The Demon Whisperers

Saint Anthony of Egypt lived in the second half of the third century. At 34, he gave away his belongings and became a Christian ascetic. He spent the next 13 years in Wadi El Natrun, a harsh alkali desert. Although he actually sought out martyrdom, he ended up living to be 105.

His teachings were recorded in Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Here is one of them:

Abbot Pastor said: If a man has done wrong and does not deny it, but says: I did wrong, do not rebuke him, because you will break the resolution of his soul. And if you tell him: Do not be sad, brother, but watch it in the future, you stir him up to change his life.

Here's another:

Abba Theophilus, the archbishop, came to Scetis one day. The brethren who were assembled said to Abba Pambo, 'Say something to the Archbishop, so that he may be edified.' The old man said to them, 'If he is not edified by my silence, he will not be edified by my speech.'

This last one is a little reminiscent of Case 1 from the Blue Cliff Record, in which Emperor Wu of Liang asked the great master Bodhidharma, "What is the first principle of the holy teaching?" Bodhidharma said, "Vast emptiness, nothing holy." The Emperor asked, "Who stands before me?" Bodhidharma said, "I don't know."

Enter the demons. (I was tempted to caption the painting - by Michelangelo when he was only 12 or 13 - "Just Another Day At the Office"...)

The Torment of Saint Anthony (Michelangelo, c. 1488)

The story is that Saint Anthony was besieged by demons in the form of evil thoughts, boredom, laziness and phantoms of women and wild beasts. On one occasion, when beset by a group of demons apparently about to attack him, he laughed at them and pointed out that if they were truly powerful, it should only take one to fight him, whereupon they left him alone. For awhile.

John Nash, who won the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics (and whose story is told in the 2001 movie, A Beautiful Mind) suffered from schizophrenia for most of his adult life. His demons were hallucinations. Ultimately, he had to choose between taking anti-psychotic drugs and suffering their mind-numbing side effects, or living with his disease. He chose the latter, and is shown in the movie in his later years as a university professor, walking among people on campus, knowing that most of them are real, but recognizing and not interacting with those who are not.

This scene made a lasting impression on me, because it brought home the fact that no matter how skillful I may eventually become in my practice, I should be prepared to live alongside my demons for the foreseeable future.  To name a couple, my tendency to procrastinate and avoid (which I touched on in When I Fell) have dogged me for a very long time. I've come to recognize that they both arise out of fear that bubbles up when I forget my connection with everything, which is to say, 99.9% of the time.

Pretending we don't have demons is silly. But I do it all the time. I know as I continue to practice (when I don't put it off...), I get braver, and on rare occasions, downright bold! But the demons are never far away, and the best I can do, at least for now, is to acknowledge them, occasionally give them a little cuddle or a scratch behind their pointy ears, and then return to the matter at hand.

Over at her wonderful blog ZenDotStudio, Carole posted a charming account of attending a retreat led by Gil Fronsdal and his description of the compassionate and gentle approach taken by the Japanese government to their soldiers who were discovered after 25 years still believing they were at war, and suggesting that we "do the same for our fears, our anxieties, our habitual tendencies that no longer serve us well."

Bows of gratitude to the skillful demon whisperers who have gone before.

New Year's Day

Why is New Year's Eve such a popular time for celebration and gathering? Why are so many resolutions to change for the better made on New Year's Day?

When midnight strikes, the year has a brand new number, and the month, day, hour and second are rolled back to 1.

The moment is also special because it is shared by so many - everyone using the Gregorian calendar in the same time zone, and within 24 hours, the whole world.

A fresh page is turned, a new book opened at the beginning, a brand new diary started, an empty canvas is placed on the easel.

In the innocent purity of the moment, we stand like little children on our doorsteps, about to embark on our first journey to school. When nothing is yet started, everything is possible.

But that isn't the whole story, is it?  In fact, everything is already started, and what we perceive as the present moment, as distinct from the past and the future, is just a mental construct, like the illusion that a candle flame is a fixed "thing".

Heat melts the wax, capillary action draws it up the wick, heat vapourizes and ignites it, creating new flame, which in turn melts more wax.

Meanwhile, the original flame has become hot air and cooler air has rushed in to become new flame. Because the cycle is seamless, the flame seems unchanging. So does the present moment.

But as we say the word "now", by the time we have pronounced the letter 'n' and moved on to the letter 'o', the 'n' is in the past and the 'w' is still in the future. As the flame is continually being re-created, so is this moment. So are we.

So if right now everything is new, beginning at 1, and everyone is sharing it, isn't now a good time to celebrate and gather, and to resolve to change for the better?

Take heart!
Every moment
A second chance

Going First Class

In April, 1957, I left the Old Country and traveled to the New World with my mum and dad and little sister. I was almost eight years old. For all of us, it was a Big Adventure leaving Scotland, where my dad had worked as a carpenter, to go to Canada, where my aunt had assured my parents that there were great opportunities and lots of jobs.

We boarded the Empress of Scotland, one of the Canadian Pacific Steamships. Because we were not “well off”, we had Tourist Class tickets, but were tickled pink when they told us because Tourist Class was full, we would have to go First Class.  First Class!

We knew we didn’t fit in, but it was wonderful pretending we did. The First Class dining room (shown in the photo) was like an immense ornate ballroom. We ate out of nice china with fancy silverware, served by polite men in white uniforms. I think we actually said silly things like, “I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.”

Soon enough we arrived in Canada.  After a scenic train ride across the country (I remember going through the Rockies in the Dome Car), we reached Victoria, where we came back to earth.

My aunt’s idea of the job market had been a bit optimistic.  Not finding carpentry work, my dad took a job as the night janitor in a big thrift store. It was great fun for me because the family went with him. My mum helped with the cleaning, and I roller skated around and played on the conveyor belt.

My dad seemed to take these ups and downs in his stride, but my mum not so much. I think she was the most elated by the First Class treatment, which was above her station, and felt the most humiliated by the janitor job, which was beneath it. Fairly soon afterward, my dad got a job with a cabinet maker and our family settled comfortably into the lower middle class where we belonged.

Whether it be to an unexpected benefit or to an unwelcome setback, I think my mother's response can be summed up in one sentence: I don't deserve this.

I recognize both my dad's equanimity and my mother's class-consciousness in my own character. As much as I'm reluctant to admit it, every day I catch myself making comparisons - "she's wealthy", "he's uneducated", "he's refined", "she's crude" - all measured against my current notion of who I think I am, or even, who I think I ought to be. It even creeps into my practice as uninvited thoughts critical of others' insight or commitment. And these are just the thoughts I catch.

These antics of monkey mind, if pursued or encouraged (or grappled with) tend to divert our awareness from our true nondual nature and interdependence with everything, which in turn, I think, weakens our drive to act compassionately.

The more I see you as me - whether you are wealthy but miserable, poor, dirty and hungry, addicted or deluded - and the less I set myself apart as better or worse, or just plain separate, the better are my chances of being compassionate to you.

And I need all the chances I can get.

The Call

A number of years ago, I had been listening to Bette Midler's version of God Help the Outcasts, a touching Alan Menken composition from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and was quite moved by it, well actually, a lot moved by it. As I listened to the silence after the song ended, I began to hear, inside my head, a distant sound that seemed to be a blend of sorrowful weeping, groans of pain, and fearful moaning, of countless humans and animals. In the brief time that it lasted, I felt a deep sadness, and somehow knew that it was the sound of the suffering that we, as the human race, have inflicted.

I don't think this was a celestial vision.  I believe it was a Makyo, a waking dream, or perhaps some flatulence of the temporal lobe. It did leave a lasting impression, however, and my memory of it is still clear. A couple of times, the thought has even occurred to me: I wonder if what I heard was the Call?

There are many stories of people responding to a call to become missionaries, to become priests, to feed the hungry or to heal the sick. We use the terms "calling" and "vocation" (from the Latin vocare, 'to call') to describe pursuits that have meaning for us. Something beckons to us to leave behind the compulsive cycle of working harder to earn more money to buy more things to enjoy more pleasure for ourselves. How this process happens is a wonderful mystery to me.

It seems the call that turns our head, that draws our attention to suffering, can come from anywhere and take any form - a sudden shock, or just a nagging feeling that something isn't quite right. A feeling that won't go away and eventually knocks on our door so loudly that we have to open it and embrace whatever greets us on the other side.

A young monk asked Zen master Gensha where he should start to enter Zen. Gensha asked, "do you hear the sound of the mountain stream?" The monk said, "yes". Gensha said, "enter Zen from there."

Do we feel an urge to listen for that call? A desire to hear it? A wish to be, or even feel, more compassionate? That is the call.

Do Bodhisattvas Go To Heaven?

Twenty-Five Bodhisattvas Descending from Heaven  -  Japanese painting c. 1300

In the legal business we say there are two times you should never speculate: when you need to, and when you don't need to. I'm pretty sure some of this post falls into the second category. 

Once again I feel liberated by my profound ignorance about the subject matter.

I can hear the Christian and Buddhist scholars getting up to leave, so I'll skip right to the last page.  My answer to the question, meant in the nicest possible way, is "At the moment, I don't see why I should care." Not just about the fate of bodhisattvas, but about the whole question of what will happen to me after death.

In my limited understanding, a bodhisattva is a being who has chosen to become awakened just to relieve the suffering of all other beings, forgoing buddhahood, whatever that may mean, until everyone else gets there first. Sounds very heroic and celestial, but I would focus on the words "has chosen" and "relieve the suffering," so that the term can include the likes of you and me. With no authority whatsoever, I would say that a frilly cloud to stand on and almost-perfect enlightenment are not prerequisites - just an intention to put others first.

Then what? For me, I tend to favour a ‘need to know’ approach. Although I’m very curious about a lot of things, at the moment, Buddhist and Christian cosmologies aren’t high on my list. Being part scientist, I’m reluctant to take anyone’s word for things like reincarnation and heaven, hell, purgatory and the recently abolished limbo. When I know that I need to know, then I’ll try to find someone who’s been there and lived to tell the tale.

In any discussion about these concepts, my only question is, “What would I do differently at this moment if there really is reincarnation and/or heaven and hell?” I’m hard pressed to think of anything. This may have something to do with choosing the bodhisattva path.

Assuming that going to heaven is desirable and going to hell is not, and assuming that being reincarnated as a lower life form or as a more miserable person is to be avoided, and assuming further that virtuous or selfless actions will land you in heaven rather than hell, or cause you to be reborn as a more evolved being, or even not be reborn at all, then knowing all this, would we not choose to act compassionately, for the benefit of all beings?

Wait a minute – this sounds like the qualities of a bodhisattva.

So the upshot seems to be, once we put our feet on the bodhisattva path, the afterlife becomes less relevant.  Who knows – perhaps going to heaven may not be desirable, as there is probably a lot more suffering in hell.

If I may make an exhortation:  May we just practice hard, whatever our practice is, take aim at the next thing that needs our kind attention, and let our arrows fly!

Some More Poems

No matter how large I built the deck, I knew this would happen......

Dewdrops
Brief lives in bright sun
Each containing all

~~~

Sitting in darkness
A flash of lightning
Your face

~~~

Staggering along
I wonder why
The ox is so heavy

~~~

Eyes unseeing
Skin like wax
Outside, the wind

~~~

Ignoring the full moon
I search for a pool
To gaze at its reflection

~~~

Shining
From a thousand pools
The moon

~~~

After the rain
A walk on wet pavement
Helping stranded worms

~~~

Right hand struggles
Left hand without thought
Jumps to assist

~~~

Forgetting to remember
I while away the hours
Inspecting shadows

~~~

Going away
To be here
Somewhere else

~~~

Seagull
Comical walking
Soaring majestic

~~~

Lazy water
And my old habits
Take the easy way

~~~

Everything
A doorway
To everywhere

~~~

Dog breath
In my face
It must be morning

You can find other poems at Some Poems and Another Batch of Poems.

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

Mindful Blindness: A Rant Against Speciesism

Every time,

A twinge of sadness:

The meat department

Warning! This is a rant.

As you may have noticed, I love you all dearly. The last thing I want to do is cause you pain. Because this is a rant, I’m not taking aim at anyone in particular, but if you stand too close, you may get thwacked, I may hit a nerve, or even step on your beliefs. No hard feelings if you bail out at any time.

You could think of this as an address to the jury on behalf of a group of sentient beings facing the death penalty that can’t speak for themselves.

I’ve been a vegetarian for the past six years, and in total, about 15 of my 62 years, but have only been phasing eggs and dairy out of my diet for the past six months or so [as at 2011].

I am grateful to Peter Singer’s classic book Animal Liberation for helping to crystallize my thoughts on the subject. I have drawn freely from his ideas.

Speciesism, like cannibalism, slavery, religious persecution, racism and sexism, is the imposing of the will of a powerful group upon a weaker group - in this case, by humans upon other sentient species. We take it so much for granted that it often goes unnoticed. But it's everywhere - not just on our dinner plates and covering our feet, but also at the rodeos, circuses, bullfights, hunting and fishing trips, the fur trade and clothing stores. Last but not least, the worst atrocities are hidden behind the walls of the factory farms and slaughterhouses.

The idea of animal liberation isn’t new. Plato and Pythagoras were vegetarians for ethical reasons. So was Leonardo Da Vinci. He would buy caged birds sold at the marketplace for food and then set them free. Edison and Einstein were another couple of smart guys that decided they didn't need meat and stopped eating it.

The amount of suffering we inflict on animals is staggering. Of course, physical pain causes suffering – branding, de-horning, castrating, tail docking, de-beaking – all without anaesthetic.

But so does the psychological pain caused by frustrating the natural instincts to run, to root around, snuggle with a mother or an offspring, socialize normally, exercise and play. It’s not uncommon for pigs in factory farms to literally go insane, making endless repetitive movements and biting their own tails and their cage bars. Pigs are as intelligent and affectionate as dogs, but the idea of subjecting puppies to the same cruelty we bestow on pigs, and then killing and eating them, is unthinkable.

Fish suffer too, when they are pulled out of the water and left to die in a heap.

Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

So why do we eat animals? What benefit can we possibly get that outweighs the suffering and killing?

I like the taste. You can make some really delicious veggie meals – avocados, ginger, oranges, roasted nuts, garlic – the combinations are endless. My dad used to say “hunger makes the best sauce”. I think eating with a glad heart makes things taste pretty good too.

They are dead already or I didn’t kill them. Every time you take a chicken home from the store, another chicken has to be killed to take its place on the shelf.  By eating them, we are causing their deaths. Like the starfish story posted over at Jomon's lovely blog nothing to attain, every little bit of meat not eaten makes a difference.

I need my protein. True, but you can get it from plants.  Beans and grains provide all the essential amino acids our bodies require. End of story. If you don’t believe me (I’ve got a degree in nutritional biochemistry), ask the vegetarian Olympic athletes. If vegan Carl Lewis can win nine gold medals, surely I can drag my sorry ass to work and back without eating meat. The omega unsaturated fatty acids found in fish oil are abundant in flax seeds. The only thing lacking in a vegan diet is vitamin B12, which you can take as a supplement.

Our bodies are designed to eat meat – we have canine teeth.  True, but we are also designed to eat plants – we have molars.  Unlike other animals, we have the ability to choose our foods.  We tell our bodies what to eat, not the other way around. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

You are killing plants. As far as we know, plants don’t experience pain.  As Alan Watts said, “cows scream louder than carrots.” Besides, it takes about ten pounds of plants to produce one pound of beef.  So if you eat a pound of beef, ten pounds of plants are killed as well. Maybe in a perfect world, we will live on fruit and nuts and grains and no plants will be killed.

You may want to skip over the next paragraph. It's a little unkind.

I eat meat mindfully. This one really gets me, and I’m sorry if I’m talking about you. Nothing personal, but I don’t care how many prayers you say, how many candles or sticks of incense you light, or how “in the moment” you are; and I don’t care what the sutras say, or what the Buddha said – the animal on your plate was still killed, and another will be killed to take its place. Maybe the smells and bells and chanting will make you feel better or change your karma, but that’s not the point. If it is the point, then I’ve missed it. The same reasoning would justify the death penalty, killing in battle and all manner of atrocities. How can you be mindful and in the moment, and not hear the screams from the abbatoir?

I only eat meat from animals raised and killed compassionately. Good for you. I mean it. But if you go to all that trouble to eat something you don't need, why not just stop?

What about eggs and dairy?  I'm finally 100% vegan - no eggs or dairy or honey, leather, wool or silk - but it took quite a while.

[This post originally read: Ouch. This is where I get hit by my own flailing. There is plenty of suffering associated with the milk and egg industry, but my diet is still only 95% vegan, for interpersonal reasons. You know the old saying, "take my advice - I'm not using it." Besides, if they only allowed perfect people to rant, it would be awfully quiet.]

What can I do? Lots. Here are a few suggestions. Start by cutting dead critters out of your diet.  If you eat eggs, make sure they are free range. If you eat dairy, make sure the cheese doesn't contain rennet and the yogurt doesn't contain gelatin. Consider giving up leather and silk. Consider only using detergents, shampoos and cosmetics that are labelled 'not tested on animals'. Learn about this stuff. Check out blogs like vegan.com and organizations like PETA. And of course, spread the word. If you're looking for company, I posted a list of some famous veggies here.

Here's something to consider: If all the land in North America now used to raise and feed animals were used to grow crops, it would produce enough food to eliminate hunger on the entire planet.

If you managed to read this to the end, my heart gives you a big hug! Thank you.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

If you're up for it, watch the trailer for the award-winning documentary Earthlings, but be prepared to weep (seriously!).  You can watch the trailer and the entire movie here.

I also recommend seeing the documentary Forks over Knives just released, about the health benefits of a plant-based diet and unrefined foods.

Photograph: AP/Alexandre Meneghini 

Acts of Kindness: Does Size Matter?

One morning I noticed a tiny insect drowning in a cup of water and rescued it. As I watched it drag itself to safety, a flood of emotions took me by surprise: love for the little creature, joy that it didn't drown, and gratitude that I happened to notice it and could help. Fortunately, I had to leave for work before I really started wallowing in feelings.

I walked to work with a glad heart, and a sort of koan took shape: What effect does saving the short life of a tiny being have in the grand scheme of things? When I reached the office, more pressing matters took my attention and I forgot about it.

That evening, I read a beautiful blog post over at ZenDotStudio called Gladdening the Heart which reminded me of the question. A couple of days later, a simple but moving story called Three Gifts at Mind Deep reminded me again that the question was not going to go away.

One of my all-time favourite movie scenes is near the end of Schindler's List where Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) gives Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) a ring made from a gold bridge given by one of the 1,100 Jews he saved from the gas chambers by employing them in his factory. He essentially bought their freedom with his own money. He realizes to his dismay that he still has an expensive car and a gold pin that he could have sold, and in that heart-wrenching moment he breaks down, crying "I could have got more out, I could have got more - but I didn't!"  (Watch the scene here - make sure you have hankies.  It gets me every time.)

The inscription in the ring is from the Talmud:  "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire."

That line is reminiscent of the statements attributed to the Buddha: "On the day I became enlightened, the whole universe became enlightened," and to Jesus, referring to feeding the hungry and caring for the sick: "Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of one of these, you have done it to me."

One thing is for sure: because of the interconnectedness of every single thing with every other single thing, there is no way that our tiny intellects can ever calculate every possible outcome of a simple action. Science fiction stories have described how a seemingly trivial event could prevent Hitler from being born, averting the second world war. Perhaps a child watching you rescue a stranded worm from the wet pavement will be inspired to become another Mother Teresa. Or perhaps the child will just think you're a nut.

You could say that saving an insect matters because it's connected to everything, or that it matters because it is everything, or, that it doesn't matter.

So the question remains: In an act of kindness, does size matter?

The ox goes through the window
But it's tail does not
Why was the little bug saved?