What is the price of Luling rice?

Another favorite bit from Refining Your Life:

From Dogen:
“When you eat a grain of Luling rice, you may become the monk Guishan.  When you add a grain, you may become the cow.  Sometimes the cow eats Guishan, sometimes Guishan pastures the cow.”

.’A monk asked Qingyuan Xingsi, “What is the essence of the buddhadharma?” Master Qingyuan replied, “What is the current price of rice in Luling?"

’One day Guishan said to the monks “A hundred years after my death I will be reborn as a cow belonging to a parishioner near the skirt of this mountain.  On the right flank of the cow will be written ‘I am Guishan’.  Now if you saw the cow is me you are wrong because it is just a cow, and if you say it is just a cow, you are wrong because it will be me.  So what should you say?”'

From Uchiyama:
…we assume the self is a fixed entity…and yet, though we say that nothing is fixed, it is not a matter of our “self” being nonexistent.  As in the story of the Luling rice, our self occurs at the juncture where what is relatively fixed intermingles with that which is indeterminate or undefined.  

…Our dharma becomes the buddhadharma precisely when it is functioning as this body in our daily life

….there will always be complaining and unsatisfied aspects of the self with which we have to deal.  The dharma is not going to become manifest only after we have somehow brought this aspect under control or stamped it out.  The function of the dharma and of zazen is to care for the obstreperous aspect of ourselves in the same way a mother lulls her baby to sleep.  In other words, “Guishan pastures the cow.”

Bringing new meaning to pastoral care!

On having finished From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment: Refining Your Life

On having finished From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment: Refining Your Life, Dogen and Uchiyama - a book I know I will be keeping close!....

The gāthā of Xuedou (p83)

One, seven, there, five

The truth you search for cannot be grasped.

As night advances, a bright moon

  illuminates the whole ocean;

The dragon's jewels are found in every wave.

Looking for the moon, it is here,

  in this wave, in the next.

How it speaks to the question I have carried across my own (Dogen-esque)seas:

Seeing the ego in Purpose,

the judgement of Squander,

everything dropped, except

the path of vow.

One, two, three, four five - 

Manifesting moon wave after wave.

I keep laughing......just read a quote that I had always heard ...incorrectly, then looked it up:


"The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes."


I had always heard this as "the quality of mercy is not strange"... .. And thought...huh? Of course it is not strange, though it may be rare...do they mean to normalize mercy? How do these words do that? Isn't this a sing lyric (it is) and doesn't it sound kind'a like....


Yes, it's from The Merchant of Venice, which I last saw/heard as a junior high school kid at a Shakespeare in the Park performance. I totally forgot that the quote came from there! Must have bern besotted with being out late in the city. (And note...there are a few instances of the same mis-hearing on the web.)


How perfect!


This gift was from Marc Ian Barasch's Field Notes on the Compassionate Life .... A delicious book that underscores my gatitude for every mercy!

My teacher, dying, continues to teach

She said: "I didn’t expect to have no comfort.  So many things happened.  Good things.  But the pain has been unrelenting.  Karma of a bad cancer."

Clouds today.  Clouds for the coming week.  Clouds, ice, snow and cold for most of the past month.

Karma of a bad cancer?

Ceaseless, mounting pain.  A body that persists in its needs and aliveness.  

A will that resurfaces in denial of all illness - to order, control, direct.

Resurfaces strongly with a yell - My life, let it be, at least in these small tasks.

No.  

Karma of a bad cancer?

A month later there are no periods of ease, before there were moments.

Now the oxygen machines hums persistent, your weak footsteps and narrow tubing define your boundaries.

And there is just pain, dulled by medications that give you waking dreams, daymares really, unpleasant in their vivid, urgent mystery.

Karma of a bad cancer?

I thought I understood karma, the consequences and implications, near and far;

the stone tossed by you, by others, 

that hits the pool and ripples through this moment.

An outcome of Newton’s law applied to a broad definition of energy that works through time.

What we do affects ourselves and others; we reap what we sow ...eventually

Which is this, reaping or sowing?

Your actions led to this?  Really?  On what scale does that make sense?  

Someone else’s actions?  Then is she now sowing seeds of ease for a future life?

Karma of a bad cancer?

There it is.

The time when faith will out.

Right out.

Down the drain, into the mire.

I will not muddy this reality with faith.

There is no right, no reason, nothing beyond my ken. 

Karma of a bad cancer.

Now I sit - 

without hope.

with no purpose.

No candle.

It is within.

The flame rising with breath,

this breath, now.

I sit.

I do not sit in faith.

I sit in life.

Religion, science, chaplaincy - how do they fit?

We were asked this month to reflect on this piece from the Huffington Post.  It addresses an issue I think Sam Harris addressed best, but was a lovely springboard for thinking about chaplaincy.  Or rather, why on earth I do this work.

The actual assignment:   offer a brief reaction to Stenger's article, followed by your own reflection on the question of whether your not you believe science and religion can be reconciled...and why....with some additional thoughts on the issue of professional chaplaincy as a science.  What are your thoughts/feelings on the idea chaplaincy becoming an outcome oriented, evidence based practice? 

***************

The premise of Stenger's article is that science and religion are fundamentally irreconcilable because religion is based on faith (defined as belief in the absence of supportive evidence and even in the face of contrary evidence), while science is based on observations derived from methodical application and testing of rules and descriptive models.  Further, Stenger states that science claims success in representing the world based on its accuracy (“practical success”) and objective repeatability, while religion justifies its success in representing the world by "logical deduction derived from dubious metaphysical assumptions".

I would extend this to state that methodical application and testing of rules and descriptive models has not provided any insight into the afterlife or the concept of the spirit, so such things are not (presently) dealt with scientifically.  Science would answer there is no afterlife or spirit because there is no evidence or instructive model to support its existence.  Religion would say that evidence is derived from the tenets of faith ("dubious metaphysical assumptions") and as such do not need to be objective or repeatable.

Thus, I find myself squarely in Stenger's camp.  I believe reconciliation is neither possible nor desirable.  Most especially, I agree with him (and his echo of my favorite atheist , Sam Harris) when he speaks of the dangers of religion:

"Religious faith would not be such a negative force in society if it were just about religion. However, the magical thinking that becomes deeply ingrained whenever faith rules over facts warps all areas of life. It produces a frame of mind in which concepts are formulated with deep passion but without the slightest attention paid to the evidence that bears on the concept. Nowhere is this more evident than in America today where the large majority of the public hold on to a whole set of beliefs despite the total lack of evidence to support these beliefs and, indeed, strong evidence that denies them. Magical thinking and blind faith are the worst mental system we can apply under these circumstances. They allow the most outrageous lies to be accepted as facts."

In reading Stenger I am mindful of my fundamental discomfort with religion.  Speaking with a considerable amount of critical judgment, I would say that I experience religion as a chosen set of blinders, a mental burka whose dictates constrains movement and limit vision. 

By contrast, I experience Buddhist practice as a science of mind.  Faith is not engaged.  Instead, a worldview is expressed and practitioners are invited to test it out in their lives.  A series of teachings (the insights from the explorations of others), practices, and community are offered to support the exploration. Meditation, dharma talks, student/teacher dialog, bowing, chanting exist  as tools to foster being able to experience the mind, a mind embodied in and influenced by flesh, in a way that is objective and repeatable, as demonstrated by Buddhist practitioners for over 2500 years.

For me the experience of Buddhist practice is an opening of the heart, an intention to dedicate my life to being fully present for all that it offers, and a natural movement toward compassionate action.  Faith is not engaged.  In fact, I am struck by a colleague's statement in a recent class that it is perhaps "imagination" that is engaged.  This may be true, i.e., that Buddhist practice fosters the capacity to connect imaginatively to another, to all others. 

But wait.  Here I find myself on the edge of a deep hole.  Is Buddhism a religion or not?  Buddhism may not ask that I take anything on faith, but it does points toward an experience of "enlightenment".  Enlightenment implies a transcendent experience - something that goes beyond the self, which is scholar Karen Armstrong’s definition of a religion.  I find I am more comfortable with this definition because Buddhism does not ask that I believe in enlightenment, just that I see if I can experience for myself. 

Whoops.  I just offered my strong discomfort with religion only to find that I am wrapped in it.  The comments of a favorite Buddhist blogger remind me why I am rootless in this argument:  answering this question is not the point.  The point is to be mindful of the emotional, intellectual, and physical baggage that I bring to any moment:

It's said that the only way to understand Buddhism is to practice it. Through practice, one perceives its transformative power. A Buddhism that remains in the realm of concepts and ideas is not Buddhism. The robes, ritual and other trappings of religion are not a corruption of Buddhism, as some imagine, but expressions of it. There's a Zen story in which a professor visited a Japanese master to inquire about Zen. The master served tea. When the visitor's cup was full, the master kept pouring. Tea spilled out of the cup and over the table. "The cup is full!" said the professor. "No more will go in!" "Like this cup," said the master, "You are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?" If you want to understand Buddhism, empty your cup.

My experience of chaplaincy is as a response to the practice of Buddhism, i.e., an opportunity to live my vows that goes beyond and enriches my day-to-day existence (a practical form of transcendence!).  As practiced, chaplaincy is a conscious effort to address the cheesecloth of religious consolation that is accessed by those in the hospital. Patients, confronted with loss, change, and a contemplation of mortality, work to shape the fabric of religion to their need; sometimes, often, it does not serve.  Chaplains are present for that effort. 

As such, I understand that chaplains do not operate as representatives of a particular faith, but as a supportive witness to the human effort of sense-making when confronting dis-ease.  As people who understand the arguments of many faiths, they support the patient's exploration and effort to make of their thoughts and beliefs, a whole cloth. 

So is chaplaincy a science? To the extent that we are committed to an accurate description of what we are encountering, articulating models of engagement that can be tested, and honing practice based on those models - possibly.  But where is that commitment?  Where is the consistent, objective, accurate means of measurement?  And where is the proof that exercising a scientific approach in this realm makes a difference in the lives of patients or in the effectiveness of the healthcare team?

In truth, I feel that outcomes-oriented chaplaincy is more of a religion asking that I take on faith that there is a model and a set of practices that are distinct to the field of chaplaincy that apply accurately to the religious/spiritual needs of the diverse patients I encounter.

Psychotherapy has models and evidence because its indicators are how a patient functions in the world.  There is a comparison to a baseline normal that can be objectively assessed.  It may not exist in chaplaincy not because we are late to the field, but because we are dealing with issues of transcendence.  How do we measure that?  What is the way we measure an intact spirit?  How do we track the outcome or the experience of a good death?

If not a science, chaplains can still seek to operate as professionals guided by a philosophy of practice that is thoughtful and systematic.   To do so reflects a commitment to ethics and a willingness to be transparent about our aims and methods.   And it leaves room for what is considerable art in this practice.

Interestingly this is not dissimilar to the challenge I presently face in the library field – a field that tiresomely enough began referring to itself as “library and information science” about 20 years ago.  I go about saying that good things happen in libraries everyday.  My current job, which involves seeking determining which programs to develop and fund, requires that I prove and quantify the good.

Careful assessment of project outcomes does not make my work a science.  It makes it professional, thoughtful, and potentially more valuable to the communities I serve.  Do I need to seek for more?

The work of a chaplain can alleviate suffering.  As in library science there is education, ethics, and accepted practices.  Do we need to seek for more?

Finding happiness

Two experiences from recent weeks that continue to teach:

The patient who shared that when she was 4 years old she had been a witness to her mother’s murder, which appeared to be a thread passed from generations – the difficult life her mother lived, the patient’s challenges, and now a potential estrangement from her own young daughter. 

I believe we had established a strong connection in the encounter and, upon reflection, was encouraged that I thought to (1) use the relationship as a point of reference, “You appear to feel safe sharing this information with me.  Thank you.  With whom else do you have this kind of relationship; who else will hear you on this subject as you work through its meaning now?” and (2) I did not slip into problem-solving mode, but kept my attention on acknowledging the emotional weight of what she was sharing. 

While the encounter seemed successful to me in the moment, I wish I could have followed up sooner.  I was saddened to have learned today that the intervening week was rife with medical challenges for the patient. I met the patient again – she was unable to talk but could mouth the words “I want to go home.”  She nodded responses to a few questions and was tearful and agitated.  I offered the metta prayer I had mentioned to her the week before –acknowledging both her concern for others and the wish we had discussed that she would care for (mother) herself.  I held her hand as I recited the prayer; she appeared to calm and fell asleep.

The patient who’s hope was to be able to be happy. 

The content of what the patient communicated over two meetings was devastating, especially given that she closed her narrative by revealing that she  deserved the genuinely difficult things that have happened to her – from hard work as a child helping her crippled father act as a building superintendent, to a lifelong struggle with eczema and boils, sole responsibility for EOL caregiving for her parents, a boyfriend who had several strokes and not is more in need of care than a support to her, estrangement from her siblings, theft, poverty, kidney disease and diabetes.

When I asked about the relationship as a means to probe about her sources of support, she noted that it was quite unusual for her to share all this information with anyone. She sees a counselor once a month, but the time is limited as it is focused primarily on prescribing medications.

 When I challenge her on her sense of having deserved all these difficult experiences, she noted that there was something she did that would explain it all – some “sin” that she was not “ready” to share with me.  She had spoken of her non-active Catholic faith, nonetheless I asked and she rejected the idea of a dialog with a priest, and she seemed offended that I made the offer.  The offer seemed to be perceived as a breach of the trust she had invested in this relationship. The conversation ended with the dinner meal tray - she abruptly shifted from pensive and teary to dismissive. I left, sensing I had gone as far as we could in this encounter.

Her story stayed with me.  She is close to my own age – though would be taken for much older.  Her experiences had a raw veracity – they took place on streets in neighborhoods where I grew up – a few blocks away and a few years apart – but miles away in their outcomes. 

How do you get to be happy?  Life is never particularly fair and I don’t believe in fate, let alone an interventionist deity.  All Buddhist have to offer is a path to shift perception – this seems so out of reach for someone so locked into such a self-defeating and not-unjustified world view.

Defeat.  Hopelessness.  That is consistently hard for me to be with.

Aging as a Spiritual Practice by Lewis Richmond

This is a lovely, accessible book.  I wish it would find its way into everyone's hands as surely as the offer to become an AARP member and the arrival of a Medicare care card.   Right along side consideration of healthcare and retirement, have you considered what it means to grow old?

In a world where we increasingly live into 70s, 80s and 90s - Richmond poses the question "What's the best use of this extra gift of time?"  (Good question, though  my fantasy follow-up would be to have him in dialog with Susan Jacoby about the faulty messages we receive culturally about what those years "should" look like!)

The book is in a way an explication of Suzuki Roshi's response to the question - why do we meditate? His answer was "to enjoy our old age."  The core take away for me was thatto enjoy our old age we need to know how to enjoy our lives in this moment - with an awareness of both horizontal time (future, present, past) and vertical time (this moment in all its aspects).  To be mindful of the present moment is to live and to age breath by breath.

Richmond describes the persistent surprise with which we come to recognize that we are aging. He captures this in stages: lightening strikes (precipitating event - from illness to receipt of Medicare card),  coming to terms (assessing old me vs. new me), adaptation (a process of acceptance), and appreciation.  

Ideas that I liked:

• Explication of De Shan  and the tea lady - "With what mind will you drink this cup of tea?" - "Past, present, and future mind are all aspects of horizontal time.  The vehicle of horizontal time is always moving.  There is no opportunity to stop for a cup of tea or anything else.  In horizontal time there is no way to grasp anything...We can no more locate our selves in time than a bird in the sky can locate itself in space.  Everything changes everything is in motion.  In vertical time however everything is accessible, every possibility is restful and free."
• Recognizing that we are getting older one breath at a time. 
• Pebbles in a bowl representing the possible weeks left between now and say, when I turn 95.  Remove one each week,  randomly put one back - cause really, who knows!
• 105 year old woman responding to his question about what's the deepest lesson you've learned I your life.  "This is my life; I have no other."
• Suzuki Roshi - gratitude is this moment, i.e., letting go of what is already slipping away is how we enjoy this life
• gratitude walk (a time just for noticing)
• Suzuki - "When you are sitting in the middle of your own problem, which  is more real to you? Your problem or you yourself?  The awareness that you are here, right now, is the ultimate fact."
• Mindfulness definition: concentrated non judgmental attention to what is happening
• I especially liked, and will use, Richmond's refashioning of metta prayer to:

As I grow older, may I be kind to myselfAs I grow older, may I accept no and sorrowAs I grow older, may I be happy and at peace

          Which then expands to:

As each of us grows older...As all beings grow older...

• Buddhist teaching on the "Five great fears" - death, illness, losing ones mind, losing ones livelihood, public speaking. (the last one is the clue - all are felt in the body as anxiety)
• Suzuki"s death.  " don't worry...nothing (special) is going to happen."  He breathed each breath, ready for  each to be his last.  Then he stopped. Nothing special happened.
• Calm lake meditation

Ideas I didn't"t think we're well developed. - Yet another nostalgic review of in other cultures and days of yore when there was an appreciated and appropriate role for elders of a community...what is that role in the 21st century?  Why does everyone seem to suggest we go back to that same role as opposed to evolving it for the present day?!