On Formerly Hating Crows (and Other Murderers)

Hate is a pretty strong word, but hate crows I did, for a long time, and so did my whole family.

Soon after arriving in Victoria from Scotland, we were captivated by the goings on in our back yard. From an upstairs window, we watched in anticipation as a pair of robins built a nest in the apple tree below.

Before long, the nest was complete, tiny blue eggs appeared, and instead of twigs, mum and dad robin brought home worms and insects for their hungry new brood. How we loved that little family!

Looking back, I think we identified with them because we were making a new home too.

In less than a minute, right before or eyes, it ended.

The crows attacked, the robins screamed, we shouted and screamed and ran downstairs, but far too late. Nothing remained except one of the babies, dead on the ground. In that moment, crows became evil incarnate.

I took up BB gunnery and would lay in wait in my sniper's nest in the window upstairs, having sworn vengeance upon any black bird that dared to darken our back yard. However, despite my worst intentions, I was a terrible shot and no crows were harmed.

The robins never came back, and the empty nest remained a cruel reminder for several years until my dad replaced it with a tree house. (Although at the outset I said our whole family hated crows, I don't think my dad actually did. He was a very kind man who rarely spoke ill of anyone.)

Our anger and hatred were unthinking reactions to the violence. Emotion over reason. I suppose, to put it in perspective, we might have considered that crow nestlings are also the victims of predators, few reaching adulthood because of raccoons, squirrels, foxes, hawks, owls, bullfrogs and rats.

We might even have considered the havoc wreaked on unsuspecting worm and insect families by the marauding robins.

More to the point, the crows ate the baby robins because they are crows, not because they chose to.

Said a scorpion to a frog, “Please carry me over the river.”

The frog replied, “I’m afraid you’ll sting me.”

“No, I won’t. If I stung you, we would both perish.”

“Well, OK then.”

Halfway across the river:

“Ouch! Why did you sting me?”

“Because I’m a scorpion.”

I sometimes think I have fully forgiven the crows. Although it feels true, it makes as much sense as forgiving the wind for blowing down a tree.

Forgiving humans. Well that's different, isn't it?

In the news reports that the Boston Marathon Bomber had been sentenced to death we also learned some of the victims had forgiven him.

Different, unimaginably difficult, but surely, necessary.

Image: public domain

The Good Oil

In a supermarket buying some plain soy milk for my daily banana / blueberry / cinnamon / oat bran / wheat bran / wheat germ / hemp seed / flax seed smoothie, I went through my usual ritual. Propping the cooler door open, I practically unloaded the whole shelf to get at the cartons at the very back with the latest 'best before' dates.

When I got home, I realized I had been so wrapped up in getting the freshest cartons that I had bought sweetened soy milk. Bleagh.

In the midst of berating myself for being such an oblivious dolt, I realized there was a second dynamic: I felt like a heel for needlessly seeking out the best for me, leaving the older cartons to go to someone else or even be thrown out... and for taking so long to realize I was doing it.

Then I remembered I had already figured this out years ago but had obviously forgotten the lesson. I had borrowed a car for a week or so from a friend. Before returning it, I went to top up the oil. I had a jug of cheap stuff and a small container of expensive oil. Naturally, I reached for the jug since he would never know the difference and I could save the good oil for myself.

Then, as now, a little nagging voice asked me what was so special about me that I should have the best. The good oil ended up in my friend's car.

When I exchanged the sweetened soy milk for plain, I confess I took a little pleasure in choosing the oldest cartons on the shelf.

I feel a bit awkward talking about 'good' deeds performed. Is this just ego not wanting to appear to be seeking praise? *sigh*

All the suffering there is in this world arises from wishing our self to be happy. All the happiness there is in this world arises from wishing others to be happy.

        -Shantideva (from the Bodhisattvacharyavatara)

Photo credit: Arne Hückelheim

Straying In One Place

Urban Monk Cunningly Disguised as Yachting Enthusiast

There is a patch of water near Cadboro Bay in Victoria where the tide is particularly strong.  Small sailboats race there, and when the wind abates somewhat, it's not uncommon to see them with their sails filled but drifting backwards. Since their direction is the nearby U.S. coastal waters, a rather overused quip from fellow sailors is, "Have you got your American money?"

For the last several months my forward progress has felt like moonwalking - effortlessly striding ... backwards. And the common perception that time seems to accelerate as we age doesn't help matters. I walk into Monday full of hope and ideas and things to achieve, then rest for a moment, have a little nap, and it's Monday again.

One of the things that seems to have been drifting just beyond my reach is connecting with the sangha.

For the longest time, I have been meaning to drag my butt to the Zen Centre and plant it on a zafu, but the weeks have turned into months and I haven't gotten any closer.

Another place I wanted to spend more time is the blogosphere, reading and writing, but haven't done much of that either.

The paradox here is that a big part of the solution to the problem is to simply overcome the problem. What I mean is that interacting with sangha - cyber or otherwise - is a strong motivator to engage in practice, in this case communal sitting in zazen and reading and writing blog posts about practice - i.e. interacting with sangha.

So as we used to say in the hippie days, "nothing to it but to do it." I could go on about this, but I think today is more about action than verbiage. So I'll click the 'publish' button, go sit with the Twitterverse, read some blogs, and trek on over to the zendo.

Hope to see you soon.

An English Teacher's Gift to a Stranger in a Strange Land

I wrote elsewhere that part of me (my thinking mind) feels like it's still seventeen. 

Comparing my profile picture to the high school yearbook photo above will confirm that the rest of me definitely is not.

A couple of years before the photo was taken, a very dear English teacher (Mr. W. L. Hardie) made a lasting impression on me. His presentation of Emerson's essay Self-Reliance was a gift that 50 years later, I still remember fondly.

The tenet is simple: don't be afraid to be yourself. Since we are each unique, it also means have the courage to be different.

To an often painfully shy introvert, those words were music. I took the advice to heart - perhaps, I hasten to admit, a tad to the extreme. If you look closely, you may detect some subtle differences from my classmates below (hint: check the hair length, sideburns, glasses, shirt and tie colour)...

Many years later, noticing my tendency to be timid and overly self-effacing, the abbot of our zen centre offered some kindly advice that can be reduced to one word. Manifest!!

Or, in the language of the Heart Sutra, less emptiness, more form.

As we act out our lives and our practice ripens, no doubt maintaining a skilful balance between nonduality and differentiation becomes more natural and effortless. However, a concept that came of age, like me, in the hippie era was that ego is to be avoided and even, to be ashamed of. Consequently, a well-aimed self-administered kick in the pants is occasionally needed to get me 'out there'.

And what a strange world 'out there' can be.

The flip side of being aware of our individuality is noticing the wonderful, the weird and the heartbreaking. Interwoven with wordless beauty and breathtaking kindness are idiotic thoughtlessness, meaningless self-absorption and unspeakable cruelty, all of which, through encouragement, great sorrow, some despair, and yes, anger, kindle our compassion, fuel our resolve and launch us into action.

I admit that when the 'stranger in a strange land' feeling comes upon me, I have a tendency to disassociate myself from the perceived evils of the world, to set myself above them and to cling to an idealistic construct of myself. Before too long, hopefully, I also realize that these are warning signs that I'm allowing unification anxiety to creep into my life and that it's time to dive back into practice.

We can be strangers in a strange land, as long as we keep our hearts wide open and remember that everyone else is a stranger in this strange land too.

May we make the other strangers feel at home.

May we love the ones we're with.

Well, the last bit is true....

Down Judgment Road

I'm becoming a grumpy old man.

At least, the warning signs are there. A new addition to my watch list of troubling tendencies – joining old friends procrastination, avoidance, timidity, gluttony (a.k.a. Sweet Tooth) and sloth.

Because I propounded the old adage, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing,” I had my last cigarette and drink 26 and 16 years ago, respectively.

However, being judgmental is one of those awkward necessities – along with procrastination, avoidance, timidity, gluttony and sloth - that you can’t quite drop cold turkey if you tend to overindulge.

I mean, some things just have to be put off or avoided, caution is often called for, and without eating or sleeping, we wither and die. And judging is a necessary part of rational thought.

So it comes down to practice: our efforts to give energy and direction to our everyday lives to do the ‘right’ thing – as in the right speech, right livelihood, right concentration, etc. of the eightfold path, making our way through the currents of cause and effect in the ocean of form and emptiness, otherwise known as our ordinary lives.

Zen master Yunmen was once asked, “What is the teaching of the Buddha’s entire lifetime?” Yunmen answered, “An appropriate response.”

Eshin Godfrey likened our moment to moment efforts to stay on course to sailing a small boat. Responding to the movements of the wind and tides and waves and currents, adjusting our weight, the pressure on the tiller and the tension in the sails.

Of the possible responses to the specific annoyance of intrusive unhelpful judgmental thoughts, making sure my mouth remains shut is a big one. Refraining from scowling is also big, as is refraining from rolling my eyes (unless it's at my ridiculous penchant for judging...).

Then there is the standard repertoire for dealing with unbidden thoughts in general - acknowledging them, evaluating their immediate usefulness (yes, judging them!), and for the most part, letting them go their merry way without following them.

But many (of my) judgmental thoughts tend to be unkind, and these call for more extreme measures, namely a concentrated blast of kind thoughts at the judgee.

Here's Pema:

The next time you go out in the world, you might try this practice: directing your attention to people—in their cars, on the sidewalk, talking on their cell phones—just wish for them all to be happy and well. Without knowing anything about them, they can become very real, by regarding each of them personally and rejoicing in the comforts and pleasures that come their way. Each of us has this soft spot: a capacity for love and tenderness. But if we don’t encourage it, we can get pretty stubborn about remaining sour.

Here are some related posts:

You Must Forgive Them All

Lifeless or Just Leafless?

Too Bad for You, Buddy!

And here's Sarah:

Top Photo Credit

Profoundly Ordinary (and other Zen Oxymorons)

Insight into the great matter, sometimes reverently called the The Great Matter of Birth and Death, has likely been pursued for millennia, ever since humans became self-aware.

Enlightenment, satori, kensho, seeing into one's own nature, self-realization, illumination, awakening, seeing one's original face, epiphany, reaching God-consciousness, or, as Robert Aitken Roshi put it, noticing something important.

It can be a gradual shift in perception spanning decades or a sudden realization as quick as the opening of an eye. It can follow years of diligent meditation / zazen / mindfulness, or it can happen for no apparent reason at all.

Although much sought after, it is not infrequently, I suspect, the elephant in the room. After all, “Whoever knows does not speak; whoever speaks does not know.”

Which means whoever spoke those words (Lao Tsu) obviously didn’t know (?)

Which means the statement might be false. Which means … hmmm … entering a place where words fall apart.

On March 15, 1958 In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, Thomas Merton was suddenly overwhelmed with a realization “like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream.”

Over at Monkey Mind in his post A Bit of What Kensho is and A Bit More of What it Isn’t, James Ford Roshi wrote, “…what we get is a discovery of our ordinariness. And, like for Father Merton, finding our deepest connection.”

Bodhidharma’s answer in the first koan of the Blue Cliff Record  to the emperor’s question, “What is the first principle of the holy teaching?” was, “Vast emptiness, nothing holy.”

The oxymoron ‘profound ordinariness’ might have been used by St. Augustine. (I’m flitting about here, fearful that this piece may descend into rational analysis in a place where rational analysis has no business being.)

His particular usage of oxymoron, found in the prayer to God, is as follows: "(You are) deeply hidden yet most intimately present, ... immutable and yet changing all things, ... always active, always in repose, ... you love without burning, ... you are wrathful and remain tranquil. You will change without any change in your design” (Conf., 1,4,4) …

Augustine uses the oxymoron for glorifying God. The phrase "(You) deeply hidden yet most intimately present" contains contradictory and incompatible words. Yet it is with these contradictory words that he was able to express God. God is absolutely ineffable. Nevertheless, "if that is ineffable which cannot be spoken, then that is not ineffable which can be called ineffable." (Doct.Christ., 1,6,6)

Hikasa Katsushi – Augustine on the Aesthetics of Ambivalence

Speaking about shift in perception, here is an autostereogram (remember them?) The slightest change in view brings alive a vivid three-dimensional image from a bunch of coloured dots.

 

Hint: enlarge the image and experiment gazing at it slightly cross-eyed.

[Spoiler alert: It’s the image of a shark, cut into, not standing out from, the flat surface.]

Perhaps here might be a good place to mention, for those interested but who haven’t read it yet, The Book of Mu – Essential Writings on Zen’s Most Important Koan by James Ford Roshi and Melissa Myozen Blacker – a collection of over 40 wonderful essays, each pointing at the moon.

And finally, another grateful nod to James for introducing me to Peter Mayer’s Holy Now.

The Children Shall Lead

“It's not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world.

It's our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.”

― L.R. Knost Two Thousand Kisses a Day: Gentle Parenting Through the Ages and Stages

A big part of my job is persuading people: judges to grant what I’m asking for, opposing lawyers to be reasonable, clients to get real. It spills over into daily life as I bend the ears of friends, family, colleagues and strangers, trying to sell my particular brand of The Right Way to eat, live and think.

All for a good cause, of course, to end the suffering of all beings, everywhere. Probably a smiley face should go here.

Human evolution. Leaving behind cannibalism, slavery, racism, sexism, homophobia, war, the death penalty, exploiting animals. We can give it a push, or at least, get out of the way. 

It dawned on me that I've spent quite a lot of energy trying to change opinions that were formed back when I used a slide rule. Pushing molasses uphill comes to mind.

I can relate to the inertia, as I suffer from the same opposition to change - clinging vainly to a version of the English language that's crumbling before my eyes, and I feel as helpless as my forebears who watched in dismay as “you” relentlessly replaced “thou” and “thee”.

It further dawned on me that evolution won’t come by changing the tightly held views of old people, but by encouraging the amazing hearts and minds of those who have never seen a slide rule, an eight track tape or a brick phone.

I went looking for statistics about the views of different age groups and found these:

Statistcbrain (2013): 

Age demographics of the the 8.3 million vegetarians/vegans in the USA

42.0% 18-29

40.7% 35-54

17.4% 55+

Pew Research Center (2013):

Americans opposing the death penalty

43% 18-29

38% 30-49

33% 50+

Gallup (2012):

Americans who believe same sex marriage should be valid

73% 18-29

49% 30-49

51% 50-64

39% 65+

Taking the cynical view, it could be argued the statistics mean our liberal ideas become more conservative with age, but I don't buy that.

If we encourage our children and if we seek out and nurture the child in us, I believe the human race will evolve beyond our wildest imaginings.

A Field of Swans and Ducks and Geese

A field of swans and ducks and geese,
A twilight picnic meeting,
Together wade and feed in peace,
No thought of time as fleeting

How precious, life, how hard to know,
Yet time I’m prone to squander,
My home is here and now, although
My mind is prone to wander

Let’s open up our guarded heart,
No matter if it’s breaking
And all we cherish falls apart,
We’re from a dream awaking

The lonely wave, it laughed aloud
Then wept with such emotion,
Cried, "Oh my God, I see it now -
I've always been the ocean!"

Compassion is a burning flame
That sears away our blindness,
Though we may never be the same,
What matters else but kindness?

Zen and the Art of Debauchery

Every summer on Salt Spring Island, the Saturday market brings droves of tourists in their cars and campers to the village of Ganges. Much time is spent circling the blocks hoping someone else will leave the market and vacate their spot. Inevitably, someone came up with an apt bumper sticker: Zen and the Art of Motor Vehicle Parking in Ganges.

Ever since Eugene Herrigel's book, Zen in the Art of Archery, and later, Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a plethora of  "Zen and the Art of ..." books have sprung up, ranging from Zen and the Art of Knitting to ... Zen and the Art of Competitive Eating.

Much has been said about the "Zen" of activity beyond effort. Two of my favourite bloggers wrote about it this month:

In letting go of “trying”, in letting go of any intellectual idea of how archery should be done, these archers are simply totally, wholeheartedly merged with their activity. The years of practice in a very easy way, in a relaxed way, comes through.  The archer, the arrow ... are all one movement and one whole. Subject and object merged. This is what one might call effortless effort.

- Beyond Effort by Judith Ragir at Byakuren's Zen Practice Blog

... Dogen Zenji propounds the concept of ... gujin ... which means “the full exertion of a single thing.” That may sound like yet another form of striving, but it is actually quite the opposite. Far from adding another burden, the practice offers a path toward total rest.

Gujin has been variously translated as “total realization,” “total penetration,” “total manifestation”—and, most often, “total exertion.” The scholar and translator Francis Dojun Cook, an authority on Dogen, explains the concept in this way:

From the angle of the person who experiences the situation, [gujin] means that one identifies with it utterly. Looked at from the standpoint of the situation itself, the situation is totally manifested or exerted without obstruction.

- The Labyrinth of Exertion by Ben Howard at One Time, One Meeting

I suspect we all experience this from time to time. Splitting wood with an axe, no matter how hard I try to hit the centre of a log, I always seem to miss, but often as soon as I stop trying, the axe splits the log exactly in the middle, even cutting the little dot in the centre of the growth rings in half.

Debauchery.  One definition is "seduction from virtue or duty". Also, debauch: "to make disloyal", "to lead away from virtue or excellence" and "to corrupt by intemperance or sensuality".

I realize they are only human, but fresh (to me) news of Zen masters behaving badly always triggers a little letdown.

In the ‘60’s, Philip Kapleau’s The Three Pillars of Zen was the first Zen book that really touched me. Kapleau’s teacher Hakuun Yasutani Roshi, who founded the Sanbo Kyodan school, became one of my Zen heroes. I even wrote him a letter asking for advice (he didn’t reply).

One of the little letdowns was learning that, as most notably published in Brian Daizen Victoria's book Zen at War, both Yasutani Roshi and his teacher, Harada Daiun Sogaku Roshi, held extreme right wing, militaristic, and in the case of Yasutani, anti-Semitic beliefs.

Kubota Ji'un, the 3rd Abbot of the Sanbo Kyodan wrote:

I personally became Haku'un Yasutani Roshi's disciple at the age of 17 and kept receiving his instructions until his death. So I know very well that Yasutani Roshi did foster strongly right-winged and anti-Semitic ideology during as well as after World War II, just as Mr. Victoria points out in his book.

- Apology for What the Founder of the Sanbo-Kyodan, Haku'un Yasutani Roshi, Said and Did During World War II

I find the following quote from Harada Roshi particularly disquieting, perhaps because it takes the form of “Zen and the Art of …”:

Forgetting [the difference between] self and others in every situation, you should always become completely one with your work. [When ordered to] march -- tramp, tramp; [when ordered to] fire -- bang, bang; this is the clearest expression of the highest Bodhi-wisdom, the unity of Zen and war.

- quoted in Daizen Victoria, "Japanese Corporate Zen," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 12.1 (1980:65)

Victoria’s book has not been without criticism:

It is right to uncover actual corruption, and Victoria has done a great service in shedding light on a dark time in our history, but nearly destroys his argument by his questionable methods and exaggerated conclusions. … Let’s keep up the good fight to uncover wrongs, reflect and atone, make things right. But let us do so in a forthright and honest way. One must not manipulate and straighten twisted vines.

- “Zen At War” Author Brian Victoria’s War On Zen by Jundo Cohen at Sweeping Zen

We practice Zen for the benefit of beings. Selflessly seducing a student or skilfully slaughtering another being - on the battlefield, the electric chair or the barnyard is using Zen as a means to an end that doesn’t justify the means. To me, this is Zen and the art of debauchery.

Bodhin Kholhede, dharma heir of Philip Kapleau, has this to say:

Now that we’ve had the book on Yasutani Roshi opened for us, we are presented with a new koan. Like so many koans, it is painfully baffling: How could an enlightened Zen master have spouted such hatred and prejudice? The nub of this koan, I would suggest, is the word enlightened. If we see enlightenment as an all-or-nothing place of arrival that confers a permanent saintliness on us, then we’ll remain stymied by this koan. But in fact there are myriad levels of enlightenment, and all evidence suggests that, short of full enlightenment (and perhaps even with it—who knows?), deeper defilements and habit tendencies remain rooted in the mind.

- Yasutani Roshi: The Hardest Koan Tricycle Magazine, Fall 1999

And finally, thanks to Koun Franz for this kindly reminder:

There is another conversation in all of this, one that I find more troubling: “He wasn’t a real Buddhist, because a Buddhist could never do something like this.” The math behind this is very simple: If a Buddhist could never do this, and if I am a Buddhist, then I am incapable of doing [this]. And if he and I do not share the same capacity for doing good or bad, then he and I are fundamentally separate.

It doesn’t work that way. We may want it to, but it doesn’t. The fact is, there’s nothing that a human being (any human being) cannot do. The difference, if there is one, is that Buddhists might know that. …

I wanted to say there’s a limit and I’ve found it, that here, finally, I can say, “I am not that.” But that’s not the truth. I know. Whether through practice or the constant asking or just advancing age, I know better. ...

The question for us is how—not just, “How could he do it?” but “How could I do it?

- What Are the Depths to Which You’ll Go? at Nyoho Zen

Flee(t)ing Thoughts

As I never seem to tire of mentioning, my attraction to Zen practice is its simplicity, or more precisely, its lack of distracting frills and ornaments, and its directness.

Whether we're off the cushion chopping wood or interviewing a client, or on the cushion following the breath, sitting with a koan, or just sitting, our brains naturally churn out unbidden thoughts. A constant part of practice is dealing with them in order to be fully present.

In Opening the Hand of Thought, Kosho Uchiyama Roshi (successor to Homeless Kodo Sawaki) describes the process like this:

Briefly, our attitude in zazen is aiming at maintaining the posture of zazen with our flesh and bones, and with our mind letting go of thoughts.

What is letting go of thoughts? Well, when we think, we think of something. Thinking of something means grasping that something with thought. However, during zazen we open the hand of thought that is trying to grasp something, and simply refrain from grasping. This is letting go of thoughts.

When a thought of something does actually arise, as long as the thought does not grasp that something, nothing will be formed. For example, even if thought A (“a flower ") occurs, as long as it is not followed by thought B (“is beautiful"), no meaning such as AB (“a flower is beautiful") is formed. … So, even if thought A does occur, as long as the thought does not continue, A occurs prior to the formation of a meaningful sequence. It is not measurable in terms of meaning, and it will disappear as consciousness flows on.

Our encounter with thoughts during practice seems to fall into two categories: after daydreaming and before daydreaming.

The first happens when we have grasped a thought, chased it with others, and find ourselves in a daydream. Here we simply notice that our attention has wandered, let go of the thought, and return to being present. If it’s gentle, effortless and non-judgmental, the process of letting go doesn't itself become a distraction, as it can otherwise trigger its own train of thoughts.

The second happens when we become aware of a thought as it begins to take form, but before it takes hold.

Dealing with these nascent thoughts requires even less effort - just returning the attention to the matter at hand without, literally, giving them a second thought, allowing them to 'disappear as consciousness flows on.'

Of course there are times when we need to pay attention to thoughts as they arise. Making thoughts disappear while trying to write a list of things to buy at the store would be a little, er, off the mark.

The title of this post comes from the realization that opening the hand of thought is a skill that, perhaps because it's so easy, can be used wrongly. I've been catching myself allowing thoughts to disappear not because they distract me from being present, but because they're uncomfortable: generally thoughts that remind me I'm avoiding something. (Hopefully I'm just noticing this more, rather than doing it more.)

Either way, more practice required.

Related Post: Stage Fright

Photo © 2013 Marjon Hollander, with kind permission.

Missing In Action

Stepping from August into September, the question nipping at my heels is, "When is not doing enough, enough?" The lazy summer months floated by, my formal practice went on holiday, this blog crawled under a rock and went to sleep and to some extent, honestly, I feel like I did too.

The summer hasn't been a complete write-off by any stretch. Lots of family time, office time and exercise, and what I think of as my informal practice - i.e. for pretty much everything outside the zendo that doesn't involve sitting on a zafu, aiming to be fully present - continued to unfold at its own pace.

The bodhisattva express, it seems, has infinite stations where one can get on board, but none for getting off and going on a seaside holiday.

The feeling of having been missing in action (I pause to acknowledge having borrowed, nay, stolen the term from blogging friend Lynette Monteiro's Trudging the Wrong Path Diligently) arises when my half-hearted best intentions miss the mark and I drift back into reading a mindless novel. Another twinge of remorse comes from the downside of spending less time on the internet: falling behind in my blog reading, leaving a veritable cornucopia of wonderful works to catch up on.

I could lapse into platitudes here, but since what is really called for is action, I'll just click the 'publish' button and get back to work at failing better.

See you out there.

Childhood's End

It seems like I've been seventeen for an awfully long time - 47 years next month, to be precise. Body sporadically reminds me that, although feeling the benefit of being a herbivore and getting some exercise, it's no longer a teenager. However, I can't honestly say my thinking mind feels any older than it did when I graduated from high school. It’s still curious, prone to wonder, and as my colleagues will attest, annoyingly analytical.

It was years after my teens before I could freely admit to being an adult man. Over time, my depth perception has increased and I can't deny being a bit wiser, but terms like 'grown up' and 'mature' suggest a level of development I still don't feel.

This post languished as a draft for over a year as a title, opening line, picture and a few scattered thoughts. Because the previous post leaned towards ‘nothing to attain’ (hopefully not so far as to suggest that aimless marketplace wandering should be substituted for formal practice), now seemed a good time to bring this one out of mothballs.

Childhood's End is the title of a science fiction novel I read in my teens by the late Sir Arthur C. Clarke about a tipping point in human evolution. It made a lasting impression on me and contributed, I’m sure, to my shamelessly optimistic belief that, despite the horrors of human depravity, war, and the animal holocaust, we are growing up.

We start out preoccupied with ourselves. Possessive, even obsessive, about our toys. Caught up in playground rivalries - "I'm better than you are!" With any luck, as we grow older, we leave some of this behind. Life becomes less about our own personal pleasure, our personal safety, and our status in the eyes of others. What gives us more happiness is nurturing growth and healing hurt, as if our need for the world to be our parent transforms into our becoming a parent to the world.

In the novel, a whole generation of children begins to exhibit breakthroughs in awareness and acquire powers that their fearful parents don’t understand. To shepherd the children through this transformation, a race of benevolent aliens keeps a watchful eye, and for the most part, doesn't interfere with human affairs. One exception is their intolerance of cruelty to animals. At a bullfight, when a Picador stabs the bull with his lance, the entire crowd screams in pain. They quickly got the message.

I think the reason I avoided finishing this post for so long is that it cuts uncomfortably close to the bone. Writing about childish behaviour in others draws on my considerable judgmental skills. Just when I've figured out the specifics of someone else's arrested development, however, I catch a glimpse of myself in that pesky mirror and it all goes out the window.

I feel those pokes of the Picador’s lance as twinges of guilt each time my critical thoughts loop back and point out my own fears and defence mechanisms. The lessons hit the mark, and I’m very grateful for them …  but it doesn't mean I have to like them.

Kindly reminders to stop and, rather than follow my inclination to run away and take refuge in distraction, take refuge in the Three Jewels.

Beckoning to loosen my fierce grip on the 'right' way.

To let each moment be.

Childhood's beginning.

Related posts:

Ah But I Was So Much Older Then

Lifeless or Just Leafless?

Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream

A Snuggle, a Swim and a Hug - Taking Refuge in the Three Jewels 

With Bliss-Bestowing Hands Searching for the Ox

The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures are traditionally considered to represent stages along the path of awakening. The first picture is of a beginner; in the last picture, the beginner has become a master. For present purposes, I'm skipping the steps in between.

The beginner appears to be intent on seeking. The master seems to have found, mastered, and transcended whatever he was looking for, and now, for lack of better words, is blessing everything he encounters.

The boy in the tenth picture looks remarkably like the beginner in the first - perhaps a hint that beginning never ends, or in T.S. Eliot's words, the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

In Original Dwelling Place, Robert Aitken Roshi wrote:

I spend time with inquirers disabusing them about absolutes. When someone who has read a little in Zen Buddhism asks me if I am enlightened, I respond without hesitation that I most certainly am not. When someone asks me how many koans I have passed, I respond that I am still working on my very first koan and that I haven’t passed it yet. This is not false modesty but is true to the very bottom. There is enlightenment beyond enlightenment, passing beyond passing. Each milestone on the path may seem a be-all and end-all experience. Everything falls away. The everyday self disappears. Yet the path continues to open out.

Experience is the moment; the path is endless practice.

The tenth ox-herding picture brings to mind words from another tradition:

… I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. (Revelation 21:6)

The point I seem to be trying to make is that it’s never too early to spread kindness. No need to ‘attain’ something first. Just do it. The marketplace awaits your bliss-bestowing hands.

Oh and the flip side of that is, do we really believe there is something to attain? Or, perish the thought, that we have attained it?

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Lately I've been discovering the music of Libera.

I am the day, soon to be born

I am the light before the morning

I am the night that will be dawn

I am the end and the beginning

I am the Alpha and Omega

The night and day, the first and last

Zen but not Buddhist

Don't worry - I'm not jumping ship, just letting my mind wander.

As time passes, I seem to have been shedding one thing after another - old habits, language, values, beliefs (see, e.g. Prayer Pruning: Goodbye Jesus?) like articles of clothing along the dock on the way to a dive into the lake.

I wrote elsewhere (Buddhist Blasphemy?) that I call myself a Zen Buddhist because the label seems to be the best description of what I seem to be. And then, because I'm a Zen Buddhist, I do Zen things, like put on a black robe and do zazen on a zafu on a zabuton in a zendo, chant the four Bodhisattva Vows and pay attention to the abbot.

Ever with an eye for a simpler way, it seemed logical to wonder about extracting from Buddhism some kind of 'pure' Zen - in words attributed to Bodhidharma:

A special transmission outside the scriptures,
Not founded upon words and letters;
By pointing directly to [one's] mind,
It lets one see into [one's own true] nature and [thus] attain Buddhahood.

(I was tempted to replace the last four words with "..." because of the B word.)

It's not that everything Zen has to be as wordless as the Buddha's holding up a flower evoking a smile from Mahākāśyapa, but I admit to ducking for cover when I encounter language like:

This teaching of causality is not that of universal mutual co-arising and non-temporal causality developed later (as, for example, in the Hua-yen tradition), but the temporal, twelvefold chain of dependent arising as discovered by the Buddha during his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree and classically expressed in the Mahāvagga…. Dhātu-vāda is antithetical to Buddhism, since it is the very teaching that Śākyamuni intended to deny. (Paul L. Swanson "Zen is not Buddhism": Recent Japanese Critiques of Buddha-Nature)

But I'm not convinced that bare bones ‘pure’ Zen as a method of transmission can stand on its own.

The law of entropy says that over time, things naturally dissipate, decay, scatter, become diluted, disorganized, out of focus, forgotten. The principle seems to have wide application: a drop of ink in water, galaxies, civilizations, memories, my desk.

Energy and direction are required to counteract entropy. This opposing force also takes many forms: biological growth and healing, cultivating relationships, repair and cleaning, spiritual practice.

So if Zen is a blooming awareness, how best help the flower unfold and propagate, and at the same time, counteract the natural tendency of awareness to become a fading memory, soon easily confused with a clever facsimile constructed entirely of thoughts?

The Buddhism component, with its priesthood, ordination, teishos, sanzen and dharma transmission, is a ready-made machine for nurturing, refining, and passing on awareness, with the added benefit of quality control to ensure that the end product is the real McCoy.

Granted, the gadget is of very old construction – some parts seem unnecessary and overly ornate, but modernizing it has mostly been rather conservative – I suspect, at least partly, because of the priceless nature of the human raw materials and the onerous responsibility for their transformation. It works, and if it ain’t broke…

Nevertheless, those inclined to be ‘spiritual but not religious’ may be turned away from the Zen by a perceived irrelevance of the Buddhism.

Domyo Burk covers this nicely in her post Zen and Religion at Sweeping Zen:

When someone describes themselves as “spiritual but not religious” they usually mean that they pay attention to aspects of life beyond their immediate and personal physical, emotional and mental concerns – like universal truths, morality, or the existence of God – but they do not identify with an established tradition, set of beliefs, or institution. If we use this popular understanding of religion, we might use the term “Zen practice” to refer to the Zen teachings and practices that address our relationship to ultimate reality, and the term “Zen Buddhism” to refer to the set of traditions, resources and institutions that people have created to support and convey those teachings and practices. Zen Buddhism includes writings, a special vocabulary, history, mythology, rituals, devotional practices, imagery, religious objects, clergy, institutions and – most of all – many groups of people, now and over the course of the last thousand years, consciously practicing Zen Buddhism together.

...

I hope non-religious folks can find a way to practice Zen, because I believe that in its essence Zen is about training to master the art of living a human life. I want people to have access to that training even if they aren’t interested in religion, or if they follow a different religion. I see this training as a wonderful opportunity to take full advantage of having a human life, but even more I see it as a fundamental human responsibility. Should we not work to master the art of our human life as we would work to master a skill, a trade, or another kind of art? Should we not diligently train ourselves throughout our lives toward greater wisdom, compassion and facility with using this tool of a human body-mind?

The value of “many groups of people … consciously practicing Zen Buddhism together” is echoed by James Ford Roshi in his Huffington Post article (well worth reading in its entirety) How to Be Spiritual But Not Religious in a Way That Actually Helps:

There's something really important about people on a spiritual path coming together regularly with others. …

We desperately need others, if we hope to grow spiritually.

The human ego is not a pretty thing to behold in isolation. We need each other. We need our rough edges bumped against, and worn down a little.

And little does this as well as throwing one's self into a spiritual community.

It's easy, and exciting, to envision an evolving Zen Buddhism that can be embraced by a wider and wider sangha without losing its edge. Surely it's happening as we speak.

Calligraphy by Kanjuro Shibata XX "Ensō (円相)" (Wikimedia Commons)

Pulling Strings

We have a saying in the law business: We are deemed to intend the natural and probable consequences of our acts. In other words, defenses like "Sure, I hit the window with a sledge hammer - but I didn't actually expect it to break!" don't cut it.

Sometimes I picture the universe as having absolutely every single point in space-time joined by a string to absolutely every other point. Any movement, anywhere, affects us. Everything we do - and think, which is a form of action - to some extent affects everything else.

Because of the infinite complexity of this interconnectedness, we generally move almost totally blind to the radiating consequences of our actions. Nevertheless, we place great store in feeling in control of our lives - that when we turn the steering wheel to the right, the car will go to the right and not into oncoming traffic.

I noticed that I had been thinking about the string analogy recently when I had an urge to eat something nonvegan.  It goes like this:

Taking a roast chicken from the supermarket shelf pulls a string that goes into the storeroom and magically pulls another roast chicken out onto the shelf to take its place. Each roast chicken in the storeroom is connected by a series of strings to a live chicken. As sure as night follows day, whenever a roast chicken leaves a store in a shopping cart, far away and unheard, a wretched chicken is dragged out of a house of misery into a slaughterhouse, whether we want to think about it or not.

Remembering the string analogy helps me choose actions that don't naturally and probably lead to suffering ... or does it? If every action is the result of the sum total of the influence of every other action, everywhere, do we even have free will?

My inclination is to fall back on "I don't know - does it matter?" and just carry on acting as if I do have free will, one step at a time.

I was taken with Kokyo Henkel's post Karma, Free-Will, and Determinism over at Sweeping Zen:

A bodhisattva is one who is willing to play the game of appearing as a sentient being who is in control of herself and living in accord with other sentient beings, completely willing to receive the effects of karma, even though ultimately the set of conditions we called “me” that did the action is not the same set of conditions called “me” that receives the result. The freedom of the bodhisattva is that by seeing the illusory nature of free will, they are willing to receive whatever effects come.

Suffering exists.

The laws of cause and effect exist.

We can't control them, but we can unreservedly throw ourselves into them.

And act, when we feel a pull ... on our heartstrings.

The Narrow Way - A Review

There are times I feel awed by courageous acts of compassion. This is one of those times. Blogging friend Chris Lemig’s book The Narrow Way comes out next month and I’m honoured to be able to say a few words about it.

As the subtitle suggests, The Narrow Way is about Chris’s coming to terms with realizing he is gay in a time and place where homophobia was the norm. His gut-wrenching descriptions of the fear and self-loathing he experienced and his nightmarish descent into substance abuse and suicidal thoughts are riveting, and surely took great courage to write. How he managed to climb out of such a pit of torment and make his way as a new Buddhist to India and Tibet is a gripping and inspiring story.

Although I’ve kept my own words to a minimum, I hope these passages will whet your appetite for a wonderful book that I had great difficulty putting down.

From time to time, Chris quotes from his journal.  Here is a passage verging on despair.

I worry that everyone who sees me knows I’m spun.

My face turns red and my hands turn cold and purple.

My teeth are falling out and my breath smells a little like death.

It makes me crazy.

I don’t take care of my dog.

It controls me. Sometimes I do it only hours after saying I wouldn't.

I don’t even like it anymore.

It defines me and that’s scary.

His drug use fails to produce the much-needed refuge.

I take a hit and inhale into oblivion, letting my eyes roll back until I forget who I am, who I was, who I might be. I hide, deny, evade and make another attempt at this futile escape. But there is no escape. Even though I have changed my name and moved once a year for the past eighteen years, even though I have changed my story and lied through my teeth, the truth has found me out every time. It tears through my body and mind like a chainsaw, unrelenting and agonizing.

And doesn't make his struggle coming out of the closet any easier.

I couldn't even see that it wasn't desire at all but the essence of the real me, the gay me, just trying to get out. So I took the drugs wildly, hoping they would help me to sound out that name with dry throat and tongue. I would snort whole grams of speed in one great inhale, stay awake and stuttering for days, make my way to the gay clubs and porno stores when I thought I had finally broken through. But even then I could only stand there on the shore of that sea of men and sex while the throbbing music and the desperate moans crashed over me like waves. Sometimes I would hold those men in the middle of the night, there in the dark little booths where I could get down on my knees and with open arms and mouth finally confess. But mostly I would just bite my lip till it bled and run for the door. Three years I did this. Nine hundred blinding sunrises in a row. Then the bottom came up too fast and seeing the imminent future of me, shattered and broken there on the hard, concrete earth, I called home.

And once out, it was far from a cakewalk.

I've been out of the closet for only a month when I find myself pinned down in the back seat of the car. We have just come from the funeral of a friend who died from crack cocaine. Her sister and her son, two people I once called friends, are beating me half to death. We are drunk and angry and I have just said something stupid.

“She had it coming to her,” I heard myself slurring under my breath.

Now I take what’s been coming to me for years and I will never again feel this afraid, this alone, this powerless. Flailing fists smash my face, sending electric shocks of violence to my brain. Fingernails tear at my eyes and I think: “She’s going to scratch my eyes out. She wants me to go blind.” “Faggot, faggot, you fucking faggot!” they scream. Or are they saying, “Fly caged bird, fly”?

I think I will go deaf from the screams that are filled with hate and loud enough to shatter a stone heart. But my heart is not stone; it is flesh and muscle beating two hundred times a minute as I start fighting for my life…

I was completely drawn into the book by Chris’s imagery – whether the sights and smells of a drug hit gone wrong …

It is three years before India and I am not going anywhere. Instead, it is four in the morning and my eyes are wild and bloodshot as I pick through the carpet, searching for tiny pieces of crack cocaine that may have sizzled off the end of my pipe. My roommate sits on the bare floor of her room cooking up a fresh batch on a tarnished, blackened teaspoon but I can’t wait to get another hit. I try to smoke what turns out to be the clipping of a dirty toenail, and it fills my mouth with the taste of burnt skin and rubber.

The temptation to use again, always just around the corner …

Four days later without a drink or a cigarette and the cravings come in powerful waves that threaten to bowl me over. “Just one drag, just one drink and it will all go away,” say the voices of old demons still squatting in a back room in my mind. “Stay quit, stay quit, stay quit,” says another voice, a voice that I am just learning to trust, a voice that I’m beginning to recognize as my own.

I chant the mantra to myself when the bargaining and the drafting of new promises begin and the demons withdraw. Stay quit, stay quit, stay quit.

Or the sights and sounds and strangeness of India.

The bus that will take me there from Delhi is an hour late. Plenty of time to stare, dumfounded and open-mouthed, into the face of India as I wait by the side of the road. I am clutching a sweaty bus ticket while she stares back at me, unblinking and unashamed, with a hundred thousand expressions to fit a hundred thousand moods. She is the young leper girl without a nose in bright blue sari begging for rupees while she dances and twirls to tabla beats. She is the prostitute leading the young man into the abandoned, graffiti covered shack across the street. She is the cars, auto-rickshaws and motorcycles screaming endlessly by. She is the three-legged dog covered in mange darting through the traffic.

This is not the face of India that I had expected or imagined.

Panic and despair as a long and carefully planned attendance at a talk by the Dalai Lama seems to unravel.

Back down Bagshu Road I run, following the black lines of the map that is burned in my mind, all the way to the building marked Security Office. I am on the tips of my toes, humming a little victory tune as I walk through the door. I have made it! Ten thousand miles on this long, hard road. There is no stopping me now!

But then, without any warning, I am stopped, suddenly and surely and dead in my tracks. A giant chalkboard hangs at the far end of the hall and I narrow my eyes in the dark to read and reread the tall letters that spell out in clear and perfect English: THERE ARE NO MORE PASSES FOR HIS HOLINESS’ TEACHINGS.

“There must be some mistake,” I say out loud. I close my eyes, imagine the website that I thought I had checked and double-checked. Passes are only issued on the first day of the teachings, it said.

There is obviously some translation problem at work here, so I scurry from door to door peering into the tiny rooms looking for answers. But no one is home. Then I hear a stirring towards the back. In the very last office sits the only stern Tibetan I have ever seen. He gets up from a rickety wooden chair and looks me up and down. I have lost the ability speak so I wave and sign in unintelligible gesticulations. I try to tell him that I want a pass for the teachings; that I have just gotten off the seventeen-hour bus ride from New Delhi and the fifteen-hour flight from America. I pantomime the past year of preparations and planning and hard work. I explain in sweeping, arcing gestures all the magic and synchronicity that has led me here, to this very place, at this very moment.

He is unmoved.

“Didn’t you read the sign?” is all he says. “Yes,” I manage in a whisper.

In the face of extreme suffering.

I let my backpack slide off of my shoulders and I sit cross-legged on the cold platform next to a pile of filthy rags. But it is not rags at all. Suddenly, it begins to stir and unfold. I leap up, ready to run down the tracks in fear as a human form uncurls itself from underneath a torn t-shirt smeared with dirt and grime. It is a young man, no more than twenty, already broken beyond repair. He is all bones now, sharp at the joints that threaten to tear through the wrinkled brown paper sack that used to be his skin. His wispy beard and wild, black hair are a nest for lice and leaves and bits of trash that have come to rest there.

He struggles to move and each bending of each brittle limb is a creaking agony. I think he might be dying right then and there before my eyes.

…

I am no more than ten feet away. I could take two decisive steps and help him to his feet, take him to God-Knows-Who, to someone, to anyone for help. But I don’t. All the meditations on compassion, the wish to free others from their suffering and pain, are sucked out of me like air into the vacuum of space. Instead, I stare, jaw dropped open, like a dumb, mute statue of stone. It takes long, slow minutes for him to rise to his feet and when he does I think the cool breeze coming from the north will blow his hollow bones and paper skin down the tracks. As the apparition staggers off and disappears around the corner, I wrap the memory of him neatly into an unlabeled box and hide it away on a lonely back shelf in my mind. By the time my train comes four hours later, chugging and steaming around the tracks, I will have already forgotten him.

A simple act of kindness.

This descendent of the Bodhi Tree stretches her long, dangling limbs over me, just like her forbearer did over the Buddha two and a half thousand years ago. Her leaves shimmer and twist and dance in the warm breeze. Sometimes a score or more of them break loose from her branches and spiral down to the earth. Pilgrims swarm, giddily snatching them up before I can even think about rising. A young Tibetan monk, ten years old, picks one up that has landed right in front of my feet. He has an armful of them already and he cradles them to his chest like precious jewels. He is about to return to the stream but when he sees me looking on longingly, he turns and with a happy smile and bright eyes drops every last one of them into my lap.

At last.

His Holiness is still smiling and offering his blessings to the crowd as the car pulls away. Our eyes meet for a split second. It is not the perfunctory eye contact of politicians and celebrities but a genuine reaching out. For that brief moment I know he is looking just at me, taking the time to really see me. He smiles, then I smile back. I melt and dissolve right there before his eyes until I am completely content and for the first time in my life I am certain that I have come the right way.

Friendship and a call to action.

Monks and nuns and pilgrims encircle us as we say our goodbyes. Finally, I let go of Sonu’s hand and begin to walk away. I turn to wave one last time but he has already disappeared. I have missed the point entirely. Yes, it is good to meditate, to prostrate, to pray. But what good is this if it doesn’t help those in need?

A deep bow of gratitude, Chris. You made me laugh and cry. Thank you for your kindness and courage to tell your story. I hope that many who find themselves overwhelmed by despair, standing where you have been, will know that they are not alone and that there is a way out, even though at times it seems very narrow indeed.

Let me close with your quote of Joseph Campbell:

Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.