Car 16 - A Reminiscence

Looking back, most of my 62 years have been a gradually changing landscape, except for the times when I just dropped what I was doing and took up something completely different.

The first time was in the late '70's part way through a PhD in biochemistry. I still don't really know why I quit, but I spent the next three years working in a plywood mill figuring out what to do next.

To alleviate the boredom, I took up singing lessons and practiced at work, where my melodic warbling was drowned out by the loud machines. Not entirely, it seems, as I remember some wiseass up on a catwalk hollering down asking if I was calling out for first aid. In the end, I left the mill and went into law school.

Most recently, I tried to retire from law and took a job in a microbiology lab. Compared to law practice, I had a pretty idyllic life looking after the typhoid, cholera and pneumonia collections. Sherlock Holmes in retirement on the Sussex downs tending his beehives. But after a couple of years, my two favourite lawyers from the old firm started their own shop and asked me to join them, so my valiant attempt to be a recovering lawyer happily ended in a relapse.

Both of those detours were deliberate. But there was one that took me by surprise: a burnout. I wrote about it in When I Fell. That was like stumbling into a pothole.

Casting around for something to do, I ended up driving the night shift for a taxi company. At first, I was dealing with self-created shame because I had 'failed' to keep my act together as a lawyer, but when I look back now, those two years as a cabbie were golden.

Driving alone to pick up a fare, I could practice being mindful, waiting for a trip was a chance to meditate, but best of all, transporting customers was a never-ending lesson in kindness.

One of my regular fares was a 'working girl' who also happened to be a heroin addict. I was touched that she would take long cab rides to the hospital to visit her husband, whose foot had been amputated because of diabetes. She wore her best clothes to look pretty for him and insisted on introducing me. They obviously cared for each other and somehow, her occupation didn't seem to be an issue for him.

I didn't see her for a few weeks, but when I finally did, she seemed subdued. Her husband had died. She told me she had gone to a native ceremony held for him and found much comfort in it. She asked me if I could possibly take her on a $5 trip but only charge her $4. All I could say was "No, but I'll take you there for nothing."

One evening I drove a lady to church. She suffered from a mental disorder of some kind and spent the whole trip talking to herself, rummaging frantically through her purse looking for $2 for the offering. When we arrived at the church, she paid the fare with a coupon and rather bleakly started to get out. As she did, I asked her if she would mind doing me a favour. She gave me a puzzled look as I gave her a $2 coin and asked if she would please put it in the collection plate for me. Her face lit up like the sun and she said yes, she would! I thanked her very much.

In due course, things changed. A door opened and I walked into a law office and sat down behind the desk. I have many fond memories of those years. Some conversations I will never forget.

DA:              Car 16.
Dispatch:     Go ahead, Car 16.
DA:              My rear end is making a weird noise.
Dispatch:     Say again?
DA:              ... er, the car's that is...
Dispatch:     Glad you cleared that up, 16.

Straight From the Heart (Sutra)

One of the most beloved figures in Buddhist cosmology is the bodhisattva of compassion Avalokiteśvara, who hears and responds to the cries of all sentient beings. In some countries and cultures s/he is considered to be male, and in others, female.  In China she is the goddess Kuan Yin (Guanyin; in Japanese, Kannon).  In Tibetan Buddhism, each Dalai Lama is his reincarnation.

The Heart Sutra may be the best-known and most popular of the Buddhist sutras. It describes the bodhisattva of compassion's liberating insight gained while engaged in deep meditation.

Statue of Kannon at Daien-in Temple, Japan

Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva … clearly saw that … form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form; form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form; sensation, perception, mental reaction, consciousness are also like this. … all things are essentially empty - not born, not destroyed ... Therefore in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, perception, mental reaction, consciousness; no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind, no color, sound, smell, taste, touch, object of thought; ... no ignorance and also no ending of ignorance, ... no old age and death, and also no ending of old age and death; no anguish, cause of anguish, cessation, path; no wisdom and no attainment. Since there is nothing to attain, the Bodhisattva lives by [the perfection of wisdom], with no hindrance in the mind; no hindrance and therefore no fear; far beyond delusive thinking, right here is Nirvana.

When you refer to yourself, where do you instinctively point - to your heart or to your head?

Straight from the heart: we know what this means without thinking.

Kind words spoken - direct, sincere, unrehearsed.

A compassionate act - complete before the brain has a chance to modify or muddle.

Straight from the heart: without fear, far beyond delusive thinking.

Right here is Nirvana.

The excerpt is from Robert Aitken's translation of the Heart Sutra.
The top photo is the rather sad looking stump of a sidewalk tree in North Vancouver.

Poems Batch 4

Here are a few new poems and some old ones gathered from other posts.

Gazing at the child

That inhabits

Your sleeping face

~~~

Through the window, winter

A falling snowflake

Shakes the house

~~~

The Waterfall

Chaos and bedlam

No droplet misplaced

Pandemonium

Cacophony

Every splash harmony

Even the moment

Of thunderous impact

Silent water

Gives silent birth

To silent spray

The waterfall

Is the water

Is the rocks

Is the trees

The waterfall

Writes this

Reads this

Is this

Is just

A waterfall

~~~

Take heart!

Every moment

A second chance

~~~

My cowardice is in vain

There is nowhere

To hide

~~~

Paddling down the rapids

No time to reflect

On skilful strokes

~~~

In a dreamless sleep

The Rocky Mountains

Stride across the prairies

~~~

Countless cries

One voice

Can’t ignore

~~~

Who is asking this question?

What wants to know?

An ancient tree blooms

~~~

Thinking about thinking about thinking

Ripples on the pond

Where the frog jumped in

~~~

When I fell

You stopped

To help me up

~~~

Morning stretch

Reach out

And touch the moon

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

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?

Smart People on Dumb Animals

I've already told you what I think about how we treat our mute cousins.

Here is what some really great minds had to say:

Abraham Lincoln:

I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.

Thomas Edison:

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

Mohandas Gandhi:

To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy:

A human can be healthy without killing animals for food.  Therefore if he eats meat he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.

Albert Schweitzer:

There slowly grew up in me an unshakable conviction that we have no right to inflict suffering and death on another living creature, unless there is some unavoidable necessity for it.

Leonardo da Vinci:

The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.

Henry David Thoreau:

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with each other.

Albert Einstein:

Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.

Plutarch:

But for the sake of some little mouthful of meat, we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.

Plato:

The gods created certain kinds of beings to replenish our bodies they are the trees and the plants and the seeds.

Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple:

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than blacks were made for whites, or women for men.

Cardinal John Henry Newman:

Cruelty to animals is as if humans did not love God.

Sir Paul McCartney:

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.

Sir Ian McKellen:

Although he's a vegetarian, I couldn't find any quotes by him on the subject. This one will have to do instead: "I'm Gandalf and Magneto - get over it!"

Franz Kafka:

Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you anymore.

George Bernard Shaw:

Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.

Fred Rogers:

I don't want to eat anything that has a mother.

And on the subject of kindness to animals, let's not forget to be kind to the often mistreated animal wearing our clothes!

Pen Pals and Kindness in the Cybersangha

My father and mother met as pen pals during the war. Dad was in North Africa rebuilding things that had been blown up. Mum was in a bunker in England plotting the location of incoming bombers. Both of them painted watercolours.

It seems a group of the ladies started it, each writing a little about themselves in a batch of letters delivered to the boys overseas.

Someone with a stack of letters came into my dad's camp and said, "Harry, this one must be for you - she paints too." And so began a very sweet exchange of letters that lasted until Dad took a posting in England to be closer to Mum. The only catch was he had to dig up unexploded bombs! Happily, none went off, the war ended, and they married soon after.

As a newcomer to the cybersangha, I at first thought this was the crest of a new wave of spreading compassion, a fresh way for bodhicitta to manifest in the wonderful world of our evolving appreciation of our interdependence - Indra's Net on the internet.

I still believe this, however the idea is certainly not new.

In the 1994 Summer issue of Tricycle, Gary L. Ray wrote:

"There's nothing lonelier than a Buddhist in Alabama" is the kind of comment I hear from many Buddhists who live in outlying regions of North America where their sangha is small or nonexistent and information about Buddhist practice and philosophy is scarce. By tapping into computer networks, however, geographic isolation can be overcome. This rapidly expanding "cybersangha" provides support and community for Buddhists around the world. From your home, you can now send a message to anyone (who has a computer, a modem, and a telephone line) within seconds, and usually at the cost of a local phone call.

Old or new, I am constantly touched by the kindness and generosity of those who take the time to write in cyberspace, from little tweets of sympathy for a personal loss, to words of wisdom and encouragement in widely read blogs by practitioners like Marguerite Manteau-Rao, exhortations to compassionate action by socially engaged Buddhists like Maia Duerr, online sermons from our Unitarian Universalist Zen friends James Ford Roshi and Meredith Garmon, and online journal posts by Lewis Richmond and Joan Halifax Roshi, to name only a very, very few.  Online meditation communities, like the Online Meditation Crew (#OMCru on Twitter) have sprung up to bridge the gaps of distance and disablility. The Buddhist blogs listed in my blogroll (over 100 at last count) are surely just the tip of a much greater iceberg.

Whatever we call our practice, may it flourish, spreading the wonderful mystery that is kindness, one link at a time.

Another Batch of Poems

Surrounded, and rather overwhelmed, by the media coverage of the 9/11 anniversary, I put up a few more poems, some posted elsewhere and some new, as a little oasis from the storm.

Tiger eats the strawberry
Cliff eats the tiger
Strawberry eats the cliff

~~~

Crabs in a tank
Money to the clerk
Crab in the sea

~~~

Knock on a thousand doors
The same familiar face
Answers each one

~~~

Orchid
The moon
Pointing to a finger

~~~

An old tree
Sharing a moment
Cheek to bark

~~~

Smiling eyes meet
Waves bow
A cow is spared

~~~

Reflection
Connection
Affection

~~~

Fearlessly unfolding
Destination unknown
The oak tree in the garden

~~~

You and I
High five
One hand claps

~~~

From the wood
Of the table top
My face looks out

~~~

Leaves of thought
Bud, flourish and fall
In an eyeblink

~~~

Round cushions
Square mats
Kind hearts


You can find other poems at Some Poems, Some More Poems and Poems Batch 4.

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.