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.

Sitting with what sucks -- I mean, what is.

Maybe my hair is ready to ordain.

Head-shaving has long been a symbol of renunciation in Buddhism. Head-shaving has been a way to physically express the cutting off of the three poisons -- greed, anger and ignorance. Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn even called hair "ignorance grass".

From Only Don't Know:

The Buddha taught that hair is ‘ignorance grass’, so cutting is necessary. If your hair is long, maybe your ignorance is long. When you have hair, you always worry how it looks … We put so much concern and time and effort into keeping this hair the way we like it. So this hair is always pulling our minds around. Being a monk or nun means cutting off all attachments and becoming a completely free person. Being attached to your hair cannot help you do this, so we cut it.

The bald spots on my head are getting larger, and a new one was just found at my last trim at the barber. Alopecia Areata is presenting me with quite a practice. Despite my ideas about myself as a pretty wash-and-go gal, ready or not, I am getting better-acquainted with these attachments to my physical presentation: Thirtysomething woman with cute, short, thick, dark, slightly graying hair.

Holding onto that idea of myself is painful when it's falling apart every moment.

For many people, hair loss is often a side-effect of chemotherapy. Something that adds insult to the injury of life-threatening illness. Mine is certainly not that severe, and even if it gets to that point, Alopecia Areata will damage only my ego, and so I try to keep that in perspective, and see it as an ally in this way.

Also:

• I should always have a full head of hair, the appearance of which loosely commensurate with my age.
• I should be able to control this body.
• I should understand why this is happening.
• Something is wrong with me.

The glue holding this self together is made up of thoughts like those.

Also revealed are my pet notions of how a Zen student "should" respond to this. Well, not just any Zen student. I would not expect others to have some miraculous calm about such an experience, but I have apparently been feeding this notion that I should welcome this teaching with instant acceptance, serenity, equanimity, and even humor or delight at the opportunity to further simplify my daily routine. Let me be clear: That's not how it's been.

There has been quite a bit of resistance to actually feeling the truth of my feelings around this; pain, embarrassment, anger, irritation, shame. And so many of these are secondary emotions; embarrassment about feeling embarrassed. Anger about feeling anger.

Lama Surya Das on renunciation:

...it doesn't necessarily imply suddenly, impulsively, dropping everyone and everything. What renunciation really means is letting go, openness, relinquishing the tight-fisted grasping. The heart of renunciation means allowing rather than controlling; letting go of the controlling and the contrived, selfish manipulation you do in order to get what you think you want. We try to see through the manipulation so that we're less invested in the fool's gold of materialism, of spiritual materialism, or anything that we believe is going to save us or make us happy for ever.

Not a pushing away, but a letting go. Not a wrenching away, but a releasing.

I've actually had that experience with Zen practice. As this life turns more toward practice, the things I used to spend time doing just fall away quite naturally and without much fanfare. Like the time I had signed up for a week-long Sesshin, which turned out to be the week that my home team, my beloved St Louis Cardinals went to (and won) the World Series. I was surprised that my reaction to missing the final games was such a non-reaction. I was surprised to be so satisfied with turning my attention to practice instead of the games. Even missing the games, I did not have any sense of missing anything. It was easy. Effortless.

Lama Surya Das again:

In Tibetan the word (renunciation) is very interesting. It means the arising of certainty, which has a highly positive valence. It doesn't mean throwing away your life, your wife, your husband, your kids, your career, your health, and flagellating yourself in various ways. It means the arising of inner certainty. For example, drinking salt water does not alleviate thirst, so when you know that, you don't have to renounce drinking salt water when you're thirsty; it just doesn't make sense so you naturally relinquish such an action. It doesn't help, so you effortlessly renounce it. When you have inner conviction and spiritual certainty, what is there to renounce?

That is why the Buddha said:

"Adopt and cultivate what is wholesome and beneficial;

Relinquish what is harmful.

Purify your heart and mind;

This is the way of enlightenment."

The way the Tibetan idea was translated from Sanskrit was not sacrifice, but more like the ridding of excess baggage. We have to pay for every kilo of excess baggage, so sloughing off the excess is not a very dire renunciation. Buddhist teachings strongly emphasize notions such as non-attachment, renunciation, simplicity. This is not because Buddhism is pessimistic, but because it's practical and realistic. Everything is passing and changing, so resistance or holding on to fleeting things and relationships is ultimately unsatisfactory. These are the first sublime truths the Buddha taught; they're just the facts of life, not some holy ontology or mythology about the beginning of the universe. These are the facts of life: If you want to suffer less, then resist less, grasp less, identify less with ephemera. It is very unsatisfying to hold on to what is ungraspable.

Yeah man, very unsatisfying. Like getting a crutch kicked out from under you.

All the while, I continue to turn my mind toward looking at this as simply what is; not struggling, but cultivating willingness to actually feel the pain of trying to hold onto something that is transient. To really be awake to how it feels to take refuge in a burning house. To sit and feel the feelings of embarrassment that are not in fact the result of hair loss, but are the result of identifying with these thoughts, this idea of a self as is "should" be.

So instead I just let myself cry, and wordlessly go through this process as it is. To open and widen beyond the tight little clutching confines of me, me, me, self, self, self. Actively receptive.

Post-Sesshin Post

Dogen said that he reached enlightenment by making "one mistake after another" or "one continuous mistake." If that is the case, I am well on my way.

On Monday, about two hours before leaving for this past Sesshin, the Thursday night "Benji" (the unfortunate word for the Shusso's assistant) e-mailed me to ask what was planned in Hogen Roshi's and my absence. Thus began the scramble to actually plan something, and thankfully, Chozen Roshi agreed to come down and do Shosan, or public Sanzen.

And in that vein, though billed as the Generosity Sesshin, this was, for me, the Humility Sesshin.

Indeed. This time I was not the Head of Tea, just a tea server. See this post for comedy of errors occurring under my watch as Head of Tea. What a relief this time, right? Just serve tea! And cookies. On a wooden tray. Bowing at the waist with the tray at about eye level, while the seated person you are serving bows to you. Then kneel down with the tray to serve. And try not to CRACK THE SHUSSO RIGHT ON THE HEAD with your tray because she is still bowing!


Yes, I did. At the end of Sesshin, Chozen Roshi said that over the years they have witnessed "hundreds of near-misses." Wow.

Usually at Sesshin, there will be lines from a chant that had once been opaque and mysterious that just jump off the page into technicolor understanding: 'Stone woman gets up dancing,' Yes, I see it!

This time, it seemed all the lines about obstructions and difficulty were revealing themselves in my experience:

'Move and you are trapped, miss and you fall into doubt and vacillation.'

It took quite a few days to settle the mind, and it never really got all that quiet for long this time. One of the residents at the last Sesshin described that level of not-really-quiet-mind was like watching CNN on mute, always with the moving scrolls of thought down in the very bottom of the screen.

It took me until Wednesday to remember that I can actually observe what the mind is doing, notice its patterns, then maybe come up with something to help move through whatever mind pattern is happening, like creating an internal suggestion box for a particularly active complaining mind.

So once I started doing that, things settled a bit. Except I kept falling for one thing: The Comparing-Sesshin-to-Sesshin Mind: "It's Friday and you're still not quiet?! This is terrible! What are you doing wrong? You should be in much deeper samadhi right now. Remember last year when you had that big insight and it was like all colors and light and all the cells of the universe dancing together? Yeah, this is sooo not that. But wanting to return to that is definitely doing it wrong, too, so you better stop that. Because maybe stopping that is the way to deeper samadhi and a big crashing insight!"


Just like a dog endlessly chasing her tail. Continued practice seems to have given me more endurance for that kind of thing, so I can grind away like this for more days at a time before hitting the wall of exhaustion and surrender.

I've been ambivalently doing koan practice. Taking it up, putting it down, and scared to really commit. I find myself presenting in Sanzen with these conditionally structured sentences: "If I were to do koan practice..." "So if I continue working with this koan..." Talking about it is surely not doing it. It feels like walking all around the edges of a very very deep, dark body of water, and trying to imagine what it would / might / could be like to jump in.

And yet, apparently, I am working with this koan. Or it is working with me. Because I find all my extraneous holding and self-protecting and holding back is completely revealed. And because I am at times genuinely scared. It feels like something deep inside is slowly breaking.

Over and over, not every time, but many times in the last few Sesshin, I'd go into Sanzen, and return to sit weeping on my cushion for the rest of the period. Because I can just see it all so clearly:

Wanting so desperately to be doing it right. Wanting to know the answer. Wanting to know anything. Wanting to be a good student. Wanting to be good. Wanting to obtain validation from some outside authority. Not wanting to fail. And continually thinking that all of this is where safety comes from. It feels like being a scared 8-year-old pulling out all of her coping skills that have ever worked before and finding them completely ineffectual.

Yeah, it's like this sometimes.

This experience of having these deep knots revealed and the subsequent feelings of fear, sadness and frustration is becoming familiar. So much so that I was able to recognize one of its origins: Being a good student was one way that I tried to manage my parents' anxiety. No need to go into detail, but there it is.

'Turning away and touching are both wrong, for it is like massive fire.'

Wouldn't it be great to let all that go? I find myself really wanting to let it go. Yeah, really wanting to let it go. And in that wanting, there is a lot of grasping and clutching. Like trying to grasp and clutch water. Or fire.

'Just a hair's breadth's deviation and you are out of tune.'

At some point I could feel a lightening up. And then I had this wonderful image which sums up what this practice is like: Wile E. Coyote trying to catch the Road Runner. In one episode, he ends up falling through the air, and suddenly remembers his parachute. He pulls the ripcord, and then camping gear and kitchen utensils fall out. Then the fall and the puff of landing.

This is what my mind is doing! Throwing all the ways I have ever developed to think my way out of things, to problem solve, to look rationally at things, to try to effect outcomes, being invested in outcomes, trying to find certainty and safety... all completely ineffectual.



Free Falling indeed. (The whole Road Runner episode with the stuff falling out of Wile E. Coyote's parachute pack is here at about 2:00.)

'...heart humble and grateful'

Hogen Roshi shared a lot of poetry by Rumi during the Teisho. Here is one poem.

Enough Words

How does a part of the world leave the world?
How can wetness leave water?

Don't try to put out a fire
by throwing on more fire!
Don't wash a wound with blood!

No matter how fast you run,
your shadow more than keeps up.
Sometimes, it's in front!

Only full, overhead sun
diminishes your shadow.

But that shadow has been serving you!
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.

I can explain this, but it would break
the glass cover on your heart,
and there's no fixing that.

You must have shadow and light source both.
Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.

When from that tree, feathers and wings sprout
on you, be quieter than a dove.
Don't open your mouth for even a cooooooo.

When a frog slips into the water, the snake
cannot get it. Then the frog climbs back out
and croaks, and the snake moves toward him again.

Even if the frog learned to hiss, still the snake
would hear through the hiss the information
he needed, the frog voice underneath.

But if the frog could be completely silent,
then the snake would go back to sleeping,
and the frog could reach the barley.

The soul lives there in the silent breath.

And that grain of barley is such that,
when you put it in the ground,
it grows.

Are these enough words,
or shall I squeeze more juice from this?
Who am I, my friend?

It Takes A Village, People

I just finished a weekend with my 22-month-old "Buddha-son". It's easier to introduce him to other folks at the park as my "nephew," but my husband and I were invited to be the Buddhist half of his spiritual guides along with a Christian couple.

One of his moms is an old friend from college, who stood up at my wedding, and is a sister to me. She is also on the path of Zen. Amazingly, we both came to this path completely independently of each other. She is about to take Jukai in Iowa next week. Incredible.

I had not spent any significant time with Hans since his baby blessing when he was an infant.

He departed blowing kisses from his carseat. I found him to be a surprisingly agreeable little guy, especially for an almost-two-year-old. His meltdowns are usually for good reason: HALT (hungry, angry, lonely, tired), just like mine. Well, I guess you could add poopy diapers. And I bet it would not take long for me to melt down if I had poopy diapers. That might appropriately fall under the "angry" category.

Anyway, I feel like I just did a Beginners' Mind weekend retreat. Entering the world of a toddler is just not much different than Sesshin. He was even awake at 4:30 am (having come to Pacific time from Central time). We spent time at the park, and at one point watched a little iridescent bug for what, five, ten, fifteen minutes? It's relentless; a roller coaster of emotion, requiring constant consciousness and intentional widening and narrowing of focus. The difficult times just keep calling for more growth to contain it all. The sweet, wonderful times feel so cosmically delightful. And Hans simply embodies wholeheartedness. He would give big hugs, one by one, to everyone's who was standing in the kitchen in one moment, and then fling himself, inconsolably sobbing, from one end of the house to another in the next moment.

But there was a point on a hike we took at the coast, at which I felt like an Auntie in an elephant herd. I simply knew that if anyone ever tried anything on this boy, they would have to get through me first.
What is that? What causes this connection? Is it biology? It sure feels biological. But I've been around other kids, and don't necessarily experience that, or at least I'm not conscious of it. Is it the closeness between me and his Mommy? The time spent with him? I find it kind of astounding.

So I googled around and discovered that the word for these "aunties" of either sex in species of animals who do share parenting is called "allomother."

I ran across an article in the NY Times discussing a primatologist's research into this phenomenon. Dr. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, in her book called Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding, theorizes that humans developed this ability to cooperatively parent not to be competitive with other groups, but because it was effective:

“I’m not comfortable accepting this idea that the origins of hypersociality can be found in warfare, or that in-group amity arose in the interest of out-group enmity,” she said in a telephone interview. Sure, humans have been notably violent and militaristic for the last 12,000 or so years, she said, when hunter-gatherers started settling down and defending territories, and populations started getting seriously dense. But before then? There weren’t enough people around to wage wars. By the latest estimates, the average population size during the hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution that preceded the Neolithic Age may have been around 2,000 breeding adults. “What would humans have been fighting over?” Dr. Hrdy said. “They were too busy trying to keep themselves and their children alive.”

She posits that it's this development of cooperative breeding that is the source of much of our behavior and extreme sociability (empathy, cooperation, relative pacifism, and trust), rather than the complexity of our brains.

And that somehow, it's those helpless babies who trigger and promote "many of the behaviors and emotions that we prize in ourselves and that often distinguish us from other animals, including a willingness to share, to cooperate with strangers, to relax one’s guard, uncurl one’s lip and widen one’s pronoun circle beyond the stifling confines of me, myself and mine."

So apparently it takes a village, not only to raise children, but to evolve ourselves.