Tagged: Buddhism
reborn at 45
I’m going to kick-start my running career this week, starting today, and I’ve been reading a lot of George A. Sheehan. Sadly, most of his books on running are out of print, but you can still track them down in used bookstores, libraries, and online. There’s a great website here that has published a number of his inspirational essays. One of his essays really touched me. It’s called The Start-Reborn at 45. And here’s a small sample from one of his essays entitled “The Fitness”:
“When Bill Rogers was teaching school, he ran during most of his free time. One day, the principal called him into the office. “Bill’,” he told him, “you will have to make a decision. The time has come to concentrate on your vocation.” Rogers took his advice. He quit teaching…Personal growth must precede professional growth. What you do in your profession is a function of the person you are. That must, therefore, be your top priority.”
Good advice, indeed. I also turn 45 this year, and have lain dormant for far too long. It’s never too late to begin again, and to just start where you are. It just so happens that there’s a church across the street from my house. The parking lot of this church is empty six days a week. It has a gentle slope, has a nice view of the woods, and is well-lit at night (I prefer to run at night). I measured it with my car’s odometer and it’s exactly 1/10 of a mile per lap. So, ten laps to a mile. Turns out I’ve got my own personal track right outside my door. I’m taking small steps, relaxing, and having fun. I don’t think I’ll end up like the marathon monks of Mount Hiei in Japan, but a 45-year-old, born-again runner can dream:
two possibly unrelated things, or, the man with the donkey
I subscribe to a newsletter from the Satipanya Buddhist trust in the UK. The guiding teacher there, an English monk by the name of Bhante Bodhidhamma, usually posts a short column called the Tip O’ the Day. Here is today’s post, titled Impulsive or Spontaneous?:
“When we act impulsively, we do so out of habit. A thoughtless reaction. There’s no reflection involved. And the word impulsive suggests that it is not skillful. We often regret what we have done. Somebody asks us to come and help in the garden. And we find ourselves saying, ‘Yes, I’d love to!’ And immediately comes that sinking feeling that we really didn’t want to do it. And that we don’t have the time. We would prefer to be doing something else. It scratches on the mind and we think of excuses. It can lead to fibbing. ‘Woke up feeling terrible. I’ve got a job to do. Someone I must see. Forgot all about it.’ Of course, we are prolific in our apologies. But it leaves an uncomfortable feeling. That’s the dread of being found out. The shame of it. There’s a Mullah Nasruddin story. He is tired of his neighbor asking for the use of his donkey. So on the next request, he tells him the donkey is being used by someone else. Just then the donkey brays. And when his neighbor raises his eyebrows, he asks, ‘Who are you going to believe? Me or my donkey?’ We all want to be spontaneous. It suggests skillfulness and joy. And we think that spontaneity should arise spontaneously! But it’s hard work to train ourselves towards a genuine, unaffected naturalness about what we do. Consider sport! How many times do tennis players practice their shots? And in the immediacy of the game their strokes are spontaneous. Not that they are always as accurate as they would want them to be. Consider performance artists whether actors or musicians. Although their performance seems so natural, there has been an enormous amount of practice beforehand. So it is with virtues. We need to consciously develop them – goodwill, generosity, patience and so on. And then every so often we shall surprise ourselves at our spontaneous, wise and joyful response.”
I recognize myself in Bhante Bodhidhamma’s words. I am the chronic promiser. I promise to call, to write, to send the package, the card, the email, the thank-you note. I promise to pick up someone else’s children. Call me if you need me, I say. We should get together some time, have dinner. I’ll cook. But like the man with the braying donkey, I usually get found out. I want to be perfect first, and only after I have attained perfection will I be ready to help others. Reading this essay made me think of Mary Oliver’s poem The Journey, which touches on the the notion that the only person you can save is yourself. There is a constant struggle within me between selflessness and selfishness. There is a Buddhist idea that we can’t save all beings until we save ourselves. But an equally forceful Christian idea is that by saving others first, we simultaneously save ourselves. What do you believe?
joy on a rainy day
After a weekend of of sun, we woke up here in Maine to wind, driving rain, and gray skies. There were whitecaps on the Kennebec River. But when I opened my inbox, I found this “Tip of the Day” from my friend Bhante Bodhidhamma, a British monk who I correspond with occasionally. A link to his group, Satipanya, can be found on the right there. As I sat in my car outside the bank waiting for it to open so that I could have some papers notarized, I looked out at the rain, and the feeling of disgust I woke with was replaced, ever so slightly, with a feeling of joy and even wonder. This rain, I thought, will make the flowers bloom and nourish the grass and the forests that I will lie on and walk through this summer. It will fill up the quarries on Vinalhaven that I will be swimming in in a few months time. It will wash away all the dirt and sand on the streets. Although we might not see daffodils here in Maine yet, still these thoughts on joy can help us find happiness and peace during the quiet moments of our day, even when it’s raining. En-joy!
“It’s spring and the daffodils are out. So I am hoping there is a sense of joy in the air for you. Joy is one of the Illimitables along with love, compassion and equanimity. And just like them it can be developed without boundary, limitlessly. Often in a rushed and overly busy day or in a slow, dull one, our attention fixates on the downers. But notice that there are times when some form of happiness does arise. Often if we are used to excitement we miss out on the sweetness of a quiet joy. Excitement is the subtle enemy of this joy for it is an expression of that desire to be happy in an overly emotional way. Quiet, peaceful joy often arises, but because we are so used to joy as excitement we miss it and fail to appreciate it. Perhaps it comes when, after some engagement, you have a quiet cup of tea; or while walking from here to there in a park or along a quiet street; or stopping and resting from what you are doing for a moment. When you notice this calm joy, say to yourself, ‘I am feeling a calm joy’. Sit with it and appreciate its qualities. And notice how you feel gently energized by it, not just physically but mentally. Then when you are settled in it and have drunk your fill, offer the cup to others and to all beings. ‘May you be joyful and may your joy increase!’ After all, a joy shared is a joy squared, for now you are happy because others are happy. Then there’s the power of ‘positive thinking’. The Buddha is very much into this practice. Even when you feel down, you can note that. Offer yourself a blessing: ‘May my unhappiness decrease. May my unhappiness come to an end.’ After a little while, offer the same blessings to all beings. And then as it were, put it to the side. And start offering joyful blessings to yourself, something sympathetic to oneself. As you begin to lift, offer it to all beings. This is a much better strategy than one offered by self-pity and resignation. ‘I am depressed. I am so depressed. May all beings be depressed!’ Or at work: ‘I’m bored. I’m so bored. May all beings die of boredom!’ So throughout the day, train yourself how to lift the heart with goodwill intentions of joy and see how you feel at the end of the day.”
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.
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.
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’
the bush money
That’s what we call it in my house. As in, “When the Bush money gets here, we can do (fill in the blank).” When I first heard that Congress passed legislation authorizing the rebate checks, I was ecstatic. Dreams of a sunny beach vacation for my family or a few new shirts from the Patagonia outlet danced in my head. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this money would be spent almost before it made it into my bank account. Unless I can somehow convert my ancient Accord’s engine to burn old socks for propulsion, I’ll be spending it on $4-a-gallon gas, and all the other bills that stem from this fact (food, electricity, water, heating oil, etc) The President has said that he’s simply giving Americans back “their own money,” but how can that be, when we are borrowing the money, probably from China, in the first place? There are some Buddhist organizations that I am fond of, and I would love to give a chunk of that money to them to help them build a stupa or make an addition to their meditation hall. I may still give $50 or $100 of “my own money” to these worthy causes. But the truth is that even though this is borrowed money, my family needs it too desperately to be able to give much of it away. We’ll use some of it to pay for our rather modest weekly vacation rental cottage on an island off the coast of Maine this summer, but other than that, we’ll pay bills, which is probably what most Americans will end up doing. Sorry, Ocean Palm Motel and Patagonia; I need to eat.
spilled wine
This past week, I had the occasion to come across a small book that I found in a used book shop while on holiday with my family in Portsmouth, NH . It is entitled A Record of Awakening by David Smith. The subtitle is Practice and Insight on the Buddhist Path. Written in his own hand, this self-described “ordinary chap”, a gardener from England, tells of his deep awakening while practicing the Way at a Threravada Buddhist monastery in Sri Lanka. I won’t be a plot-spoiler, but suffice to say that if you are sincerely interested in the Dharma, this may be quite an eye-opening book for you. It was extremely inspirational to me, an ordinary chap myself, to read the story of the enlightenment experience of someone who had no advanced education or special knowledge, just a sincere desire to awaken. At the end of his account, he gives a few words of final advice, and one of his phrases resounded very deeply with me. He says, “Immerse yourself in the Dharma, dive into it like you would a pool of cool water on a hot summer’s day, but never get out!” This past weekend I also had the occasion to experience a brief illustration of why it is so important to practice. I was at my in-laws’ house and as I was pouring red wine into a glass, it spilled all over the countertop. As I attempted to clean up the mess, I knocked over the wine glass and it almost shattered. I swore out loud, anger flashing. My daughter was right behind me, and heard me. She wanted to know what the matter was. In that instant I realized how foolish I must have looked, getting so upset over some spilled wine. That ever-present Me was wronged once again, by these mindless, inanimate objects. Upon reflecction, I saw the folly of thinking that we can somehow control every situation we find ourselves in. Shouldn’t we expect that if we open the bottle carefully, and slowly tip it towards the glass, that the wine will flow smoothly? But no. Despite our best plans, the wine spills or our car refuses to start or we lock ourselves out of our house or we lose our eyeglasses. But just who is it that gets so angry? I think practicing the Dharma can show us that there’s no one here to even get upset. Or maybe that I shouldn’t be drinking wine.
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.
