The Curse of Enlightenment

 

Something I'm grateful to the pandemic for is the development and greater use of Zoom as a method for attending meetings and lectures. This week I've been at several webinars sponsored by the Buddhist magazine Tricycle, an event they're calling The Buddhism and Ecology Summit: Transforming Anxiety into Awakened Action.  Today's seminar was titled From Mindfulness to Movements and featured activists Michelle King, Dekila Chungyalpa, and Bill McKibben

I've been attending because, like I think.many people are, I am anxious about what is happening to the environment. I'm a child of the 60s and recall too clearly the information, new to the public, that the ecosystem (brand new term) was in trouble and certain things needed to be done or be stopped in order for people to live comfortably in the then-far future of the 21st century. Like many, I calmed myself saying, "By then, practices.will be put into place to counteract all that. There's nothing to worry about, the adults will have it taken care of."

Of course, the adults have not, and in terms of our likelihood of avoiding environmental crises, we're at a further remove than we were then, as solutions like solar, wind, geothermal are more controversial among leaders of industry than to their forebears. President Jimmy Carter had solar panels installed on the White House roof. They become a source of ridicule to the opposition and Reagan had them removed.

So yes, I worry about the end of human life and civilization, although I was also startled by my agreement a few days ago with author Michael Hinton's statement that the so-called 6th Extinction which we are doing our best to bring about by doing nothing at all is as natural as previous extinction events brought about by volcanoes, meteors, and ice ages, and may in fact herald "another set of miracles" like all those others. 

Like Hinton observed I am jealous of anything like that because I'm "in love with the environment as it is now" and don't want to see it changed in a huge way. But a remark by Michelle King about "being the practice" rather than just doing it reminded me too of something I was told at Dhammapada monastery so many years ago.

First, we have to recognize we aren't going to solve the crises. It will take many generations to turn them around just as it took many generations to fuck them up. And secondly, we can't abdicate our--those of us who see clearly and dismsyingly what is happening--responsibility for opening the eyes of others to it. After a period of time at Dhammapada I approached the Abbott during my weekly interview and told him, "Well, I've become enlightened." He looked at me blankly for a few moments and then it terrible sadness crossed his face. "I am so very sorry," he said, clinching my diagnosis. Because it's axiomatic in practice that, once you become enlightened you will see all the problems of the world. Once you can no longer ignore them or rationalize them away, you are responsible for doing what you can to rectify them.

The Holiness of Lift and Drop

 

Two months ago I was asked to be part of a service celebrating the holiness of work. Most people assumed I would talk about my pastoral or chaplain work, but I wrote this about a dull, plodding job that I discovered had its own holiness. This is the five minute version I went with. I wrote a longer version to get the story out and may turn that later into a longer essay. 

THE HOLINESS OF LIFT AND DROP

    I used to work short-term jobs, most of them through an agency. There was a plant in Mankato, LMH Quality Packaging, that put together candy bags for local businesses. I rode my bike there one day and was put on the assembly line, checking bag seals. But after a little bit I was called into the foreman’s office and told, because I looked like someone who didn’t mind harder work, I would be moved.

I was taken to a room that was pretty big although there was only one table and one man in it. The fellow was a little shorter than me and what he was doing was walking around the table, which had sides about a foot tall, with a shovel. There were different candies inside and he’d dig into them and then drop them again before taking another shovelful. I was handed a similar shovel, a short-handled grain shovel, and left in the room.

The guy, whose name was Gary, told me what the work was without stopping or slowing down. What we were doing was mixing candies for the assorted candy bags you get around Halloween or party treats. About every hour someone else come along, take the table which was on wheels, and bring in an empty one. Then a half dozen other people would bring in about 20 10-pound bags of different candies—Sweet Tarts, Skittles, Peanut Butter Cups, Tootsie Rolls, the kinds of candy were always different—and dump them into the table. Our job, he explained, was to walk the length of the table and then around, dipping the shovels into the candies, and then turning the shovelful over. Every 10 minutes we’d change directions.

That was it. Not a very hard job. But shortly after starting, I was bored and my arms ached, especially my shoulders. My legs were sore from the walking and pivoting. My forearms ] jolted each time I dug my shovel into the box and it connected with the bottom. Sometimes the hard candies broke or the softer ones mushed and then I’d have to reach in and dig them out. And I was bored. God, was I bored.

At our first break, Gary gave me pointers. “Angle the shovel gently so you don’t hit the table bottom. Let the momentum carry the shovel just above the pile and then let them slide off to one side. Keep your legs bent at the knees and your legs won’t hurt as much. Stay exactly opposite me and you won’t have to hurry or slow down, just keep the same pace.” I did that and it was easier but no less boring. I hollered over to him “How do you deal with being bored?”

He said, “Bored? I never think about it. I just focus on one thing: the shovel lifting and dropping. That’s it. Everything else just gets in the way.”

I was surprised, given my experiences with Zen and meditation, I hadn’t caught onto it sooner. It was kitchen work, simply the repetition of movements without haste or worry about it’s being done. The job would never be done I realized, more tables with more candy would come in, and it would always be done by the end of the day because another two guys would take the shovels for second shift.

The rest of the week passed by with aches of course, and some foot sores. I learned to wear sneakers instead of boots, to ease the shovel because it didn’t matter how much I loaded on the shovel, it would always be added to by Gary. And I drifted, letting my mind wander away from monkey-mind, and let thoughts come, go, stay, whatever they felt compelled to do.

The work was holy, by which I mean there were people who enjoyed those candies and enjoyed the variety available. Even if no one bought the bag and it ended up in the landfill, the insects and mice would eventually eat the candy. It might not be good for them nutritionally—it wasn’t good for you or me nutritionally—but it added a little sweetness and pleasure to their lives, and I could hope for no more than that.

Stop doing so much, start slacking

In the past few weeks, I've had a tremendous and sharp pain in the lower left quadrant of my back, right above my butt. It's as if someone had been slinking a dagger slyly under my skin and into the muscle, shiving me between the sleeve and the meat. It hasn't knocked me down, but it's threatened to.

It was so painful for so long that yesterday I visited my chiropractor. He worked on me for a while, and while it felt better for a few hours after, what helped me most was what he suggested I do as an exercise to ward it off. Demonstrating, he said, "It's a kind of lunging motion, using the opposite side's muscles." And when I saw it I shouted out, "I do that! Or I mean, I used to do that, or something like it."

What he was showing me was similar to a yoga exercise I'd made a part of my stretching routine, and which I haven't done much of for at least a couple months. For reasons I can't articulate, except that avoiding the act became the reason itself, I'd filled up my days with so much busyness that, rather than stretching and doing tai chi before taking a leisurely walk, I'd been just walking without stretching or doing chi. When I explained this to him he smiled and said, "Well, it's not a mystery any longer, is it."

What had I filled up my days with? I can't really say that either. The endless embarrassment of the Trump administration is one issue with which I've busied myself, often only for argument's sake. Extra time for reading on the internet is another. Still another has been nearly daily naps. None of these have added anything beneficial to my life. It's been like I've been engaged in proving the truth of the adage that activities expand to take up the alloted time.

I had posted this cartoon some years ago and it popped up on my FaceBook page recently. It is an important reminder to me that what is important isn't the things that are done, it's what is accomplished. I haven't been accomplishing much lately, and the stress has finally gotten my attention.

I'm reminded of visiting a Gurdjieff community in West Virginia decades ago and coming across a woman sorting buttons from a large cookie tin by size in the dark. It is that sort of attention I need to cultivate again.

Sitting quietly

While it's true, as my wife has observed, that I can't take part in a moment of silence without telling somebody that I'm observing a moment of silence, I do in fact spend most of my working day quietly. Between patient visits, of course, I do a lot of reading, usually with a radio on. And when I visit someone who is unresponsive, I'll sit close to them, preferably near a window because I like a view, and relax into my role as nonanxious presence. 

Oddly, I wouldn't have pegged me for someone for whom calm would become a natural state. I bite my nails, I tap my fingers, I hum and sing under my breath. I am a mess of jangling, banging nerves. I promised myself when I was younger that I would never be bored, and smartphones and Facebook have helped me keep that promise. Sometimes, even sitting next to the bed of a person actively dying, it's difficult not to check my email or a friend's status or my Twitter feed. I admit to giving in more often than I'd like.

But I reflect on the situation this way. As a Unitarian Universalist I accept individual and corporate dignity and worth. And a part of that is something I've heard called NODA. No one dies alone. While I can't guarantee to be with someone when death happens, I can be present for a short time as the process plays out. This ministry of presence, as I see it, is as important to a comfortable death as any drug or prayer. It's the best I have to offer, maybe the best any of us has to offer. To accept the sociability of our species, that we like to live with one another, is to accept we also like to die with one another.

258 candles-day 98

I've been wracking my brain trying to think of what I can say that will mean anything to anyone about the current dismal, distressing state of politics in this country. And I've come to realize this: There isn't anything I can say. But there is something I can do.

My solution, based on the Chinese proverb that it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, is to provide daily candles in the form of links to other people's solutions, simple or complex responses to problems that they see. But as a single candle will hardly provide enough illumination to blot out the darkness that is the pettiness and meanness that characterizes this election cycle, I will light 258 candles, one each day between now and election day. In this way, I will do my part to remind each of us we are better than the baseness of the bases.

Today: What would happen if we taught meditation as part of American education?

basho & thoreau mashup

UPDATE:  unfortunately, the quality of the size of the video needed in order to make it possible to upload to the net precludes being able to read the copious information and quotes.  for most people, that won't be important, but I'm obviously going to need to learn to do this in another format (or find another way to size videos like this) if what I intend is to make this sort of thing academically presentable.  in the meantime, the music and pictures are pretty.

the past week and a half has been productive for working at various projects, few of which would interest anyone beyond the teachers they're intended for.  but this is the latest and holds a general appeal.  I'm proud of the start.  it's an integrative project comparing basho's and thoreau's status as "zen walkers" and tying that comparison into the uniquely human activity of wandering (at least on 2 feet) with little goal in mind.  I was astonished, in collecting material to use, that there were only 2 videos on google and youtube that had what I wanted--which was video of barefeet walking along a forest path or a paved road--but weren't obviously fetish vids (easily discernable by the person walking stopping every few seconds to arch his feet or show the soles slowly and fully to the camera or stretching her toes luxuriently before the camera as if it was someone's face) so I ended up making my own.  in my ever-evolving quest to make mashups as an academic alternative, I also cited all my quotes; but there's noplace to do such a thing on a mashup, so they appear in a document below the video.

“No One on the Road, No Traveler Crossing the Bridge: 

Basho and Thoreau”

Resource List

Quotations: 

[Format:  Approximate minute—Author Page Number]

1.      1:01:57—Solnit 10.

2.      1:15:80—Quoted in Solnit 33.

3.      2:09:57—Solnit 32.

4.      3:32:17—Solnit 40.

5.      4:54:60—Hass 15.

6.      5:24:47—Thoreau Loc. 18[1].

7.      5:30:23—Hass 11.

8.      5:35:97—JazzoLOG.

9.      7:24:63—Solnit 35-6.

10.  7:31:87—Hass 16.

11.  7:37:33—Thoreau Loc. 17.

12.  8:12:60—Aitken xx.

13.  9:10:87—Thoreau Loc. 7 & 10.

14.  9:58;53—Hass 36.

15.  10:23:33—Thoreau Loc. 20.

16.  10:34:77—Hass 13.

17.  10:48:57—Thoreau Loc. 92.

18.  10:54:70—Hass 45.

19.  11:21:37—Thoreau Loc. 242.

20.  11:31:57—Hass 16.

21.  12:03;20—Thoreau Loc. 430.

Works Cited

·         Aitken, Robert.  1978.  A Zen Wave:  Basho’s Haiku and Zen.  Washington, DC; Shoemaker and Hoard Publishing.

·         Hass, Robert.  1994.  The Essential Haiku:  Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa.  New York, NY; Ecco Books.

·         JazzoLOG.  2008.  “Flag Day.”  Last accessed May 15, 2012, at http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v63/__show_log/_p5/

·         Solnit, Rebecca.  2000.  Wanderlust:  A History of Walking.  New York, NY; Viking Putnam.      

·         Thoreau, Henry David.  2012.  “Walking.” Kindle Edition. 

In addition, I’ve quoted liberally from my sermon “Evolution and Revolution” available in three separate posts on my blog, Too Long in the Wasteland.

·         Sneakers, Bobby.  2011.  “Evolution and Revolution.”  Too Long in the Wasteland. Website. Posts from February 13, 16, and 19.  Last accessed at 2longinthewasteland.blogspot.com on May 15, 2012. 

---

[1] Kindle quotes are found by choosing the “Table of Contents” option at the bottom of the screen, choosing “Location,” and entering the numbers.

 

my zen experience

I was raised a Seventh-Day Adventist in the German tradition, which meant stiff prohibitions against alcohol, coffee, premarital sex, meat and several other things.  My parents were rather relaxed when it came to religion and allowed me to leave the church in my early teens.  I experimented with several Christianities for some years as well as agnosticism and atheism, and came to Buddhism after reading Hesse’s novel Siddhartha during my second college go-round and eventually on Zen.

Zen practice fit with my lifestyle at that time, which was geared toward a massive de-emphasis on material goods.  My divorce, though amicable, had helped me recognize that my life was not what I wanted it to be.  I lived for a year after that in a tiny room in a boarding house where I had a large bed, a desk, a cabinet, a stereo and a bookshelf and not much room to move around.  If I had guests we needed to sit on the bed since it took up nearly the entire room.  Everything else was in storage at my parents’, and when I moved into an apartment on the other end of town, it quickly filled up with the things I retained from my marriage, including a lot of bad feelings.  So in the middle of the night about a month after moving, having watched the film The Razor’s Edge and being especially touched by the scene in which the protagonist stays warm by burning the pages he’s read from the one book he has, I spent several hours literally piling clothes, books, furniture, utensils and various other things into the center of the living room and called in my friends to pick through it and take what they wanted. 

After that I set about studying in earnest.  I lived in a small college town at the base of the Shawangunk Mountains which are part of the Catskills and there was no little choice of Zen classes to join.  I chose one that met at Unison Center which was a 30-minute walk west of town.  I did a great deal of reading and spent a lot of time in practice.  After I bought a car I drove northwest to Woodstock to study under John Daido Loori at Zen Mountain Monastery which I managed to attend for free for a while having done carpentry work under a friend’s brother who was doing renovations there.  Eventually I moved to Woodstock for several years and continued my studies there. 

Before that happened I spent three months in sesshin at Dhammapada in Montreal on Daido Loori’s suggestion during which I did a lot of practical study.  I didn’t advance very far in my practice; the monastery was strict Rinzai school where we sat seiza style and I discovered I really wasn’t very good at sitting or contemplation.  I looked forward to my time in the kitchen and the garden each day and that was what got me through each sitting.  I was one of those people from the joke who say to themselves, “Hey, I’ve become one with nothing. Aw, nuts.”  At one point near the end of my stay I approached the abbot in dokusan saying, “I’ve become enlightened,” to which he answered, “Oh, I’m so sorry.”  I can’t say I got very far, certainly not in my practice.  But I did learn to master my anger which was a powerful step forward. 

After I returned from sesshin I did a lot more reading and studying but almost no practice.  It was almost as if I thought of myself as having used up the practice I needed during sesshin and didn’t have to put in the painful and (in my view) futile sitting.  I remember sitting once a day on my return—often at night before bed or early in the morning after waking—then once a week, then once a month, and finally not sitting at all.  Meanwhile, my reading emphasized the ethics of Tao over the practices of sitting; I decided to drop Buddhist studies, as I saw the end result of it as retiring to a monastery, in favor of Taoism.