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....

Musing over the Rainbow

As the loyal companion of two rescued springer spaniels (see The Rescue of Dallas and Austin), I joined the English Springer Spaniel Lovers Facebook group.

Springers are 99% heart.  Dallas is about as smart as a bag of hammers, but I've never known a dog with more heart.

As you might expect, members of the group tend to post from the heart too. Most of the stories are heartwarming accounts of devotion and loyalty and just plain cuteness.

But as you might also expect, there are heartbreaking stories of the brown and white faithful companions arriving at the end of their all too short lives. This, I learned, is called going to the Rainbow Bridge.

Lately, several Pride parades got me thinking about the rainbow symbol.

The oldest is probably as the symbol of hope for the future.

Noah said it was God's way of saying that He was done with His ethnic cleansing rampage.

Personally, I wouldn't take much comfort in that, coming from a being who had just massacred 99.99% of the women and men on earth and their children. Not to mention what must be the worst example of collateral damage ever - especially coming from an omniscient omnipotent being - killing all but two members of every innocent animal species on the planet.

Oops - ranting. Perhaps another time...

The rainbow symbol that gives me the most hope is as the celebration of diversity.

You know how some people just can't seem to tell you about someone else without being compelled to also mention the person's race, religion, sexual orientation and body morphology?  I remember getting particularly fed up with racial stereotyping one day and saying, "Won't it be nice when all the races have completely interbred and we all look the same?"

After a little reflection, however, I realized that what would be much nicer will be to live in a world where our hearts have opened and prejudice no longer abides, where, with innocent, affectionate curiosity, we can approach strangers and ask them about their racial origins and no offence will be intended and none will be taken.

Here's Eva Cassidy. Sadly, cancer took her to the Rainbow Bridge early, but the songs she left behind have gladdened many hearts.



Photo credit: Captain76 by CreativeCommons.

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.

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?

-------------------------------------------------------------------

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

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 Bodhisattva Express

The Bodhisattva's way is called "the single-minded way," or "one railway track thousands of miles long." The railway track is always the same. If it were to become wider or narrower, it would be disastrous. Wherever you go, the railway track is always the same. That is the Bodhisattva's way. So even if the sun were to rise from the west, the Bodhisattva has only one way. His way is in each moment to express his nature and his sincerity.

We say railway track, but actually there is no such thing. Sincerity itself is the railway track. The sights we see from the train will change, but we are always running on the same track. And there is no beginning or end to the track: beginningless and endless track. There is no starting point nor goal, nothing to attain. Just to run on the track is our way. This is the nature of our Zen practice.

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

To my simple-minded way of thinking, there is a lofty view and a lowly view of what a Bodhisattva is. One is a highly evolved being so far up the awareness food chain as to barely have physical existence, who, out of great compassion, foregoes buddhahood to come to the aid of all beings.

The other is anyone with a sincere desire to end the suffering of others.

I can relate to the lowly one, of course, but the other, multiple arms and all, is so beyond my event horizon that my third eye glazes over. True, given our amazing interconnected universe of infinite dimensions, we can probably say the two versions are one and the same, but really, I don't think I need to know that just now.

Pema Chödrön's book had been tirelessly beckoning to me from the bookshelf. Despite its title (or probably, because of it) I studiously ignored No Time to Lose for as long as I could. After struggling with it for over a year, I finally gave in. The masterpiece is her companion to The Way of the Bodhisattva (Bodhicharyāvatāra), by the 8th century Buddhist monk Shantideva. She calls it the essential guidebook for fledgling bodhisattvas longing to alleviate suffering.

Although I quote from it quite a bit, this post is not a review of her wonderful book. These are just some thoughts about the subject closest to my heart: the spread of kindness by ordinary people. The awakening of the bodhi heart of compassion. The flowering of bodhichitta.

These are Pema's words:

The Sanskrit term bodhichitta is often translated as "awakened heart" and refers to an intense desire to alleviate suffering.  On the relative level, bodhichitta expresses itself as longing.  Specifically, it is the heartfelt yearning to free oneself from the pain of ignorance and habitual patterns in order to help others do the same.  This longing to alleviate suffering of others is the main point.  We start close to home with the wish to help those we know and love, but the underlying inspiration is global and all encompassing.  Bodhichitta is a sort of "mission impossible":  the desire to end the suffering of all beings, including those we'll never meet, as well as those we loathe.

On the absolute level, bodhichitta is nondual wisdom, the vast, unbiased essence of mind. Most importantly, this is your mind - yours and mine. It may seem distant but it isn't. In fact, Shantideva composed this text to remind himself that he could contact his wisdom mind and help it to flourish.

When I first read Suzuki Roshi's comparison of the bodhisattva path to a railway track, it struck a chord. Although compassionate action takes myriad forms, adapting and reaching out to suffering wherever it calls from, the resolve to do it is straight as an arrow.

As we grow in our practice, its fruits - wisdom and compassion - come to our aid: wisdom guiding our actions to be more skilful, and compassion giving us the courage to act more for others and less for ourselves.

But "sincerity itself is the railway track." From the very first moment we decide to take this path, there is really only one answer to our question, "what should I do next?" The answer is, "follow your heart!"

Here is some guidance from a champion of compassion:

So we can ask: What is compassion comprised of? And there are various facets. ... But first, compassion is comprised of that capacity to see clearly into the nature of suffering. It is that ability to really stand strong and to recognize also that I’m not separate from this suffering. But that is not enough, because compassion, which activates the motor cortex, means that we aspire, we actually aspire to transform suffering. And if we’re so blessed, we engage in activities that transform suffering. But compassion has another component, and that component is really essential. That component is that we cannot be attached to outcome.

Joan Halifax Roshi TED Talk

Compassion and the True Meaning of Empathy

To start each day on the right track, Pema Chödrön recites these verses from the Bodhicharyāvatāra every morning before getting out of bed:

Just as all the buddhas of the past

Embraced the awakened attitude of mind,

And in the precepts of the bodhisattvas

Step by step abode and trained,

Just so, and for the benefit of beings,

I will also have this attitude of mind,

And in those precepts, step by step,

I will abide and train myself.

Let's give Pema the last word:

Personally, I am indebted to Shantideva for his determination to get this message across: people like you and me can transform our lives by awakening the longing of bodhichitta. And I am deeply grateful to him for expressing, unrelentingly, that it is urgent, very urgent, that we do so.  We have no time to lose. When I look at the state of the world today, I know his message could not possibly be more timely.

And now as long as space endures,

As long as there are beings to be found,

May I continue likewise to remain

To drive away the sorrows of the world.

The Way of the Bodhisattva, v. 10.55

Amen.

Related posts:

The Call

Do Bodhisattvas Go To Heaven?

Skilful Action and Collateral Damage

Acts of Kindness: Does Size Matter?

An Ancient Tree Blooms: The Awakening of Compassion

The Oak Tree in the Garden

The Zen Cure, an Alternative to the Death Penalty and a Case for Dharma Lineage

Getting strapped into "Old Sparky"

It seemed like a bright idea at the time, but I'm having doubts that this argument can withstand scrutiny. If it turns out to be exploring a dead end, perhaps others can see a way through. Anyway, here it is.

The death penalty is wrong for so many reasons and should be abolished. Zen practice can (suddenly and/or gradually) result in a fresh view of the world, the unfolding of wisdom and compassion, and a commitment to the Bodhisattva path. Inmates on death row should have the option of intensive Zen training with a qualified teacher. Their progress could be verified by masters with recognized dharma transmission and by experienced psychiatrists. The ultimate goal is their return to society.

The penal system deters crime, rehabilitates offenders and protects the public. At least that's the theory.

The death penalty doesn't deter crime. States in the USA without the death penalty have consistently lower murder rates. In the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, A recent study concluded:

The findings demonstrate an overwhelming consensus among these criminologists that the empirical research conducted on the deterrence question strongly supports the conclusion that the death penalty does not add deterrent effects to those already achieved by long imprisonment.

And of course the death penalty doesn't rehabilitate offenders - at least, not in this lifetime.

The death penalty may protect the public, but at great cost. The Innocence Project reports that, despite apparently compelling evidence of guilt at trial, 300 inmates on death row have been exonerated based on DNA [as at September 29, 2012]. One wonders how many of the 78 people executed in the USA in 2011 and the thousands awaiting execution (3,189 as at January 1, 2012) may be innocent.

Another purpose of the penal system is retribution. Killing a murderer is supposed to make society in general, and the family of the victim in particular, feel better. Personally, the killing of Troy Davis, Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden all just made me feel sick.

Religious beliefs don't seem to make taking a stand on capital punishment any easier. If you believe every word of the Bible, then you will also support the death penalty for Adultery - Men and Women (Leviticus 20:10), Blasphemy (Leviticus 24:16), Breaking the Sabbath (Exodus 31:14-15), Being a Disobedient Child (Exodus 21:15 and Leviticus 20:9), Homosexuality - Men Only (Leviticus 20:13), and Not Being a Virgin on Your Wedding Night - Women Only (Deuteronomy 22:20-21), whereas Jesus is said to have said "turn the other cheek" and "if you did it to the least of these, you did it to me." Some Christian denominations that do not oppose capital punishment, like the Roman Catholic Church and Southern Baptists, still decry its use for vengeance. Many others outright oppose it.

You would think that Buddhists would be on side, but there is even disagreement about whether Buddhism forbids the death penalty. In general, Buddhist groups in secular countries such as Japan, Korea, and Taiwan tend to take an anti-death penalty stance, while in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan, where Buddhism has strong political influence, the opposite is true. Just as the First Precept against killing other beings seems to be circumventable to permit eating animals because they taste good, it has been gotten around, it seems, to sanctify killing people for the greater good, whatever that means.

So the choice has to be a personal one. I hope you will forgive my biased phrasing of the question: "Is the priceless gift of a human nervous system and consciousness, through which we can awaken to our interdependent, compassionate nondual nature, and in a sense, through which the universe can realize its own existence, something we have a right to take away from another human being just because she or he has done it to someone else?"

Can a murderer be cured? I think the answer is 'yes', at least sometimes.

In his Message Supporting a Moratorium on the Death Penalty, His Holiness the Dalai Lama said:

Before advocating execution we should consider whether criminals are intrinsically negative and harmful people or whether they will remain perpetually in the same state of mind in which they committed their crime or not. The answer, I believe, is definitely not. However horrible the act they have committed, I believe that everyone has the potential to improve and correct themselves.

Is Zen training a way to do it? Again, I think the answer is a qualified 'yes'. Even though the justice system is supposed to weed out those who are not guilty by reason of insanity, there will be those on death row who are deeply disturbed - either originally or as a result of "death row syndrome." Can they be reached by a skilled psychotherapist or a wily Zen master? There is only one way to find out.

Ultimately, how can apparently cured murderers be let loose on the streets? Many, I suspect, are, or have learned how to be, skillful con artists, capable of faking spiritual transformation and psychological healing. That's where even more skill is required to detect the fakers. For psychological issues, it probably means highly qualified psychiatrists. For Zen issues, the obvious choices are masters who have received full dharma transmission, i.e. those who have been through the process of "it takes one to know one".

This is only a brief and I’m sure extremely naive sketch of a concept, not the blueprint for a solution. Many, many practical challenges await. In fact, it sounds more like the description of how an advanced civilization might treat its criminals in a science fiction novel, set in the distant future or a distant galaxy, rather than West Livingston, Texas.

But then who ever thought we would walk on the moon?

On the subject of how we relate to 'evil' people, Meredith Garmon has written some great posts over at Lake Chalice, including Primary Sociopaths and Secondary Sociopaths, Answer Evil with Justice and Community and The Wound that Cuts Through Every Human Heart.

May I also suggest exploring the Prison Dharma Network website if you haven’t already?

Photo: An African-American prisoner is prepared for execution in "Old Sparky," Sing-Sing Prison's infamous electric chair. Photograph taken circa 1900 by William M. Van der Weyde. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Look! A Mayfly!

Look! A mayfly!

Tears began, but then my heart

Sang a little song

The mayfly is a member of the Ephemeroptera, from the Greek meaning 'lasting only a day'. After a year as a nymph, it crawls out of the water, moults, spreads its wings, takes to the sky, finds a mate, lays its eggs, and dies, all in a day.

A cascade of emotions took me by surprise.

Melancholy and a sense of futility surfaced first. Compared to the rest of its life, the tiny creature's last day is like a flash of lightning. So much heroic activity in such a short time, and for what? So that more mayflies can grub around in a stream for a year to spend a frantic day in the sun, provided they don't get eaten by the fish or the birds first? Perhaps even so that people can contemplate them, get all teary-eyed and write poetry that other people who may not have seen a mayfly can read and get all teary-eyed too.

Melancholy becomes wonder. The critter's last day really isn't so much frantic as it is perfect. After a slow climb out of the water, it waits in the sun until it's ready to moult. It climbs out of its old skin and waits again until its wings dry in shape. Then at just the right time with just the right effort, flapping them, the former bottom dweller does the unimaginable. (I don't imagine that mayflies imagine, but who knows what goes on in their little heads.) Its flight is an invitation to jump for joy.

Then the adult stuff - courtship, wild mayfly sex, laying eggs. Since baby nymphs don't need looking after, the parents do the right thing and give themselves completely for the benefit of all beings in the vicinity that could use some nourishment.

I recognize I'm projecting here, or maybe squinting at my reflection. The sadness, wonder and joy I feel contemplating that brief life, are the sadness, wonder and joy of my life.

And the cascading emotions aren't quite over.

I feel an uneasy chill that I really don't want to deal with, knowing exactly what it is. The mayfly's life is brief, but not a moment is wasted. My life is not so brief, and about those wasted moments, let's just say I seem to be studiously ignoring what Zen Master Daito Kokushi said in 1337:

Time flies like an arrow, so do not waste energy on trivial matters.

Be attentive. Be attentive!

Guilty as charged.

So many lessons packed into a tiny mayfly.

So many lessons in everything, if we just pay attention.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is one of my favourite pieces of music that breaks my heart – the theme from Schindler’s List, composed by John Williams and played by Itzhak Perlman. Although the movie is about the Holocaust, the music makes me think of the suffering of the animals for whom the Holocaust has never ended.

Mayfly photo credit: Richard Bartz via Wikimedia Commons.

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

The early Buddhists seemed to love making lists - the Four Noble Truths, the Ten Perfections, the 108 Cravings (comprised of six groups including the 18 Cravings Through the Sense of the Nose for Sensual Pleasures Associated with a View of Eternalism or Nihilism, Internally or Externally, of the Past, Present, or Future). Out of curiosity, I had a look at the 38 Blessings. It turns out the first one is Not Associating with Fools. Who knew?

I think because I’m a bit of a minimalist (read: simpleton), lists enumerating the Virtues, the Hindrances, the Dwellings of the Noble Ones and the Unwholesome Actions just don’t ring my bell. I guess that’s why I’m attracted to the simplicity of Zen - even the name only has three letters.

There is one little list, however, that I have grown very fond of: the Three Jewels - the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, a.k.a. the Three Treasures.

Many folks with great scholarship and great insight have already written about the Three Jewels. This little offering is just a freehand sketch of what they mean to me. I know that as soon as I open my mouth, I fall into error, creating artificial separations, but here goes.

First off, the Three Jewels are not separate 'things' - more like one thing seen from three different directions. For the same reason, our take on them will be different, each from our own vantage point.

Buddha - not just the chap who sat under a tree and noticed something important. Buddha nature may be a better term. Vast emptiness. All-inclusive. Capable of becoming anything. Capable of awakening.

Dharma - the teachings of the Buddha and more. The laws of cause and effect. Change. Unfolding. Awakening. Relieving suffering.

Sangha - for sure everyone who follows the teachings of the Buddha - but also every other being of every kind, everywhere.

Taking refuge in the Three Treasures is a formal Buddhist ceremony. It is also a personal act we perform with our whole being - not just our thoughts and words - but our whole lives: a lifelong, intimate love affair.

We take refuge in the Buddha whenever we sit down, let go of our thoughts (including the thought of taking refuge) and simply pay attention. A little habit has crept up on me: last thing at night, if I snuggle up with the universe, for want of a better term, my iron grip on my little sense of self seems to loosen and I'm asleep in a few seconds.

My mental picture of taking refuge in the Dharma is going for a joyful swim in a river, doing a playful dance with the currents of cause and effect. It's also expressed in our sincere efforts to do the right thing, to be a manifestation of wisdom and compassion.

Taking refuge in the Sangha. Group hug. How wide can we spread our arms? We support and nourish and heal and cherish. And we are supported and nourished and healed and cherished. How cool is that?

Photo credit: Tambako the Jaguar via Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic

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I apologize to anyone who got a malware warning from visiting this site, especially if your own blog started setting off alarm bells for linking to it. I hope I didn’t cause you too much grief. The problem seems to have been a link on my blogroll and a spam comment that I hadn’t deleted. Both are fixed now and thankfully, Google was very prompt to reassess the site and give it a clean bill of health. Please feel free to contact me at ashton at shaw dot ca. A useful resource for checking site safety is http://sucuri.net.

Lifeless or Just Leafless?

Slogging through a stretch of writer's block, it seems I'm bogged down in a quagmire of mental molasses, vainly hoping that monkey mind will pull me out.

Like that will ever happen.

Standing in the morass, weighed down by a bagful of ideas, it still seems inanely logical that if I think hard enough, I'll come up with the perfect post and be able to play the Get Out Of Bog Free card. If I could only dream up a profound subject and add just the right amount of righteous self-deprecation and a dash of humour, surely I could transform what would otherwise be drivel into a blogosphere classic.

Makes me think of the guy who said that in retirement he was going to take up chemistry and develop a process for converting expensive single malt whiskey into urine...

As my harshest critic, let me assure you that I have no intention of doing any such thing. At least, not on purpose. I'm going to patiently wait until, like a sculptor gazing at a block of stone, I see my next post beckoning to be liberated.

But while I'm waiting, there is one thing I just wanted to mention.

As the husband of a propagator of rescue plants, I'm no stranger to the angst of deciding whether a wretched creature that has lost all its leaves is going to make it or not.

More often than not (especially with my wife's touch) after exactly the right amount of time, leaf buds appear. By their own nature and in their own time, plants bud, wounds heal, broken hearts mend and writer's block dissolves.

Oh and just one other thing. When I lapse into judgmental mode, I often use the opening bud analogy to excuse all sorts of perceived deficiencies in others - you know, evolutionary felonies like promoting the death penalty and slavery, and all manner of misdemeanours ranging from smoking and needing to display wealth to being lazy in practice and judging others.

It's not that the analogy doesn't have merit - undeniably there are degrees of awareness, maturity and development. The image of a bud emphasizes the potential for growth. It puts an unspoken "yet" at the end of sentences like "S/He doesn't realize the value of self-forgiveness."

My problem is forgetting that I'm looking at a mirror. Your tightly closed bud is my tightly closed bud. After all, we are the same tree, aren't we? We will flower when the time is right.

Break open a cherry tree and there are no flowers,
But the spring breeze brings forth myriad blossoms.

- Ikkyu Sojun

Unification Anxiety and Nonduality Terrors

Shiva the Destroyer, one hand in 'fear not' mudra

You're losing your grip on reality. Your identity is in doubt, slipping through your fingers like sand. You compulsively grasp at anything within reach as you spiral into dreams from which you may not awaken, in which your separate existence is also a dream. You have a strong feeling that your secret is about to be exposed, but you don't know what your secret is.

Is this the beginning of a descent into madness or dementia? It could be, but you know what it really is.

A monstrous truth lurks just below the surface. When you drop your guard and doze off, you awaken with a jolt, terrified. You shout, "I do exist, I do exist! I think, therefore I am! The more I think, the more I am, so I shall think and think and think!"

To escape the growing feeling of dread, you overshop, overeat, overspeak, overact over anything that will bolster your crumbling sense of being a separate and distinct entity unconnected to anything else. You seek respite in the distraction of adventure novels and science fiction movies. But even there, images and words remind you and frighten you.

"I am Locutus of Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile."

Submerged, you look up and see the surface of the water from below. On the other side is yourself, enjoying the warmth of a sunny day, smiling in the blossoming awareness of interdependence. Below, your painstakingly constructed personal identity fabricated over a lifetime, begins to come to terms with its illusory and temporary nature like a wave on the ocean.

As we unfold, may we be considerate of the part of us which literally fears for its life, and be understanding of its desperate and sometimes destructive attempts to cling to a separate identity.

May we practice and be kind.

May we take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the beloved Sangha.

What? What?

I just figured out why, despite his outrageously politically incorrect opinions, I'm so fond of Archie Bunker. He had a kind heart, and he was absolutely genuine.

Other than his own, no nationality, ethnic group (including hippies), race, religion, sexual orientation or social class was spared. Sometimes he would lambaste several at once, as when he called England a "fag country" because of the upper class accents. Coming from anyone else, the bigoted things he said would be offensive in the extreme. Coming from him, somehow they weren't.

You don't scold an infant for grabbing and breaking your necklace. It's what they do, with no thought of causing harm. Tell Archie Bunker he's a bigot and he won't have a clue what you're talking about.

Some years ago, I went to a restaurant with a charming elderly gentleman and his grown up daughters. I knew that the lady serving us was in fact the new owner-manager and told him so. He looked up at her with a big smile and said, after thinking How could a mere woman own a restaurant?, "Good for you!" When we hung our heads in embarrassment, some with our hands to our foreheads, like Archie, he said, "What? What?"

Over the Christmas season, I found myself quick to criticize (in my head) kindly people at dinner parties, talking about peace and goodwill while gnawing on body parts of murdered animals. Sorry - I'm starting to rant...

I think another reason I like Archie's well-meaning cluelessness is that I know I'm looking in the mirror. It feels like I'm, for the most part, genuine and kind-hearted. But an oblivious person by definition doesn't realize s/he is oblivious. Since I'm not aware of everything, I must be oblivious too.

Something to work on.

Oh dear - I feel a joke coming on.

A blind man walks into a bar, and says loudly, "Hey do you guys wanna hear a blonde joke?" The bartender says, "Sir, I realize you are blind, so I am making an allowance here, but I am female, and a blonde.  Also, the two ladies beside you are professional wrestlers, and they are blondes.  And the two ladies behind you are Hell's Angels, and they are blondes. Are you sure you still want to tell that blonde joke?" The blind man said, "Nah, I don't want to have to explain it five times."

Homecoming

Photo courtesy of Marjon Hollander

No matter how far you have gone down the wrong road, turn back!

~ Turkish proverb

Twice in the past week, dharma friends have told me they are making changes in their lives partly because of reading this blog. The first time it happened, I was humbled; the second time was like being hit by a sandbag. Perhaps I was overreacting, but I got choked up and mildly terrified at the same time.

The idea of returning home as an aspect of practice had been percolating on the back burner for a while.  Last week just pushed it to the front.

I think of it as coming back to a path or a state from which we have strayed. Not that straying is necessarily bad - we are the sum total of our strayings, and a little wiser for each one.

Returning home can range between a minor course correction, as in mindfulness practice or zazen when we return to the the present from a daydream, and a 180 degree life-changing about face.

The variations are endless. Here are a few that occurred to me, in no particular order:

• walking past someone in distress, then going back to help
• saying "I'm sorry"
• letting go of a grudge
• forgiving a debt
• doing or saying something kind that you have been putting off, no matter how belated it is
• returning something you stole
• forgiving yourself, no matter what you did
• quitting smoking
• allowing yourself to cry
• deciding to eat a healthy or ethical diet
• cuddling after a fight
• coming out
• deciding to watch TV, then changing your mind and going for a walk
• picking up litter you dropped
• going into rehab or an AA meeting
• sitting down to meditate after deciding to go to bed
• asking for help when you don't want to

Each time, our two old friends, the fruits of practice: wisdom and compassion, seem to play a part. Wisdom to realize we have strayed, and compassion to motivate us with the courage to make the change.

The distance we go down wrong roads varies. There is a saying in recovery circles that some people realize they are riding on a garbage truck, figure out where it's going, and jump off, while others ride it all the way to the end. I suspect that as our practices progress, the distances we tend to stray before returning will become shorter, and more and more, we will see a road leading the wrong way, and just pass it up.

I'm avoiding Zen questions like "are we not home already?" or venturing into places where words don't belong, but I do have a question:

So long as one sentient being is suffering, can we ever truly be home?

A Cautious Homage to Words

"A woman without her man is nothing."

Demeaning ... but wait ........ the punctuation is missing.

"A woman: without her, man is nothing."

Words have great power to uplift or to crush.

I love what you do!
I hate what you do!

Small change, big difference.

Used by some, words can be instruments of healing, teaching and nurture; wielded by others, they can be weapons of war and instruments of destruction.

Realist landscape paintings use many brushstrokes to convey a detailed scene.

Sumi-e paintings use only a few strokes to capture their object.

In the same way, a verbal description can be highly detailed, or, like haiku, stark but capturing the essence of a moment.

Although enormously powerful, words have enormous limitations. In the same way that a flat picture can only suggest a three dimensional scene, words can only suggest the objects they describe.

To make me imagine a full moon, you only have to say, "full moon" ... unless I have never seen one.  Then you will have to use more words to describe it, and even then, the image created in my imagination may be very different from the one you are trying to convey.

But the crux is that words are not the object.  They are only a finger pointing at the moon.  I tend to think that the closer you get to 'the moon', the more you run into contradictions and paradox because, in the end, words fail.

This is the dangerous realm of koans and word games. I could say that the finger is not the moon, and you could say that the finger and the moon are one. I could say we are both correct, and you could say that neither of us is correct. We are at the place were every opposite is true ... and false.

Does this mean we can't use words to describe what is beyond description, to convey what is outside words and scriptures? In the Heart Sutra, we recite, "Form is none other than emptiness. Emptiness is none other than form." So, yes, we can. But I would add, with extreme caution. To pursue this subject any further is way above my pay grade.

Because words are both powerful and severely limited, they are dangerous. In the hands of a Zen master with the wisdom to see the state of a student's realization, a few skilful words spoken at the right moment may help the student's awakening to unfold. In unskilful hands, the same words could lead the student far astray.

Which is to say, we who are not Zen masters ought to steer well away from this danger zone - especially if we are seen as any kind of font of wisdom. In our eagerness to be compassionate (how wonderful!) may we remember to treat words with respect and use them wisely.

After all, actions speak louder than words.

Skilful Action and Collateral Damage

On a narrow rocky ledge, a beautiful caterpillar is basking in the sun. I see it, and nevertheless crush it with my foot. A shocking act, except that a few feet above, a little boy has crawled under a guard rail and slipped. He has grasped a tree root, but his grip is failing. The only way to reach him is to step on the narrow ledge, exactly where the caterpillar sits. Perhaps if I were a skilful mountaineer, I could have saved the boy without stepping on the caterpillar.

I don’t know the official definition, but I understand ‘skilful action’, in the Buddhist sense, to mean an action that is wise, compassionate and effective, that causes the least harm.

Our skilfulness is acquired over years of practice. Our imperfectly wise and compassionate actions will inevitably cause some collateral damage.

Our perpetual choice is whether to act now out of compassion, or refrain from acting, to avoid causing collateral damage. Perhaps we should wait until we have developed greater skill. We could stew over that question forever.

Surely each choice must be met as it arises, and once made, bravely and directly carried out. If we choose to step on a caterpillar to save a boy, we must do it, and live with the consequences.

This post came out of nagging recriminations over my last post on speciesism. I felt I had been a bull with a mission loose in a china shop, not sure what I had stepped on but pretty sure I must have broken a few things. Old self-doubt crept back wondering if it was worth it.

The skill we develop in our practice is not just skill in our actions, but also skill in making choices. As our wisdom grows, our choices become wiser. As our compassion grows, our actions become braver.

May we accept being where we are, our inevitable mistakes, and be diligent in our practice!

AP Photo/Fraidoon Pooyaa

Stage Fright

My cowardice is in vain

There is nowhere

To hide

Lately, I’ve been noticing the interplay of three characters on my mental stage.

Actor number one is my intellect, recently mused about in Mental Fractals.

Having avoided taking psychology at university (it wasn’t “real” science), I’m not hampered by knowing what to call the other two.  Looking them up in Wikipedia would spoil the fun.

The intellect lives in the brain and generally talks too much.  The other two can be hard to tell apart, as they both live in the viscera, emanating uneasy gut feelings.

One of them warns me that I'm about to do something that is likely to hurt me or someone else, as when my hand is about to pocket the change the cashier accidentally gave me too much of.

The other one tells me I don’t want to do something, like approaching a vaguely familiar stranger and asking if we used to be acquainted.

The same unease accompanies leaving a comfort zone, thinking outside the box, taking a risk, being vulnerable, going out on a limb, breaking a habit, facing an addiction, relinquishing a crutch, defying a superstition, embracing the unknown.

I got to study these two up close when I wrote When I Fell.  I felt a strong urge to write it, but I sure didn't want to.

The first gut feeling seems to be an impulse to act compassionately, follow the precepts, be skillful, “do the right thing”.  The other one is, well, fear.  To make things interesting, the intellect chimes in and explains why the first one should be ignored and the second one followed.

I don’t have much to say about the first - it seems to give pretty straightforward signals.  The real problem is when the second one masquerades as the first or drowns it out.  If I'm about to cross a high and very unsafe platform, both 'instincts' will urge me not to do it, but only the second one will urge me to stay back no matter how safe the platform is.  Going ahead despite our fear is called courage.  We have other words for going ahead against our better judgment.

A little healthy fear can be an antidote for complacency.  They say if you ever stop getting a few butterflies in your stomach before giving a speech or performing, watch out – mistakes are sure to follow.

Intuition or inhibition?  Probably by paying attention to the sensations as they occur, I’ll get to know them better and be a little braver.

To paraphrase a native story, there are two dogs inside me that fight: one leads me forward, the other holds me back.  Which one wins?  The one I feed.

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[Note from 2011]:

Here's a plug for some upcoming blogging on May 1 [Note - this has been changed to May 8].  Nate DeMontigny over at Precious Metal has organized Article Swap 2K11 and paired up volunteers to write guest blog posts.  TMC from Return to Rural will be posting here, and I'll be writing a post for Danny Fisher's blog at Rev. Danny Fisher. Cause for a few butterflies...