CPE Reflection #3

CPE Reflection #3, due 2/13/2012

"...if then I bend over and pick up a stick, he (Monty) is instantly before me. The great thing has now happened. He has a mission. It never occurs to him to evaluate the mission. His dedication is solely to its fulfillment. He runs or swims any distance, over or through any obstacle, to get that stick.

And, having got it, he brings it back: for his mission is not simply to get it but to return it. Yet, as he approaches me, he moves more slowly. He wants to give it to me and give closure to his task, yet he hates to have done with his mission, to again be in the position of waiting.

For him as for me, it is necessary to be in the service of something beyond the self. Until I am ready he must wait. He is lucky to have me to throw his stick. I am waiting for God to throw mine. Have been waiting a long time. Who knows when, if ever, he will again turn his attention to me, and allow me, as I allow Monty, my mood of mission?..."

                              Alan Wheelis, The Listener (a memoir)

Wheelis makes an analogy between a dog’s expectant waiting for purpose (fetch the stick) and our own expectancy (and need for) a purpose that is articulated externally (from God).  The poignant closing words of hope and expectancy evoke one particular encounter with a patient a year ago"  "Why was I spared - again and again?  To do what?  Did I miss [the message]?"

I am struck by how distinct this external seeking is from my understanding of Buddhist thought, as well as how explicitly contrary it is to several recent readings that made sense to me - Sam Harris’ The End of Faith (holding us fully accountable for our beliefs, and urging that we look within to understand their source and value), and Karen Armstrong’s Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (proffering that compassion should be sufficient to animate purpose and a better world for all).  

From my Zen practice,  I experience meditation (turning the light inward) as a means to experience (brief) insights into the true nature of reality (impermanent, empty, undifferentiated), which leads to .....and here is a leap that I can’t yet explain fully or well ....compassion and a commitment to compassionate action.   Simplistically (because really, that’s where I am right now), this reflects a truth of no-difference, i.e., that we are all confronting the same challenges and that we sink and swim together.  In this vein, I understand my “purpose” to be compassionate action that flows from the realities of the moment.   That purpose is further animated by continued (Zen) practice -dedication to inquiry about the truth of the present moment and a wish to be attentive and available to what emerges.  It is renewed with each breath.  (Hmmm...which must mean that when I act like a dolt...I stop breathing.  Gonna keep an eye on that.)

Would that I had the skillful means to guide a patient in an existential crisis to a reaffirmation of their own universal nature and the ability to draw strength (and purpose) from its expression in the moment.  A patient recently expressed being trapped (by her life circumstances and illnesses).  I have been thinking about how that perspective occurs and what it takes to get un-trapped.

(Any resemblance to the Deathly Hallows is just plain...funny.)

Our cultural and social norms define the options for purpose and action.  Within those norms, the accidents of birth (nature and nurture) define a view of what is possible for each of us.  (I am willing to argue for the role of karma here, but not now.)  Within that view we define an individual sense of role and capabilities.  If we are fortunate, we can see a reasonably full spectrum of possibilities (and purposes), but in all likelihood, we will have blindspots as peer at the world from the Johari House of our life’s design.  

We exist nested within these structures.  What is it to have a view of the nest itself? Like the fabulous ending to Men in Black, how do we draw back far enough for that view?  

I think such a perspective is necessary to understand purpose.  Alternatively, purpose-seeking will lead with the blindspot-ladden self.  Looking externally for purpose, looking from within our nested worldview (and biases), how can we expect to see what is needed?  It appears all to easy to default to a judgement-rich “acceptable” view of purpose, expediently defined by socio-economic circumstances, peer groups, and chance.  


Does such a default position serve? Can useful purposes be articulated from that vantage point?  My biases point to no.  I fear the world we have is the result of these blindspot-ladden, self-directed determinations of purpose:  a world in which caring for each other, our communities, and our earth is somehow not quite grand or sufficient a purpose; instead we leave that work to an unknown, undefined, and poorly valued other.  (My experience in service professions is certainly showing itself here!)

Perhaps the sense of purpose I am proposing is too relativistic.  But then, not holding to a belief in an external God from whom an absolute worldview is drawn, it seems appropriate.  My focus is on the moment to moment understanding of what is present, what there is to work with, what emerges in response to the suffering (physical, existential) that may be present, and in response to the amazing wonder of life that is before us. For me, this inquiry is sufficient to animate a sense of purpose.

As I write that last line, I am reminded of the parable of the blind sea turtle.  Adrift, it only surfaces every 100 years. Now imagine there is a small ring in this vast sea. It is more likely for the turtle to accidentally poke its head through that ring than to be born a human being.

This gift of our lives deserves the inquiry of purpose. The existential inquiry (and pain) that drives us to inquire about purpose - whether through religion, philosophy, communing with nature, etc. - is an attempt to honor that gift.  

Circles, wheels, spirographs

The Motivation Futility Cycle is from a perversely funny source called Despair.com, which offers a brilliant response to all the annoying motivational messages that assault in a corporate setting.  (Read through the roster of "demotivators" and tell me which aren't true statements?!!!!)

Initially I saw this as a witty take on how businesses trying to strategize their way out of a bad business situation:  Hmmm, let's reorganize (shift the deck chairs on the Titanic).  Yeah, that'll do it.  Awe, results not so good.  Must have done it wrong. Pinterest, that's it.  Hmmm, no success.  I got it, let's Tweet more!

This takes a more menacing tone when seen as a reflection of patient thinking as they confront illness and diagnosis:  Seek out a new motivational stimulation (hope in a treatment), roll with it enthusiastically (it'll all get better now), learn that it has limits, and crash down into despair, which necessitates seeking out a new motivational stimulation.

Hope is good, new treatments are good.  What is demotivating and exhausting (to me) is not seeing the cycle in perspective (as the flow of samsara and part of the journey on the wheel of life).  More troubling still is not having any idea of what it could mean to step out of it!   Lacking that perspective, all contracts to the energy of three poisons (greed, anger, delusion)as it spins that wheel.

Wheel of Life

A recent patient encounter made me think of this most keenly.  Chaplaincy in that instance seemed most like an opportunity to walk with someone fo a moment in that cycle (since we're both on the wheel of life, it's could be like the intersecting segments in a spirograph) and maybe step with them - if just for a second - onto a by-road for a breath.

Hmm...did I finally discard that spirograph?

A 21st century Rohatsu exhortation

If Eihei Dogen had a daughter in the 21st century, perhaps he would have encouraged her to be "steadily intimate in [her] mind field" in this way:

You have my okay
   to suck the marrow out of life
   to break through the effervescent exterior of the moment
   and bite into its dark, rich truth.

You have my blessing
   to do only what you can do with attention
   to not layer in more because you ought, should, or were told to
Breathe, then ask your heart if this is what you intend.
If the answer is yes, go forth.

You have my support
   to be less of the person you thought you were
   and more of what you are fully in this moment,
   to be aware of what drives you,
   be they habits of mind, aspirations, delusions,
   and to give yourself the liberty to chose which will surface today.

To know the world, start by knowing the knower - nothing is excluded.

Blindness

Saw this "improv" link a few days ago.  Jaw still on floor.

But then it is all of a piece with the Human Zoo videos we're watching in CPE training..and the brown eyes/ blue eyes "lesson" conducted in the '60s by Jane Elliot ....

...and the genuine 'need' for the diversity initiative just launched in my organization, which may the 3rd or 4th within my tenure.  All similar ways in which the world reminds us to wake up and turn the light inwards, if only for a second of self awareness.

I am not immune from this blindness, but I find that I am certainly drawn toward efforts to counter it.  Hence the practice of meditation, the reflective confronting of 'self' in retreats, in CPE, in my work as a manager (though I could wish it were less confrontational...working on that).  I think it is an outcome of something that happened early and indelibly - my bones and muscle memory have never forgotten being a minority - the other race, the "disadvantaged" economic group, the kid who stuttered and couldn't run fast enough, the smart/wise-ass who didn't fit in so stood out.  Rolls reversed, deficits countered - and those memories still waft through actions to this day.

Zen's teaching of "no difference" has always made bone-deep sense.  And my experience in chaplaincy has never failed to confirm it - who is suffering...who is the patient...this time you, next time me.  All that seems to matter is how we meet each other in this moment.  Anger, tears, frustration, hope, joy - are any of these "other"?

Can't help but consider that the way I've seen folks respond to kirtan is also proof of no difference.

A "found" quote

...in the closing pages of Head Off & Split, poems by Nikky Finney.

Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.  - Simone Weil

CPE Reflection 2

CPE Reflection 2, Due February 6, 2012

“...as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theater before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like condemned prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means.”"

(Arthur Schopenhauer, German Philosopher 1788-1860)

The last words I read before turning to this assignment were in a book by Thomas Nagel called What Does It All Mean.  The book is a brief narrative of how philosophy approaches several key questions, building up to “What is the meaning of life?”  (Alas, the answer is not Adams’ “42”.)  Nagel is dissatisfied with a religious answer to the question (i.e., that we can’t know beyond the fact that it is God’s will or purpose) because it precludes our asking and being able to get a satisfactory answer to “Why” or “What is that purpose.”   “Can there really be something which gives point to everything else by encompassing it, bit which couldn’t have, or need, any point itself?  Something whose point can’t be questioned from outside because there is no outside?”  

Nagel appears to lead to a conclusion that life may be fundamentally meaningless, but since we as individuals determine to care about our lives and each other, that’s gonna have to be meaning enough.  He notes that some are troubled by this and ascribe it to a tendency toward taking ourselves too seriously, needing some larger sense of purpose or importance to energize our actions.  To give this up a larger/higher purpose would be to acknowledge the ridiculousness of taking ourselves so seriously.  “..if we can’t help taking ourselves so seriously, perhaps we just have to put up with being ridiculous.  Life may be not only meaningless but absurd.”  


Let’s take the above as true - that life does not have inherent meaning and may indeed be absurd.  Then indeed the children are “condemned” to a meaningless existence.  But it is their existence and their opportunity to explore its breadth and depth.  

The children in the relatively affluent United States (even those comfortably swaying in Mitt Romney’s imaginatively well-woven safety net) as well as those in nations from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe have the opportunity to not just discover an answer to the question of the meaning of life, but to create one.  It is an opportunity, not a destiny. Many things are stacked up against such discovery, from being able to rise one's head above subsistence to developing the capacity for reasoned exploration. And then there is how little introspection most bring to the project of their lives.  It often seems that only in the moments of crisis - illness and death - the question of meaning surfaces strongly enough to be considered if not addressed. But then, those moments eventually come to us all.

There is a Buddhist parable of the burning house from the Lotus Sutra that is relevant to this reflection in that it captures why I think of the children not as condemned but as having a real chance to realize if not create meaning.  The story goes like this:

One day, a fire broke out in the house of a wealthy man who had many children. The wealthy man shouted at his children inside the burning house to flee. But, the children were absorbed in their games and did not heed his warning, though the house was being consumed by flames.

Then the wealthy man devised a practical way to lure the children from the burning house. Knowing that the children were fond of interesting playthings, he called out to them, "Listen! Outside the gate are the carts that you have always wanted: carts pulled by goats, carts pulled by deer, and carts pulled by oxen. Why don't you come out and play with them?" The wealthy man knew that these things would be irresistible to his children.

The children, eager to play with these new toys rushed out of the house but, instead of the carts that he had promised, the father gave them a cart much better than any he has described - a cart draped with precious stones and pulled by white bullocks. The important thing being that the children were saved from the dangers of the house on fire.

The father represents the Buddha (aka the awakened one, a perspective and realization available to each of us) and we are the ones trapped in the burning house. The burning house is the life we are “condemned” to, which inherently includes the “fires” of sickness, old age and death.  The father/Buddha is calling the children out of the house - out of the delusion that the house is not on fire (the spectacle we will see on stage) - and into the possibility of awakening to a larger truth - and meaning.  (The strategy the father uses is referred to as skillful means, i.e., means appropriate to the understanding of the children, so yeah - it was fine to lure them out of the house with treats;  but this has limits - it wouldn’t be okay to say come out or I’ll kill your sister.)

Is it condemnation to know that the play will end or that it will have tears as well as joys? Knowing that the curtain will eventually come down is one thing. Not having an opportunity to influence the quality of the play, or to dream up an alternative plot, is another. It is a “blessing” that we do not know what is really going to happen in so far as it allows us to discover for ourselves. In Zen this is expressed as “beginners mind.” This idea is part of a key line in a Zen koan: “not knowing is most intimate”, i.e., it makes it possible to meet life without preconceived ideas, interpretations, or judgments. We can then discover what will happen for ourselves; that discovery may in fact be the “larger sense of purpose” that animates my activities. 

Guess I get to own my ridiculousness!