my time?

From stories that have been passed down through the Buddhist tradition, we know that the Buddha had to face many threats and hardships during his lifetime: his experimentation with extreme asceticism during his quest for enlightenment, assassination attempts, charging elephants, accusations of fathering an illegitimate child, unruly and undisciplined monks, and encounters with thieves and murderers along the roads he traveled during his ministry, just to name a few. But nowhere in the Buddhist canon have I found an example of the Buddha having to deal with a screaming five-year-old child who isn’t getting his way. Trying to be a Buddhist and a parent at the same time seems irreconcilable most days. One trick I use is to divide the day up into little chunks of time that for simplicity’s sake I’ll call my time and everyone else’s time. I keep an imaginary balance sheet in my head. When my inner accountant informs me that I haven’t had enough me time for one day, I immediately get grumpy. But what if all time could be viewed the same way? I have been rereading The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh, a book I haven’t looked at in many, many years, and probably the book that comes the closest, in my opinion, to The Only Book on Buddhism That You’ll Ever Need. Listen to this passage from a student of Hanh’s who is also a parent:  “I’ve discovered a way to have a lot more time. In the past, I used to look at my time as if it were divided into several parts. One part I reserved for my son, another part was for my wife, another part to help with my new baby girl, another part for household work. The time left over I considered my own. I could read, write, do research, go for walks. But now I try not to divide time into parts anymore. I consider my time with my son and my wife my own time. When I help my son with his homework, I try to find ways of seeing his time as my own time. I go through his lesson with him, sharing his presence and finding ways to be interested in what we do during that time. The remarkable thing is that now I have unlimited time for myself!” I noticed this feeling last night when I spent time with my five-year-old son as he practiced writing his letters. Bathed in the light coming from the desk lamp, my head was bowed towards him as we both worked together, at one with the letters and sentences we were creating on the page. And my time became his time became our time became just time.

networks of affection

I wish I could write like Rebecca Solnit, but I can’t so I’m just going to quote a few lines from the opening pages of her new book, A Paradise Built in Hell. To me, this is what true citizenship is all about, not about shouting people down and threatening “we surround them.” Listen:

“When Cain asks God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” he is raising one of the perennial social questions: are we beholden to each other, must we take care of each other, or is it every man for himself?…Most traditional societies have deeply entrenched commitments and connections between individuals, families, and groups. The very concept of society rests on the idea of networks of affinity and affection, and the freestanding individual exists largely as an outcast or exile. Mobile and individualistic modern societies shed some of these old ties and vacillate about taking on others, especially those expressed through economic arrangements-including provisions for the aged and vulnerable, the mitigation of poverty and desperation-the keeping of one’s brothers and sisters. The argument against such keeping is often framed as an argument about human nature: we are essentially selfish, and because you will not care for me, I cannot care for you. I will not feed you because I must hoard against starvation, since I too cannot count on others…but if I am not my brother’s keeper, then we have been expelled from paradise, a paradise of unbroken solidarities.”

When I see what happened yesterday in Maine, when equality was defeated by bigotry and intolerance, and when I see the talking heads on cable TV shouting at us and one another, I wonder: Where are the networks of affection and affinity that are supposed to bind us as a society?

one thing well

It would seem that my recent posts are getting shorter and shorter. Maybe I’m distilling some collected wisdom down to its essence. I don’t know. In any case, here’s another quote I found stashed away in one of my document folders. I suppose it can apply to any creative endeavor, or just plain life:

“Do your best at each and everything.  That is the key to success.  Learn one thing well and you will learn how to understand the ten thousand things.  Ten thousand things are one; this is the secret place of understanding you must find.  Then everything is mysterious and wonderful.”

-Archery Master Awa Kenzo

empty-handed zen

Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed — that is human.
When you are born, where do you come from?
When you die, where do you go?
Life is like a floating cloud which appears.
Death is like a floating cloud which disappears.
The floating cloud itself originally does not exist.
Life and death, coming and going, are also like that.
But there is one thing which always remains clear.
It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death.
Then what is the one pure and clear thing?

I’m not sure who wrote this, but I reread it from time to time. That one pure and clear thing, not dependent on birth and death, is what I have been searching for all my life. Can we find this pure and clear thing in the midst of our daily lives? That is the real challenge.

monday zen

Imagine this situation: The alarm goes off at 4:30 am. It’s still pitch black outside, and cold. You’re under three layers of blankets, warm in your cocoon. You should get up and go to the gym, that’s why you set your alarm, but today it’s Monday and that means it’s just too difficult. Why not just stay in bed awhile? Sound familiar? This is our daily dilemma. Not just whether or not to go to the gym, but whether to abide in inertia, or keep going. A Zen teaching I read years ago said that we should get out of bed in the morning as if our bed is on fire, and go to sleep at night as if it’s our final rest. The underlying message is that whatever we do, we do it fully and mindfully. To continue: So you manage to get out bed (at 6:00 am) but then you are presented with the fact that you have to perform about fifty small tasks just to get out the door in order to arrive at work on time. Then your car doesn’t start and while you are fiddling with some engine cables under the hood, you step in a pile of dog shit. Now you really wish you hadn’t gotten up that day. But what can you do? Just live and breathe right into that moment with dog shit on your shoe and keep going. Dainin Katagiri Roshi, in his book Returning to Silence, says, “In everyday life there is no excuse. One day you like your life, the next morning you don’t. Finally, all you have to do is just live. This is pretty hard and very painful because from day to day, you have to do something in this situation where you feel as though you cannot move an inch at all. You have to get up in the morning when you have to get up, wash your face when it’s time to wash your face, have breakfast even though you don’t like it, go to work and take care of your life…Nevertheless, right in the middle of this situation we have to be refreshed constantly.  In sickness, in despair, in hard work, in easy work, whatever it is, happy or not happy, you must be constantly refreshed. To be refreshed is to digest your life completely. This is Zen teaching.” So I ask you: Can you be refreshed with dog shit on your shoe, late for work with a car that won’t start? If you can, you see the Dharma clearly and are close to Buddhahood.

the empty boat

I am always thankful to the patriarchs and Zen masters of the past for their pithy stories that so often illuminate the situations we face in our daily, modern lives. One that comes to mind is the story of a fisherman on a boat in a river. He’s skillfully plying his trade when he notices another boat rushing towards him from upriver. The fisherman yells to the pilot of the boat to slow down, but to no avail. The boat keeps bearing down on him until at the last minute the fisherman has to jump into the river to save himself, only to notice that the boat that was about to kill him was empty. All day yesterday I was thinking of that poor six-year-old boy sailing alone in a homemade balloon thousands of feet above the Colorado desert, frightened out of his mind and half-frozen with hypothermia. And what instead was the reality? Balloon boy, empty boat. Are we also shouting at the invisible captains of empty boats?

upon awakening

This from Bhante Bodhidhamma, in his latest email from the Satipanya Buddhist Trust in the UK. Another of his witty, insightful Tips O’ the Day:

“An alarm clock is all well and good, but it is often a rude awakening. Consider how you wake up when, on holiday perhaps, you don’t put the alarm on. One wakes into a presenting mood. But the jolt of the alarm creates a shock wave in the mind and heart, and we wake into that reaction. This is hardly a good start for the day. If you can quieten the waking alarm by smothering the clock a little or go to the expense of one with a rising alarm that is the better way to waken oneself. You can always put on a second alarm clock which, should you fail to wake, is guaranteed to blast you out of bed. So we awake into a presenting mood. It may be pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Should it be neutral, that is a peaceful start to the day. Should it be pleasant, the mood will grab an idea from the mind’s library and create a reverie. It will do the same should the mood be unpleasant. These opening moments to the day offer us an immediate practice. To turn these opening gambits to our advantage, we have to be wide awake upon awakening. We will do this if we have made that resolute resolution to wake with the bell. It may take a little practice, but it is not so difficult to develop. We center that immediate wakefulness into the body, especially attentive to that area in the mid-chest where we distinguish our emotional life. As soon as we recognize the mood, we acknowledge it and practice vipassana. Should we wake into a peaceful state, rest there and acknowledge it, grateful for this gift. Develop a taste for it. See it as a default position and make a resolution to return to this peacefulness as often as we can throughout the day. Should it be pleasant, from excitement as to what the day beholds, to a flowering romance, to a joyful memory, whatever the cause of the happy mood, be wakeful enough not to be transported into the dream world. But again we acknowledge the state. We see the danger of a make-believe world and we practice, if possible, until it quietens, hopefully into an inner glow. This is to take the attachment out of happiness. And we make a resolution to maintain this quiet joy. Should the mood be unpleasant, from depression, to anxiety, to anger, whatever the cause of the unhappy mood, we prevent it from hurling us into a mental maelstrom. So again we acknowledge the state. We see the danger – how the mood uses the mind to wind itself up. Bury the attention into the feeling, the sensation, of the mood and practice at least until it begins to subside. In this way we take the sting out of these unpleasant states. And we make a resolution not to allow negativity to hold sway. I have to say this is where the snooze button comes into its own. Here, not simply for the purpose of reminding us of time passing, nor to appease the base desire to exercise one’s sloth (heaven forbid!), but the very opposite, to be sure our enthusiasm for this wakening practice doesn’t make us late for work! The Buddha admonishes us, ‘Don’t be lazy now and remorseful later’

day four – one thing

Multigrain pancakes for breakfast, then a 20-mile bike ride. Bright, sunny day. My Soen Roshi diet is pretty much out the window. I was going to attend a sitting group this morning, but I realize I have a greater affinity for solitary meditation. I’m more of a Bodhidharma kind of guy. I checked out a copy of the Mirror of Zen by Korean Zen Master So Sahn. I started reading it, and page one stopped me in my tracks:

“There is only one thing, from the very beginning, infinitely bright and mysterious by nature. It was never born, and it never dies. It cannot be described or given a name. What is this “one thing”?

Like Joshu’s “Mu!”, this question is like a hot ball of iron in my gut that I can’t get rid of.

stepping outside

I wasn’t familiar with the story of Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz until I watched a preview (on that Mount Olympus of all internet time-wasters, Apple Movie Trailers) of a forthcoming film called Surfwise. This is the story of a man who left his successful medical practice to travel around North and South America with his wife and their nine kids in a 24-foot camper so that they could surf full-time. This idea of becoming a “businessless person,” as Zen Master Linji says, is a seductive one. Wild nature is shrinking and as a society we (and our children, if we have them) don’t spend enough time romping in the woods or combing the beaches anymore. I was watching HBO a few nights ago and George Carlin was on, doing his usual routine, when he started talking about how our kids are so overscheduled right now, and how something that used to be spontaneous – play – has now been transformed into “playdates.” What happened, Carlin wondered, to a kid sitting in the backyard in the grass, just sitting there, digging a hole in the ground with a stick? “Do they even make sticks anymore?” he asked. I laughed because it sounded funny at the time. But I wonder. If you look at Doc Paskowitz’s story, you might conclude that he was crazy. His children certainly criticized him for handicapping them in life by not sending them to regular school, etc. When Thoreau moved out to his cabin at Walden Pond, he was stepping outside of what society at that time thought was normal behavior. And yet, his example, his rebelliousness, serves as an example for us today. I wonder sometimes how far I would be willing to step outside of cultural norms to pursue a life of true independence. Would I ever have the courage to sell everything I own, take my wife and kids to the Caribbean, and live in a grass hut, digging in the sand with a stick, eating fruit we picked from the trees that morning? Is that really crazier than working in a basement cubicle for the next twenty years? Which scenario is more normal, more human? I don’t think humans were meant to live in boxes. Sometimes I’d rather get myself to a tropical beach, find a stick, and start digging.

one book

They say everyone has one book in them. At age 40, it might be too early to start thinking about posterity, but I often wonder what my one book will be. Unless I receive a sudden literary genius injection, it probably won’t be Ulysses or Moby-Dick. One thought comes to mind. As a parent, I have a worldview or life philosophy that encompasses my beliefs, personal ethics, and habits. This worldview is like an inner voice that guides my actions. We all have one, and of course it changes over time, but I try, every day, to instill in my children a little bit of that worldview. For instance, when my daughter reports on the misdeeds of her classmates (“Jacob stuck his tongue out at the teacher during story time”), I try to use that as a teaching moment about correct behavior. But sometimes, as all parents realize sooner or later, your better judgment can be overridden by frustration, sleep-deprivation, stress, or any combination thereof. That’s when you might resort to yelling something that your parents used on you like…”If Jacob jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?” (That was a classic in my family, and not quite the message I’d want to send). What I’m trying to get at is that sometimes there’s a disconnect between your inner wisdom and your outer action. I guess right now if I had to choose, the one book I would write would be an explanation of my worldview, kind of a daddy’s wisdom book, for my kids to have in perpetuity. Not that mom or dad is always right. Certainly not. But at least if you write something down and it expresses your general philosophy of life, you or your children can refer back to it, and you could even say, “Well, that’s what Dad was trying to say.” But come to think of it, if this blog gets stored in the bowels of the WordPress server farm for all of eternity, then maybe I’ve already started writing that book to my children, right now, every day. And I can still hold out hope that one day I’ll finish my million-dollar screenplay.