Healing Through the Here and Now

I used to know how to start these entries.  Something would just come to me while I was in the shower, at the dinner table, biking around, wherever.  I'd let it bounce around my head to see if it settled on its own.  If not, if it found the resonant frequency of urgency, then I'd sit and type out some paragraphs.  Always off the cuff, always a shooting star burning out of its own accord when I ran out of gusto or cleverness. 

These days, I'm never quite sure where to begin.  Where does anyone begin anymore?  With the school shooting in Connecticut just two weeks before Christmas, what can me make of the world as we look it squarely in the face?   

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I'm in the process of becoming a formal student in the Mountains and Rivers Order of Zen Buddhism.  The founder of this order, John Daido Loori, often said that we need to take responsibility for the whole catastrophe.  Another question he loved, really the same question, is: where do you find yourself in all of this? 

Where do I find myself in the school shooting?  Did I do nothing wrong? Are the only guilty parties the gun dealers, a poor mental health treatment program, and the shooter's friends and family who failed to intervene earlier?  Can we blame reified concepts like "gun laws"?  I think all of these have a hand in it, but I'm also in it too, inextricably in the mix whether I like it or not.  Where the metaphysical meets the tangible, I create those patterns in the world - every time I act out of fear and anger, every time I promote an Us and Them mentality, every time I shrug off helping someone in need.  These acts ripple outward.  I think its what we call karma. 

Yes, some people in certain situations have more direct influence.  I desperately want them to awaken to the urgency of problems such as easy access to guns and poor access to mental health resources.  They are not somehow more guilty than you or I, though.  The moral imperative (I believe) is to live out this urgency for change and awaken to just how broken our society is.  That is where I find myself, and my responsibility for this whole catastrophe.

I'm signing petitions and talking with friends and strangers.  In doing so, I see it as my job to not recreate the same suffering that the shooter and now all the survivors are going through.  How angry and scared he must have been, how deeply lost in the delusions of his own mind.  How angry and scared the surviving family and community members are, how deeply they are immersed in the grief of this experience.  I can hear the anger and fear in those who want to cling to owning guns.  I can hear the anger and fear of those of us who want to decrease the number of guns floating around our country.  I can feel my own fear every time I encounter someone who is mentally ill and is suffering without relief.  What part can I play in easing these fears, in quenching some of the fire of hate and blame? 

My mind, the same divided mind that creates Us and Them, wants me to believe that we need to find out who to blame and how to make specific changes to our laws to hopefully avoid this type of incredible violence in the future.  It wants to say that I'm on the right side, and someone else (must be!) on the wrong side.  It's true that we need to change, and that I want to be an agent for that change.  However, I feel more and more these days that if I enter this fray with labels in hand to slap on everyone's forehead, I may perpetuate the very problems I'm wrestling with.  How else might we go about it?

I'm not sure how I imagine things unfolding from here.  What if we all put a little more energy into just living for peace?  What would that look like?  What if we all faced up to our fears and connected a little more with a person in need?  What would that feel like?  What if we were a little easier on ourselves and those around us?  What ripples will that send out to the world?  What if we keep the longer term goals in mind, and begin by accepting that right where we are is the only place to begin?  Where else can we begin than this moment?  What else can I do but heal and accept? 

Coming Back to This

 

I'll cut right to the chase.  What am I indeed up to?  Where have I been and where am I going?

I'm currently settled in the town of Mt. Tremper, NY, in the southern part of the Catskills.  It is quiet and green, with good hiking and biking in abundance.  There are many places that look like this picture above.  This one is the view from a small bridge about 200 yards from my apartment.  If you go north another 100 yards, you're at the gate of the zen monastery where I practice.  Best commute ever - walking through natural beauty to a place dedicated to awakening. 

 Jess and I have split up.  We are... friends.  She is living at the monastery now, halfway through the first of her 12 months as a full-time resident.  We see each other several times a week when I go over to sit zazen, work, or socialize.  It is a blessing to have a shared practice that feels very deep for each of us individually and also informs how we want to relate to other people, including each other.  

This fall, like every fall, the monastery sangha dedicates itself to a period of ango, which translates as "peaceful dwelling."  It is a three month period of intensified practice, where you commit yourself to practice beyond your ordinary routines in eight areas: Buddhist studies, art practice, body practice, concentration on a simple task, stewarding the earth, liturgy studies, two intensive retreats, and zazen practice.  The focus of this ango is The Bodhisattva Way of Life, including a study of the book by the same name.  

It is really interesting to devote myself to religious practice and study.  It is something that I have never really done in my life before.  When I was a child, I did not take Sunday school at church seriously at all.  While in college, I studied Buddhism in great depth, but always as an intellectual endeavor, from the viewpoint of art criticism, symbolic studies, history, cultural anthropology, etc.  Here and now, it is a whole new game for me.

The focus of much of our study is around three key virtues of the Bodhisattva way - effort, generosity, and patience.  My art practice is painting watercolor (which I'm totally new at, and is really fun), and I have spent several afternoons sitting and painting the experience of patience.  This is really wild for me.  We're encouraged to go beyond symbolism or simply painting something that we think of when we think of patience, like Ghandi's face or something like that.  Instead, I just sit with the experience of patience and... paint.  So far I've turned out some landscapes, like a maple tree by a river or a pumpkin on a tree stump, and I've also painted some gritty patterns and images just made of lines.  I don't know what any of them mean, which is great. 

As always in zen, this practice and others rest on the fundamental practice of zazen - sitting in quiet meditation.  What do I discover when I investigate deeply into my experience of the world?  Who is the I that is experiencing things?  What does it mean to experience "something"?  If everything seems to be changing all the time - emotions, perceptions, my ability to perceive, the physical world - does that mean anything for the story that I carry about How Things Are?  Where are my footholds in my sense of self when everything dissolves under close scrutiny into smaller constituent phenomena, that in turn dissolve again? 

As my skepticism deepens, how does that in turn inform my practice of effort, generosity, and patience?  For me, I find myself humbled again and again by what shows up in my investigation.  It seems that we are all connected, both in a spiritual sense of sharing similar outlooks on life, and in an ecological sense of being made up of similar systems.  I draw on this sense of connection to energize my practice.  I enjoy seeing others awaken to deep introspection, and my effort becomes more dedicated.  I give more generously, as I see that clinging to things feeds my narrow, rigid sense of self while giving away creates an open, spacious feeling of connection.  And patience feels like the deepest practice right now.  In a world that we are all degrading but deeply want to preserve (consciously and unconsciously), I am aiming to cultivate patience so as to keep practicing, keep coming back to the meditation cushion, keep making myself available to friends, keep aiming to live more lightly on the planet, etc.  If I indulge a sense of haste and urgency, then I end up cultivating anger at myself and others for all sorts of reasons, which is actually an impediment to anyone walking this path. 

So this is the practice that takes up much of my life.  I fill in from the edges with writing letters, reading books, and missing good friends who are far away.  I do some carpentry to pay my small bills each month.  I'm really loving life here right now, and opening up to what comes with each day.  I wish you a wonderful Here and Now wherever you are, and look forward to seeing you again.

Doorways

So, I have just returned from Puebla, Mexico, a city of a few million people on a plateau southeast of Mexico City.  I was there to attend the international conference for the Association for the Advancement of Gestalt Therapy (AAGT).  Every day, as I walked the beautiful streets of the historic downtown on the way to the convention center, I passed by dozens and perhaps hundreds of doorways like this one.  They hold large, exquisite doors, made of wood and stone and sometimes even copper or bronze.  There are doorways that must be at least 15 feet tall with smaller doors cut into them, because the full size ones are probably too unwieldy to open on a regular basis. 

As I wandered past these doors each day, I felt as though I was moving through a city full of potential.  Many of these doors open into inner courtyards, revealing a whole other world.  Giant marble or stone fountains rest gracefully in these tiled courtyards.  Small trees and large flowering shrubs grow up in the sunlight coming through the open roofs.  Balconies look down on the courtyard from inner apartments, government offices, or church libraries (many of the buildings in Puebla are/were related to the Catholic church).  Vines climb up trellises, children peek out, old women slap masa slabs to make tortillas, men in suits talk briskly about the business at hand.  Worlds nested within worlds, mysterious parts that when revealed make up a wonderfully complex whole. 

Being at the Gestalt conference, I felt the promise of doorways in a personal way as well.  I had the great privilege of talking informally and at length with some well-seasoned Gestalt therapists - Erv Polster, Bud Feder, Lynne Jacobs, Ruella Frank, and other folks you've never heard of.  In these conversations, I felt doorways opening to the next steps in my life.  I've been doing part-time Gestalt training here in the Bay Area for about three years, and am ready to take the next steps of both deepening my own therapeutic journey as well as launching into practice.   This conference helped me to gather the courage to go further along this journey of self-discovery as well as honing my ability to offer my deepest, brightest truth to the world. 

I realize that a brief description of Gestalt may be helpful here.  Gestalt therapy is an approach that is rooted in the here and now.  That is, whatever is appearing in your mind and body (psycho-somatic) is your reality in this moment, and therefore is the only place to begin (as opposed to theoretical anything).  Through a deeper awareness of old stories that we are carrying in our bodies and minds, we can begin to make our present more flexible, dynamic, and fresh while decreasing the likelihood that we will continue to repeat old behavior patterns that are no longer serving us.  Increased awareness is the goal - from there, our life will inevitably feel fresher and more exciting.  We'll less often feel like we're living the same movie over and over, and instead have more contact with the amazing, ever-changing world around us all the time. 

My training to practice Gestalt is also a journey into myself.  I uncover new gems from time to time, nuggets of insight that I can carry around and chew on.  Mainly, though, I simply notice myself and others more, with an eye towards avoiding the Meaning Stories that we all so often put on ourselves and others.  Things I've done in the past don't mean that I'm a good or bad person.  They have vanished in time, and I may have feelings about them that I can work with in the present.  Things other people have done or are doing don't necessarily mean they are good or bad people, either.  Instead of putting a meaning story onto what they do, I can practice observing the world outside and simultaneously observing my own embodied reactions.  Some examples: When he is loud and red-faced, I clench my jaw.  When she talks about that, I think she is missing the point.  When I hear political debate, I just know that the conservatives are failing to understand reality.  Noticing them is the crucial (and some might say sufficient) step in changing ourselves from habituated reactions to fresh perspectives (like perhaps I don't know as much as I think I do about How the World Is).  All it takes is time and practice, lots of practice.  And a good Gestalt practitioner (like me) to help you out :-) 

What is next for me?  A trip out to the east coast with Jess, leaving in the beginning of June.  We'll be settling in New York state, in a town called Mt. Tremper.  It's near Woodstock, not too far from New York or eastern Pennsylvania.  We'll be staying in a little house by the river, so you should come visit.  My journey there will unfold by contacting some local Gestalt trainers to continue my work, while keeping an eye towards co-creating community with a focus on healing and heartfelt connection.  I'm looking forward to gardening, working with my hands, and helping everyone wake up, as much as possible. 

 

What does the next doorway open onto?  If I can stay with the not-knowing, avoid the meaning-making and the grasping, then whatever it is will be much more available to me.  Then I can awaken to the profound, infinitely rich beauty of how things are.

Dwelling in Connection

Our generation, the young people and the old people not yet settled in their ways, are in a beautiful and interesting position.  We are seeking answers about how to thrive in a society that is crumbling and a world that we're destroying...

Immediately, you may respond with a strong feeling welling up inside.  "Society isn't crumbling!  The world isn't being destroyed!  What do those even mean?"  I'm unsure how to measure them in a good way.  When I read about the ecosystem(s) of the planet, I see that we are directly and indirectly making big changes and disruptions.  The trends seem to be destroying the diversity of life, converting natural resources into hazardous wastes (carbon dioxide, trash, nuclear waste, soot, etc), and rendering the whole system less stable all the time.  These all run counter to the trends of life sustenance in which we evolved.  These broad conceptualizations are how I approach thinking about the modern world.

We seem to be engaged in a similar unpleasant degradation in our society (societies) as well.  There are more of us working more hours to earn relatively less money that we did a generation ago.  We are dismantling the social structures through which we are supposed to care for each other.  Everything from public libraries to public healthcare are under the knife.  We continue to add more people to the planet all the time, with big organizations like the UN and the CIA trying to estimate how many people there will be at some point in the near future.  8 billion, 9 billion?  Whew - I think it feels crowded already at just over 7 billion.  Our money game, which entails placing arbitrary monetary value on essential aspects of life like food, water, shelter, clean air, and (I will contend) access to the wilds, is wearing terribly thin both in the U.S. and abroad.  With the situation of the haves and have-nots growing dimmer all the time, can we say that this system is inherently functional and just needs tweaking?  That does not resonate with me, but feel free to email and we can chat more if you want.

How do we proceed in life when the systems in which we operate are so broken and poisonous?  I think it takes a lot of energy to work against these complex systems full of inertia that weave through most of the world.  How do we admit what is happening, as best we can understand it, and keep going on?

I think our current predicament has something in common with first generation Americans, born of parents who immigrated here from their home countries.  Their children, the first generation born in America, grow up in a world that is very different from their parents' homes.  Their parents may have brought certain values, ethics, and attachments with them that are rooted in the country from which they came - Vietnam, Poland, Guatemala, China, wherever.  Growing up in America, especially in the second half of the 20th century, their children experienced choices, options, and promises that their parents never had.  They can marry someone not from their ethnic group.  They can live alone, or even with other people of the opposite sex to whom they are not married.  They can choose from a huge number of professions and career options.  They are navigating their lives as they live out these and many other choices that their parents perhaps never had.

This freedom can be tough.  What if your choices run counter to the REALLY strong ethnic/religious upbringing of your matriarchal grandmother, who weeps and prays at the dinner table every day that you haven't met a nice boy of the same ethnicity as your family?  Don't laugh (or laugh if you want) - this stuff happens.  You can choose any career you want, as long as it's being an engineer, preferably mechanical, and going to school for it in the same city where you grew up.  You can be as independent as you want as long as you live in the same house with your parents after college and devote much of your non-work hours attending to their needs.  So many choices!  What do we do if we love our parents and grandparents and yet want different things for ourselves?

Our generation now faces similar clashes with the culture at large, and with our older relatives too, regardless of ethnic traditions.  What do you do when you are ensconced in a capitalist culture, yet see that this system is our vehicle of choice for continuing the exploitation of each other and nature?  You can write a book critiquing it, and make some money for yourself as well as the publishing company - one of the top five who control more than half the market.  You can get a sandwich board sign and stand on the corner of 42nd St in Manhattan, telling people about the intricacies of the broken system.  That might get you actually kidnapped and institutionalized at your parents' request.  You can attempt the Warren Buffett - make boatloads of money in the system and then reach out to some of the cultural critics with indictments of how the rich get away with murder.  Not that his criticisms are invalid, but think first about how many millionaires and billionaires get that money and continue to engage in a deep and radical critique of the system.  How will you fare? 

The only way I know to live in opposition to the system we are engulfed in is to find others who resonate with your mind and spirit.  It is critically important to prevent your own slide into excuses and hypocrisy, or to prevent insanity as you engage in cultural critique alone.  You do not have to go find a commune, ashram, or monastery (though if that's your thing, call me up and we'll talk 'cause I love them).  A yoga class is good.  Join a writer's group.  Knit with other knitters.  Volunteer at a bike repair workshop.  I promise you, deeply and truly from my own experience, that when we connect with other kindred spirits in any way, we garner energy to live our lives with more awareness and courage.  Both of these are key to being heartfelt and authentic in seeking to change the world. 

It takes a lot of energy to make it through our modern lives.  We are overwhelmed by choice in every product we buy at nearly every store.  If we drive, we're overwhelmed by more traffic and higher costs of gas, tolls, car payments, insurance, etc.  If we watch TV, we're overwhelmed by the frequent and fast cutaways in the programs as well as the advertisements.  If we read the Times, we're overwhelmed by the volume of inanity and hate in the world news and the U.S. elections.  If we acquire gadgets and knick-knacks like most Americans, our home is overwhelming with clutter and chaos.  If - and by if I mean "when" - we use facebook, we're overwhelmed by bits of content clamoring for our attention regardless of its utility value.  I know you've got to watch the video of a kitten tumbling out of a cardboard box, but it's just a distraction.  Don't do it - I promise you'll feel better.

We've created these systems and we perpetuate them.  It takes so much energy that it's no wonder we have difficulty getting out to do the things we love and letting our minds fully engage the world around us. 

When you do the things you love, the things that help you to awaken, you get more energy.  I promise.  100% of the time.  It never fails.  There is something about authentic encounters between your soul and what you love, what speaks the truth for you, that calls up energy from inside.  If you make it to the 7 a.m. yoga class, you will feel better when you come out, even if you had to wake up an extra hour early to get there.  When you knit with nice folks at the yarn shop, you will come out feeling more energized (as long as you like knitting), even if you just sit there with them clicking away on your 16" circular #8.  When you sit in meditation at the zen center, if that's your thing, you come out feeling energized by the 40 minutes spent in a dim room saying nothing to the person next to you in a black robe with a shaved head. 

Human connection is the key to revolution.  It begins with the courage to go out and meet other people who like or love the things that you love.  The path will become clear from there, I promise.  You do not need to know what comes next.  In fact, you cannot know what comes next.  If your spirit calls out for it, perhaps you will be the person to help resurrect the Black Panther party.  Perhaps you'll find a way to wrestle tax money from the hands of rich so that we stand a chance of being able to take care of each other.  Truth be told, I suspect that heartfelt, relentless contact with the world will inevitably lead you to do more to take care of your fellow humans and the ecosystem.  I can't quite put my finger on it, but there is something hollow behind the devil's advocate saying, "What if my heartfelt truth is to steal lollipops from kids and cut down old-growth redwood trees?"  I don't lose sleep over it when I continue to encounter joy from so many people seeking real human connection. 

Your energy will come from this contact - the Gestalt word for authentic encounter with the world around you, including other people.  Contact is inevitable when we are heartfelt and awake in the present moment, and this comes from being with people doing what you also love to do.  As you continue to cultivate contact, you will have authentic encounters with everything in the world, because there are no real boundaries or divides in the world.  When you talk about injustices that speak to your heart, you will find the people who want to talk with you.  When you knit scarves for charity, you will inevitably have the chance to consider why some people are poor and some people are old rich white men.  As long as you come to these encounters with an open heart, you will keep reaching and growing as a human being.

This is the formula for success.  I do not know what success looks like - be very wary of anyone who tells you that he or she knows.  Through contact, we are simply able to explore the crisis in which we find ourselves in 2012.  (Hint: it is not the end of some misunderstood ancient calendar, but the real prospect of a degrading world.)  We will find love, sorrow, joy, tribulations, and peace as stepping stones along the way.  It will be a journey as fresh, authentic, and full of possibility as each and every moment to which we awaken. 

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Me, or You)

Walt Whitman came back into my life two weeks ago, just before coming to the Zen Mountain Monastery, near Woodstock, NY, where I am currently residing for the month of January.  He came to me in a hardbound green book, containing all his writings.  This came to me from a gentle and loving hand, attached to a heart and mind that are profoundly human.  Who knew that through a man who died long ago, whose writings I thought I knew, I would discover the song of myself again for the first time?  

from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

"I have perceived that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful curious breathing laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them... to touch any one... to rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a    moment... what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight... I swim in it as in a sea.

There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them and in the contact and odor of them that pleases the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well."

This is our work here at the monastery.  We seek not to retreat into ourselves, but to be with ourselves just as we are in the world.  We seek to lean into the experience of being alive.  Not to cultivate an absence of thoughts, but to be at peace with the thoughts as they come and go.

We generate a story about what it means to be ourselves.  Are we good or bad?  Does a certain thought make me evil or kind?  What does it mean if I don't know what I want right now?  How shall I be in the world to make my life worthwhile?  If I don't perpetuate the story of what it means to be me, what will be left and who will I be?

In zazen, which is the formal sitting meditation, and in all other life here at the monastery, we are seeking to find the still point where we don't buy into the story of meaning.  What happens when I am cleaning a toilet and am just present with my breath?  What happens when I chop wood and shovel snow, and let the thoughts flow through without latching on to them or struggling against them?  Do I die?  Worse yet, do I become nihilistic and shallow once I get "free from attachment"?  How can I live a good life if I'm not beating myself with the whip of my conditioned mind, shaped by all the elements of my society that have told me what is Right and Wrong and whom I now carry in my mental machinery?

My experience is that in the moments of life where I can dissolve the story, where I can consider all the facts and feel joy in my existence, where I can feel the fullness and emptiness of the universe at once, where I can be loving though I don't know how, where I can accept my accidental cruelties due to my ignorance... these moments are full of compassion.  I can feel that all of us are the same.

You and I are the same, though completely different.  We are made of the same elements in identical arrangements (it's amazing what carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen can do when they spring to life).  We operate with nearly identical biological processes.  We, for the most part, share faculties that give us rough approximations of what is happening around us.

But, we also keep ourselves wrapped in the illusion of separateness, from each other and from the universe, by our stories.  I like rum raisin and she likes coconut.  I am a Buddhist and he is a Presbyterian.  He is the Secretary of War and I talk about peace.  He leaves dirty dishes on the counter after cooking and I am a conscientious person.  He is the thoughtless 1%, and I am the awake and aware 99%.  These are endless, if we choose for them to be so.

A different path that we can take is to realize our unity.  Freed from the clinging or aversion to our stories, the unity of experience overtakes us.  We're all eating, drinking, breathing, and seeking warmth in the winter.  We all feel better living from a place of love in our hearts instead of fear in our minds.  We feel joy in our bodies sharing a sense of connection with each other.  We wish to break through our limitations, and we wish the same for others.  We are the same and different at the same time, existing simultaneously and seamlessly together.   

Perhaps a question is begged here: if we accept ourselves just as we are, how we will we engage with and, in this the darkest of all hours, save the world?  How will we turn the Red States back to Blue?  How will we keep fundamentalist Christianity out of our government?  How will we convince the North Koreans, Iranians, Southern Baptists, Republicans, our mothers who don't listen enough, couples with more than one child, the neighbors with the noisy dog, Israelis, people who leave the lights on, people who don't check with us before making plans, people who don't love us exactly as we need to be loved every moment of every single day (which incidentally would be so much better if you just saw that you need to change and repent of your old ways)... how will we convince all these people that they need to see the world from our enlightened viewpoint?  How will we do it?  How????

The zendo is still and quiet.  The late morning light comes through the south windows, slanting across the black cushions and the square mats under them.   Outside the field is crusted with hard and bright snow.  The creek coming down the mountain gurgles under the small ice waterfalls that are frozen on the rock ledges.  The trees are bare, leaning into the wind and calling out for nothing against a bright empty sky.

I bow as I step across the threshold, and walk quietly to a mat halfway down the empty row.  I bow to my seat, and then turn to bow to the middle of the room.  I pick up the cushion, set it aside, and kneel down.  I tuck my homemade wooden seiza bench under me, and sit down on it.  I rock gently side to side to find a balance point.  I smooth out the fabric of my gray robe where it flows down to the mat all around me.  I place my hands in my lap in the cosmic mudra that is standard practice here.  I look at my watch one last time, and then gaze toward a spot on the floor a few feet in front of me.  The baseboard heaters tick wildly for a few seconds, and then settle into silence.

I am here, as best I can be.  Sometimes I count my breath and am in the river of my body that flows through my life.  Sometimes I sit and worry about the future, and why I am how I am.  Why do I struggle in marriage?  What kind of work do I really want to do?  Will I cut it as a therapist?  I wonder how long it would take to build a 10x10 hut all by myself.  It would be nice to have a good portable table saw for that kind of project.  How deep will a spiritual practice take me?  I wonder if that's a... and back to the breath.  Just like that.  Just like that.  The still point is always there.  It is not the end, nor is it the beginning.  It is not an anchor, but I can anchor to it.  I am not empty when I have no clinging in my mind, and I am not full.  I am uniquely and completely myself when I realize my connection to all things.  Though it may feel that way sometimes, there are no gaps in reality.  The puzzle is rich and infinite, and my heart burns to explore it.

The shimmer of a steel spoon in the mug,
still hands hold the gentle book -
the cat adjusts its paw.