

Maybe that line of thought is right, that we each carry our own internal volcano, a reserve of overheated lava that we hide somewhere in our body and that erupts with fury when a tiny fault line happens to open up. Maybe it's the unhealed wounds of childhood that we have learned to hide away and keep tamped down until spontaneously released at a moment of vulnerability, when we're caught off guard.

Or maybe it's just me.

But I think not. I think about the words that Angela wrote in the piece I linked to yesterday--and cross-posted on Accidental Dharma--and I'm reminded just how deep those childhood wounds lie buried in the human psyche. I also went, yesterday, to catch a preview of a new art show called "Inner Battles of the Imaginary Male" at Andrew Shire Gallery and was reminded, yet again, of what I have learned about myself and other men in this regard. How much of the violence and the rage for power that dominate our global life today springs from that inner battle that many men have not yet learned to conduct appropriately, in the mind? Back to George W., then. A prime example of what it is I'm talking about.

But more of this later. I plan to do much more work on that exhibition, including an episode in my Art of Outrage podcast series. Meantime, I'd be interested to hear what others think...

Meditation

A very peaceful meditation this morning. Usually, when I am as busy as I am this week--with reading, with interviews and preparations for my next "Art of Outrage" podcast, and with the other writing chores that preoccupy me--my mind is all over the place; trying to find directions, trying to find solutions, trying to find words... This morning, though, I was unusually successful in finding and maintaining focus and concentration. And at the end, I was rewarded with a curious sensation that I cannot remember having felt before: all the molecules in my body seemed to start swimming apart and at the same time to merge with everything around it, leaving me with the sensation of pure energy. I have felt that sense of the contours of the body melting before, when the distinction between self and other simply disappears; but never, that I can recall, this sense of swirling, almost dizzying energy. And I notice that the feeling persists, even fifteen minutes after meditation.

I have been reading a manuscript on the concept of "becoming" by Than Geoff these past few days, and just yesterday came upon a section on the jhanas--the states of deepening experience in meditation; and I wonder whether this was one of the jhanas I was experiencing--or whether my mind was fantasizing such an experience, based on the reading? It was by all means a very pleasant experience, and one that I will watch for in the future. I should also go back into the text today, to see whether it corresponds with anything I read with less than full attention.

Death & Dying: The Third Challenge

Okay, so here we are, arriving at the third and final episode in Joan Halifax Roshi’s challenge about death and dying from the current issue of Tricycle magazine. The first, as you’ll remember, was about the way in which you most fear dying; the second, about how you would want to die, if you were granted your choice. The third question is this: What are you willing to do in order to die the way you want to?

That one took my breath away. It handed me the responsibility for my own manner of dying. Unless, or course, the choice is wrested from my hands by accident, debilitating disease, dementia… all of which must be entertained as possibilities. Even so, to be given the sense of responsibility for preparing for my death came as a real, and even more perplexing challenge than the first two.

Okay, though. Let’s try it. The first thing I can do is to prepare myself to let go of everything I think I own—to recognize that none of it is truly “mine,” as I have always liked to believe. That includes this lovely cottage in Laguna Beach, where I sit writing these words; the art work on the walls, which I have come to love; the computer on which I’m privileged to write (for how many years did I use, first, pens and pencils, then a manual, then an electric typewriter?) It’s a cliché, perhaps, but one worth recalling: there is not one single thing I can take with me on my not too distant journey into the unknown. Might was well train the mind to let them go NOW. That would be one thing I could do.

Next, as I wrote only yesterday in these pages, I can prepare to let go of the stories that I so much treasure. My own, to start with: the story of Peter, the writer, husband of Ellie, son of Harry and Peggy, now deceased; father of Matthew and Jason and Sarah; and grandfather of Alice, Georgia and Joseph. Human companion—I hate to say “owner,” which reminds me of slavery—of George the dog. I have a great deal vested in that story, I remind myself, and have no wish for it to reach some arbitrary end.

Next, harder still, I can prepare to let go of all those that I love, and all those who love me, some of them not included in the list above. That would include friends, teachers, fellow practitioners, some I have worked with in various capacities. If I can find the wisdom to be able to say goodbye to them all NOW, it will be easier, perhaps, to say goodbye to them when the time comes.

I recall that in answer to the second challenge, a part of my wish was to be conscious at the moment of my death. In order to make this possible I need to do everything I can to avoid disease, senility, unconsciousness. It behooves me, then, to be as conscious as possible at every moment I have yet to live: conscious of body, health, care for myself and those around me. Meditation will help here, I believe, so one more thing I can do in order to die the way I want to is to continue with, and enhance, my daily meditation practice, especially with an awareness of the aging process and the inevitability of death.

These are things that I can do. There may be others that have not yet come to mind, and I’m sure that there will be many lapses in both attention and intention along the way. But the hard part is not being able but being willing to do them—to make that commitment to myself. The first, easy impulse is to say that I will try, but “trying,” of course, is never enough. Keep trying to feed the dog, and the dog inevitably goes hungry. And I don’t want to make any easy promises, if only to myself.

So this is something I will need to meditate on further. I see it as a process rather than a race. Commitment will require full prior understanding of what is I’m committing to. In the meantime, though, I would like to thank Joan Roshi for having brought these matters to my attention, and providing me with sane and practical counsel as I approach my final path.

Dying: A Challenge, Part II

A couple of weeks ago, I posted this challenge on death and dying from Joan Halifax Roshi, along with the promise that I would return to steps two and three in the process she proposed. As a reminder, the first challenge was a meditation on this question: "What is your worst-case scenario of how you will die?" I offered my own worst-case scenario, and received several others in return.

I've had plenty of opportunity to ruminate on death and dying in the past week: the history that abounds in Savannah and Charleston almost demands it. In touring the houses of the one-time wealthy, the visitor can't help but sense the ghosts of those who lived and died there--both the wealthy and the enslaved peoples whom they owned. Death, the greatest of all equalizers, visited them all regardless of wealth or color, social standing or religious conviction. Those who were abominably unequal in their lifetimes suffered equally at the approach of death. I've heard that the Civil War, fought in these territories, brought dreadful ends to more Americans than any other war, before or since. And the epidemics of yellow fever and malaria took the lives of many thousands more before their time. Life expectancy was much shorter than it is today, and much that has been learned about medicine, personal hygiene and health care was unknown to these earlier Americans.

So, yes, I could not prevent myself from thinking how it might be to die of yellow fever, in one of those spacious bedrooms in a rice plantation mansion--or in one of the bleak cabins deemed fit for slaves. I could not prevent myself from imagining myself wounded, fatally, by some stray bullet in the chaos of battle. The spirits of those who died in these ways, so many years ago, seemed awfully close to me. It seems entirely imaginable that those whose lives were taken from them before they reached completion would find it hard to consent to the finality of death.

But back to Joan Roshi's challenge, part the second, her next topic for meditation. Here it is: after meditating on your worst-case fears, "How do you really want to die?"

Some, I know, envy those who slip away quietly in their sleep. I don't know about you, but my own great wish is to die conscious, at home, in my own bed. To still be fully in command of all my senses and bodily functions, to be alert in mind and aware of each stage of the process, surrounded by those I love--and those who love me. To be strong enough to keep sending out loving-kindness to all living beings. To be so fully conscious and to have reached a state of such equanimity that I have no fear, and can simply watch and treasure my presence in those very last moments here on earth. My heroes are those monks reputed to have died sitting up, in the meditation posture, conscious to the end; and perhaps, who knows, beyond, through every one of the bardos described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead--though I don't wish this for myself.

The challenge, then, is to meditate on those last moments as one would wish to experience them--a much more pleasant prospect, I think you will agree, than the preceding one. If you're up for it, I'd certainly be interested to hear how it works for you.

A Big Crash

Ah, how vulnerable we choose to make ourselves with our silly dependencies!  As I noted yesterday on Accidental Dharma, I stopped off for breakfast at Denny's after leaving my Prius at the Toyota service department, blithely assuming that Denny's would have wireless connection.  Well, apparently they did.  I saw it there on my laptop and was trying to access it when the whole thing crashed.  

With remarkable equanimity, I got on with my sausage and eggs (and a well-toasted English muffin), picked up the Prius and drove back home.  Still nothing.  An hour's delightful conversation with Apple Care, at the end of which my despairing advisor suggested reloading Leopard.  I started the process.  Four hours later, it was still "installing," with two minutes to go.  It had been registering two minutes for the past two hours.  Another call, this time to a "product specialist"--I think that was the term.  Another hour or so later, he suggested radical surgery: the hard drive would need to be wiped clean, and everything on it lost.  

Well, okay.  I'm fortunate enough to have my desktop, where most of my work is stored.  No big deal.  I'd have to transfer a lot of stuff, but it would not be the end of the world.   And, well, I did succeed in erasing everything.  But things have not returned to normal.  This morning, the laptop was indulging in other strange behaviors--and not the ones I wanted it to.  In a word, I try not to use too often, but which seems appropriate here, I think it's truly fucked.

Perhaps the reason I'm not tearing out my hair is that I do have the alternative.  But I like to think, too, that I have learned something in my ten plus years on the meditation cushion.  A few short years ago, the word I resorted to at the end of the last paragraph would have been mild compared with the language coming out of my mouth.  Now it's just, Right Speech, Equanimity, Impermanence...  Sweetness and Light.  See?  There's something about these Buddhist teachings that does actually work.