A whole-hearted, unrestricted cooperation with the unavoidable

Bowing had long felt right physically and befuddling mentally.  The dissonance stopped a few years ago so that it encompasses everything - aspiration, acceptance, union, and most deeply - gratitude.

I love this exploration of bowing and the conceit of self, because it did seem that I needed to get over myself - but I had never thought of it as needing to actually bow to my idea of self in appreciation and affirmation.  Conceit "manifests in the ways we contract around a sense of “self” and “other”; it lies at the core of the identities and beliefs we construct, and it enables those beliefs to be the source of our acts, words, thoughts, and relationships..." rather than what is taking place in this present moment.  This concept of self (the article explicates this nicely) is yet another daydream.

A teacher was asked, “What is the secret to your happiness and equanimity?” She answered, “A whole-hearted, unrestricted cooperation with the unavoidable.” This is the secret and the essence of a bow. It is the heart of mindfulness and compassion. To bow is to no longer hold ourselves apart from the unpredictable nature of all of our lives; it is to cultivate a heart that can unconditionally welcome all things. We bow to what is, to all of life. By liberating our minds from ideas of “better than,” “worse than,” or “the same as,” we liberate ourselves from all views of “self”and “other.” The bow is a way to the end of suffering, to an awakened heart.

(Clearly, I should have read the Fall 2008 issue of Tricycle sooner.)

What is this?

I was wading through some old, unread Buddhist magazines and came across this piece by Martine Bachelor on a Korean Zen koan (Tricycle 2008).  I am noting it here because something about the use of this question to cultivate a bone deep sense of perplexity resonated.  (Honestly, I think I live in a state of perplexity!)  


Perhaps it was how Bachelor described how to work with the question:

The practice is very simple. Whether you are walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, you ask repeatedly, What is this? What is this? You have to be careful not to slip into intellectual inquiry, for you are not looking for an intellectual answer. You are turning the light of inquiry back onto yourself and your whole experience in this moment. You are not asking: What is this thought, sound, sensation, or external object? If you need to put it in a meaningful context, you are asking, What is it that is hearing, feeling, thinking? You are not asking,What is the taste of the tea or the tea itself? You are asking, What is it that tastes the tea? What is it before you even taste the tea? 

My own teacher, Master Kusan (1909–1983), used to try to help us by pointing out that the answer to the question was not an object, because you could not describe it as long or short, this or that color. It was not empty space either, because empty space cannot speak. It was not the Buddha, because you have not yet awakened to your Buddha-nature. It was not the master of the body, the source of consciousness, or any other designation, because those are mere words and not the actual experience of it. So you are left with questioning. You ask, What is this? because you do not know.

I learned today that here is a distinction between formal koan practice (in which you verify with a teacher that you've "passed" the koan) and working with a question; in the Korean tradition it seems this can be a question you work with for a lifetime, uncovering and looking more deeply as new layers of meaning are revealed.


What engaged me most was the illustration of using this koan to address working with old patterns of behavior, specifically daydreaming!  Here's how Bachelor characterizes daydreaming:

Imagination is a function of the mind, but daydreaming is a proliferation of the imagination with disadvantageous consequences. It takes you away from what really is happening, and it can cause frustration, because what you daydream of often does not happen.

 I have always taken pride in my imagination and can clearly narrate a long line of stories that are a background narrative of my life.  Each day taking place in relationship to the story that I tell myself about the meaning and measure of the day.  This is a problem?  Yes, in the context of my Zen practice and a vow to live mindfully, to be present, and to fully live and act from this moment.  Living in these dreams is not where I want my life to take place, but after all these years, can I even be sure when I am here and when I am there? I don't just daydream occasionally; thinking back to the days on the swings in Bronx playgrounds, weaving stories of my future life as I looked across to High Bridge, I see a practice of putting myself deep into those dreams. 

..Meditation can also make you discover the specific taste of thoughts. Daydreaming is very seductive; when the thoughts “If I were. . . If I had. . . ” come up, they pull you in; they taste yummy, like something sweet and gooey, with their promise of enchantment. If you are a prisoner in a jail, then daydreaming is vital, it helps you to survive. But as I was discussing this specific pattern of mind with a young prisoner I met in South Africa who was keen on meditation, he told me that he would daydream in moderation and only used it as a safety valve when he felt very oppressed by his incarceration. If he did too much daydreaming, then he became frustrated and aggressive. 

Try being conscious,of how often you slip into dream; do it just for a day.  I tallied 9 times just on the 40 minute ride to work - and I consider myself to be a pretty attentive driver.  (All the more reason to stay in the right lane on cruise control...)  The rest of the day just became a wonder.  And I found myself wistful; I am my dreams - for a better life, for a better world, for possibilities of love and compassion.  But perhaps if I can reclaim some of the dreamtime, I can find more time to make those dreams happen!

Bachelor is not saying to not daydream, rather to be aware when it takes us away from being fully in our lives.

So the point is not that we cannot daydream, but that we should see the effect this pattern has on us and know when it is useful and when it is detrimental. When we ask the question What is this? it will bring us back to the moment. 

If you see me muttering to myself, looking a bit perplexed, now you know... 

Cave in the Snow

Vicki MacKenzie, c1998

Biography of Jetsunna Tenzim Palmo. Read this after I read Into the Heart of Life, which was after I got to meet Tenzim Palmo at one of her last US lectures (May 2011).

Found her story to be really inspiring. She expresses such clarity of purpose, resolve, and goodwill. Her path seems to be one she was both destined to take and one that was enabled by her commitment and clear purpose to achieve enlightenment. I am amazingly moved by her commitment to achieve enlightenment as a woman as a way to shift the balance of power within Buddhism and to bring the power of women more fully into the world.

The journey that she undertook to spend her 12 years in the cave was pretty amazing. The time in te cave was a different kind of amazing - challenging, even life threatening, and perfect all at once. (I confess to it all having a certain intoxicating appeal from the perspective of this over-scheduled, deluded existence...)

Some quotes:
“The only problem with bliss is that because it arouses such enormous pleasure, beyond anything on a worldly level, including sexual bliss, people cling to it and really want it and then it becomes another obstacle.”

Her description of the perspective gained after those 12 years is exactly what I had imagined:
“...while I was in retreat everything became dreamlike...one could see the illusory nature of everything...because one was not in the middle of it. And then when you come out you see that people are so caught up in their life - we identify so totally with what we’ve created. We believe in it so completely. That’s why we suffer, because there is no space for us.....Now I notice that there is an inner distance towards whatever occurs, whether what’s occurring is outwards or inwards. Sometimes, it feels ike being in an empty house with all the doors and windows open wide and the wind just blowing through without anything obstructing it. Not always. Sometimes one gets caught up again, but now one knows that one is caught up again......[This is not] a cold emptiness but a warm spaciousness. It means that one is no longer involved in one’s ephemeral emotions. One sees how people cause so much of their own suffering just because they think that without having these strong emotions they’re not real people.”

What moves?

"May the sound of this bell dispel greed, anger, delusion, and all of the hardships suffered by all beings.

A week at the Great Springs Temple in PA. Percussion crazed, I get to ring the bell (bansho) most of the mornings I was there. 18 strikes. 60 seconds apart. After each, a full bow and recite the gatha above.

And the world moved....for me; so I guess at minimum I moved.

The crack of the wood against the metal that preceded the resonant thrum of the world's chord must be what did it. Cracking a heart like cracking the shell of a macadamia nut. It took work.

And now I am back home. No bell. Just cracks.

Instead I say "May this practice dispel...." Somewhere around the 10th or 15th bow, the words drop and bones feel the truth of it. It is not MY practice, but this practice, being done not by me, but through me.

Maybe a small flake of that hard shell around the ego is what moves....taking at least one small hardship with it....

She whispered

So this was the first time I have been present for someone's death.  10 months of training in pastoral care just completed, but the focus was on anticipation and change.

JD was in her 60s.  Retired early, I think.  She was a middle school art teacher and artist (watercolors).  Just one living relative of whom we were aware.  Her "family" was a network of people from work, the community, and the sangha.  

JD was simply kind to me whenever I encountered her.  She appeared to be someone who had slowed down - her speech was slower, her body less reliable; but then she’d comment on something - a softly delivered joke, a heartfelt comment on a dharma talk - and I'd understand that she just listened and processed differently.

I am so grateful to have been present today. I wanted to be there in part because I was acutely aware of how relatively little I knew about this sangha member from whom I had received so much goodwill. A woman who always had a kind word for me, who loved when I showed up dressed nicely because I'd come straight from work - unprepared to shift into the dark, simplicity of zen-wear, who asked after my kids and my husband, and who was clearly struggling a bit more in the last few months.

Just last year she completed jukai. I learned today that JD had been unable to do the small stitches that form the jukai robe, each stitch to be taken with a vow - to do cease doing harm, to do good, to live for the benefit of all beings. So others made the stitches, with JD seated close to them, whispering the vow into their ear.

Such is the surprising intimacy of zen practice.

And could it be my most recent prior thought had been to idly wonder why she kept dropping off to sleep in the zendo? Was that the heart condition manifesting itself? Will I ever really get it that saying goodbye should always be full and complete; you never know if you get to do it again.

To the last, she accommodated. Most of us had to leave by 5. The service was done by 3:30 and shortly after 5 she took her last breath. During he service, I felt she heard even if she could not understand the chants. She understood the message - you are not alone, you are part of us all, you are loved, you can move on to whatever comes next. A nurse commented that she usually felt like crying to see such a sweet woman die, but everything felt so peaceful that she simply felt happy for her. The nurse, with joy, urged JD to let go and get "up there" to look after us.

Absent breathing tubes and the sound of machinery, JD was peaceful. Labored breathing slowed; less wildness in her eyes. As I held my hand to her chest, I eventually felt the rough rumble of breathing ease and then stop.

This is how it unfolds. Life, suffering, flashes of joy, struggle, a moment of change, and the course is set, the scene changes so quickly.

Thank you JD for being present, for letting us all in, for vowing in our ears....sometimes we need to be close to hear.

Poem of anticipatory grief

The earliest bird will sing its awareness

as sunrise bleeds soft gold onto the dew damp grass.

Potted flowers will turn in attention

as it begins - 

water pipes whistle, horns cry, truck tires squeal, 

and the first child runs headlong toward the curb

as the mother’s voice is lost in the hum of sound.

That day will come

and there will be no possibility of hearing your voice.

I can not call on the phone.

I can not show up at your door.

No letter will be read.

No message received.

I will sit with my words.

I will sit with my thoughts.

I will sit with my heart broken

in the haze that only 

the light of your friendship

ever dispelled.

Poems of Joy....are far too few....maybe I'll start a collection with this one by Ed Hirsch

Happiness Writes White

I am a piece of chalk
scrawling words on an empty blackboard.

I am a banner of smoke
that crosses the blue air and doesn't dissolve.

I don't believe that only sorrow
and misery can be written.

Happiness, too, can be precise:

Doctor, there's a keen throbbing
on the left side of my chest
where my ribs are wrenched by joy.

Wings flutter in my shoulders
and blood courses through my body
like waves cresting on a choppy sea.

Look: the eyes blur with tears
and the tears clear.

My head is like skylight.
My heart is like dawn.

Being with Dying, Joan Halifax c2008her.

There is an intimacy in the voice of this book that prompted me to read it with more deliberation than I have others on this topic.  Each chapter was coupled with a meditation that I recognized as challenging for me, which likely means they are all ones I would benefit from doing; so far - indeed they are!

From her experience and contemplation of how to be with the dying, Halifax effectively communicated that it is just that - be there, be present.  Bring nothing extra so you can respond to what emerges in the moment-to-moment reality of breathing in the same space as another human.  Which is also what we need to do with ourselves as we live with our own discomforts and fears of our own deaths.

Also offered is an explanation of tonglen that now makes me want to explore further.

This is one of the handful of books I would recommend to both those who find themselves in a caregiver role and to anyone who wants to explore what this part of our lives can mean.

Book notes:

• Jonas Salk: Learn to cooperate with the inevitable.
• Radical optimism (born from the raw truth of death) = not investing in the future, but in the present moment, free of design.  "Only a radical optimist can bear to bear witness."
• Equanimity - the state of being non-partial, which is not the same as impartial.
• Sympathetic joy (3rd boundless abode) = joy in the good fortune of others, joy in the virtue of others, altruistic joy engendering benefit in others
• Can we see the true nature of being as free from all pain and at the same time be present with the truth of suffering?  Can we see two things at one and the same moment, like seeing that the water and the wave are not separate?
• Zen saying:  If you take care of your mind, you take care of the world.
• What is the shadow of the Bodhisattva?  Helping other beings. (When we forget there is no "I" doing a good deed for "another.")  Roles that emerge (and block) - the hero, martyr, parent, expert.

Letting go

If you let go a little, you will have a little peace.
If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.
If you let go completely, you will have complete peace.
 - Ajahn Chah, Forrest Buddhist Master, 20thc Thailand

....The same message in every book on how to live the Dharma....

Right Speech / Perfect Speech / Samyag-vach

On reading Dharma, Color and Culture, Charles Johnson's essay on Reading the Eightfold Path:

Really enjoyed this comprehensive essay.  Have come back to the discussion of right speech several times since reading it.  Johnson quotes Heidegger on idle speech serving to close-off "Being-in-the-world" aka "inter-being".  Then notes:  "Violence is not only physical, it is psychological and verbal.  It beings in the mind.  All my life I've wondered what it would be like to live in a society where, instead of men and women insulting and tearing each other down, people in their social relations, and even in the smallest ways, held the highest intellectual, moral, creative, and spiritual expectations for one another."

Indeed, what would that world look like?  What we I look like/be if genuinely habituated to that type of expectation.

It would be a reason to follow the Buddhist idea of "holding" thought at three gates, i.e., enough time to consider:  Is what I am about to say true?  Will it cause no harm?  And is it necessary?

I remember meeting at least one teacher who seemed to so consciously aim to observe / hold his speech in this way.  Maybe it is possible.

Through the looking glass

Got to read to a patient this week. Every week before this she had been too engaged with the struggle to stay alive to speak with someone new.  I knew her name, but had no sense of the person.  This time - awake, alive, color in her cheeks.  Her body still wasted and weak, but clearly this was a new day.  We agreed that Alice in Wonderland would be nice.  I read the first chapter - pausing together to appreciate how perfect the metaphor of the rabbit hole was for her current situation and for life generally.  What would it take to greet suffering with Alice's eyes:  Curious and curiouser.

Completely still

From The New Old Age Blog http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/the-agenda-for-today/
So evocative of the the experience of my elder relatives:

 “It’s just, I feel like my life is like that.” She waves her hand toward the forest outside the window.  The trees, whipped bare by passing winds, crowd without grace down the hill to a thick darkness. Beyond their crisscrossed branches, the winter sky is blue, bold, slashed with a single riff of cloud. “Beautiful,” she says, “and completely still.”

Equally evocative of the experience of a patient I recently saw - young senior, 10years into life with a  brain tumor.  I asked her what she was thinking  (in the bardo of the hospital room).  "I feel useless."  In that moment the room was silent, completely still.  The sun of the cold bright day streamed into the room.  

"What is useful?" I asked.  The conversation moved in many other directions as that thought and moment passed for her.  But it stayed with me.  

Before I left I said, "About being useful, I think differently about it then I used to.  Not much at times seems useful, except maybe being here, in the moment and being with what is there for us.  Being here for that sunshine, for your mom, your friends."  A sigh as the thought returns.  "Maybe."

Charter for Compassion

An effort by Karen Armstrong and many others since 2008.  Seems like an impossibility without a cultural shift that supports mindfulness and reflection.  

Charter for Compassion http://charterforcompassion.org/site/

The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.

It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common humanity. We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion.

We therefore call upon all men and women ~ to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion ~ to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate ~ to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures ~ to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity ~ to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings—even those regarded as enemies.

We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensible to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.