This morning I woke up on the slightly anxious side of the bed. I only got a few minutes of grace before my mind went into chatter like a squirrel on a mild dose of adderall. Even though the themes aren't fresh, and are in fact well-worn like stones at a 2500-year-old pilgrimage site, they can still grab me. The flavor of this morning's neurotic chit-chat is:
a) I'll never make enough money.
b) I'm separate from the rest of the world and everyone else.
c) A generalized feeling that I'll die penniless and alone, perhaps before I get to my entitled life expectancy of about 75.
This chatter came and sat meditation with me, which I thought was quite generous on its part, to devote a half hour of its precious time when it could have been out harassing any number of other people. It persisted into my morning tea (it chose a nice black assam, fair trade of course). It quivered a bit when I started journaling about what was coming up for me in the moment, but showed good spirit and redoubled its efforts to throw me off of being present. Then we read a poem together, and things... shifted a bit.
from Walt Whitman's Song of the Broad Axe:
5
The place where a great city stands is not the place of stretch'd wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits of produce merely,
Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new-comers or the anchor-lifters of the departing,
Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings or shops selling goods from the rest of the earth,
Nor the place of the best libraries and schools, nor the place where money is plentiest,
Nor the place of the most numerous population.
Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and bards,
Where the city stands that is belov'd by these, and lobes them in return and understands them,
Where no monuments exist to heroes but in the common words and deeds,
Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place,
Where the men and women think lightly of the laws,
Where the slave ceases, and the master of slave ceases,
Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of elected persons,
Where fierce men and women pour forth as the sea to the whistle of death pours its sweeping and unript waves,
Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside authority,
Where the citizen is always the head and ideal, and President, Mayor, Governor and what not, are agents for pay,
Where children are taught to be laws to themselves, and to depend on themselves,
Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs,
Where speculations on the soul are encouraged,
Where women walk in public processions in the streets the same as the men,
Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men;
Where the city of the faithfulest friends stands,
Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands,
Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands,
Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands,
There a great city stands.
This passage really resonated with me. Where is such a place? Do great cities that even get close to this ideal exist? Do great towns, villages, hamlets exist like this? Did they ever? Is Bhutan, with its mythic status among liberals, a bastion of such virtue and uprightness? Portland? Austin? Minneapolis? Brattleboro? Flagstaff? Bend? Asheville? Detropia?
I think this passage opened things up for me because I imagine the feeling of living in such a place. Is it a place where we take care of each other? Is there good, sturdy work for the hands? Is it the kind of place where we cultivate the patience to help each person give their unique gift to the world? Is it a place where wanting to steward the world is all you need to find a home? Is it the kind of place where we see scarcity everywhere except in the coffers of the Perpetual War Machine? Is it the place where we tolerate the sentiment of "I wish I could help, but...," in ourselves and others? Is it the kind of town or country where we spend much of our precious life seeking out who to praise, who to blame, who is responsible for each thing, dividing and measuring this seamless and defiantly beautiful world?
The feeling that Whitman evokes of this great city is beautiful. Holding that feeling in my heart, I look at the world we are in and feel a deep longing to transform it. Are we headed towards a vision of society that we love, or are we coping and telling our children all of our rationalizations for why things don't work out? When I see you and you see me, can we really see each other as the same, made of the same stuff with only the thinnest illusion of separate identities? How can I be responsible for the oil-covered pelicans, the homeless man sprawled on the sidewalk, the girl whose mother is attending to the smart phone rather than her?
I know it all starts with me, though I so rarely know how to begin. One way of describing my zen practice is learning to trust in not knowing how to begin. Trusting that each situation is unique and I can't know ahead of time how to enter it, yet needing to enter it since I am fully in this world all the time. It feels like a tall order, especially on mornings like this when I'm anxious and feeling separate from everything. I want to defect to a narrow self-interest - figure out how to take care of myself, and if I have any energy left over, then I can care for someone or something else. But do I get that choice? Can I withhold and treat myself as separate? When will I have enough, or have things just right, so that I can then enter the world and take up caring wholeheartedly for everything around me? These questions reveal their impossible nature, and if I've got grace and luck, I can see them, let them go, and enter the world again in this moment, just as I am.
This morning holds nothing special, nothing to communicate or hold on to. In a few hours or a few days, it will almost certainly have passed from my mind, and if you've read this, probably yours as well. This is as it should be. What could I offer as a solid lesson to myself or others that clearly exists and persists in time? Nothing. These words are just an offering, hopefully as transient as those white dandelion seeds taken up by the wind. If you take courage from them, or a feeling of being less alone in the world, or anger at how I've got it all wrong, then you have my deepest thanks for offering your response as a gift.
from William Stafford's "Whatever Comes":
Gray sweeps here again, draping trees and buildings.
Air floats up the cellar stairs with its fresh face turned toward the open.
The new season means its all right -- time is.
Sure, those evil things happened in your life, but they're over.
Here comes the rain to forgive, wide as outdoors and so welcoming it doesn't care whether it knows you.
I'm laughing at the person I was. Who cares how serious my face looks?
Now -- on the mayor's hat, on the poor woman at the corner, all over fashionable people --
comes the wide gray forgiving rain.
