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.

the walker

The New York Times has been running an excellent series on their web page entitled One in 8 Million. One of their recent posts really spoke to me, suggesting a type of existence that I long for. It tells the story of a 30-year-old waitress named Maggie Nesciur, who walks  up to 90 miles per week around the neighborhoods of New York City. She has never owned a pair of sneakers, and instead does all her walking in either cowboy or motorcycle boots. She says, “I don’t walk fast; I don’t walk slow; I walk at my own speed. I have to keep moving. If I’m not moving, my mind isn’t moving much either.” Well said. You can watch and listen to her story here.

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?

disaster utopia

Last night I attended a lecture by the writer Rebecca Solnit, whose latest book is entitled A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster. I haven’t read the book yet, although I have read some of her others. Her premise is that far from human beings acting cowardly or panicking in times of natural and man-made disasters,  people instead end up acting incredibly courageous and compassionate, working together to form ad-hoc communities, and expressing their basic human goodness. Solnit suggests that in disaster, we can almost glimpse a kind of utopia, a place where we treat each other as we should. Our daily life makes it almost impossible to sustain this type of behavior, however. We remember the post-9/11 United We Stand mantra, and how quickly it faded when our president told us to go shopping. It is our identification of ourselves as primarily consumers first, and citizens second, that is at the heart of the tragedy of our current American public life. We’ve been told that we need to be selfish because everyone else is and the more I think about this, the more I understand that this is the driving force behind the current ultraconservative, right-wing talk show blather. The talking heads of the world would have us believe that they love this country, but instead they really just love themselves. If you start from the premise that it’s every man and woman for themselves and that we don’t owe each other anything as fellow citizens then you can’t even begin to approach public life in any meaningful way. Solnit suggests there are other lives than the private. Did we evolve this far as Americans just to demand our right to be left alone? She also said something that stuck with me: in disasters perhaps we discover our Buddha-nature. We all have Buddha-nature, but have trouble finding it or expressing it. We are already enlightened beings, compassionate and wise. If we would forget the self, as Master Dogen suggests, then the barriers between us would drop away and we could treat each other as the fully human beings we are rather than as the means to our own personal ends.

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?

a letter from the president

This just popped into my inbox. Can any American really be angry about this?

Michael –

This morning, Michelle and I awoke to some surprising and humbling news. At 6 a.m., we received word that I’d been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009.

To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize — men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.

But I also know that throughout history the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it’s also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes.

That is why I’ve said that I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations and all peoples to confront the common challenges of the 21st century. These challenges won’t all be met during my presidency, or even my lifetime. But I know these challenges can be met so long as it’s recognized that they will not be met by one person or one nation alone.

This award — and the call to action that comes with it — does not belong simply to me or my administration; it belongs to all people around the world who have fought for justice and for peace. And most of all, it belongs to you, the men and women of America, who have dared to hope and have worked so hard to make our world a little better.

So today we humbly recommit to the important work that we’ve begun together. I’m grateful that you’ve stood with me thus far, and I’m honored to continue our vital work in the years to come.

Thank you,

President Barack Obama

fat man with a laptop

Time for henry to dust off his keyboard. I was travelling through upstate New York with my family a few weekends ago, on the way to my sister’s wedding. We had stopped at a rest area along the New York State Thruway for a bathroom break.  As my wife took my daughter to the ladies’ room,  I took my five-year-old son by the hand and we walked towards the gift shop. We live in Maine, which is Red Sox country, and I know from being born and raised in upstate New York that every rest area along the Thruway sells I LOVE NY and NY Yankees merchandise. So as I walked towards the gift shop with my son, I said jokingly, “We’re in Yankees country now, buddy.” (Before I get to the punch line of my story, I should also mention that I was wearing my Made-In-The-USA navy blue Obama ‘08 t-shirt.) So as we walk into the gift shop, I notice a man sitting on a bench outside the store typing on his laptop. He heard what I said because under his breath but loud enough to be heard, he said, “You’re in REPUBLICAN country now. What a stupid t-shirt.” I should also note that he said these words with what can only be described as venom in his voice. At first I couldn’t believe he was talking about me. I passed him and continued on my way into the store, pretending to look at magazines and Mentos as my heart thumped in my chest. It was hard to believe that a complete stranger, and obviously a fellow American, would make such a comment to someone he didn’t even know. But these are the times we live in. I would like to say that I should have been brave enough to go back out and confront him, but I had my son with me and didn’t want to make a scene. I thought about the political rallies held recently in this country where people brought guns and brandished them freely. It certainly hampers political discourse if you’re not sure if your debating opponent is armed. Eventually we left the store and the rest area and continued down the Thruway, but it took a long time for that pounding in my chest to abate. As people usually do in these situations, I thought of all the snappy comebacks I could have made, the astute political arguments.  But as I hinted at in an earlier post on metta and democracy, I still have to believe that we are all citizens of the same country. I would have liked to sit down with my compatriot and have had a reasonable conversation. Would it have done any good? Was I right in pursuing the policy, so often used in these times when confronted with a political adversary, of  “do not engage?” My Christian and Buddhist beliefs teach me to have love and compassion for my neighbor. But how should I react when my neighbor, just by looking at me, has already judged me to be the enemy?