Rant

I've been aspiring to write a series of posts on Pema Chodron's teachings on Shantideva's Way of the Bodhisattva, and well, just haven't found the energy and focus to really get started. But the energy and focus found me. Yesterday I came face to face with a teaching. Yesterday I found myself in the thick of a rant. The rant came after a work-related phone call with another professional. I remained (mostly) polite over the phone, save for a moment or two of sarcasm. When I got off the phone, I realized I was sweating. The anger got internalized, and then in a couple conversations afterwards, it came right out in a self-righteous, beleaguered, insulted, pissed-off rant. With hand gestures. And dramatic vocal range. Now there's some energy and focus. What force could possibly knock Jomon from her equinimitous (is that a word?) Ango practice of Right Speech?

4.27

I am as if benumbed by sorcery,

My mind reduced to total impotence

With no perception of the madness overwhelming me.

O what is it that has me in its grip?

Insurance companies. The minions of Mara.

Dealing with insurance companies is, for me, such a reliable, predictable trigger into fervent righteous angry victim mode, that it is familiar, becoming tiresome even, and still I seem to be able to only helplessly watch it arise. My best intervention has been to just try to avoid interacting with them, though this is not entirely possible. And I'm coming at it from the provider side of things; not even an ill person in need of benefits. I can know this is a danger zone for me, and believe I am about to use my skills to navigate sanely through it this time, and then the next thing you know, I'm Corky St. Clair in "Waiting for Guffman:"

Nobody ever plans to be Corky St. Clair:

6.24

Never thinking, "Now I will be angry."

People are impulsively caught up in anger.

Irritation, likewise comes --

Though never plans to be experienced!

All of it gives me a chance to see where the little velcro hooks are in me that get caught here every time. Certainly I harbor some opinions and views about how health care SHOULD be delivered, but boy howdy, isn't. In fact, this rant always ends the same way, with a soliloquy about the collective cost to a nation of all these bean counters on each side fighting over the same $20 bill in the no man's land of paperwork trench warfare, blah blah blah...

As I've said before, I'm a cheap date when it comes to righteousness (it does have an addictive quality), and I like to be right, and I don't like to not-know. Very strengthening of this ego, this self -- to have some evil empire to bump up against, generate emotion about, and verify all this selfing.

For whatever reason, I also get stuck in the roles in these conversations. I take them too seriously. I fail to see the larger picture. I hold my professional role too tightly, and I also see a them on the phone, something like one of the Borg in a big heartless, faceless corporation.

Indeed there may be some place for righteous anger, perhaps as fuel to change conditions that are oppressive. Nevertheless, Shantideva recommends patience as an antidote to anger. Certainly needed if there is to be change in this system, otherwise burnout will come fast and hard, and what good is that to anyone?

6.2

No evil is there similar to anger,

No austerity to be compared with patience.

Steep yourself, therefore, in patience--

In all ways, urgently, with zeal.

Pema Chodron and Shantideva also talk about three sources of patience:

1. Reframing our attitude toward discomfort,
2. Understanding the complexity of any situation,
3. Developing tolerance.

But here is the kicker:

6.107

So like a treasure found at home,

Enriching me without fatigue,

All enemies are helpers in my bodhisattva work

And therefore they should be a joy to me.

*Sigh*

This bodhisattva work is tough stuff.

Now I Atone For It All

It's a good thing I had a few days to reflect on this searching and fearless moral inventory. The workbook I used listed many open questions on each of the following topics:

Honesty, Love, Maturity, Sex, Fear, Anger, Self-Worth, Responsibilities, Finances, Gratitude, and more. Daunting, but so helpful!

So what comes of setting aside a few days to reflect on one's strengths and shortcomings? After a few days of writingwritingwriting on these subjects, it turns out there is a lot more right with me than there is wrong with me. This is no surprise -- to anyone who doesn't carry my driver's license. Actually going through the whole process was key to seeing this clearly. To be open to it all, positive, negative, neutral, and to remain in non-judgmental stance as much as possible. When we're afraid to look, the challenges can loom large -- like a monster in the closet. But opening the door and shining a flashlight reveals it was just a coat.

There weren't really any big surprises, just a wonderful opportunity to focus, and to begin moving more deeply into practicing with the Precepts. From here, I have decided to focus more on the Precepts pertaining to Right Speech.

One of the many great things about this retreat was that I got to create my own structure and container. Another great thing was that I actually worked with the Dharma books I brought (as opposed to hauling them around out of worry that I would lack something to do). Mostly I read and worked with Waking Up to What You Do, a wonderful book on applying the Precepts in our lives by Diane Eshin Rissetto. This book deserves a whole post of its own. One of the things I love about it is her re-ordering of the Precepts, and her use of language in the positive. For example, "I Take Up the Way of Speaking of Others With Openness and Possibility." "I Take Up the Way of Meeting Others on Equal Ground."

I also worked with No Time to Lose, A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron,

and The Heart of Being by Daido Loori.

All of these focused to some degree or another on the Precepts, and I really enjoyed seeing the overlaps in the 12-Step process and the Precepts, since this is the first time I have done such a structured 4th Step (Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves) since I started practicing Buddhism.

And of course, I'm not done; the 4th Step is followed by the 5th Step (Admitted to our Higher Power, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs).

There is something spiritually universal or archetypal around this template of self-assessment, confession, atonement, and rededication. How wonderful that we do not have to reinvent the wheel of how to live a decent human life. It only occurred to me yesterday that this retreat happened to fall during Yom Kippur. I appreciate James Ford's post about Yom Kippur and the importance of ever-returning to such practices as atonement and rededication as an integral part of the path to peace.

Shantideva spends a lot of time doing what Pema Chodron calls "Preparing the Ground" for being a Bodhisattva. This includes atonement. She writes,

Rather than hiding our mistakes from ourselves and others, we forthrightly declare them. By acknowledging them to ourselves, we avoid self-deception. In certain circumstances we may also declare them to someone else, as witness to our wise intention.

To see clearly how we strengthen or weaken crippling patterns, we have to bring them to light... You may ask, "Isn't it enough to acknowledge my regrets to myself?" It does help a lot, but not enough to completely dissolve self-deception. When we express our regrets to the buddhas or another human being, we can't kid ourselves. As an act of self-compassion and self-respect, we use a witness to expose ourselves to ourselves...

The practice of confession... relies on the view that neurosis, while it may feel monolithic or immutable, is essentially transitory and insubstantial. It is just very strong energy that we mistakenly identify as a solid and permanent "me". Confessing, like making offerings and prostrations, helps us let go of this fixed version of who we are.

A friend in the 12 Steps said the 4th Step and 5th Steps are like flushing the toilet. What if you never did that at home, and instead chose to ignore or pretend there was no need? What if you flushed once and said, 'Whew! Glad that's overwith.' No, we have to deal with our "shit" on a daily basis. And being full of shit is not a problem unless we are not recognizing it and acting accordingly.

I admit to some resistance to the process, though, which I think is pretty natural. My resistance showed up in at least one amusing way. I had decided that Friday Morning After Breakfast would be when I would start writing. I brought my workbook and little tote bag of other books into the peace and quiet of the Lodge library, crawled into an overstuffed couch, and found myself not writing, but reading. Reading the first chapter of Eshin's book, which was on Honesty. Well the first workbook writing would be about Honesty, so I guessed a little preliminary reading was OK. And ahh, the geothermally supplied warmth of the radiators! The comfort of the sound of gently falling rain outside! Yep, I was instantly and completely overcome by a drooling NAP. Fell sound asleep whilst reading Waking Up to What You Do. It would have been a marvelous photo.

These aggressive naps overtook me throughout the process just prior to starting out another session of writing. And it's not like I'm tired. I have not been this well-rested and stably energetic in quite a while. No, these were psychological / emotional naps. And I didn't make a big deal about it, I would just wake up, mop the drool, and begin the next writing session perhaps even a little more refreshed and focused.

More on the Way of the Bodhisattva soon.

Stats!

Oh dear. I have just discovered something that is apparently new to blogspot: Stats. When did they add stats? Or have I just been blissfully ignorant of them all this time?

I've read many a post from you other-kind-of-blog bloggers about your practice with stats: How many hits have I gotten? Who's reading my blog? Why was that post popular and that post wasn't? What search terms are people using to get to my blog? Kloncke wrote a great post about this, and even created StatDragons to illustrate the weekly ups and downs of feedback from blog hit statistics. I have always been grateful that I hadn't the same ability to check and check and check: How am I doing? What does everybody think of me?

Now I do.

So observing myself observing the numbers, learning features of the stats application, like being able to see the different countries from whence the hits have come (hey there, Estonia!); this seems fine. It's the Olympic-level jumping to conclusions, the interpretations, the stories being generated about what it all means about me that starts to feel potentially problematic.

So I'll try to balance this shocking new option for self-obsession with a morsel from Pema Chodron's No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva, in which she combs through and comments upon each line of Shantideva's Way of the Bodhisattva, a text written in the eighth century, and no less relevant this very minute.

6.93

Children can't help crying when

Their sand castles come crumbling down.

Our minds are so like them

When praise and reputation start to fail.

"We invest so much energy into getting people to admire us, but our reputations, like everything else, are as impermanent as sand castles, and attachment to them causes so much unnecessary pain.

There's a Charlie Brown cartoon that shows Lucy building an elaborate sand castle, saying proudly, "And a thousand years from now, people will see what I did here today and be totally amazed." It's this nonsensical attitude that Shantideva addresses here.

Better to regard yourself as a character in a play. You can take the part of a person who's famous or admired, without taking this identity too seriously. If praise and reputation are as fragile as sand castles, it's realistic to not be disturbed when they pass away with the changing tides. Then you can build a magnificent sand castle, covered with beautiful shells and stones. You can even get people to help you and enjoy it thoroughly, and when the waves come in, out it goes."

sand castle originally uploaded by Ben Amstutz