The Heathen

Packing lunch

2012-01-15T10:30:00.000-08:00

Auschwitz-Birkenau: selection site

Matt went back to college today. It's a long trip for him: a plane, a subway, a train, and then a taxi. I got up early to pack him a lunch he could take with him.

Packing lunch -- an ordinary act I used to take so for granted when the lunches came two a day, every day. Now, it's almost a sacred act, feeding my children when they allow themselves to be fed by me. But, in that quiet kitchen, the rectangle of torn wax paper on the counter brought with it all the mothers who carefully packed food for a trip they didn't

Auschwitz-Birkenau: end of the tracks

want to take. They had no idea where they were going or what they'd find when they got there but they did what mothers do -- they packed food. They probably stood in their kitchens, terrified, but they did what they could do.

Long after the carefully wrapped food was eaten, too many of them sat on their suitcases, with their children all around them, in the stand of beautiful trees, and waited their turn.

It would be a lot easier to move through life wrapping sandwiches in oblivious peace...but I'm not sure I can do that.

For the moment, contentment with not knowing, not realizing, not seeing what happened, feels like sleepwalking to me.

Auschwitz-Birkenau: the woods near the gas chambers

Gemmon in Krakow

2011-10-30T23:30:00.000-07:00

Never plan to see a friend you haven't seen for almost two years for the first time at 10pm if you want to get any sleep.

When I got back from visiting Luke, Gemmon was in the hotel. We started talking that night and stopped long enough to get a few hours of sleep before setting off first thing in the morning in search of Amon Goeth's house, the infamous concentration camp commandant of the Płaszów camp on the outskirts of Krakow.

I'd forgotten that Gemmon had decided to become a Buddhist, in part, because of the Holocaust. About 40 years old now, Gemmon and her generation grew up in Germany with their faces shoved squarely into their country's culpability for the atrocities committed by their elders during Hitler's reign of terror and it's hard to imagine anyone more fearless and obsessed with owning the full weight of that responsibility than Gemmon. She knew so much more about precisely what happened than I did. To this point, I've learned only what I had to about the Holocaust, what came towards me at school and in popular entertainment but Gemmon told me she first began reading the accounts of Germans who lived through the period because she wanted to know "how in any possible way they could have survived this without feeling failed as a human." Then she began to read as many of the survivors' written accounts as she could as well as the diaries of people who were killed in the camps. "I kept asking myself: could I? Would I? Finally, this was the reason I got into practice."

Gemmon hadn't changed much in the year and a half since I saw her last. She no longer has the shaved head of a Buddhist priest, although she remains one, she says, "for now." After things didn't work out at the Zen Center, Gemmon went back to work as a hospice nurse, this time in Zurich. I asked if she missed the zendo, missed Los Angeles. She teared up. "I sometimes miss the Pacific and I sometimes miss Roshi but never the Pine House." (where Roshi lived and the workplace personnel conversations took place.) And Gemmon added that she didn't think she'd have a teacher like Roshi or live in a community like that again but that didn't mean she was no longer a Buddhist priest. "For me, my robes are alive." While Gemmon had clearly processed her feelings of loss - much of into gratitude - still, after almost two years, Gemmon's hurt seemed fresher than I expected.

I cannot continue to feel this way for two more years. Perhaps it was just that, in catching up, my more recent parallel tale of job woe stirred up her old feelings...or maybe it's that, while I only lost a job, Gemmon lost a job, a home, a teacher, a way of life, and a country.

We'd come to the Auschwitz retreat for slightly different reasons. I'd decided to come to leave behind my tiny ego bruises, to plunge fully and completely back into this effort, and to begin my approach to Judaism. Gemmon's reasons, the questions she was asking, were much more complex. "I don't think it's difficult to have compassion for the victims, but the perpetrators? Is it possible to have compassion for them? I've read their stories. I've heard them talk. They don't have nightmares. They compartmentalize what they did. They killed people - for them it was just another day at work -- then they went home to their children. How do you have compassion for that?"

Am I supposed to have compassion for that? What happens if I can't?

This is the really tough part of Buddhism, the dark side of "we are all connected, interrelated."

Gemmon said, "You are right that it is tough but I think it is actually even tougher to be attached to our hatred as we are suffering under it." She sent me a verse of the Dhammapada about this which is below.

I guess that's what we are all here to face at Auschwitz and Birkenau. For a week.

The verses of the Dhammapada that Gemmon sent

Neverhere by enmity

are those with enmity allayed,
they are allayed by amity,
this is the timeless Truth.

Hatred is, indeed, never appeased

by hatred in this world.

It isappeased only by loving-kindness.

This is an ancient law.

Forhate is never conquered by hate.
Hate is conquered by love.
This is an eternal law.

Chapter 1 of the Dhammapada as it is in Wikisource

1:1 (1)

The mind is the basis for everything.
Everything is created by my mind, and is ruled by my mind.
When I speak or act with impure thoughts, suffering¹ follows me
As the wheel of the cart follows the hoof of the ox.
1:2 (2)
The mind is the basis for everything.
Everything is created by my mind, and is ruled by my mind.
When I speak or act with a clear awareness, happiness stays with me.
Like my own shadow, it is unshakeable.
1:3 (3)
"I was wronged! I was hurt! I was defeated! I was robbed!"
If I cultivate such thought, I will not be free from hatred.
1:4 (4)
"I was wronged! I was hurt! I was defeated! I was robbed!"
If I turn away from such thoughts, I may find peace.
1:5 (5)
In this world, hatred has never been defeated by hatred.
Only love² can overcome hatred.
This is an ancient and eternal law.
1:6 (6)
Everything will end.
When I understand this, all quarrels fade away.
1:7 (7)
As the wind topples a brittle tree
So will temptation³ topple me
If I am lazy, unrestrained, apathetic, seeking only endless pleasure.
1:8 (8)
The wind cannot uproot a mountain.
Temptation cannot uproot me
If I am alert, self-controlled, devout, unmoved by pleasure and pain.
1:9 (9)
The saffron robe⁴ is perfectly clean
But I am not ready to wear it
When I have not cleansed my spirit,
When I disregard truth and neglect to practice self-control.
1:10 (10)
When I have removed all defilements,
When I am filled with self-control and truthfulness,
Then I am truly worthy to wear the saffron robe.
1:11 (11)
When I see the truth as false,
When I believe illusion to be reality,
I am unable to find the truth.
1:12 (12)
I must see the essential reality as real,
And discard illusion.
Only then can I find the truth.
1:13 (13)
As heavy rain will penetrate a poorly-thatched roof,
So passion creeps into an unreflecting mind.
1:14 (14)
The rain will not penetrate a well-thatched roof.
Passion does not enter a tranquil and reflecting mind.
1:15 (15)
I grieve now, and I grieve in the future.
When I do wrong, I am doubly-grieved.
I mourn and suffer when I see the results of my actions.
1:16 (16)
I rejoice now, and I rejoice in the future.
When I am virtuous, I doubly-rejoice.
I smile and give thanks when I see the results of my actions.
1:17 (17)
I suffer now, and I suffer in the future.
When I do wrong, I suffer doubly.
It pains me to know that I have done wrong,
And it pains me even more to see the consequences.
1:18 (18)
I am happy now, and I am happy in the future.
When I am virtuous, I am doubly happy.
I am delighted to know I the good I have done,
And I am even more delighted to see the consequences.
1:19 (19)
Even if I can recite large portions of sacred texts,
If I do not put those into practice
Then I am like a shepherd counting someone else's sheep,
No closer to enlightenment⁵.
1:20 (20)
If I know just a little of the sacred texts,
But I put those teachings into practice,
Casting off desire, ill-will, and delusion,
Practicing wakefulness and meditation,
Free of attachments to anything, here or in the future,
Then I may become enlightened.

The Visit

2011-10-29T18:00:00.000-07:00

Edinburgh

I could write about the beautiful town, another castle, a city park in autumn, but that's not the sight I came to see. I hopped on a the cheapest-of-the-cheap airlines to spend a few hours with Luke. Yes, I walked around, ate a few meals with him, met some roommates but, the highlight? The highlight is pathetic to admit, really. We meant to watch something on my Ipad but ended up napping. My hand was under Luke's cheek and I got to brush the hair from his forehead while he slept. That was my highlight. It made me completely and unreasonably happy.

All that cuddling and affection we're supposed to give freely to our children one day runs into the brick wall of adulthood -- and there's so little warning that it's about to happen. Suddenly I find myself required to summon, out of this same mind and body that was squarely in the momentum of years of physical parental care, the ability to take my hands off, to step back, and to even give the loving nudge out of the nest a healthy parent must do. Wow, this is hard.

What's amazing is how many people do it okay, not that some people can't handle it.

How hard, arrogant, caustic, judgmental I was towards my parents when I was Luke's age. How pure and complete justice is. Luke and Matt have no idea how much kinder and gentler they already have been to me, at 18 and 20, than I was to my parents, how much wiser already. I watch them and I learn.

Empty

2011-10-28T17:38:00.000-07:00

Krakow - main square

So this big idea of mine's not going so well. This trip is supposed to be the end of wallowing in the hurt of losing my job and the reclamation and re-dedication to this project. I've been trying so hard to get back to this full-time, I should be thrilled, right?

To allow for jet lag, I arrived a few days before the Auschwitz retreat actually began. Maybe that wasn't a perfect plan. A little too much time alone to think...

Wawel Castle

Krak's Mound

Pedestrian bridge with lovers' locks

I walked all over Krakow this morning - through the market square just as the sun came up, to Wawel castle and down through the kitschy dragon's den, through the reviving Jewish quarter (Kazimeirz), all the way to the prehistoric Krak's Mound, then back across a pedestrian bridge covered with padlocks with lovers' initials carved or written into them that wasn't on my map, and finally back to St Mary's Church.While I walked and looked, I was fine. But, stop for a hot chocolate, and I'm a mess again. Still. I can't get myself back. The hurt won't burn itself out. Dented ego or work head that doesn't want to get it: it's over.

Done.

Move on.

Funny. The job was different than anything I'd done before, different than anything I thought I'd ever do, but I'd just decided to stop questioning my decision to be there. I could see the good it was doing in a place that had the money to have an impact and I was working with people I adored. So, just three weeks before the end, I bought two new suits.

I hate those suits.

I can tell you I am not wearing either of those suits right now.

I know, I know: it's a good thing the job ended or I wouldn't be walking around Krakow, I wouldn't be back working on this project, I wouldn't be able to get some cattle car cheap ticket to go visit Luke while he's on his semester abroad. But the hole I'm in is deeper and scarier than even the job loss. I'm having trouble getting back in to this project.

It took me so long to get comfortable with what I'm doing, to get over the embarrassment I sometimes feel when I tell people who have known me for a long time what I'm doing. A number of them have been supportive, some even enthusiastic. But I've also lost a few friends who think I'm nuts.

Before getting on the plane, I tried to sit down to catch up on some of the old notes that I haven't posted yet but I got nowhere. Instead, when I had any energy at all, I obsessed about a friend who hasn't seen me since I told her about this project several years ago. When I told her about The Heathen, she smiled. She tried to look interested. She was not a convincing actress. I haven't seen her since. I hadn't really thought much about it but, every time I sat down to work, I couldn't think about anything else. It feels like part of a wall of shame between me and returning to the work that really means something to me.

I feel empty.

Empty. Empty. Empty.

And I don't think it's the kind of empty Zen Buddhism wants you to feel.

I am suffering because I am attached to what other people think about me and to what I think about myself. And that sucks.

Outside St Mary's Church - point taken

Beginning with the Holocaust?

2011-10-27T06:30:00.000-07:00

Main Market Square

When I landed in Krakow, I started to think about my relationship to Judaism. Let's just say I think it was a good thing I decided to begin The Heathen with religions I knew absolutely nothing about: Hinduism and Buddhism. The next three -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- are going to be a challenge because of what I think I know, what I don't know, and what any readers of The Heathen know and feel about these religions.

Wawel Castle, Krakow

Why am I going through the training for these faiths in this order? To begin with, because of basic chronology. Judaism came first, then Christianity, then Islam. But the relationship between the "religions of Abraham" is deeper than that, of course: Christianity was built on the foundation of Judaism, and Islam was built on the foundation of both Judaism and Christianity. Makes sense to start at the beginning, right?

One of the few remaining synagogues in Krakow

Okay, so it's important to bring out any baggage I've got before I begin. I've always thought that Judaism and Islam would be the toughest for me, the ones that would require a bit of airing out of old ideas so I can start with as open a mind and heart as possible: Islam because of 9/11, Judaism because of family.

My father, who is now a devout atheist and, in fact, against religion of any sort, was raised in a Jewish home. Sort of. He was a bar mitzvah at thirteen but more because of his grandparents than his parents. His wise-cracking, playful father and more sharp-edged mother cared about cards, family brunches and traveling. My grandfather died playing pinochle with friends. I don't remember my grandfather or grandmother in any religious event or ceremony. The most religious person in my father's life was his grandmother, Bertha. "She used to bribe me to go to synagogue with her," my Dad said. "If I went with her, she'd take me to the movies after, the ones with the show and cartoons before. So sometimes I'd go. She was a lot of fun."

I think if my father had married someone more observant, he might have gone along with it but he didn't. My mother has no use for groups of any kind or anything she considers weak and the need for belief of any kind, she feels, involves both. Her father felt the same, a bah-humbug man, for sure. He was born in the United States in 1896, shortly after his family came here from Poland and grew up in Irish-Catholic South Boston, the son of a Jewish doctor. That couldn't have been easy. Her mother, Opal, was my only grandparent with any vestige of religious feelings left over from her Methodist up-bringing in far northern Maine, but it was a pretty pale remnant: she cared a lot about having the palm leaves in the shape of a cross in her home on Palm Sunday.

Together, my parents feel quite clear that things like 9/11 and the Holocaust -- and virtually every war going back to the beginning of time -- have been caused by religion. Far from being a positive force in the world, they really believe it is the root cause of dissension and hate. It's not hard to see why they think that.

As for me? I have felt completely frozen by this concept. Just because someone claims to act in the name of a faith, is the act caused by that faith? If I rob a store and claim that I'm doing it in the name of Mickey Mouse, is Disney to blame? But, given how little I know about any religious tradition at all, I've been pretty much stuck having to listen to pundits -- never a good place to be.

This explains part of the provocation for The Heathen but I need to get back to laying out my personal baggage as I begin to learn about Judaism. When it's family baggage, there's always more, right?

My father's sister married a guy who was in the Army with my father in the Korean war. My aunt and uncle became fairly observant of certain Jewish traditions, especially Passover. We were invited every year and, in spite of my mothers deep-seated discomfort with my father's family and with any religious traditions at all, we went. We went and my mother made quiet quips about the proceedings to whichever one of us was next to her and spent the car ride home picking at the moments she felt were full of it. It didn't help that my uncle loved being the center of attention in a kind of creepy way and that we had other reasons to be deeply uncomfortable with him. So the only practice of Judaism I really ever witnessed was all tangled up in uncomfortable family dynamics.

Anyway, for better or worse, the little personal contact I had with any religion as a child were these Passover seders and the Christmas plays at my Episcopalian school. Which brings me to the final piece of baggage to trot out: shame.

I cannot mince words: I went to school in a deeply antisemitic, bigoted community. I know this because girls in my class would tell me what they thought of Jews in general and the Jewish girls in our class in specific. In middle school my friends all went to dance class, ballroom dance class with mandatory white gloves, at a club that did not admit Jews or blacks. Catholics were just getting the privilege of admission. I was told that Jews ate funny food, didn't get to have fun at Christmas, and were cheap. "Drop a penny and see if she picks it up!"

Yes, girls in my school did this to classmates of theirs.

In my neighborhood, we played games nonstop including tackle football and our made-up game of Spy. Dory Strittmatter always loved playing the villains. His villain of choice: the Nazis. One day, when I was about eleven, my brothers and I were playing football with the rest of the guys on the cul de sac. My brother, Robbie, somehow mentioned that we were Jewish. On the way home I took him aside and hissed at him: "Never tell people we are Jewish because we aren't!"

When I got older and it became clear that I was, according to my school classmates, part Jewish, they thought they were paying me a compliment by telling me that "you don't look Jewish."

All this was made even more confusing by Naomi, my best friend in high school, who was Jewish and who told me that, by Jewish law, because my mother wasn't Jewish, I wasn't either. And a boyfriend in college said I'd have to convert to Judaism before he could marry me, I wasn't Jewish "enough."

But, even if my mother were Jewish, how could I be anything if I didn't know the first thing about it it and never practiced it in my life? Isn't faith something you practice? Something you believe? It makes sense that you tend to believe and practice the faith of your parents but it's not an inherited trait like eye color, right?

I used to joke that I wasn't Jewish enough for Jews but I would have been for Hitler.

So now you have all the baggage I come with as I begin Judaism.

Still, to start my Judaism studies with a visit to the epicenter of the hatred of the Jewish people (and Catholics, and gypsies, and homosexuals etc etc etc) feels a bit off. That hatred emanated from ideas that, really, had nothing to do with the teachings of Judaism. But, if the purpose of this project is to understand, in some kind of visceral way, whether hatred between people of faith has, in reality, anything to do with those faiths and what kind of response these religious atrocities demand of us, then perhaps Auschwitz is really the dark heart of the matter. And I don't think it's possible to learn about the practice of Judaism, as a child of the 20th century, without standing squarely in some earned knowledge of the Holocaust.

I'm not at all sure I'm equipped to handle this.

On the plane...to Auschwitz

2011-10-26T15:30:00.000-07:00

Why am I doing this? So many reasons. The initial provocation may seem odd. In early August, after about three days of full-blown grieving the unexpected loss of my job, of going from 200-miles-per-hour excessive -- truly excessive -- work to a cold, brutal full stop, I was tired of standing in my back yard and crying. But there seemed to be no end in sight. None. So I decided to go to Auschwitz.

As I write this, even I can see how crazy this sounds. Depressed? Lost your job? Helping your aging and frightened parents unhappily downsize? Facing a soon-to-be-empty nest? What better cure than signing up for a week as close to you can get to catastrophic evil!

That exclamation point should be puffy with a circular dot underneath. That would be, in part, honest.

Bernie Glassman
from the Zenpeacemakers site

But there is more. As bereft as I felt about the loss of the job at the same time I was helping both Matt and Luke get ready to leave for college, I also knew it meant I could come back to this project, at least for a while, full time. If I could get myself up off the couch. If I could stop compulsively staring at the Facebook posts of my former friend and supervisor.

But in the same Facebook news feed was this: a post by Roshi Wendy Egyoku's teacher Bernie Glassman, someone whose books I've read and have long wanted to meet, with a link to the registration form for the up-coming "Bearing Witness Retreat in Auschwitz." A Zen retreat led for the last 16 years by a Roshi named Bernie Glassman in a place deeply associated with Judaism - the religion I intend to learn something about next. I filled out the form and sent in the deposit. At least I had taken some action to get back to this work and out of my self-pity festival. It was two months away. I had two sons and two parents to pack up so I got to the to-do lists. Nothing like the salve of to-do lists.

The two months flew by in a blur of packing and unpacking boxes...and more tears.

Yesterday, when I called to say good-bye to Matt, he said he was worried about me and this trip. "They're not going to shave your head or anything, are they?"

"It's not a re-enactment, Matt."

"Okay, but it sounds kinda strange, you staying at the concentration camp."

"I know. It will be, but I don't think our dormitory is right on the grounds but just outside." Then, to put it terms he could understand, "Like the Trianon Hotel is just outside the gates of Versailles." My royalist child.

"Oh, okay. Will you call or skype when you get back to let me know you are okay?'

Now that I'm sitting on the plane on the way to Krakow from Frankfurt, Germany, I am a bit nervous, too. Coming in through Germany - an accident of the quest for cheaper fares - only added to strangeness. I've just had my passport stamped by a blond, blue-eyed German official whose grandparents lived under Hitler's regime.

Not long after I made the plans, I realized I was going to have a ridiculous sixteen hour layover on the way back, so I'd sent an email to Gemmon in Zurich (for those who haven't read anything else*, Gemmon is the German Zen priest who Roshi "fired", a woman who made me laugh a lot) to see if she was going to be home in Germany when I was passing back through from Poland. She said she wasn't but asked what I was doing in Poland. I told her. Her answer: "WE WILL MEET FOR FIVE DAYS IN AUSCHWITZ!"

Gemmon was going, too.

* NOTE: the better part of my time learning Zen is not posted yet but will be before long so you will not be able to find the posts that tell this story right now...

Is work a religion?

2010-06-27T23:06:00.000-07:00

Making this blog private is too cumbersome. Apologies to the first batch of invited readers for the false alarm. I'm leaving it just as it is...public. For now.

Is work my current religion? It's another beginning as all consuming as Hinduism or Buddhism was: new rites and rituals, a foreign language, obscure terms, ceremonial dress, even spiritual leaders although I doubt they think of themselves that way. I hadn't really thought about it before, but a workplace unifies around a core belief or set of beliefs and then the people in it struggle - sometime constructively and sometimes not - to act on those beliefs.

Three and a half months in to this new day job and I'm still learning when to bow or not to bow, and it's every bit as uncomfortable as being in a Mandarin-only retreat in polyester in July. And I'd like to say I'm better for all of my years of practice but, right now, that really is a big fat lie.

This blog is going private for a while....

2010-05-16T07:49:00.000-07:00

...so, if you want to keep following along, please let me know so I can "invite" you to be one of the readers. I'm closing it up next weekend.

What to do?

2010-05-09T18:01:00.000-07:00

So have you noticed I haven't been round these parts for a while? I'm not loving it, I must say. Turns out I haven't figured a way to help pay for two boys to go to college while working on The Heathen fulltime.

I never set out to write a blog. Several years ago, when I was confused by the believers at war with each other all over the globe, I set out to learn what each of the seven * major religious traditions teaches its newcomers, its potential converts. I was no longer willing to remain on the sidelines, ignorant.

I am still confused and I am still unwilling to just let it go. But I began this blog when it became apparent to me that this task was going to take at least three more years and it seemed a shame to go on that long alone, without sharing the ride, without company and feedback. I guess I also had some hope that, by going this public, I might figure out a way to support The Heathen and my sons' college educations....not so easy to do when allowing advertizing seems wrong and other potential support eludes me.

So I write this to say that I've taken a new job, one that will take most of the summer to sort out. I'll catch The Heathen up to where I actually am - "finished" Hinduism and Buddhism - but I am going to take the next couple of months to consider whether or not to continue with a public blog or to take it down and continue it in private until my effort is complete.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

* as identified by Huston Smith in his seminal work The World's Religions.

Brit Hume, Tiger Woods, and Faith

2010-01-08T18:38:00.000-08:00

This whole dust up confuses me.

First, in every Buddhist temple I've been in, they have regular atonement ceremonies that are central to the practice. At the Zen Center of Los Angeles, every time you sit, you begin with the Gatha of Atonement:

All evil karma ever committed by me since of old,
on account of my beginingless greed, anger, and ignorance,
born of my body, speech and mind,
now I atone for it all.

Second, Buddhist concepts include "right speech" and "not speaking of others' errors and faults."

I think all of us could benefit from considering this wisdom every time we open our mouths.

Finally, comments about the superiority of one religion over another serve only as further evidence for people like my mother and father that religious practice leads only to dissension and conflict.

Heaven, Hell, and Reincarnation...or not

2009-12-18T12:52:00.001-08:00

Death was a hot topic at the Los Angeles Buddhist-Catholic dialogue this month, death and what happens after.

Professor Chris Chapple invited me to go to the Buddhist-Catholic dialogue a while back and I've gone when I could. This group of Buddhist and Catholic spiritual leaders and academics have been meeting together for over twenty years. It's been going on so long, there is a real personal warmth between all of the clerics and academics in spite of the great variety of their beliefs, backgrounds, nationalities and outfits. I mean, you've got sweet Sister Thomas Bernard in her wimple, white sweater and orthopedic shoes as well as a number of Catholic priests from different orders in their collars, interspersed around the table with Buddhist leaders of various traditions. If you didn't know better, you might think that there were representatives from three different religions because of the striking difference in dress between the Buddhists from the "northern" or Mahayana tradition (Chinese, Japanese, and Korea) and the "southern" or Theravadan tradition (Sri Lanka, Thailand etc.) For example, Venerable Miao Hsi from the Taiwanese Hsi Lai Temple and Professor Jeung Park, who's also an abbot in a Korean Buddhist order, dress in robes that look like closely tied coats. Phrakru Sumanatissa Berua from the Wat Thai Temple, on the other hand, is partially, but not fully, wrapped in bright orange cloth with one shoulder completely exposed.

Here's a photo from one of the meetings back in 2008 so you can get a sense of what I'm talking about....

Over the past four or five sessions, the group has been working their way through a pamphlet that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles gives out to its flock: "What Catholics Should Know About Buddhism." The Buddhists at the Buddhist-Catholic dialogue are correcting mistakes they find - and they've found quite a few.

The effort was actually suggested by the representative of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Right Reverend Alexei Smith who was ordained as a Melkite Greek Catholic priest.(* explanation of his unusual relationship with the Archdiocese below) "If we're going to be teaching our Catholic kids about these various world religions," Father Alexei said, "we should be teaching them accurately."

It's a pretty remarkable thing that representatives from all of these religious institutions have cared enough about building relationships with each other that they have devoted this much time and energy over decades to do it and with such little notice. And this is by no means the only group like it.

After four sessions, the group was just about to finish correcting this sixteen-page pamphlet. I know, it sounds like watching paint dry, but it wasn't. It wasn't just that there were a number of errors in the text itself but, on occasion, the Buddhists didn't agree among themselves about what should be said instead. Although they are all Buddhists, there are nuances in their tenets and beliefs as different as their dress.

But then, today, death got on the agenda. In the previous meeting, one of the Buddhists had said that, unlike in the West, many people consider themselves Confucian and Taoist and Buddhist or Daoist and Buddhist and Shinto. There just isn't the rigid separation between faiths. However, one of the Buddhist clerics said, in Japan, it wasn't until someone in their family died that they turned to Buddhism.

Professor Michael Kerze, an adjunct professor at Los Angeles Valley College, said he thought that was odd, given what he understood about Buddhism. "Why do (people in Japan) turn to Buddhism for funerals? Given Buddha's vision of samsara and being reborn, why turn to Buddhism for funerals when this is just one passing into another life?"

Ven. Dr. Karuna Dharma, (cleric on the far left in the photo above who was born Joyce Adele Pettingill in Beloit, Wisconsin) abbess in a Vietnamese Buddhist order, said, "When somebody passes, they're headed for a new life. It's very important for Buddhists to try to help them towards a good new life."

Venerable Miao Hsi, added: "It's like a very grand spiritual send off."

Phrakru Sumanatissa Berua from the Wat Thai Temple said: "Actually death is the final journey of the human being. In Buddha's time, there was a very beautiful woman, a woman so beautiful that every male, chase behind her. Even monks. She pass away. Buddha say: 'Keep her. Don't burn her.' Her body lay there for days. Buddha say 'She's there. Anyone want to go there now?'"

I don't know about anyone else at that table, but there's a pretty strong image now stuck in my head.

The Wat Thai monk continued. "The Buddha have to teach them that this," the monk bent his fingers back to his body draped in bright orange, "is impermanent so they can decline from attachment. Everything is illusion. It's not real. So when we have a funeral we have to teach about that: life is impermanent. We like to say that the people who pass away are our teacher, that life is impermanent." So, he said, in his tradition, in the Theravada tradition, the funeral is not so much for the person who died, for aiding in their transformation into a better life. "That's governed by their karma, by what they did in their life. You did good things, you go to good place; you did bad things, you go to bad place - that's what Buddhists believe."

Professor Jeung Park, a Korean Buddhist abbot, explained that, for Buddhists, the concept of a sentient being or "sattva" is different than other religions. He said, for Buddhists, even people who pass away are "sattvas. Because they return. In other religions, whoever passes away aren't counted. For Buddhists, they are because they are in a cycle of samsara. Understand? We are reborn again continuously."

But Professor Kerze had more questions, questions his religious studies students asked that he didn't feel he was answering fully. "My students ask me 'But what, exactly, is reborn?'"

Professor Park said, "We deny that any kind of self exists." No 'atman' - that Hindu term for the "I" that can say "my mind." Wikipedia says it's the Hindu term for soul.

Rev Karuna Dharma said, "I wouldn't use the word 'reincarnation.' 'Rebirth' is different from reincarnation." There seemed to be general agreement from all the Buddhists clerics around the table on this point, no matter what the tradition.

But Professor Kerze persisted, "It's said that Buddha remembered 'all his previous lifetimes in the process of enlightenment.' What was he remembering if there is no 'soul' consisting through these lifetimes?"

Father John Raab said he, too, didn't understand. "Even if you called it "rebirth" instead of reincarnation, what is being re-born?"

Then Reverend/Professor Jeung Park made a point I'd never heard before. The whole idea of rebirth is not really that important in Buddhism. At all. "It's more like a teaching tool to help people see the benefit of living a moral and ethical life." He said that the notion of karma and of dependent origination (that nothing can exist on its own) are much more important than any notion of rebirth for Buddhists. "It's not a big topic or a main notion for Buddhism. So don't spend too much time arguing about it."

It was pretty funny. Everyone who wasn't Buddhist was pretty hung up on nailing down just what, exactly, Buddhists mean when they talk about reincarnation or rebirth while Professor Park was telling us the whole concept was little more than a teaching tool, nowhere near as important as living an ethical and moral life; the idea that nothing can be alive on its own, separate and apart from countless other people and circumstances; and the idea of emptiness or no "self", which is a pretty tough idea to wrap your head around. And it seemed as if most of the other Buddhists around the table agreed.

Those central concepts each make a certain amount of straightforward sense to me. Dependent origination -- that I couldn't exist without my parents and their parents and their parents' parents is easy to see but it's more than that. My continued existence is also completely dependent on a complex and almost infinite series of people, places, events and circumstances - things that are happening or not happening. No one is breaking in to my house right now with a gun so I am able to type these words. I have a glass of water beside me that probably began as snow in the High Sierras and then ran through hundreds of miles of sluices, pipes and pumping stations with the help of many forms of energy with the oversight of who knows how many people to get into my glass where I can use it to keep me alive and functioning for another day. What this means is that the 'me' I hold to be the center of my universe is, according to Buddhism, not self-sufficient, not self-contained, not at all the same as what I really am.

The Heart Sutra says that "Form is emptiness and emptiness is form." This second notion - emptiness - is actually, according to Roshi Bernie Glassman easier to understand if you understand the first idea of dependent origination. It's not that there is nothing, that I am nothing, that Buddhism thinks everything is a big void. It's "empty" because "nothing can exist separate and apart from a web of causes and conditions. Suffering comes, in part, from our ignorance of this fact.

For me, it's pretty easy to see the trouble I've gotten myself into when I've acted as if my actions don't affect a vast web of other people, when I act as though this "self" is self-contained, unaffected by and not affecting others.

My guess is that part of the reason rebirth is not as important as we outsiders might think is that heaven, hell, and rebirth are all temporary - all part of the endless cycle that doesn't end until you've moved beyond karma, beyond the cycle of birth and death, by "realizing" the truth. And, like in Hinduism, you can only realize the truth while you are alive. Being alive is precious, it's temporary, it's fleeting, it's our chance to break free of our ignorance of the truth.

Sitting at that table, I was moved by the determined attempt at understanding and by its limits. Is it possible without at least some direct experience of another's faith? I think that's especially true in Buddhism because Buddhism is, at its heart, about directly experiencing what is unknown, beyond words, beyond concepts and using that direct experience to reduce one's suffering. But it sure was a relief to be sitting there watching people far more knowledgeable than me struggle with the same questions and concepts that make me feel like my brain is missing a few critical gears.

---

* Right-Reverend Archimandrite Alexei Smith was appointed by Cardinal Roger Mahoney as the Director of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. He is the only Greek Catholic priest in the United States serving a Roman Catholic Archdiocese in such a visible position. I didn't know it but the Catholic Church is actually a communion of 22 Churches all united to Rome: Roman Catholics are one of those Churches, and by far the largest and hence most dominant and the Greek Catholic Church (not Greek Orthodox Church) is another.

If you're interested:
Minutes from a past Buddhist-Catholic Dialogue, October 1- 4, 1998

Newest posts...

2009-12-09T15:21:00.000-08:00

...just in case you aren't on the email list. THOSE people already know about these.... ;-) This should remind everyone that The Heathen is still under construction. One day SOON, I hope, I really hope, it will be fully up-to-date and much more "of the moment." For now, I must catch up and turn all of the raw notes I took (before I realized I was actually writing a blog ) into posts.

Compassionate Hitting? (9 July 2007)
Help! I'm back in elementary school! (10 July 2007)
Some post-retreat thoughts (15 July 2009)
Other people's lives (7 September 2007)
Zen and Pure Land (11 September 2007)
Sutra of Eight Realizations (12 September 2007)

Thanksgiving and Zen

2009-11-25T07:54:00.001-08:00

No, I haven't gone tofurkey - there's just so far I can go - but I can tell you that the time I've spent on the mat has definitely affected the way I cook, especially for Thanksgiving.

In the very first face-to-face I had with Roshi (Wendy Egyoku Nakao,) she said the heart of the practice was sitting. (Roshi doesn't say that verb like anyone else; her "sit" is muscular, it has force and weight.) But her second and final instruction in that very first chat about Zen practice was that I might try, several times a day, to bring my awareness fully back into the present moment. For instance, while brushing my teeth, something I rarely remember doing because my plan-making brain wanders ahead into what I have to do the rest of the day, I might just brush my teeth. With all of my attention. Just drink a cup of coffee. Just drive my car.

This sure isn't easy to do. I don't know about you but, when I try and fail to do something, when I try to "just" brush my teeth and I catch my brain racing off several minutes after it's gone and find my toothbrush rinsed and back where it belongs (or not ;-) but have no recollection of doing it, the first place I go is self-flagellation: "Why can't you...?" Or "You'll never be able to..." Or "This is too hard..." Which is, of course, just more of the same wandering mind.

But cobble together a few moments of "just" cooking and it's amazing what disappears; the scurrying, distracted person I tend to be because I am so rarely "just" doing what I am doing, for one. Suddenly, the potential disastrous outcome is remote and irrelevant. Overwhelming piles of dishes become just the thing I am doing at that moment. The days of collecting the ingredients, preparing, and then cooking the food, calling my Mom with last minute questions, actually become joyous actions when I do them one at a time. This isn't just because of the time I've spent sitting; part of this is what comes from the ritual of cooking essentially the same meal for long enough that I've begun to relax into it, but this idea of fully living my life, of peeling one potato at a time in a kitchen filled with perfect smells with my boys working next to me...who wouldn't want to do "just" that?

(By the way - most of the newest posts are still in the middle (reasons explained elsewhere.) If you don't want to miss them, sign up to have the new posts emailed to you by clicking that button on top of the right hand column...)

Here and Now...and There

2009-11-17T10:38:00.000-08:00

Was sitting this morning and thinking.... Whoops.

Well, I've learned this much: I'm not going to use any of the following verbs "supposed to" or "ought" or "should" when it comes to what goes on when I'm sitting. What I keep hearing and reading in Zen Buddhism is: "Just sit."

That means let it all pass by: the ideas, the stories, the plans, the regrets, the fantasies, the to-do lists, etc etc etc. It doesn't mean that this stuff isn't going to come up but this moment, as it is, is all there is so sitting in this way is a pretty rigorous exercise in retraining my mind and body to stay in the here and now. Given a lifetime atrophy of the mental focus to do that, it is no wonder sitting can be so uncomfortable.

All this is a flimsy acknowledgement of the fact I got stuck this morning on one notion in particular and it was caused by a letter from my ten-year-old niece, Marley.

It was the best letter ever. My niece wrote to thank me for some silly birthday presents I'd sent (let's just say, soap in the shape of dentures was among them) but it was my first real letter from her and it was really fun to get. I can't share the contents because the final sentence said: "Don't show this letter to ANYONE els!!!" (sic)

So, as I was struggling this morning, to "stay in the moment" which included letting go of an unpleasant dream and the free-floating, low-level anxiety of every-day living, I used the thought of Marley's letter to reframe my perspective of my life. I have a ridiculous number of things in my life that call for gratitude and, this morning, that letter and all that it signified, topped the list.

There is no way to keep counting my breaths from one to ten, over and over again, when you're thinking all of these things. That is what beginner sitters are supposed to be doing until their mind is still enough to no longer need the prop of counting. After more than twelve years of off-and-on meditation, eighteen months of zazen, this is my progress: I can watch my mind working. If a really delicious topic comes up, it may take me a bit to notice I've gone off somewhere, but I do eventually notice.

But here's my question, the question that came up for me this morning: If it weren't for my curiosity, my ability to think several steps out, to concern myself with the problems I see in the world, to imagine something better, I'd never have started this project or come to Buddhism in the first place. It is precisely that curiosity and plan-making brain that gets me to the mat and enables me to keep coming back to it, to see what might happen down the road if I put up with the discomfort of the present effort. So I'm supposed to sit and toss what supplies both the determination to sit and the steady stream of mind chatter that makes sitting so difficult? No wonder Zen Buddhism is rife with riddles.

Second, that letter from Marley isn't "in the present moment," right? It was only in the present moment when I read it. I guess it will be in the present moment when I answer it. But what's so bad about indulging in the glow of it for as long as possible? Yes, it can take me out of where I am and what I'm doing right now, for instance, as I type this on a bright sunny Southern California day at a desk covered with books, papers and a cooling cup of tea because my thoughts are also in Texas with that ten-year-old who has given up pink for lime green.

I mean, isn't one of the very first skills we learn as an infant "object permanence?" You know, that just because an object is behind my father's back doesn't mean that it ceases to exist. The Buddhist focus on impermanence makes a lot of sense to me most of the time. How can you argue with the fact that absolutely everything you can think of is, finally, impermanent? But, within the confines of my daily life, it feels very difficult - and perhaps even counter-productive - to apply this notion of impermanence to joy, true though it may be. I am attached to my niece and that attachment will eventually cause me suffering but I am okay with that. I plan to wring as much joy out of that note as I can for as long as I can, even if it causes me to miss a few of my own breaths.

What I didn't know - part 1

2009-11-02T12:22:00.000-08:00

What I didn't know before I began this project:

-- Practicing a faith is as much about choosing a community as it is figuring out what you believe.

-- People raised in a faith rarely know why they do what they do. They just do it.

-- People who religiously practice a faith seem to find a comfortable way to navigate the schism between the way their faith tells them to interact with others and the way life actually unfolds, the way people should behave and the way they actually do.

-- It is very easy to use one's faith, the rites and rituals you are "supposed" to do, to feel bad a lot of the time for not "measuring up" to some ideal. My gut is that this is the source of a lot of the judgement of others' insufficiencies.

-- I have a lot of experience creating strife in my own life simply by thinking I know what the "right" answer is, or the "right" course of action. Get a group together, especially one trying to solve a problem, and my favorite defect appears in almost everyone.

I know that this sounds silly but, not having been raised in a faith, I just assumed that it would be different "there," in communities of the devout. It isn't....at least so far, partway along in this project's arc, whether it's people of a single faith who are trying to work together or interfaith organizations who want nothing more than to help and to understand each other. Is it any wonder people of faith are at odds with each other on a global level when in meetings everywhere, every day, we all suffer through all the ways in which we fail to work together in an open-hearted manner?

Or perhaps I'm completely misunderstanding what "getting along" looks like, what it feels like. I want no one to argue anywhere, ever. How idiotic is that? Perhaps the flip side -- of not expressing an opinion if it differs with someone to avoid an unpleasant conversation -- is just as destructive as imposing my "right" answer on everyone. I'm still very confused about all of this, but I cannot stifle my urge to run when discussions turn to community minutiae. I've gotten enough of that in the jobs I've had. My interest in what faith is and how it works in different religions was, I thought, completely unrelated to that. I'm beginning to think this is yet another misunderstanding I had before I began.

Apologies

2009-10-16T11:50:00.000-07:00

I've been doing some cleaning up of The Heathen including straightening out some of the dates now that I've learned how to do it properly but, somehow, all the folks on my email list got sent a random collection of old posts, certainly not the ones I would have sent. Just so you know: I'm in the process of putting on line all that I've done to date in Zen Buddhism so most of the newest posts will appear after the 20 April 2008 post, "Beginning Zen."

Under "religion," do you check "none?"

2009-09-24T11:01:00.000-07:00

Here's a pretty interesting look at the beliefs of those in that very large category: "None."

Some of the study's findings:

-- None's make up 15% of the population and that, given their rate of rapid growth, they might surpass the nation's largest denominations.
-- The rise of the Nones is usually decried by religious leaders as a sign of secularization or atheism's ascent but get this: 51% say they believe in God.

Here's a link to the Trinity College study ...
http://www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org/reports/NONES_08.pdf

And an article on BeliefNet that mentions it...
http://blog.beliefnet.com/stevenwaldman/2009/09/deism----its-back.html

Zen and the West

2009-09-15T14:06:00.001-07:00

We understand the extent to which the contemporary West is animated by "prophetic faith," the sense of the holiness of the ought, the pull of the way things could be and should be but as yet are not. Such faith has obvious virtues, but unless it is balanced by a companion sense of the holiness of the is, it becomes top-heavy. If one's eyes are always on tomorrows, todays slip by unperceived. Zen comes as a reminder that if we do not learn to perceive the mystery and beauty of our present life, our present hour, we shall not perceive the worth of any life, of any hour.

Lifelong practicing Methodist and author, Professor Huston Smith in his forward to Philip Kapleau's book, The Three Pillars of Zen

A reminder: You'll find the newest posts in the section on Zen Buddhism for the next couple of weeks, which begins in the March 2009 posts. Or, to make it even easier, sign up with the email subscription button up there on top of the other column and you'll get all new posts sent to your email address no matter where they're posted.

No Trace

2009-09-09T11:51:00.000-07:00

In Zen, you are instructed to 'leave no trace.'

When you clean an incense bowl,

this is not easy to do----

the soft incense powder does not readily arrange itself

when you apply too much pressure, or too little.

You must forget yourself-----

then your action becomes a beautiful action.

Beauty is revealed when the doer is unknown.

In this way, your liberation ensures

the Dharma for future generations.

-- Roshi Egyoku Nakao

In case you're interested....

2009-09-04T12:10:00.001-07:00

Got this email - it's a chance to study online with Harvard professor Dr Diana Eck who's kind of "The" person if you're at all interested in learning about other religions and how they relate to one another...

Dr. Diana L. Eck’s course, “World Religions Today: Diaspora,Diversity, and Dialogue” is being offered as a distance learning course throughthe Harvard University Extension School. Students from places as far away asIndia and Bali are enrolled alongside students at Harvard, and participatethrough online lectures and discussions. We invite you to consider enrollingin this course through the Extension School.For a limited time, the first lecture is available online at:http://cm.dce.harvard.edu/2010/01/13481/L01/seg1/index_FlashSingleHighBandwidth.htmlInformation about the course, including tuition information, is
available at:http://www.extension.harvard.edu/2009-10/courses/reli.jsp#e-1010

Not Knowing

2009-09-02T13:25:00.000-07:00

So much of Zen Buddhism is about not knowing. Irritating. I like to know. I like to think I know. I like to tell everyone in my life what they should do to improve their lives based on what I think I know. I wish I could say I'm being too harsh, too self-critical but I don't think I am. But drop off your first-born for his first year at college and you find out just how little you really know.

(Again, I must apologize. Almost all that I've done in Zen Buddhism that leads up to this lies in raw notes in notebooks, soon to be transformed into posts so I can ONE DAY catch up with myself but I just can't resist writing about some of this when it applies to what's happening in my life right now. [I sure wish I'd thought about doing a blog from the first day I started this thing....] So, please don't miss the new posts I'll be adding fairly consistently this month starting just after the 6 March 2009 post...)

One of the central rituals in the Zen tradition is something called the face-to-face meeting ("dokusan") with your teacher. In the Japanese White Plum tradition, as it is in many traditions, it's a wildly ritualized one-on-one meeting the folks at ZCLA suggest having at least once a week. You wait in the face-to-face meeting line, sitting just like you sit in the zendo, on your cushion, meditating ("just sitting") until you're at the front of the line. When Roshi Wendy Egyoku Nakao rings her little bell, you signal that you're coming by tapping a large iron bell twice. Then you walk down the hall with your cushion and your question. I think you're supposed to talk about issues that come up in your practice but try as I might to get around it, I found out pretty quickly that "practice" is no different than your life. Sit still and what ever's bugging you in your life shows up, like it or not. Every time I go in to that little room, with or without a question about Zen Buddhist practice in general or my efforts in particular, we somehow end up talking about my thinking and my ideas about life to which Roshi inevitably responds: "Is that true? Is that really true? How do you know?"

And there is always only one true answer: I don't. I don't know.

And then I trudge back up the hallway, cushion in my hands, convinced yet again about how little I actually know when I stop for a second to really question my assumptions.

For instance, when I dropped Luke and all of his stuff off at college for the first time, I was all set to indulge in the maudlin. I'd imagined it all: on the plane he played his part perfectly, falling asleep with his head on my shoulder as he always does. We shopped without rancor for the last few things, ate dinner with my parents as they live near where he's going to college. I didn't tear up in front of him but, in bed the night before, I went through all of those scenes of him as an infant, toddler, middle-schooler all in black etc and indulged. He was leaving. Our family would never be the same.

But then Luke veered from my script. He was supposed to hustle me off campus and then not call me for weeks because he was having too good a time. But Luke was miserable. Nothing was what he expected. He was panicked. And I went right down the tube with him. For days. Not completely. I did leave before I got involved setting up every last thing in his room for him. I did get on the plane and head home. I did keep the phone calls and text messages down below insane. But I took his panic and made it mine. I spun out all the possible scenarios - none of them good - about what his unhappy reaction meant about his immediate future and my parenting. And then I started to give advice. And obsess about what I could have or should have done, could say or should have said to make it better. I "should have" stayed to fix his room up because nothing is more depressing than a disorganized chaotic nest.

Then I finally remembered this "not knowing" thing I keep hearing about from the teachers at ZCLA. I don't know if Luke's unhappiness is actually bad for him. I don't know if he'll finally want to come home, I don't know if staying is what HAS to happen, I don't know how Luke should or shouldn't help himself deal better with the transition and, what's more, I don't know, if Luke actually took any of my advice, if he finished setting up his room the way I thought he should, for example, that he'd actually be better off in the long run. I don't know.

As soon as I really really realized that, I suddenly noticed what MY living room looked like. All around me were chaotic piles of clothes, books and CDs Luke had pulled out of his room to give away. And I don't even want to talk about the stacks of books by the side of my bed. Here I am obsessing about getting Luke to set up and to clean up his new room so he'll feel better about his life while sitting in a mess of my own. What better proof of how much I don't know?

After a day and a half of staying off the phone, off the internet, so I could move the stuff off the living room floor and out of the house, I felt better.

Not knowing. I'm working on it.

Related articles that refer to "not knowing" or the people in this post:

-- A lecture by Shunryu Suzuki
--a profile of Bernie Glassman, who was there at the beginning of the ZCLA)
-- a Zen talk Korean Zen teacher Hyunoong Sunim
--a dharma talk by Abbess Zenkei Blanche Hartman on Shunryu Suzuki's Beginner's Mind
--podcast interview with Roshi Wendy Egyoku Nakao, part one, part two, part three

To Do or Not to Do

2009-08-03T11:24:00.001-07:00

Grief. Sadness. Pain. Impotence. Confusion. Lethargy. Numbness. The energy of rage and anger ebbs and this is what's left and I hate it. I want to DO something, anything, because, all the time I'm planning and then doing, I don't feel what I don't want to feel or think I "shouldn't" feel.

So, the activity: within moments after finding out about Lily, I started with obsessive "fact" collection, at first imagining her terror, over and over again. Then, I went grabbing after reasons, answers, future prevention, meaning. When that failed to help, I turned to fierce and unfair scrutiny on the response of the school: were these gifted but beleaguered human beings, who were in shock and mourning themselves, doing the "right" things in response? I called other mothers. Other mothers called me. I sent emails. I left voice mail messages. I am so sorry I did that. It didn't help one bit and I made the pressure on them even worse.

In between all of this flailing around, I kept checking back in with Luke and Matt, each dealing with this in their own way. They both, at eighteen and sixteen, have made it very clear that there's only so much time and direct attention they want from Kevin and me about this. So, finally, at the end of the week, I'd run out of places to hide from these facts: it happened, I can't change that; I have only minimal influence over how it affects other people, even those I love most; and I've got a whole lot of miserable feelings about all of these facts.

I will run pretty far and wide to avoid feeling like this. My usual tricks are no match. My usual tricks are just that - tricks.

I wasn't sure if I was going to take any of this down to the Zen Center itself. From the first moment I walked in there, circumstances threw me together with Shingetsu over and over again. There was an easy, informal, personal rapport made much easier for me by her enthusiasm about what I'm trying to do with The Heathen. I felt like she got it and me. Add that I was already seeing her every week to work on the precepts because ZCLA only offers its official precept course (something you need to complete before you can "take the precepts") during the time of our annual family trip, and it just seemed natural I'd talk to her about it. But, Roshi?

I'd actually backed off from going to face-to-face meetings with Roshi because I had no idea what to say, what to ask, when I went in there. Oh, it wasn't for lack of questions but there are always so many people in line it all seemed too intense and too short. No one question seemed quite worth placing before cross-legged cleric in the quiet room in half-light. So, when I occasionally got up the guts to go in, I usually ended up asking something tiny or "manageable," which Roshi would inevitably call me on. Then I'd think she was looking at me like I'm an idiot which, of course, she wasn't, but that's what I convinced myself I saw in her eyes which, even while I was thinking it, I knew wasn't true but it didn't matter because I had no idea how to stop doing it and besides it was all a little off because I'm writing about this so was I really "there?" Should I really be there? etc etc etc... You get the scrambled up picture. So I decided to stop going for a while until I got untangled some.

But I woke up this Sunday morning and I couldn't think what else to do. I got in the car and drove down to ZCLA. I got there in time for the short service that starts Sunday morning's schedule - The Gate of Sweet Nectar - which is the service that commemorates the end of the week. At ZCLA, people bring a donation of food or a toy that's put on the altar and there's a lot of singing and chanting that speaks directly to the suffering of all, much of it is along these lines:

Calling all you hungry spirits,
all you lost and left behind,
gather round and share this meal.
Your joys and sorrows,
I make them mine.

After, everyone walks in a line to the zendo and sits in silence for two half-hour sessions during which you can go have a face-to-face with Roshi. Roshi then gives an hour-long talk followed by lunch.

I planned to stay only for one of the half hour sessions. I stayed for both and, when it came time for anyone who wanted to talk to Roshi to line up, I got in the line.

There is no question people-- forget "people" -- there is no question I want some kind of answers to the mysteries of life and death, evil and pain and suffering...and that many people find answers (or maybe just solace) in their faith. My mom and dad think it's like turning to fairytales to make yourself feel better. They think it's kind of pathetic and, even, weak.

What's becoming clear to me is each faith has different ways of dealing with pain and suffering. Buddhism puts that issue front and center. The historical Buddha, Siddartha Gautama, was a prince who gave up everything in his drive to understand why people suffer. After putting himself through every religious practice of his day, he finally resolved to sit until he understood suffering. The result? The Four Noble Truths:

1) Dukka - which some translate as suffering. Huston Smith says Buddha meant even more than what we conventionally see as suffering. Smith says it "names the pain that to some degree colors all finite existence." "Life is dislocated."

2) Tanha/Samudaya - The cause of this suffering is desire which Huston Smith says is, more precisely, the desire "for private fulfillment."

3) The Third Noble Truth says that the cure for suffering is to overcome selfish desires. Huston Smith phrases it this way: "If we could be released from the narrow limits of self-interest... we would be relieved of our torment."

4) The Fourth Noble Truth describes how to do that, how to work towards alleviating suffering. The "how" is the Eightfold Path, the practice we know as Buddhism.

All that's great to read about but what does it really mean when you're in it, inside the beast itself?

I sat in line on my cushion just like you sit in the zendo, meditating, eyes almost closed, counting my breath, one to ten and then back to one again, back to one again every time I caught my mind wandering off. It wanders off a lot. It sometimes takes me quite a long time to notice that.

Roshi signaled for the next person to come in by ringing a small bell in her room. When it's your turn, you have to answer her bell by tapping an iron bell hanging on a low stand twice with a thick wooden mallet made of a smooth gnarl of wood. Those gongs let her know you're coming down the short hall. I didn't know what I was going to say but, as the person before me bowed out of the room, a cartoon-like image popped into my head of a squirreled-up ball of energy, reaction, anger and activity, floating high in the air over a barely undulating golden brown, well, hum almost. So I walked in, bowed, and told her about it.

She was quiet.

When you go in to a face-to-face meeting in the zen tradition, the teacher doesn't look at you most of the time. They sit in pretty close to the same posture as in meditation, with their eyes down.

I continued. "I feel like that ball is me, what I normally do, most of the time. But it's not working. Not with this. " I told her I had been able to sit some but I kept thinking there was something I was supposed to be doing, at least to help my children but I was at a loss as to what that was.

She nodded and looked up. Her face was as warm and open as I'd ever seen it in any face-to-face I'd had with her. "Hearts are breaking everywhere because of Lily's death. And there is no way of knowing what this will become, what will come from this. So we sit, really sit, fully present for what is. "

"But I hate what is. And there's literally nothing, nothing I can do about it. Nothing."

"We can only start where we are. Here. Now. By being fully present, by feeling what we feel."

"I'm not sure what that means. And I'm afraid that, even if I did, even if I could just 'feel what I feel,' I would end up not being able to do anything, to help anyone, to be of service to my children or anyone else."

"You know how much damage is done by people avoiding what they feel? Mmmm?" She looked right at me for a painful moment. "It's only from that place of just being fully present for what is, that the right actions arise."

For the first time something about this made some sense. Perhaps it takes something this horrific to show us just how futile it is to try to work around what is and what you're feeling about what is. I have no idea anymore what the right actions are because, much as I'm desperate for something, anything to DO, there is simply nothing to be done.

So what is true? What is?

I don't know.

And I feel what I feel about that.

And hating those facts does nothing more than make the pain worse.

In the talk about practice that followed, someone asked how they could tell the difference between feeling feelings and wallowing in them. My question, my fear, precisely.

The answer from one of the other priests? "You feel feelings in your body. 'Wallowing' is when you start making stories up about them in your head." Stories like obsessing on the faults and errors of anyone involved before, during and after, for example.

Just knowing, really knowing, that there is nothing to be done right now, except to sit with these devastating feelings, helped. Some.

The dire muck and the sun

2009-07-30T11:50:00.000-07:00

The damage done by this event keeps radiating out.

Please note that this blog isn't entirely caught up with where I am. I've spent quite a lot of time studying Zen Buddhism at the Zen Center of Los Angeles. I will be filling in the steps that have led me to this point in the next month so, apologies if the names and concepts in this post seem out of the blue. This also allows me to remind you to check in the so-called archives of past posts as you'll find most of the new posts there in the weeks to come.

One of the difficult parts is that no one in my family thinks they have the right to feel as knocked to our knees as we have been, as we are. This is the Burk family's tragedy, this is the tragedy of Lily's closest friends, her teachers, her intimates, not us. We can only imagine the depth of their anguish and stand on the side feeling impotent to help and, as I talk to more and more mothers and hear more and more stories about their children, I know how far and wide these feelings go, the impotence, the feeling that we don't really have the right to be as devastated as we are, as if we might somehow add to the pain of those already in unimaginable pain if we did.

And so we sit in our houses. Or we sit in other people's houses. We call. We hug our children if they want to be hugged. We feed them if they want to be fed. But we don't know what to say. We don't know what to do. There is nothing to be done.

I emailed Shingetsu and Roshi to let them know what happened. I'm not sure I would have thought to do that but I was supposed to meet with Shingetsu Monday evening - I've been working my way through the Buddhist Precepts with her - and I needed to change the schedule so I could be home at dinnertime. Roshi immediately added Lily's name to the prayer service at ZCLA. And, when I went to meet with Shingetsu, the tiny British Buddhist Sensei tossed all proper Japanese ritual to the wind at first and stood up and hugged me. Hard. She then asked if it would be all right if she added Lily's name to a list that would be chanted in a ceremony every day for forty-nine days.

"Why forty-nine days?"

"It's the bardo, the time from physical death until--" Shingetsu held her fingers up in quotes: "reincarnation."

I was grateful for Shingetsu's finger quotes, her lack of certainty about reincarnation.

But what about Lily's parents? The worst part of this is that there is absolutely nothing I can do for Lily's parents except possibly to tell you -- and anyone else who will sit still and listen -- what a truly loving, smart, and kind being Lily was, how she made people laugh and feel seen.

Shingetsu suggested lighting incense for them. We did.

I'm not entirely sure what I felt about doing any of this. A part of me felt like it wasn't my place to do this, that I should have asked someone's permission first. Another called me fraud. But still another felt just the tiniest bit of relief that there was something, anything, no matter how small or even probably irrelevant, that I could "do" when part of the true horror of this is there is nothing, nothing that can be done.

Is this part of the solace people find in ritual?

After sitting in silence with Shingetsu for a bit, we talked about the horror, about the impotence, and most of all we talked about the feeling of shame that came up about having so many feelings when the tragedy wasn't directly "ours."

"But it is our tragedy. It did happen to us, to all of us. There is no separation. This is life. This is death. It's all part of the same thing. The dire muck and the sun."

The thing is, I know this is true.

Change it. Now.

2009-07-26T09:26:00.000-07:00

I don’t want to write about this. I really really really don’t want to write about this.

Yesterday I was standing on a bluff over the ocean when my husband and Luke told me that a girl in the eleventh grade was murdered. Lily Burk, a brilliant, talented, funny young girl who’d been in plays with Luke, went on an errand for her parents at two o’clock Friday afternoon and was abducted and then murdered. Her body was found in her parents’ Volvo. Blunt force trauma to her head, the Los Angeles Times website said last night.

Lily. She was in the class between Luke and Matt. Lily. She was sweet, gifted, kind, smart and a very, very funny on stage. Lily. Her parents’ only child. How blessed they must have felt for seventeen years. Lily. I looked forward to finding out what she was going to be, what she was going to do. Lily.

Lily Burk.

Now this is where faith is supposed to kick in, where faith is supposed to have answers. Does it? Does it really? Nothing, nothing can make sense out of this for me. My brain is stuck, scratching over and over again at these few horrific facts. Over and over again I can’t stop it, I can’t stop Lily getting in the car that Friday, I can’t stop filling in all the moments I don’t know, can’t know, won’t know, I can’t make time stop, go back, change, I can’t fathom the abyss of her mother and father’s anguish and I can’t do a thing to take even a tiny part of that from them, no one can, and I have to stand paralyzed as my oldest is slammed by inexplicable facts, inexplicable pain and, tonight when my youngest comes home from his summer program, my husband and I will be the ones to bring this horror into his life. He loved Lily. She saw him, liked him, was kind to him at a time when he needed it.

So this is the time when people turn to their faith, their belief, their spiritual leaders for answers, for comfort, right? Do you? Does it help? Do you get answers? Do you get comfort? Really?

Right now, slapping this grief down in front of any one human being, no matter how well-trained, no matter how much they believe and how thoroughly they walk their talk, feels unfair…to them and to me, like it’s a set-up for profound disappointment. It makes me feel like it’s just giving up, of bearing my neck to the wolf, that I’m just finding some way to accept - or at least live with - the unacceptable. What is it that I find unacceptable? Death and senseless destruction. I am in terror, pain, and rage because I want to do something, anything, about it and I can’t. Can’t. Can not. Nothing.

Last night I had dream after dream after dream:

Cars wrapped in white canvas like dining room chairs, Luke’s classmates walking thorough and around them, silent, sad.

I tried and failed to get home but highway signs were wrong and kept changing.

I sat, eating, at a metal table outside. The food was too expensive. I tried and failed to speak French to the owner. A storm came and I didn’t know it for a while until I realized I was soaked through and the umbrella over my table, which had been blown inside out apparently for some time, finally blew away.

And the last: I struggled with a display in front of pale blue fireplace mantle. A vase made of lavender paper was somehow held up in front on a web of string. But it kept tilting over and the flowers kept falling out. I kept trying to right it. I couldn’t. I finally gave up. It flipped over one more time and became a snowflake, the kind you make for a child.

Snowflakes on a red-hot stove....

2009-07-24T15:41:00.000-07:00

I was reading Red Pine's (a.k.a. Bill Porter) translation and commentary on the Heart Sutra, one of the most important sutras in Mahayana Buddhism. In the discussion, Red Pine quotes Chen-k'o as saying that, once we realize the inherent emptiness of our so-called reality,

"...the light of the mind shines alone. When all the clouds are gone, the full moon fills the sky. thus birth and destruction, purity and defilement, completeness and deficiency are all snowflakes on a red-hot stove."

"Snowflakes on a red-hot stove" - now THAT is excellent.

I was just thinking about that today when my youngest son, Matt, was talking about the lives of writers that he likes: this summer it's Edith Wharton, Charles Dickens, and the Bronte sisters. He knows so much about the lives they led while they wrote the books that he loves, the full human beings almost come alive for me. And then I realize how not alive they are. There's a collision between all that energy I can still feel when I imagine who they were and the slapping fact of how quickly, really, it is all over.

There's a line chanted at the end of some of the services at ZCLA - it's an admonition of sorts - not to "squander your life" and to practice as though there were a "fire on your head."

...or, perhaps, as though you were a snowflake on a red-hot stove.

The Heart of the Perfection of Great Wisdom Sutra

2009-07-24T14:02:00.000-07:00

This is the version they use at the Zen Center of Los Angeles. There are many different translations.

Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, doing deep prajna paramita,
Clearly saw the emptiness of all the five conditions,
Thus completely relieving misfortune and pain.
O Shariputra, form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form;
Form is exactly emptiness, emptiness is exactly form;
Sensation, conception, discrimination, awareness are likewise like this.
O Shariputra, all dharmas are forms of emptiness, not born, not destroyed;
Not stained, not pure, without loss, without gain;
So in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, conception, discrimination, awareness;
No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind;
No color, sound, smell, taste, touch, phenomena;
No realm of sight...no realm of consciousness;
No ignorance and no end to ignorance...
No old age and death, and no end to old age and death;
No suffering, no cause of suffering, no extinguishing, no path;
No wisdom and no gain. No gain and thus
The bodhisattva lives prajna paramita
With no hindrance in the mind,
no hindrance, therefore no fear,
Far beyond deluded thoughts, this is nirvana.
All past, present, and future Buddhas live prajna paramita,
And therefore attain anuttara-samyak-sambodhi.*
Therefore know, Prajna Paramita is
The great mantra, the vivid mantra,
The best mantra, the unsurpassable;
It completely clears all pain--this is the truth, not a lie.
So set forth the Prajna Paramita Mantra,
Set forth this mantra and declare:
Gaté! Gaté! Paragaté! Parasamgaté!**
Gaté! Gaté! Paragaté! Parasamgaté!
Gaté! Gaté! Paragaté! Parasamgaté!
Bodhi svaha!***
Prajna Heart Sutra

* Bill Red Pine Porter's definition: "unexcelled perfect enlightenment"
** Red Pine's roughly translates this: "The Gone, the Gone Beyond, the Gone Completely Beyond" but suggests that the vibration, the sound, like in Hinduism, is as important if not more important than the meaning of the words themselves.
*** Again, Red Pine: "Bodhi...means 'enlightenment' adn svaha is exclamatory: "at last,' 'amen,' 'hallelujah.'"

Tenets or actions, which come first?

2009-07-22T20:43:00.000-07:00

I've started reading Karen Armstrong's book The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions. Armstrong's writing about the remarkable period she calls the Axial Age (900 and 200 B.C.E) in which most of our major religious traditions began: Confucianism and Taoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Just a few quotes from the introduction:

"It is common to call religious people 'believers.' as though assenting to the articles of faith were their chief activity. But most of the Axial philosophers had no interest whatever in doctrine or metaphysics... All the traditions that were developed during the Axial Age...discovered a transcendent dimension in the core of their being, but..most of them refused to discuss it."

Armstrong says the essential spirit of the Axial Age was this:

"What mattered was not what you believed but how you behaved."

The Path to Purpose

2009-07-17T13:57:00.000-07:00

So someone asked me to take a look at The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life, a new book by Stanford University professor William Damon. I didn't think I was going to end up writing about this but I can't help it.

Professor Damon's going after a critical problem in our society: the lack of meaning, the absence of a sense of purpose that so many of us feel. Of particular concern is the "generation of disconnected and unhappy kids" whose inner emptiness, whose lack of purpose is widespread. In his interviews and surveys of people between the ages of twelve and twenty-two, he says "almost a quarter of those we interviewed...express no aspirations at all. In some cases, they claim that they see no point in acquiring any." Damon links this to an increase in the rate of suicide and attempted suicide. The reason? Professor Damon writes: "I am unconvinced by the 'stress' explanation. Hard work and competition have never broken the spirits of young people as long as they believe in what they are doing."

This might be easy to dismiss as a developmental phase if Damon didn't see evidence of a life-long problem emerging from this aimlessness in young adulthood. "In the long run, that lack of purpose can destroy the foundations of a happy and fulfilled life."

As a parent and as someone who's interviewed a lot of people just out of college who want an entry-level position, I couldn't stop reading this book. Professor Damon is describing something we all know in our gut is true but hadn't quite recognized with such clarity.

Professor Damon's thesis is that schools and parents are failing to teach children how to find their purpose, why they're learning what they're learning. My guess is that's because most of those parents, teachers and administrators may not have figured out their purpose either.

I remember a friend of mine in school - you probably had one like her, too - who always held up class room lessons, demanding to know why she should learn algebraic equations or about the Teapot Dome scandal or how photosynthesis worked. She wanted to know what possible difference it could make to her life. I'm not sure any answer would have satisfied her but Damon suggests that such moments could provoke a more meaningful learning experience. "Incredibly, in all my years as a scholar of youth development and education, I have never seen a single instance of a teacher sharing with students the reasons why he or she went into the teaching profession."

In my very first documentary as a baby producer when I was just twenty-two, I spent months with a gang in San Jose, California, and the police who were working hard to curb their criminal activity. I can tell you that the very first sense of purpose those gang members ever had in their lives, they got the day they joined that gang. I spent more than four months talking to those guys. When I asked them what they envisioned for their future, I might as well have asked in Swahili. The future did not exist for them. They had no future picture of themselves nor any hopes or dreams. But, because of the gang, their day had structure, meaning, and purpose and, as flawed as those were, it must have been an enormous sense of relief to go from nothing to something.

Going one step further with this: I wonder what role a purpose-void plays in those who commit violent acts they say are based on their faith.

I remember the panic I felt before I graduated from college, wondering what I'd do for a living. I was clear that my choice couldn't just be about what might earn me the money to live. I needed to believe in what I did, that I had to feel that it might make a difference. That thinking led me to choose to learn how to tell stories for a living because what little meaning I found in my life had come from what I'd learned from the stories people wrote or told me. I wanted to learn how to do the same for others. The incredible relief I felt when I hit upon my purpose I can still remember, I can even feel it, physically, in my body today. But I also remember how I felt before I figured it out, how desperate, lost, and hopeless I felt and how eager I was for someone, anyone, to tell me what my purpose was.

I was lucky no one ever did. I was lucky no one ever tried to make my purpose serve their purpose.

The central impetus for The Heathen has been my bewilderment about the conflict between people of faith. William Damon's The Path to Purpose has got me wondering if some of the source of that conflict comes from people desperate to find a purpose without knowing how to do it for themselves making them ripe for false clarity.

The Heathen gets a recommendation!

2009-07-16T16:28:00.000-07:00

Hey, fun news! The Heathen was listed as a recommended by the North American Interfaith Network. Here's what they said:

The Heathen Marley's Journal - A Leap

Blog recommend by Bill Lescher and Bettina Gray

Marley Klaus, a former 60 MINUTES producer was raised outside any religious tradition, yet felt a deep sense of need to explore a personal spiritual path that had not been encouraged by her family. In the face of her own children’s questions and “a world war over issues of faith” she took a leap and started exploring Hindu and Buddhist teachings and teachers. In October 2008 she started this blog which is taken from her notes. It is an unpretentious and honest chronicling of a personal journey.

Here is her post following the Mumbai attacks:

Mumbai

Does this really have anything to do with faith? With religion? If someone robs a bank but says the devil made him do it, or Jesus, or God, a jury sees that for what it is and convicts him. We don't blame the faith the bank robber happened to choose to use as an excuse for his indefensible acts, right?

In the middle of the chaos, Mumbai still under siege, a woman interviewed on the radio pleaded for all people of faith not to use this crisis to pull apart from each other but to join together, to use it to rise above, to see what we share not what divides us. I hope her voice is heard and her prayers are answered.

You can browse other entries at http://marleytheheathen.blogspot.com/

Buddhist Precepts

2009-07-08T13:14:00.000-07:00

ZCLA's Statement of the Precepts

The Sixteen Bodhisattva Precepts (Kai) that are given and received during Jukai are divided into three components: the Three Treasures, the Three Pure Precepts, and the Ten Grave Precepts, as follows:

The Three Treasures (Refuges, Jewels) correspond to the “container” or “substance.” These are the essence of our true nature. The refuges are:

1. Buddha, or the aspect of oneness (equality); the unconditioned or unhindered state.

(There are no precepts.)

2. Dharma, or the aspect of differences (diversity, multiplicity) as seen from oneness.

(There are precepts, or a natural way in which life functions.)

3. Sangha, or the aspect of the natural harmonious relationship of oneness and differences.

The precepts come alive through our actions and our relationship with self and other.

The Three Pure Precepts correspond to the order in which we function as the Three Treasures. These are:

4. Do No Evil. (The Three Tenets: Not-Knowing)

5. Do Good. (The Three Tenets: Bearing Witness)

6. Do Good for Others. (The Three Tenets: Loving Action)

The Ten Grave Precepts correspond to the more specific “functioning” of the Three Treasures in daily life. These aspects of life are:

7. Non-Killing

8. Non-Stealing

9. Not Being Greedy

10. Not Telling Lies

11. Not Being Ignorant

12. Not Talking about Others’ Errors and Faults

13. Not Elevating Oneself and Blaming Others

14. Not Being Stingy

15. Not Being Angry

16. Not Speaking Ill of the Three Treasures

Lost in transit

2009-07-07T13:29:00.000-07:00

Why is it that whatever passes for my daily rituals, fledgling though they may be, get lost when I travel? And, is that necessarily a bad thing?

I've spent most of my life proud of my ability to adapt, to be happy in most situations, with most people, under many different circumstances. On vacation, especially in a group, I like being the "whatever" person. (* a note to those who know me well below...) I guess when I was growing up, I looked around my family of origin and figured there were so many opinionated people, my option was either to have an opinion and the argument that went with it or to go along and have a chance at some fun. The choice to not care too much about my choice is not a bad way to travel with a husband and two teenagers as I care more about simply spending time with them than I do about where we actually go or what we actually do.

But somehow, once I pack that suitcase, I don't just leave behind work and the daily to do lists, I leave behind even the things that have come to mean something to me. The result? I came home from this trip a bit sad and lost. Meditation? Once or twice in three weeks. Exercise? Only the walking that comes from wandering around in hilly places. Not bad but not enough for me. It wasn't all gray. I played cards with Luke and Matt, listened to them laugh together in the back seat, watched the sun set with Kevin in more than one beautiful place, met so many lovely people, saw a rainbow with Matt when we really needed to see one, and I read a lot of Faulkner. But I spent way too much time focused on logistics and deciding where and what we were going to eat and dealing with credit card fraud alerts every other day, so much so, I began to wonder what I ever liked about traveling in the first place. Maybe I used to like leaving my daily life behind. Now, I hated that part of it. I really felt like I had vacated my life.

I must confess I also did way too much scrambling to make things work for everyone, even jumping in to solve problems that weren't mine to solve, so no one would fall apart, all in the maniacal quest for the magical family trip.

And I wonder why I came home feeling the way I do?

But it was more than just the mother-in-charge thing... It wasn't until I got back to my desk and found the passage from the Bhagavad Gita I love so much -- "He who can see inaction in the midst of action and action in the midst of inaction, is wise...etc" that I got why I'd felt so lost in transit this time. I'd lost touch with some of the small actions I now take that help give me stability, peace, meaning: the time I spend every day alone; the time I spend meditating; the literature I reread most days because it helps remind me of what it actually important rather than what presents itself on a minute-by-minute basis as needing my attention. And it didn't get lost because of the outside swirl of the people I love or even broken down rental cars. I simply didn't understand it's importance in my life and the need to make very sure I didn't lose those small things I do every day simply because I was away from home.

I get it. Rituals are important.

[* Okay, my friends and acquaintances...I'm talking about vacation. Yes, I know and freely admit I have NEVER been the "whatever" person at work but that is another subject ;-) ]

The obituary they never write...

2009-05-17T07:44:00.000-07:00

If I died today and someone decided to take the time to write an obituary, it would be all wrong. In it would be all the stuff I thought I needed to do to be worthy of life and the things I did while waiting to know better. Missing would be the moment I looked a hurt friend deep in the eyes and truly saw her and she me, that "me, too" that took the edge off for both of us. They don't write about that in the newspapers. They don't write about the dinner table belly laughs Kevin, Luke, Matt and I shared last week...and just how often that happened. They won't write about the fact that I was able to own and then leave to one side some of the damage my loving parents weren't able to keep to themselves. And they won't write about just how many moments I have been completely and fully aware that I am alive. Isn't that what really should be said? Isn't that what really should be known? Who cares where I worked or what I did while I was there?

A study: Religion most important to Asians, Africans

2009-05-07T15:42:00.000-07:00

The results of a Gallup poll....

LONDON (AFP) — Asians and Africans see religion as most important in their daily lives, with Europeans least of the view that faith matters, according to a study published Thursday.

The study also found that Muslims in key European states identify with their country of residence more than the general population, contrary to the widespread view that they are not loyal to their homeland.

Bangladesh is the country with the most people -- 99 percent -- agreeing that religion is part of their daily lives, followed by Pakistan, Afghanistan, Djibouti, Sierra Leone and Senegal within a few points.

Meanwhile, only 20 percent of people in Norway view religion as important, followed by France on 25 percent, Britain on 29 percent and the Netherlands on 33 percent, according to the study co-authored by pollsters Gallup.
"The percentage of residents who say religion is important in their lives is much higher in Canada (45 percent) and the United States (67 percent)... than it is in many European countries," said the study.

The study, by Gallup and the Coexist Foundation, notably highlighted findings suggesting that Muslims in Britain, France and Germany identify as much if not more with their countries as the general population.

In Britain, more than three quarters -- 77 percent -- of Muslims said they identified with the country, compared to only 50 percent of the general public.

In Germany, 40 percent of Muslims identified with the country against 32 percent of the wider public, while in France almost as many Muslims -- 52 percent -- as the general public -- 55 percent -- did so.

"This research shows that many of the assumptions about Muslims and integration are wide of the mark," said Dalia Mogahed, head of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies.

"European Muslims want to be part of the wider community and contribute even more to society," she added.

A quote from Isabel Allende on Darvish, a Sufi blogger

2009-05-04T12:24:00.000-07:00

http://darvish.wordpress.com/2009/05/03/you-only-have-what-you-give/

An expiration date on mothering?

2009-04-27T13:07:00.000-07:00

Does it mean your job as a mother is done when your 18-year old drives himself to a weekend-long outdoor rock festival and not only brings sunblock without being told, but actually remembers to put it on?

Living in the past, present and future

2009-04-24T12:36:00.001-07:00

I'm having a hard time with this whole blog thing. Part of the problem is that I decided to start posting my work quite a while after I started doing all of this so I'm still scrambling to catch this journal up with where I "really" am, while trying to slow down the doing part so I have a fighting chance of actually doing that. On top of that, living and writing about the past and present at the same time is messing with me. Guess I'm always living in the past, present, and future -- for me, especially the future --- but this consistent writing about it shoves my nose into how whacked that makes my life.

Even outside this project, I google old friends and boyfriends just to see what's happened to them (Hi! to any of you doing the same to me now, by the way. Bet I was the last person you thought would end up doing this, eh?)and I can spend hours reviewing key moments of my life that I've loved and even longer picking apart those mortifying "high" points that I still can't shake, the times when I said or did things I still can't believe, those moments when I sacrificed myself or someone else. I find myself luxuriating in the second-by-second unfolding of those scenes, feeling every feeling, over and over again. Why? Am I hoping, if I go over it yet again, that it'll turn out different? That I'll understand why I did what I did so I won't get to that place again? In a few cases I have developed some compassion for the situation, for whomever I deem the perpetrator, me or another, but, still...

My real obsession is the future: I get lost in it. I want to know what's going to happen. In detail. Barring that, I want a concrete list of possibilities all laid out. Why? Because I want to control or at least influence the likely outcome. I get paralyzed in fabrication, examination, consideration, rumination. I have turned millions of present moments over to this imagined future. Why? I dunno. It actually seems easier than letting all of it go, easier than hearing the bird outside my window, feeling that my fingers are a bit cold as I type this, that I made a mistake in the underwear I chose today - it kind of hurts - and that, until this moment, I didn't notice how thirsty I am and that the glass of water I poured before I sat down has gone untouched until now.

The Bowing Controversy - or To Bow or Not to Bow

2009-04-16T14:19:00.000-07:00

I knew I had a hard time with the whole idea of bowing (see the end of the Path of Love) but I thought it was just my personality quirk. Then came all the hullaballoo over President Obama bowing to Saudi King Abdullah on April 2nd. You'd think President Obama had floated the idea of making the king a cabinet member.

I thought it was my little old outsized ego that kept my spine rigid, unwilling even to try out this bowing thing just to see if I could at least come to appreciate why it's so important in both Hinduism and Buddhism but here I find it isn't just my problem, it's cultural. We're all raised to think bowing down before someone implies weakness or, worse, fealty or subservience to another.

It seems to me that how we greet one another is less important than that we do. I know that when I'm concerned more about how someone else sees me, more about making clear my power and its importance to me, more about making sure my position seems dominant from the get-go, my relationships don't go very well. I've lived most of my life with that first in my mind and, boy, was that a waste.

All I can say is, the whole angry storm over the President's bow at least made me feel that I am a real American, not just a real egotist.

(In case you're interested, here are links to previous posts with some of my bowing challenges: Hemu's Morning Rituals, First Teacher, Path of Love, Doing It, The Destroyer of Time...there must be a few more but, you get the idea. Most of the bowing is at the end of the posts...)

Disneyland

2009-03-19T15:13:00.000-07:00

What on earth is happening to me?

My sister-in-law said she wanted to take her daughter, my nine-year-old niece, Marley, to Disneyland, did I want to come, too? Well, yeah, I sure did.

If I’m lucky, I get to see Marley once or twice a year because they live in Texas so I’ll pretty much go anywhere to see Marley or Ann or my brother, Adam. And two Marleys in the teacups? Eating pink spun sugar? Avoiding teenagers dressed as Mickey or Minnie Mouse? No way I’d miss that.

But once I got there, it was an act of sheer will to move around that park, pretending the person I have always been was still there. I still ate, played, rode, and ran around, and the park was in much better shape – cleaner, more attention to detail, better food choices – than years ago, but all I kept thinking about was: how much money is being dumped here and to what purpose? I guess I should be grateful there were so many people getting a paycheck because of all of the people willing to spend money to go on a ride through a paper maché mountain, jungle, or castle but the fun felt forced, fake, hollow. Did I always feel this way to some degree but never noticed it before? I remember looking forward to going to the Philadelphia zoo but ending up depressed watching all of the big cats pacing in the little tiled cages they used to have. Or am I losing something I once had? I so don’t want to become one of those dour, serious people who can’t enjoy a game of miniature golf or bowling or pinball or air hockey or a couple of days at Disneyland but all I could think about was how short my life is and what I could have or should have been doing. Now I’m sure that’s in nobody’s tradition, wishing you were somewhere but where you are. Two thoughts brought me back.

One, Disneyland isn’t as different from so-called real life as I’d like to believe. Take the longest possible view and nothing I do – whether I ride a ride, or work to understand a faith, or cure a disease – will finally matter. The pursuit of fame or so-called immortal works, for example, is so clearly useless, ultimately, when you think forward a few million years. And yet I also know that what zen teaches, that every action each of us takes affects others and couldn’t be taken without the previous actions of countless others, is true so everything I do matters. Even if it’s just going to Disneyland with my sister-in-law and niece. If I’m fully present. I guess even if I’m not fully present as well but with a different effect, I suppose.

The second thing that brought me back from my dyspeptic ruminations: sometimes I hate myself for this but I’d rather be with the people I love than get more work done. There is a part of me that wishes I were more ruthless, more focused than that, and another part that’s grateful I’m not.

An interesting conversation over at Sharp Iron...

2009-02-28T14:46:00.000-08:00

http://sharpiron.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/the-murderous-root-of-religion/

What else is there to say? It's a new day...

2009-01-20T18:29:00.001-08:00

Dinner Party

2009-01-14T18:00:00.000-08:00

So, what do I tell people I "do" now?

He should lift up the self by the Self
and not sink into the selfish;
for the self is the only friend
of the Self, and its only foe.

Bhagavad Gita, 6.6

I hate dinner parties but I keep forgetting that. I may have always hated them but, since I’ve started going to houses of worship in earnest, doing nothing else but that, they’ve really begun to fill me with dread. But I didn’t know we were going to one when Marisa said, “Come on over for dinner. Ken and I haven’t seen you in ages. Sunday night at seven?”

Ken and Marisa were safe. They knew what I was doing and weren’t too freaked out. “Sure! We’ll be there.”

But on Friday, when I called Marisa to say, “The lemons in our back yard were great so I made a lemon chiffon pie and I’m bringing it.” Marisa said, “Oh, I guess we’re going to have a lot of dessert then. My friend Lissa is going to cooking school and she’s bringing a dessert, too.”

Strangers. I was going to have to talk to strangers. At some point they were going to politely ask, “So what do you do?” That question was kind of fun to answer when I worked for Ed Bradley at 60 Minutes. Now? "I'm going through the conversion training for the seven major religious traditions?" That's a conversation starter.

I made it all the way until dessert without the subject coming up but then Marisa, who thought she was being a good host, said, “So, Marley, tell us what’s going on with your work.”

I’ve gotten the explanation down to a few sentences and I can usually turn the conversation around to get people to talk about their beliefs and family traditions, about their experience with faith, but I wasn’t lucky that night. These were kind, thoughtful, curious people who went right for the jugular: “What’s happening to you? How is it changing you? What are you feeling about it so far?”

I could feel my eyes blink as I looked into Lissa’s sweet earnest face – she really wanted to know something of my insides. I could feel my eyes blink…and blink again. It was an overture of friendship, of intimacy…and I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

My feelings? What am I feeling? Heck if I know. Maybe spending so long as a journalist has made me incapable of accurately seeing myself. Maybe there’s such a thing as being too open-minded. I’ve presented myself, arms flung wide, over and over and over again hoping to feel the irrational tug of faith. I’m even oddly fascinated by my obedience to this uncontrollable drive to do all of this and feel like my own lab rat sometimes but how can I say that? It sounds almost disassociated.

“But you must have found yourself changing in some way, haven’t you?

I wanted to scream: I have no idea what I’m feeling, what’s happening to me, so I cannot tell you what I don’t know myself. And I am okay with that until I am asked over and over and over again to report in: ‘Marley, how is this affecting you? How is this changing you?’ I don’t know. But I’m going to find out if I can, but back off and give me time.

I need to do this, to see if taking these actions will change me, change my perceptions. But is it change I’m after? Or do I really want knowledge? But if it’s only knowledge I’m,after, wouldn’t I have just kept reading books?

No, knowledge alone isn’t it. Perhaps the desire to find out about all of them, all of the faiths, is a workaholic’s way to avoid coming to know anything deeply, a sophisticated dodge, like Swami Sarvadevananda said you dig ten feet here,then ten feet there, you never get any water. I don’t know. Maybe. But when I went looking for someone else’s description of what it felt like to practice each faith, hoping to start this journey farther down the road, I couldn’t find it in any form I could understand, in any form that started from the very beginning for those of us with nothing. How can I go deep if I don’t have any idea where water is likely to be …for me?

What has changed is I can’t give glib answers any more. I can’t pretend to know something I don’t. I can’t talk about feelings and change I haven’t identified and feared I’d never identify. I can’t chat, can’t entertain, and I certainly can’t trot out my innards over dessert. All I can do is hope that, by writing all of this down as I go along, all the facts, the actions, the confusions, the moments of connection, maybe one day I’ll be able to come to understand for myself what changed, what was changing, what I was feeling and be able to do more than shrug and stammer, “So, how did you grow up?” in the effort to make it safely through one more dinner party.

Belief-o-Matic

2009-01-05T18:44:00.000-08:00

A retired minister who's hard at work setting up the next Parliament of the World's Religions (3-9 December, 2009 in Melbourne, Australia) mentioned that he thinks Beliefnet is one of the more respected interfaith sites so I spent a little time wandering around on it. I found one fun thing not to be missed: the Belief-O-Matic. Here's how they describe it:

Even if YOU don't know what faith you are, Belief-O-MaticTM knows. Answer 20 questions about your concept of God, the afterlife, human nature, and more, and Belief-O-Matic™ will tell you what religion (if any) you practice...or ought to consider practicing.
Warning: Belief-O-Matic™ assumes no legal liability for the ultimate fate of your soul.

Have fun!

With grace

2009-01-03T11:52:00.000-08:00

Christmas eve dinner, grace was said.

Kevin came home from a business trip and, although we hadn't had a chance to talk about it, he simply reached for my mother's hand and said, "Matt, would you say grace?"

Matt was thrown. He hadn't expected it. "Ah, okay. Sure."

My mom and dad put down their forks and, without any significant looks at each other, just took the hand of the person next to them... and we had grace.

Grace

2008-12-23T01:12:00.000-08:00

I am a complete coward. I thought I wasn't going to write for a while but spending time with family has a way of slamming my face right up against some of my most lovely traits. The moment my parents come, I hide.

Most of the year we say grace at the dinner table. I shouldn't say we. Matt says grace. He came home from preschool one day and simply announced that he was saying grace and he has ever since, the very same one he learned in preschool. "God, you are very good to us, to give us food each day, to make us big and strong, so we can work and run and play. Amen."

Luke hates it. There have been nights when the simple act of Matt saying grace has touched off yet another round of the never-ending theological, philosophical, legislative ( as in "I shouldn't have to be forced to sit here while this is being said.") debates.

I love that it hasn't changed one bit in all these years. I wouldn't know what to replace those words with anyway and I sure wouldn't want to replace the feelings. I don't know if what is said matters as much as that we take a moment to appreciate that we are sitting together, to recognize, with gratitude, that the many things that could disrupt such quotidian tranquility are not in our lives. I like the fact that, at fifteen, Matt likes the ritual and still feels comfortable with those preschool words in his mouth. I even like the fact that, as much as Luke sighs and complains, he still takes the hands of whomever is sitting on either side of him and suffers through it.

Okay, so why on earth do I let the simple presence of my parents in my house cow me, cow us into abandoning one of our rituals?

At dinner years ago, when Matt was four or five and the words of the grace were still fresh, he started to do what he always did: make us hold hands. My mother was shocked but she complied, perhaps because he was cute and small, but the eye-rolling and significant looks at my dad were loud enough that none of us - especially Matt - wanted to do that again.

It makes me so sad that I haven't figured out a way to be myself and their daughter at the same time. I feel lost if I force it, lost if I don't but there is something about taking the time to recognize the sacred in the day-to-day I don't ever want to lose.

Christmas break

2008-12-20T01:00:00.000-08:00

Mom and Dad are in town so I'll probably be too busy dealing with the "now, why exactly are you doing this crazy thing" questions to post until the end of the month but, maybe not... I hope your holiday season, whatever it entails, is filled with peace and joy.

A present -- my favorite passage of the Bhagavad Gita from Stephen Mitchell's translation all together in one place:

He who can see inaction
in the midst of action, and action
in the midst of inaction, is wise
and can act in the spirit of yoga.

With no desire for success,
no anxiety about failure,
indifferent to results, he burns up
his actions in the fire of wisdom.

Surrendering all thoughts of outcome,
unperturbed, self-reliant,
he does nothing at all, even
when fully engaged in actions.

There is nothing that he expects,
nothing that he fears. Serene,
free from possessions, untainted,
acting with the body alone,

content with whatever happens,
unattached to pleasure or to pain,
success or failure, he acts
and is never bound by his action.

When a man has let go of his attachments,
when his mind is rooted in wisdom,
everything he does is worship
and his actions all melt away.

Bhagavad Gita 4.18-4.23

Mumbai

2008-11-30T08:42:00.000-08:00

Does this really have anything to do with faith? With religion? If someone robs a bank but says the devil made him do it, or Jesus, or God, a jury sees that for what it is and convicts him. We don't blame the faith the bank robber happened to choose to use as an excuse for his indefensible acts, right?

In the middle of the chaos, Mumbai still under seige, a woman interviewed on the radio pleaded for all people of faith not to use this crisis to pull apart from each other but to join together, to use it to rise above, to see what we share not what divides us. I hope her voice is heard and her prayers are answered.

Thanksgiving

2008-11-30T08:00:00.000-08:00

I didn't bang pots and pans around this year. I think Buddhism had something to do with it.

How come I can leap from the a table in someone else's house to offer to help clear and clean the dishes, how come I can put my head down and simply do what's in front of me on a retreat at the Zen Center or the Hsi Lai Temple and even get pleasure from mopping a floor or scraping an old label off a window with a monk yet, in my house, the very thought of any item on my to do list gets a heavy sigh? What is it that makes the make the ordinary stuff of life feel like such an intrusion on my life? Just thinking about organizing my finances, doing the dishes, cleaning out the cabinets, the car, the flower beds is definitely something I can identify as suffering...that is, until real suffering comes along. Today I finally got it that it's all in my head and that's because I had a truly lovely Thanksgiving and I changed nothing about it except what was inside that head.

Karen Armstrong's quote is really coming home to me. Maybe religion isn't just about believing things; it's also about doing things that change your life. In these small but profound ways, this is definitely changing my life.

Okay...this post gives me an excuse to underscore that, as I am scurrying to get this blog up to date with where I am, putting up what I've been doing for the past eighteen months or so, I am currently working on Buddhism and beginning to figure out how and where to do Daosim which is coming next whether or not that was my plan. When I told Professor Amir Hussain I thought it might be time to start figuring out what came next and how to do it and it was either Confucianism or Daoism, he sent me to Robin Wang, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of Asian and Pacific Studies at Loyola Marymount University. (Note: she's in the philiosophy department, not the religious studies department which is the very first thing I have to deal with: why does Huston Smith call Confuciansim and Daoism religions? Are they? And are either even "practiced" here in the United States? And is it spelled Daoism or Taoism? )

Anyway, Professor Wang said, "Oh you have to start with Daoism! Much more interesting. You have to deal with the body!"

Great. I decided to do this to get beyond the body but, no matter what I do, my body keeps getting dragged back into it.

Sorry to confuse the heck out of you with the past present and future all going on at once in this post. I hope to be thoroughly contemporaneous as soon as possible. When I catch up, I'll republish this post in its proper chronological place. In the meantime, please email me to let me know you're out there, to give me some sense of who's listening and what you're thinking about all of this. I'd like to know.

Right now I'm grateful I live in a home with people who don't mind my crazy ideas, who have supported me even as I act on them.

Subscribe!

2008-11-12T16:17:00.000-08:00

You see that heading over there ========>>>> in the skinny column? "Subscribe to posts?" If you click on it, it'll make following along with me even easier.

I tested it out and, when I clicked on the "subscribe to posts" link, it offered a bunch of choices like "My Yahoo", "Add to Google" etc. When I clicked on "My Yahoo," it put my blog on my Yahoo home page, right next to all the other stuff I like to read every day like the AP and Reuters services as well as a bunch of newspapers, blogs, and service items to which I like to have quick access. (Okay so I don't really need to know the weather in every single family member's home town but I do...)

So, try it out! I like company!

Voting

2008-11-04T09:39:00.001-08:00

Voted today. I waited in a long line - my first long line to vote ever - and it was thrilling. Usually I'm in and out in minutes but not one of us on line was impatient or put off. (Well, one school principal was happy when I let her go ahead of me.) Every person stood there, certain they had a purpose that morning and that it was critical they acted on it regardless of the outcome. Debbie, who's worked for my father in his office in rural Delaware for more than a decade voted for the first time....and she was excited about doing it. Today, so many of us felt that we mattered, that what we did today mattered. Isn't that faith? Isn't important to act out of that kind of faith whether or not it turns out to be correct? Didn't we all feel good acting out of that faith today?

Learning how to sit...all day

2008-05-22T16:05:00.000-07:00

What I love about ZCLA is they take nothing for granted, they assume you need to be taught.

At the heart of Zen practice is something called "sesshin." The ZCLA curriculum describes sesshin this way:

Literally translated, sesshin means “to unify the mind.” It is an extended silent retreat in which our normal daily schedules are set aside to allow for a more focused zazen practice, integrated with walking meditation, face-to-face interviews, mindful work practice, chanting, rest, oryoki meals, and talks.

Most sesshins last a week, you sit for six or more hours a day, and are completely silent but, once a year, ZCLA has a shorter, three day Introduction to Sesshin to teach us newbies how. So I signed up.

~~~

The day I was supposed to check in for the start of the sesshin began with yet another huge fight between Luke and Matt over music. Luke drives Matt to school. Given their previous music wars - Luke insists on playing things like Gogol Bordello, a gypsy punk metal band, while Matt prefers classical, opera or, perhaps French bistro music - I said there would be silence, no music, during the ten-minute ride to and from school. Yet, there they were on the phone on the way to school, screaming at the top of their lungs. So I made good on a previous warning: I went to the school, handed each of them notes between classes with a bus schedule and quarters for the fare home, and drove the car out of the school lot.

This is what silent retreats are for: mothers of teenagers.

Late that afternoon, I drove through the worst weather I'd seen in Los Angeles in a long, long time - not just rain but even a funnel cloud that turned a tractor-trailer over in another part of the city - and got there in time for dinner. Tomato soup, a salad filled with vegetables and whole grain bread which the six of us ate while chatting. When dinner was finished, Koan, a tall friendly guy with silver hair and glasses (who I found out later was the head of the ZCLA Board) said that, as all of the teachers were in a meeting, "Do what you can to help clean up." He left the four of us - two guys, the roommate I'd been assigned, and me - in the care of one ZCLA member. One of the guys went outside to stretch. The other stood supervising as my roommate and I started to wash the dishes. I just couldn't resist handing the guy a dishtowel and pointing to the silverware. Definitely not "zen" of me but, then, he wouldn't be getting the benefit of the practice if he didn't help out, right? Right?

Did I mention that I had three younger brothers growing up? Or maybe I was just on a roll from following through with Luke and Matt.

I've never really worked in an industrial kitchen before so I spent way too long wrestling with the big washer/dryer/sanitizer but even that was kind of fun. Why is the work I do anywhere but my own home fun? Give me a campsite and some dirty dishes and I'll have a blast figuring out how to clean them. Same dishes at home? Ugh. All in my head. But there is something gratifying about everyone doing it together, working towards the same goal that just doesn't happen very often, at least not in my house, not without a certain amount of grousing. Okay so, growing up, I was one of those big grousers but I still remember those weekends when my Dad decided it was time to clean out the garage or the basement or some other monumental, somewhat disgusting task, with more fondness than makes any sense at all. Those working weekends rank up there in my memory with cotton-candy filled trips to the circus. What I remember most is how close I felt to my Dad while simply sorting through a box as he swept the floor nearby.

Once dinner was through, it was time for the evening sitting in the zendo...followed by oryoki bowl training for those of us who needed it. That would be me.

Alarm bells

2008-05-03T12:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm gonna talk about why I've been so deliberately vague about the location of this retreat....

4:45am. I was almost late for the dawn sitting because my pants hadn't fully dried from yesterday's attempt to wash out the coffee I'd spilled on the drive up so I'd been up in the middle of the night dodging deer in the moonlight to use the dryer in the building with the washrooms. The day began with 108 full prostrations which, I'm telling you, is better than any morning calisthenics. From standing, you bow, then get all the way down on your knees and touch your forehead to the ground and then stand back up. 108 times. Empty brain. It was actually pretty great.

I didn't have half the trouble sitting I'd had the night before. No ticks. Legs didn't die. Minimal sweating. Mind, it wasn't easy to sit. For many of the half-hour sessions, I took counting to a new art form. I figured out how many times I counted to ten, on average, in a thirty minute session - somewhere between seventeen and eighteen times - and I'd just keep track of sets of ten. Counting to ten, seventeen or eighteen times doesn't sound so bad, now, does it? Better than sitting for thirty minutes without any way to mark time...over and over and over again. There were even moments I actually didn't fight sitting there, as much as one or two whole minutes. Those were lovely.

They did use the "wake up stick" (kyosaku) at one point, though. One of the officiants got it from the altar and creaked slowly behind all of us and ritually smacked those who asked to be hit twice. You had to ask to be hit which, my guess is, is the way it is in most zendos in the United States. I couldn't see how it was done but the sound of the people around me getting thwacked was pretty alarming, given the essential silence of the room otherwise. The stick didn't come out during every session of sitting and I don't know why it's used sometimes but not others but I sure am going to find out more about it.

Using the oryoki bowls and all the ritual that went with them wasn't so bad. While everyone was serious in their attempts to hew to the ritual, there was a low-key vibe that made looking up and following along as best you could okay.

But part of the retreat included a face-to-face interview with the center's spiritual leader. We were taught the ritual for waiting our turn, how to know when our turn was, what to do when we went in, and how to leave. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to say but I did know I was going to explain exactly who I was and what I'm doing. The monk couldn't have been sweeter. We talked for a while, about what I wanted from the practice and why but then he said, "I want you to be my student."

"But I don't live anywhere near here."

"That's okay. You can sit with people down in Los Angeles but you can be my student. Do you want to be my student?"

Although I didn't know much about Buddhism, I was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to go this way. There's a strong tradition of teachers resisting students when they first show up, waiting to see if their desire to learn is strong enough to overcome the first few "no"s.

It's a mystery to me about how one chooses a place to practice, a spiritual leader to guide you, if you aren't able to continue on with your family's traditions for whatever reason. I guess I'm looking for a teacher so committed to their own practice that who is or isn't around them doesn't matter all that much.

I hope I'm not doing the Woody Allen thing, running away from a club that would have me, but this just didn't feel right. I think I'm going back to take another class at ZCLA.

Religion, Faith, and Sitting

2008-05-02T16:28:00.000-07:00

...a spectacle. I made a spectacle of myself.

After dinner we were supposed to meet to learn about something called oryoki bowl eating. There were bowls, wrapped up in a napkin, already with our names on them, in cubbies. All told, there were actually three different cloths - a napkin, a mat, and a wipe - as well as three bowls of different sizes nesting in each other, a long cloth case which held a wooden spoon, a pair of chopsticks, and a small rubber spatula. The largest bowl was called the "Buddha" bowl.

The teacher taught us how to unwrap, set up, and use all of these things, just so, and then the ritual to put them away. He also said that, as we were going to be eating in silence and "the server will be behind you," we needed hand signals to indicate if we wanted more or less of what was being served.

Complicated doesn't even begin to describe the unwrapping and then rewrapping of all the things. I couldn't keep my napkin/wrapper from coming undone once I put everything together which was the least of my problems. But the man teaching us was pretty low key about it so I figured the only way to really learn it all was just to muddle through a meal or two.

Then came the evening "zazen" or sitting. After the overwhelming detail of the oryoki bowl training, I was actually looking forward to just sitting.

It was one of the worst hours of my life.

Okay, so that's hyperbole but, in the list of my very worst moments, days, periods of my life, this ranked.

It all began innocently enough. I was on a small square cushion facing a wall, a bit out of the way, next to one other beginner. I took my glasses off, which seemed like the right thing to do as I was going to stare at the base of a wall anyway, and hung them on the top of my shirt, just above where my borrowed black robe closed. For possibly the first time, being near-sighted was actually helpful; the whole soft-focus thing was a cinch with my glasses off.

I sat and began to count my breath. All fine. It was quiet in the zendo and there was no "stick" - the so-called wake up stick that confused and frightened me a bit - in use. Good. One to ten, then one again.

But then I started to notice that I was fine.

All hell broke loose.

I had run sixteen miles the day before. I was sore and tight to begin with. My legs went dead. Not just dead, but dead dead. Then, I got so nervous from my legs going dead that I started to sweat. I've never been much of a sweat-er but leave it to me to have this moment be the sweat of a lifetime. I was sweating so much it was dripping down the back of my neck. Then I started to panic, panic that my panic was turning my sweat into stinky flop sweat. Was my odor assaulting the nostrils of the poor guy right next to me? Was I emitting some horrible smell that was, even now, wafting its way throughout the zendo?

This, of course, made me sweat even more.

A shrill internal monologue began. "Calm the heck down. You can do this. You can sit through a half hour of anything. You've done this before."

A little whimpering voice inside my head started up: "I can't. I really, really can't. What if I start to cry?" Because that was what I really wanted to do, cry.

"Grow up. Stop wishing for things to be over. You always regret what you rush. Remember when you felt overwhelmed when the boys were little? Don't you want those moments back now?"

"Nice try. I'm going to throw up. I know it. And my legs feel three sizes larger than they are. I really want to cry and my back hurts and now my right sit bone feels like it may come through my skin. Really. I think it's gonna come through my skin. I can't move. I can't adjust because you're never supposed to distract the people around you--"

The guy next to me began to move. He scratched his nose. He rearranged his legs. A reprieve!

I took advantage of his initiative to change from a half-lotus position to kneeling. I put the cushion between my legs to support my butt the way Luminous Heart/Penelope had taught us at the Zen Center. I could actually feel the blood flow back into my legs and out again. A breeze began to move the air. I started to relax.

One of the questions that often comes up is: is Buddhism a religion? Buddhism resolutely does not discuss the issue of a higher power or creator god so there are those who say it isn't a religion. Professor Huston Smith, author of the book, The World's Religions, certainly considers Buddhism a religion but he does take the better part of a chapter to list aspects most religions have in common...

- authority: people and institutions who occupy positions of authority
- ritual
- speculation
- tradition
- grace: "the belief, often difficult to sustain in the face of facts,
that Reality is ultimately on our side"
- and mystery

...that Buddhism does not share. Professor Smith says that the historical Buddha began "a religion of reaction against Hindu perversions - an Indian protestantism." It was devoid, at least in his lifetime, of all of these aspects conventionally associated with religion.

Professor Smith said Buddha "preached a religion devoid of authority." The Buddha said:

Do not accept what you hear by report, do not accept tradition, do not accept a statement because it is found in our books, nor because it is in accord with your belief, nor because it is the saying of your teacher. Be lamps unto yourselves.

Smith said, Buddha preached a religion devoid of ritual. The Buddha said:

Belief in the efficacy of rites and ceremonies is one of the Ten Fetters that bind the human spirit.

Buddha preached a religion that "skirted speculation." Smith quotes his parable of the poisoned arrow:

It as if a man had been wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his friends and kinsmen were to get a surgeon to heal him, and he were to say, I will not have this arrow pulled out until I know by what man I was wounded, whether he is of the warrior caste, or a brahmin, or of the agricultural caste or the lowest caste. Or if he were to say, I will not have this arrow pulled out until I know of what name of family the man is; or whether he is tall or short, or of middle height; or whether he is black of dark or yellowish....etc (it goes on this way for a while and then...) ...what have I explained? Suffering I have explained, the cause of suffering, the destruction of suffering, and the path that leads to the destruction of suffering have I explained. For this is useful.

Buddha preached a religion devoid of tradition.

Do not go by what is handed down, nor on the authority of your traditional teachings. When you know of yourselves: 'These teachings are not good, these teachings when followed out and put into practice conduce to loss and suffering' - then reject them.

Buddha preached a religion of intense self-effort.

Buddhas only point the way. Work out your salvation with diligence.

And, finally, according to Professor Smith, Buddha preached a religion devoid of the supernatural.

By this you shall know that a man is not my disciple - that he tries to work a miracle.

All this is a little confusing because it seems that many of these elements were at the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple; ritual for sure. What rituals there are at the two Zen Centers I've see so far do seem simpler than those at the Hsi Lai Temple. But whether or not Buddhism is a religion, I'm in no position to argue. Buddhism is a chapter in Huston Smith's book called The World's Religions so, for now, that's good enough for me. What I can tell you, even at this early stage, is that it sure takes a mountain of faith to sit for hours at a time, day after day, especially when you're told "just sit."

In between two half-hour sessions of sitting, we got up and did a slow walking meditation and then sat back down for our final session before bedtime. Although I'd cooled down and calmed down, I noticed that my neck was still dripping. Odd. I wasn't hot anymore. I finally couldn't bear it and lifted my hand up to wipe the drip away.

It wasn't a drip. It was a tick.

I was so surprised, I let out the smallest of yelps, flicked my arm, and knocked my glasses off my shirt. They skittered across the polished wooden floor just out of reach. In a room full of silently meditating strangers, I crawled across the floor, collected my glasses, and sat back down on my cushion.

I tried to count my breath but I got stuck on just one number: six, six hours of this tomorrow. Six. I had no idea how I was going to do it.

Traces

2008-05-02T14:24:00.000-07:00

I found a one-day sitting for beginners in a beautiful Zen Buddhist center a day's drive from Los Angeles and decided to go. It began before dawn so I arrived the afternoon before, shortly after spilling a full cup of coffee on one of the two pairs of pants I brought to wear.

If you go to a Zen retreat, here's a tip: although the email may say go to the office when you arrive, most likely, no one will meet you. After I stood around trying to figure out where to go, I finally interrupted someone in the kitchen to ask for help. Turns out everything you need to know is posted on pages right outside the front door: where you sleep, where you sit in the zendo, the schedule, the rules etc. I guess everything's set up to eliminate as much talking as possible. Next problem: finding a place to wash my pants so they'd have some chance of drying before morning.

The showers and toilets were in building of their own. There was a place for shoes outside and, just inside, there was a sign saying it was a "silent area" and another that said, "No Trace."

I have never in my life see a cleaner bathroom. There were three stainless steel sinks which looked like they had never been used, a spotless floor, empty trash cans, and polished wood. Even the rubber sink stoppers for each sink were placed in exactly the same position on the rim of each sink. And I would let my children eat off the floors in the bathroom stalls. I was scared to even use it.

Does "no trace" mean no trash? I had very little time before dinner and, I'm sorry, but washing your pants in the sink leaves a trace no matter what you do. My "traces" were paper towels used to wipe up the sink and the water dripped on the floor. I just had enough time to hang up the pants just outside the cabin before dinner.

One Hundred Hours of Zazen...uhm, well, maybe

2008-04-28T11:59:00.000-07:00

It sat there so innocently, that little white booklet: "Zen Practice 5, One Hundred Hours of Zazen in One Hundred Days, Practice Book." So I took it home, along with about half a dozen flyers announcing other events at the Zen Center of Los Angeles.

Here's what it said inside:

The practice is to sit one hour a day for one hundred consecutive days. You may choose to sit a half-hour in the morning and a half-hour in the evening. You may choose to sit a full hour, alternating periods of sitting and walking, or however an hour fits into your day.
The aim of this exercise is to establish a foundation for daily zazen practice. When you sit, you sit. When you walk, you walk. The practice is it let go of all that arises, including all thoughts regardless of content, all feelings, sensations, etc. Do not use this time to think.

Two pages describe, precisely, how to sit; one is an excerpt from Eihei Dogen's Fukanzazengi which says, "If you grasp the point of this practice, you are like a dragon gaining the water or the tiger taking to the mountains."

I'd like to be like a tiger taking to the mountains.

The other page of "how to" gives very specific details about what to do with your spine, legs, mouth, eyes, hands, breath, and attention, as well as the gatha (which is like a prayer) you chant three times when you first sit down:

Gatha of Atonment

All evil karma ever committed by me since of old

On account of my beginningless greed, anger and ignorance,

Born of my body, speech, and mind,

Now I atone for it all.

...and the one you chant three times when you're finished:

The Four Great Bodhisattva Vows

Sentient beings are numberlesss, I vow to save them.
Desires are inexhaustible, I vow to put an end to them.
The Dharmas are boundless, I vow to master them.
The Buddha Way is unsurpassable, I vow to attain it.

Then comes six pages of empty rectangles for each of the one hundred days, space we're supposed to fill with "brief notes about my sitting." It's a pretty intimidating number of boxes to fill but I don't think I'll learn a thing about Zen just reading books about it. I might as well jump in. Whether I stay here at ZCLA or study Zen somewhere else, the heart of Zen Buddhism is, after all, sitting. Besides, it'll be easy to get going: I've got an overnight retreat at another center this coming weekend - a perfect time to begin.

How to Zen

2008-04-27T15:22:00.000-07:00

Feeding hungry ghosts?
A few of us came back for the second Zen Practice class at ZCLA. It was a relief that it was Luminous Heart again and not someone new. "We're going to down to the Buddha Hall in about three minutes to do the Gate of Sweet Nectar Ceremony which is the ceremony that closes out our week of practice and then we'll stay in that room and talk a little bit about how your practice is going."

Gate of Sweet Nectar? I don't know what I expected but I guess I assumed that all you did was meditate in Zen Buddhism. It never really crossed my mind there'd be services. In fact, that's probably the reason I decided to check Zen out. It sounded simple. Fun even. I think the first time I ever head the word "zen" was in the title, Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance. Of course Robert Pirisg is quoted as saying, ""it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles, either."

But Luminous Heart was telling us we were about to go to a service in the Buddha Hall. "What I want to let you know there is some floor bowing and I didn't teach you that last time. If it's more comfortable, when you see people getting ready to bow, you can do this,” she bowed at the waist, “which is a standing bow, or you can simply stand and not bow. If you want to do a floor bow, you simply do this--" And, with that, the tall, more than middle-aged woman just dropped down right on the bare floor to show us. Once her head was on the ground, she lifted her hands, palms up and flat open, slightly above her head. When she stood back up, she said, "The symbology of it is you're bowing to the Buddha, you're bowing the Buddha in yourself, you're bowing to all the other Buddhas in the room. And this gesture?" She repeated raising her open hands, palms up. "It's as though you're lifting Buddha in the palms of your hands. We call it raising the bodhi mind. It's not necessary at all for you to do it but, if you wish to, you can do it."

While I felt appreciative of her acknowledgement that bowing can be tough for some of us, I realized, while she was giving us other options, that I have learned something: I can now bow without making a big deal of it. But it sure was nice to hear Luminous Heart acknowledge just how hard bowing might be for all kinds of reasons. For me, it wasn't creaky knees or joints but my pride, my dislike of kowtowing to anyone or anything, my discomfort with doing things that feel inauthentic and, more than anything, my fear of looking stupid. However, once I got that I’m not bowing to a statue or to a person so much as indicating, symbolically and physically, that I don’t think I’m above anything or anyone else, that I’m at least willing to hear what others have to say about their beliefs and practices, to be open-hearted, I could bow. I can bow in gratitude. That’s what my bows mean anyway. There are still times I feel stupid bowing, mostly when I imagine someone I know watching me do it, but that happens less and less.

We walked down the driveway to the Buddha Hall. On the porch outside, a woman stood with a wooden mallet in hand, occasionally hitting an iron bell. We had to walk by her to put our shoes in the rack and then walk behind her to get into the Buddha Hall. She didn't seem to notice we were there, all around her. She just stood there, waiting for her last ring to die away, ready to strike when it did.

There were a few people in the Buddha Hall when we walked in. The room was carpeted, about the size of a living room, with an altar on the far side, a square brown mat in the center for the officiant, and a variety of percussion instruments in the far corners on either side of the altar. Aside from that, the room was open. The handful of us newbies filed in to one side of the room and stood in a line with our backs to the windows, facing the center of the room and the double line of people on the other side. Together, we made a center aisle for the officiant. As people came in, they bowed in the direction of the altar and joined the line of people on one side of the room or the other. As they took their place, they did a small polite bow to those on the other side and then stood still with their eyes down. It was quite clear that you didn't chitchat and catch up with your neighbors while waiting for the ceremony to begin. And, just like at the Hsi Lai Temple even though the kind of Buddhism at the Zen Center is different, anyone who had to cross the center line, cross in front of the altar, paused and bowed as they did. Well, almost everyone.

The person ringing the bell started doing it faster and faster until there was a series of quite fast strikes, then the bell outside stopped and the woman came in. The service was ready to begin. A couple of gongs inside and then someone blew on a conch shell. I've never seen anyone actually do that except in weird Hawaiian movies., certainly not in person.

The chanter began to sing:

Calling out to Hungry Hearts
Everywhere through endless time
You who wander, you who thirst
I offer you this Bodhi Mind.

It was a very sweet service. It helped that most of it was in English although there was some chanting in Japanese and some in, I guess, Pali or Sanskrit, I'm not sure which. All of it was easy to follow in the books everyone was given just before the service began. The chants talked a lot about feeding hungry spirits, both figuratively and literally, I guessed, as there were cans and boxes of food all over the altar. When it came time to bow, most people did the floor bows but some just bowed from the waist. I had no problem doing the floor bows although it's quite a trick figuring out how to do it when you're standing so close to everyone else; a standing person takes up much less room than one who's kneeling with their head on the floor. You kind of have to step out of line a bit and angle yourself so you don't put your butt in someone's face.

After the service, we ZP2 students stayed behind in the Buddha Hall where Luminous Heart explained the hungry ghosts. While, in some sense, they do refer to beings who are not currently living, they are also us, the part of us that wants and needs and is desperate to have. That helped me. I'm not so sure where I am on the idea of ghosts in other realms. Yes, my name (Marley) is associated with a pretty famous ghost in literature, Scrooge's partner, but I'm not entirely certain ghosts have much meaning for me except in the realm of fiction. However, when you describe them as that part of me that's never satisfied, well, there's no doubt that is real. And it does make me think of all the people I know, both dead and alive, whose disappointments are still palpable to me. I don't expect any of them to appear before me but I think I can feel in my body what this service is trying to address. And the food on the altar? People are supposed to bring a can of food to the service that goes to a local food bank.

Luminous Heart asked if the service made anyone uncomfortable. One guy said he didn't care for the bowing. Luminous Heart said she’d had trouble with bowing at first, too. "I was raised Presbyterian and, when I came into another practice and had to learn to bow, my mentor had also been a Presbyterian so, when I said, ‘I'm not going to bow!’ he said, ‘Bowing is very good exercise for Presbyterians because their necks are soooo stiff!’" She laughed. "You don't have to do it but you could experiment with it and see what that feels like to bow to the universe or to yourself or to love. Take it at your own pace. Each of us has their own history about what each of these things mean: bowing, incense, candles, black robes, all of it.”

She then asked about how the week between the two classes had gone, our "practice," she called it. One guy talked about the difficulty of sitting while suffering from allergies and bad knees. "When you start to meditate, every ache, every pain, every habit that you have--" Luminous Heart pulled her hand across her nose in a fake dramatic sniffle, chuckled, and then said, "everything it is that you do, that we all do, and that we think we really must do or we'll probably die if we don't do it immediately, comes up. So it's very interesting to experiment, to notice that you want to scratch your shoulder. You can scratch it if you want to, it isn't good or bad, but try to just notice the itch in your shoulder. Period. Just to notice the itch. "

Just typing that last sentence, I'm starting to itch, like, everywhere: under one of the pads on my eyeglasses, under my left shoulder blade, in my left ear, in the crease in my right elbow, etc. I bet you're pretty itchy now, too, just because I've made you think about it. Well, that happens when you're sitting. Especially when you first start. You’re supposed to try to ignore those.

Uh-huh.

Luminous Heart said, when you do, "Sometimes it gets greater and it probably will because your mind is saying, 'Oh, my goodness!!! Scratch that itch now!' Well, if you want to scratch, you scratch. It's just interesting to begin to experiment with what we think we need to do with our bodies." Luminous Heart then distinguished between this kind of shifting around and the kind we really should do, like, if your back starts to hurt, for example.

When it was my turn, I talked about how hard I found it to sit with my eyes open. “My black cat seems to plant herself wherever my eyes appear to be. And what harder to resist than a set of big green eyes staring up at you?”

Luminous Heart nodded and said, "The more you can learn to do it with your eyes open," she said, “then you can be sitting on a bus or in line at the bank with your eyes down like this and still know when it’s time to step up. You're not caught up in what's around you, nor are you avoiding it. You notice there's a cat walking by and then the cat isn't there any more and there you are again. So, it's a good practice."

That, or doing it in a room without the cat.

Another guy talked about the fact that, in the past, he tried to sit for twenty-five minutes but he had a hard time finding that much time with a small daughter.

"It is said here very, very often that it's about six hundred times better to sit for a short bit every day than to sit for an hour one day and none the next and thirty minutes the next. The continuity of the practice is what builds the stuff, the energy, the qi ("chee"), that thickens the concentrating ability so if you want to start with five minutes, that's fine. But at least you will have put your tush on the cush at least for that day. Your psyche knows that, you're whole being knows that. Is your child an infant?"

"Sixteen months."

"I meditated with my daughter when she was an infant. If you can meditate with her, it's heavenly especially if you do it right before they go to sleep, it goes right into their bodies."

A younger guy said he wakes up in full "monkey mind" so he found it helpful just to sit by the side of his bed for five minutes before heading out the door for work. "When I could hear the birds and keep coming back to my breath, that was good. As opposed to when the thoughts that go whssh, whssh, whssh."

Luminous Heart, who earned her living as a psychotherapist, pounced on his statement. "Everybody has monkey mind. There is no such person that doesn't, including Buddhas. Everyone thinks. We're not going to be stopping thinking! So the issue is: can you come back? Are you coming back? If you have maybe two breaths that are focused, then good on you, you know? That's better than zero. There's no such thing as a 'bad' sitting. Your tush was on the cush and you were present. That’s what counts."

Boy, is this a liberating idea: nothing gets in the way of meditating more, for me, than this idea that I'm doing it "wrong" or even that I'm just no good at it because, the moment I sit down, my mind starts to race. I thought the point of meditating was to stop your racing mind, to stop thought. Luminous Heart said that wasn't the point. You simply notice what's going on and then come back to the breath. The point is that coming back.

One woman said that, when she gets a focused breath or two, she'll suddenly notice that she's had them...and lose focus.

Luminous Heart broke up. "Yes! 'Aren't I wonderful that I had that focused breath' and then you're gone. It's very funny. You can feel yourself popping up after a while: 'I'm getting this down, aren't I wonderful!' Clunk." She laughed, "So I want to encourage you to keep doing what you're doing. Keep that one committed time. You want to be realistic but maybe just a little bit outside what's easy to do and then, if you can find one other time you can sit a little, then do."

Next up, our first zazen (seated meditation) in the zendo. Luminous Heart reviewed the ritual involved in walking in to the zendo….and there was a lot of it. On Sundays at ZCLA, there are two half-hour sessions of meditation with about ten minutes of walking meditation – “kinhin” - between them. The only time you can enter, leave, go to the bathroom or get a drink of water is during the walking meditation. But, because we were coming in to sit for the first time in between the first and second session, there was an additional, pragmatic ritual: we had to wait until everyone was back in front of their cushions so we didn’t inadvertently take someone’s seat. “They'll be in walking meditation and we'll enter after the clap, step over but not on the threshold, bow, and then take any empty seat. If you go to the far side of the room, make sure you walk behind the altar. If you pass any of the seats marked “monitor”, you pause and give a little bow of acknowledgement. When you get to your cushion, bow to it – it’s the Buddha’s seat, your seat – then turn and bow out (to the rest of the room) and then sit and turn around to face the wall.”

Wow. The saving grace to this overwhelming list of things to remember was that Luminous Heart somehow conveyed that no one would bite our heads off when we made our inevitable mistakes.

Once we got to the zendo, we took off our shoes again, and picked up whatever we needed – one of the small round cushions called zafus or a small bench or a chair – and waited in the vestibule. The stream of people in the kinhin walked at a pretty good clip around the U-shaped room. It was a little confusing to hear that we weren’t supposed to walk in front of the altar yet that’s just was this “kinhin” was doing.

When the clap came, each person put their hands up in a prayer position and kept walking until they got to their cushion and stopped. The abbot, Roshi Wendy Egyoku Nakao, stopped in front of the cushion facing the altar. We then started filing into the room.

I was so intent on bowing at the right time and remembering not to walk in front of the altar, I stepped right on the thick wooden threshold. I wondered why it was so important not to step on it, was it one of those mindfulness tests?

When I found an empty cushion, I put my zafu down on it, bowed to my cushion, the seat of the Buddha, then turned and bowed to the room, and sat down.

Facing the wall.

Beginning Zen

2008-04-20T14:55:00.000-07:00

I decided to check out the Zen Center in Los Angeles, it seemed like an easier place to begin than most. They had a "beginners" tab on the front page of their website, a list of classes that began with Zen Practice 1, an explanation of what "zazen" is and how to do it. It just seemed welcoming.

I drove to ZCLA on a crisp sunny day through a somewhat tatty neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles, tatty, that is, until I rounded the corner onto Normandie Avenue and drove to the top of the small rise. There, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence, was a collection of perfectly painted old houses with a pavered drive between them that led past a small fountain and into a garden. A few chairs and tables were on two thick patches of grass and partially shaded by a couple of towering redwoods. Downtown Los Angeles?

A man in black cotton - John - was looking for trash by the front gate but not finding any. When I asked him about the classes for beginners, he said, "You're early. Come around the back by the coffee machine, if that matters to you!"

The room with the coffee maker also had mail cubbies, two couches, the main bulletin board with a lot of sign-up sheets and announcements about things like "Wall-Gazing Day" and the "2008 Precept & Jukai Series," as well as two strings across one wall with more than a hundred name tags clipped to them. I guessed they belonged to the members. It was kind of sweet that everyone had their own name tag, that there was that much concern for making sure that people knew each other, that assumptions weren't made everyone knew each other, leaving newcomers feeling like outsiders.

Pretty soon there were a few other beginners desperate for coffee and some regulars. You could tell the difference because the regulars were dressed in black.

Eventually, a tall, bird-like woman wearing black robes and a sweet smile gathered all the newcomers together near the front door. "My name is Luminous Heart, as I'm known here, or Penelope. I'm a psychotherapist and a Zen priest here at ZCLA."

Luminous Heart/Penelope described the community at ZCLA - somewhere between 100-200 members, 50 very active, and just under 30 of them live in the apartment building on site as does the Abbot, Roshi Wendy Egyoku Nakao, who lives in one of the houses. She then gave us a brief tour of the "zendo" (the meditation room) which was once the first floor of another of the houses. What had been living room, kitchen and who knows what else, was now an open U-shaped room. Rectangular black cushions were around the perimeter and, in the center, was an altar with something other than a traditional Buddha on top.

After that, it was off to the "Dharma Hall," yet another of the wooden houses, this one at the end of the driveway, where Luminous Heart/Penelope taught us how to "sit." Let me tell you, this "sitting" has little in common with what I do every day in chairs. Well, maybe a little. A lifetime of having legs too short to reach the ground in most chairs means I sit cross-legged most of the time. Even at proper dinner tables. Even at restaurants, though most people I eat with don't ever know it. But there was a lot to learn about "sitting," starting with literally how to do it.

The Dharma Hall had a gray wall-to-wall carpet. Clean. In fact, every surface, inside and out, every bathroom, every floor, every counter, the garden and courtyard were remarkably clean.

We sat in a circle and Luminous Heart asked each of us to talk a bit about our backgrounds and why we'd come. I explained myself completely. My reason didn't seem too much stranger than anyone else's and it didn't seem to make a difference. Luminous Heart/Penelope said she came to the practice years ago when her mother died and two different people gave her a book by Thich Naht Hanh. "I couldn't pronounce his name at the time but I decided to learn more about this thing." And, after a spending some time in a variety of places, she ended up at ZCLA where she had been for some time.

Before beginning to teach us the what, why and how, Luminous Heart/Penelope said: "You haven't come to a military camp although maybe it'll seem that way at first. We don't do rituals for rituals' sake. These practices are designed to keep you in the here and now, to help you keep the focus on that which you are given to do."

Luminous Heart then showed us every way we could sit: on cushions of varying sizes, on small benches or even on chairs. You could sit in a full lotus (cross-legged with each foot on top of the opposite thigh,) a half-lotus (just one foot up)...

...or in something called a Burmese position where your legs are folded close to your body but resting on the mat and not crossed....

...or you could kneel using a cushion or small bench under your butt.

The key is you have to sit with an utterly straight back, unsupported by anything. If you sit on a chair, you can't lean against the back.

I'm not sure if so many choices are offered to people in Japan, for example, but at ZCLA, the point is fulfill the basic posture while allowing each person to work within our body's needs and limits so we can sit comfortably for at least thirty minutes at a stretch.

But there's more.

Your head is tilted down which insures that your neck is long and straight. Your hands rest on your feet if you're in the lotus position or on a small cushion in your lap if you aren't and you make a small oval with your hands and thumbs - the whole time you're "sitting." I guess that serves as a kind of alarm if you start to fall asleep. I mean, it's pretty impossible to keep your thumbs lightly touching if you're nodding off. And here's the capper, at least for me: Luminous Heart said, "Your eyes should be open, a sort of soft focus, a little bit out in front of you. The point is we're trying to wake up." And then you begin by counting your breath, from one to ten, and then starting over again. You can count an inhale as "one" and the exhale as "two" or one whole breath, inhale and exhale, can be "one," the next whole breath as "two, etc...it's a matter of personal preference.

Eyes open? I have a hard enough time sitting still to meditate when my eyes are closed, but eyes open? Really? Oh, and one more thing, most of the time you're "going to be facing the wall." Eyes soft-focused on plaster. Luminous Heart said she'd had problems with the whole eyes open thing when she started and tried to convince Roshi that it wasn't good for her. "But Roshi said, 'Just give it a year and see.'" Luminous Heart now says she can't imagine doing it any other way.

Sigh.

A lot of walls are in my future.

20 April 2008

Sutra of the Eight Realizations

2007-09-12T16:43:00.000-07:00

This has been described as a short summary of Mahayana Buddhism and was one of the first sutras translated into Chinese. The speaker was Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha. The commentary under each Realization is by Venerable Master Hsing Yun, founder of the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist order of which the Hsi Lai Temple is a part.

The First Realization
Realize that this world is impermanent, that nations are unsafe and unstable, the the four elements cause suffering and are empty, and that there is no self within the five skandhas; that all things that arise must change and decline, and that they are but false appearances without any stable essence; that the mind is a source of evil, and that form is a congregation of wrong-doings. Contemplate all of this, and gradually you will disentangle yourself from the cycle of birth and death.

The "skandhas" are: form, sensation, perception, mental activity, and consciousness.

Just as good things can turn to bad, so also can bad things turn to good. Change leads us out of difficult situations, it relieves us of our cares, and is the process by which we transform ourselves into Buddhas. If nothing changed, we would never grow.

Emptiness is a special term in Buddhism. It means "having no permanent, definite, or absolute aspect whatsoever.

The concept of emptiness flies in the face of basic human psychology, for one of our strongest tendencies is to treat ourselves, other people, and the things of the world as if they were permanent.

None of this says the world is not here, or that nothing exists, or that we must despair of our condition. Emptiness simply means that nothing has an unchanging essence or self-nature that is independent of other things.
The four elements are earth, water, fire and wind. i.e all material phenomena.

The Second Realization
Realize that excessive desire causes suffering. The fatigue and troubles of the cycle of birth and death arise from greed and desire. Have few desires, be receptive, and you will be content in body and mind.

The Third Realization
Realize that the mind is insatiable, and that it constantly strives for more, thus adding to its transgressions and mistakes. The bodhisattva is not like this; he thinks often of being satisfied with what he has, and he is peaceful in poverty and upholds the Dharma. Wisdom is his only concern.

The Fourth Realization
Realize that laziness leads to downfall. be diligent and break the hold of harmful fixations. defeat the four demons and escape the prison of this dark world.

The Fifth Realization
Realize that ignorance gives rise to the cycle of birth and death. The bodhisattva studies widely, listens carefully, and thinks often in order to increase his wisdom and develop his talents in speaking so that he is fit to teach and transform others, and show them the greatest joy.

The Sixth Realization
Realize that resenting poverty and suffering leads only to more of the same. A bodhisattva is generous and equal minded toward both friend and foe. he does not dwell on old wrongs, or make new enemies.

The Seventh Realization
Realize that the five desires bring nothing but trouble. Though we live in this world, we do not become stained by worldly pleasures. Instead, we think often of a monk's garb, his bowl, and his chanting instruments. Having set our minds on monastic life, we uphold the way and purify ourselves. Our morality encompasses all, our compassion includes everyone.

The "five desires" are for wealth, sex, fame, food and sleep. "Each of the five desires can be understood as an exaggeration of a normal and valuable human need. Desire is not wrong if it is kept in proportion."

The Eighth Realization
Realize that life and death are like flickering flames, and that suffering is endless. Take the Mahayana Vow to befriend all things. Vow to take on the illimitable suffering of sentient beings, and to lead them all to ultimate bliss.

Vowing is an important part of Buddhism. A vow is an act of consciousness that alters the nature of the consciousness that makes it.

Zen and Pure Land

2007-09-11T16:27:00.000-07:00

So I’d heard of Zen Buddhism before but all I was certain it involved was meditating and koan or riddles to derail conventional thinking. I didn’t know that Zen was just a sect within Mahayana Buddhism, one of the two main divisions in Buddhism. The other main strand of Buddhsim is Theravada Buddhism which calls itself the original Buddhism in that it came first and is built on the words of Buddha while Mahayana puts more emphasis on the historical Buddha's actions. Theravada encourages each of us to work hard on our own enlightenment, period. Mahayana suggests that the purpose of enlightenent is to help others.

While it’s possible to find both Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism here and most other places in the world, Theravada Buddhism has over 100 million followers primarily in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Philippines, and Malaysia, while almost 200 million people practice Mahayana Buddhism - mainly in China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Tibetan Buddhism (whose spiritual leader is the Dalai Lama) comprises a much smaller group of about 20 million people who practice a form of Buddhism that’s a bit different than the two more populous sects.

But the Hsi Lai Temple says the kind of Buddhism practiced there is a combination of Zen (in Chinese: Ch'an) and Pure Land Buddhism. Pure Land? I’d never heard of it. And yet this sect of Mahayana Buddhism is one of the most popular and widespread. In the book Huston Smith wrote with Philip Novak, Buddhism, he says the Pure Land school of Buddhism is often overlooked by Westerners because "when Westerners began tio be interested in Buddhism, its Pure Land school looked too much like Christianity to seem interesting." Zen Buddhism requires you to spend time. a lot of time, in meditation. In Pure Land, meditation is considered a good practice but there's no need to do it.

Pure Land, according to Huston Smith, says that, because so many people have become liberated in the past, they "have together produced nothing short of an infinite treasury of merit, a storehouse of salvific energy" that we regular folk can turn to for "unlimited help." This is why, for example, the Hsi Lai venerables taught us to say "Amituofo" - the Amtitabha Buddha's name - before everything. That name alone has the power to liberate and that idea is an example of the Pure Land part of the practice at the Hsi Lai Temple. Pure Land is much more popular than Zen in Japan, for example. It takes much less personal effort. In Zen, there's no being who can give you anything.

The historical Buddha was a real person named Siddartha Gautama who "woke up" then spent his life teaching others how to do it for themselves. He made no claims of divinity or even that he was the first or last "Buddha." In fact, "Buddha nature" is something everyone has, even you, even me. Zen Buddhism stays focused on that, on "waking up." In Zen, the task is to realize that, not to know it but to realize it. Pure Land says that's really hard and so you can apply for help from a Amitabha Buddha, a divine being whose name means Infinite Light.

Other people's lives

2007-09-07T16:01:00.000-07:00

Attachment is the cause of suffering. Here I am, the summer is gone, and I’m beating myself up, using my picture of what my work life, my work output, is supposed to look like and doesn’t. While I’m typing these very words, I’m mindlessly knocking back a cup of coffee while chomping Famous Amos oatmeal cookie crumbs all over my keyboard. That’s after buying and eating a chocolate MoonPie at the convenience store when all I meant to buy was milk for the coffee I’m now drinking.

Sure great how those eight grueling days of mindfulness training made a real difference in my life.

So what has filled the void? What stories have moved in to the vacuum left by those I'm not telling? Luke, sixteen year-old Luke, may be breaking up with Amy after a year. I'm like a gossip magazine addict or a mangy dog waiting for the crumbs of information that fall off the table. I'm obsessed. Better than feeling what I feel when I'm not.

Attachment sure does cause suffering. I suffer when I don't measure up to some yardstick I imagine, then I flail around looking for anyone else's plot twists to agonize over because anything's better than feeling what I feel.

What a whiner.

Enough. Just type.

Next steps

2007-07-20T17:47:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure whether everything I've learned at the Hsi lai Short-term Monastic Retreat is specific to Buddhism in general or if some of it says more about Chinese Buddhism or even Chinese culture. The kind of Buddhism practiced at the Hsi Lai temple - a blend of Pure Land, Rinzai and Ch'an Buddhism - is one of the most widely practiced types of Buddhism in the world, while Zen Buddhism (the Japanese word for Ch'an) is far more well-known here in the United States, in part, because many of the very first Buddhist practitioners who came in the late 1800s and early twentieth century were from the Zen tradition and, in part, thanks to the 60s and writers like Alan Watts (The Way of Zen, etc), among many others. Maybe if I spend some time in Zen Buddhism, I'll understand more about what's central to Buddhism in general as opposed to Chinese Buddhism or Hsi Lai-specific practice.

Here are some of the key books Professor Chris Chapple from Loyola Marymount and others suggested that newbies to Buddhism read:

The Three Pillars of Zen by Philip Kapleau

Zen Buddhism by D.T. Suzuki

Buddhism by Huston Smith and Philip Novak

...and some of my favorites...

Zen Mind, Beginner Mind by Shunryu Suzuki

On Zen Practice: Body, Breath and Mind by Taizan Maezumi with Bernie Glassman

Appreciate Your Life: The Essence of Zen Practice by Taizan Maezumi Roshi

Some additional post-retreat thoughts

2007-07-15T15:23:00.000-07:00

About death...

I've finally found a group of people more obsessed with death than me.

About suffering...

Siddartha Gautama, the prince who ultimately became the historical Buddha*(term explained below) was so traumatized by suffering - by birth, illness, old age, and death - he left his family and life of power and priveledge behind to find a way to alleviate suffering, especially that of others.

I don't think I dislike suffering that much. I don't seek it out but it's part of the life I love, it's part of love, and I would rather have the pain of attachments than no attachments.

(I need to throw in a disclaimer here: Please remember the title of this blog. I am writing about my reactions to what I'm learning, to my very shallow but, I hope, slowly growing understanding of each faith. It is inevitable that I will look back at some of what I thought and wrote and be aghast at my misinterpretation of what I was taught but I know of no way to avoid that and tell the truth of this journey. I beg anyone who has a deeper understanding of the faith I'm writing about to please comment. That way others who read this won't be left with just the information I convey...)

Intensity is what I live for and, though I hate it, I can palpably feel my life when I suffer. I think I'm very very lucky when I love enough to suffer. I still ache about the loss of my grandmother and Kevin's father, in particular, after long slow declines but my experience of illness is that it's been an opportunity for the expression of real love in action, a chance for true intimacy. And the funerals - at least the ones I've attended - reveal how meaningless petty squabbles really are.

My meaning has come from throwing myself as fully into life as I possibly can, muck and all. Suffering? Bring it on. If it's here, I'm going to feel it, know it, benefit from it, and, I hope, learn from it. So I'm a little confused about "alleviating" suffering. Does it mean I need to care less? Love less? Live a dull gray life? If I don't have suffering, will I have a life worth living?

About my outward focus...

Yes. I get it. I am too outwardly focused. More precisely, my attention is often on others, hoping that by watching them, I'll know how to act and live. Is this what gossip is about? A way of groups communicating how one "should" behave? Of holding up the behavior of others to see how we measure up?

My self-concept comes, more often than it should, by what I see reflected back to me from the people in my life. I'm flying when I get love and approval, in the dirt when I don't. But there's more to this than that. I love moving through the world hyper-aware of what's going on around me: light through a train window on a fingernail; a woman at a table staring at the table top, the other chair pushed crooked away from the table; the smell of a thunderstorm; my sons giggling together in the back seat; Matt driving me for the very first time; that first look from Luke when they put him on my belly and he turned to look up at me. Perhaps these moments of hyper-awareness have been my primary "religion" up until now. Is doing this an illusion? A delusion? I guess if I only feel alive when reacted to then Buddhism would say that is a problem. Well, ignorance, at least.

But the emphasis on not being able to look around at the Hsi Lai Short-term Monastic Retreat? I felt like I was missing a lot. I can't tell you what others were doing, thinking, or feeling - which is a lot more fun to notice than what I'm thinking and feeling. (As if I could tell from watching them, from what I could see on their faces....)

I guess thats the point. I believe my scrutiny of the world around me and the people in it is helpful to me and others. Buddhism tells me (I think) that that it's a waste of my time and energy. First, it means I see myself as separate and apart from others, from the world, not interdependent and interrelated. Second, I'm not actually present for my own life. And, third, I use my observations of the "outside world" to make up theories about how to hold on to the "good" people and events or to prevent the "bad" ones from coming into my life ever again. Even I can see some of the problem with this: so many events I thought were "bad" at the time, turned out not to be. And how many grasping "successes" have I had that weren't that at all?

15 July 2007

*When people say "historical Buddha" they're differentiating between the actual person who began what is now known as Buddhism and all Buddhas, because there are countless Buddhas. Buddhism does not consider Gautama Buddha the first, the last or the only Buddha. In fact, each of us has Buddha-nature and the practice of Buddhism is designed to help us realize that.

Re-entry

2007-07-14T13:37:00.000-07:00

Re-entry's been strange. Matt keeps asking me why I'm being "so quiet," when am I going to "turn back into your regular self?" I think that's more about his fear about me changing in some way that might be uncomfortable for him rather than any big change in me. Plus I don't think I've ever been away from them for eight days straight since I worked for 60 MINUTES and that ended when Matt was two and Luke was four. I do feel a bit "stared at" by my family and even some of my friends, like they're looking for some evidence that I'm changing, perhaps going off the deep end. Maybe I'm just making it up but I find myself trying to assure people that I still have the same foul mouth I got from working in a television newsroom and snarky attitude. Why it's so important to me to show no evidence of change I have no idea.

When I told Luke about all of the detailed rules at the retreat and that I finally found that some of it was good in that it forced me to be more present and less in my head chatter he said, "That's called Stockholm Syndrome, Mom."

Matt added, "I feel like I'm talking to a concentration camp escapee."

I don't know what to say about this except to report it. I'm freaking out my children...and maybe others who are just too polite to tell me.

14 July 2007

Unordained

2007-07-13T09:30:00.000-07:00

We were a sea of faces, lined up across the steps leading to the Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple's main shrine, our last moments as temporary Buddhist monastics snapped and recorded.

Those wearing the orange robes are the Venerables, our teachers. In the rows of gray behind them, are all of us "Preceptees"

As soon as it was over, there was talking – a lot of it – as well as teasing and laughter as people brought out their own cameras to photograph their groups before our “unordination ceremony” stripped us of our robes.

It was a relief to laugh, to smile, to compare notes, and I sure was looking forward to going home to Luke, Matt, and Kevin, to my own home and life, but it was also disorienting. I’d walked in a line, from dawn until bedtime for a week, with the same people, looked at the same set of rounded shoulder blades in front of me, got poked by the same playful tormentor behind me. I guess you can’t help feeling literally connected to others if you do everything together but what surprised me was the deep affection I felt for this small group of strangers. I mean, we’d barely spoken to each other and yet it was odd to think I’d get in my car in a couple of hours and just drive off.

The unordination ceremony was officially called “The Relinquishing of Monastic Precepts.” It took place in the main shrine and was the ordination ceremony in reverse. We ritually took off and handed back our prayer mats, our begging bowls, the orange bag for the begging bowls, and our brown robes, all symbols for what we were really giving back: the requirement to live by the monastic precepts. While there was the same amount of chanting, bowing and kneeling, the service seemed almost underwater…or maybe I was. There were people in the room who were crying. Whether it was from relief that the week was over or because they regretted that their time as a monastic was over, I couldn’t tell. Me, I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. When I’m done something, I’m done, and that hadn’t gone completely; I had to struggle to be where I was, not to run through the checklist of what I needed to do to get out fast while I stood with my neatly folded brown robe, both hands curling up from the bottom around the front edge of the square of brown fabric, ready for my turn to hand it over just when I’d gotten good at keeping it on, keeping the open side of the robe from flying open as I walked. (That double wrap of the loop did the trick.) I was also just starting to know when to kneel, when to bow, when to stand up, to be able to chant with comfort “Na Mo Ben Shi Shi Jia Mu Ni Fo” (“Homage to Shakyamuni Buddha” ) on the way to meals. I could even remember which way my folded hand towel was supposed to hang and which way the folded edges of my prayer mat were supposed to face when I held it in front of me when I walked. All this, just when it was time to go home.

As we walked back up the hill to our room for the last time, I thought about Hemu. While the collision of my non-ritual self with a 24/7 ritual life was bound to be stressful, there was one notion I hadn’t considered: how much easier it is to live a spiritually dedicated life when absolutely ever facet of your existence is proscribed and provided. I am not saying it isn’t hard, that it doesn’t require more discipline than I currently have, but Hemu and the hundreds of thousands of dedicated lay followers of religions all over the world like Hemu somehow find a way to live a life centered on the practice of their faith while also remaining, as the Hindus say, “householders.” They have families and jobs and still the most dedicated among them do all that their faith calls them to do. That seems even harder than owning nothing and living full time at a monastery. Perhaps what I’m missing is the complete lack of personal time, of a personal life. The monastics in charge of the retreat went to bed an hour or more after we did and got up hours before. And I’m not sure if there’s anything like time off.

Maybe it’s all hard. Or it just seems that way to someone with only enough discipline to muscle through an intense week of practice but who appears to lack whatever it is that you need to sustain a daily practice.

After a cup of way-too-sweet mocha at a grocery store coffee counter with the Hindu flight attendant, I started the drive home. I can take any one of three different highways so I had to turn on the radio to see which way had the least amount of traffic. The clatter of the news radio station was overwhelming. I couldn’t listen to it long enough to get to the traffic report. I decided just to drive and take whatever came.

When I walked in the door, Matt ran to hug me. “Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m okay.”

“Are you sure? You seem kind of quiet.”

I told myself he was just looking for the drama. “Yes, I’m fine. Stop.” I kissed him again and said, “I’m going to put my stuff down and take a shower.”

I took my knapsack of stuff and the bag we were each given full of parting gifts - a few books, our Certificate of Completion, a copy of the huge group photo, a collection of the daily essays we wrote – back to my room. I couldn’t believe how much stuff Kevin and I had. It was just our room, no messier than usual, but the stack of books next to the book shelf by my bed, the computer and pile of notebooks on the desk, the closet which I’d said just the week before had “nothing to wear” in it -- all seemed repulsive.

After my shower, which turned out to be much shorter than I’d planned, I found myself carefully going through drawer after drawer in the bathroom, throwing old make-up, lotions and hair products away until there was little left and each had a clear place to be.

13 July 2007

Breaking loose...

2007-07-12T16:33:00.000-07:00

It's over. In less than a day. I knew the short-term monastic retreat was coming to the end because one of my suitemates, the woman behind me in line, has started to tease me. How do you tease someone without saying a word? Believe me, she could do it. Mostly it involved poking me at times when my reaction, if seen, might embarrass me. Grown, married women, both of us. I loved it. I hated it. I was embarrassed by it. It was unbelievably funny.

What is it about rules, serious rules, that make breaking them so delicious? Especially after trying to hard for so many hours, so many days, to follow them. Or is that just me? Is this the part of me that keeps me shallow...or keeps me sane? Is humor the enemy of spirituality? Of religious practice? It kind of feels that way to me sometimes.

In the two sessions in which we let people know who we were, I found out my playful tormentor was a flight attendant who'd been raised in a Hindu family.

12 July 2007

A cookie?

2007-07-12T11:13:00.000-07:00

One day to go.

I've gotten pretty good at the whole food thing. The way it works is the servers come by but, because you can't look up or around, all you see of them are their hands and the bowl or tray of food they're carrying. You let them know how much you want - if you want more or none - by a series of hand gestures. The food has been consistently good vegetarian fare with lots of various forms of soy products. However, I don't care how hungry I get or how indiscriminate I am supposed to be, I will never like lima beans. And, after the first day, I drew the line at the morning rice soup which I may never be spiritually sound enough, from a Buddhist point of view, to choke down. I will always discriminate against that.

At lunch, which was always our last meal of the day, I'd finished all I'd been served. After that, tea or hot water was served. Next thing I knew, a white-aproned waist appeared in front of me with a plate of cookies in its hands. Oreo cookies. I thought it was a joke.

In violation of everything I knew I was supposed to do, I looked up at the young guy holding the plate and, without a word, using only my eyes, asked if he was for real, if he was actually offering me an Oreo cookie. After six days of green and white fare, the sight of that cookie was a shock, a joke, a punch line. He smiled a "yes" back at me.

That moment, that exchange of delight, was even better than the cookie.

12 July 2007

Memorized

2007-07-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

I only managed to memorize a few of the texts we were supposed to try to memorize during the week. The slightly odd syntax that comes from direct translation was a mixed blessing; in some ways, it made them easier to remember. Here they are:

#1 Taking Refuge - the central Buddhist vows that most Buddhists recite in one form or another. The key idea that never changes is: the vow to take refuge in the Buddha (the historical teacher/the Nature that we all share), the Dharma (the teaching) and the Sangha (the community.)

Taking refuge in the Buddha, I wish every sentient being to understand the highest doctrine and make the greatest vow.

Taking refuge in the Dharma, I wish every sentient being to study deeply the sutra Pitaka and acquire an ocean of wisdom.

Taking refuge in the Sangha, I wish every sentient being to lead the congregation in harmony and without any obstruction.

#2 Transfer of Merits (what this means: wikipedia, Buddhanet)

May kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity pervade all Dharma realms.

May all people and heavenly beings benefit from our blessings and friendship.

May our ethical practice of Ch'an and Pure Land help us to realize equality and patience.

May we undertake the greatest vows with humility and gratitude.

#3 Humble Table, Wise Fare - written by Venerable Master Hsing Yun, founder of the Hsi Lai Temple's denomination, the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Order whose headquarters are in Taiwan.

With an open mind
Every road is wide
With a pure mind,
Everywhere is the pure land.

Know how to listen
- you will accept the Dharma
Know how to think
- you will benefit from the Dharma
Know how to cultivate
- you will apply the Dharma

Although being a leader is good
Because you can lead the community
Being second is also wonderful
Because you can complement and support others
A leader should take care of the weak

When working, there is no real difference
Between the important and the menial.
When serving, there is no real difference
Between the worthy and the undeserving.
When learning, there is no real difference
Between the young and the old.
When cultivating, there is no real difference
Between the sage and the ordinary.

#4 The Heart Sutra (Prajna Paramita) This one I worked on and almost got under my belt before the end of the retreat. This sutra is one of the most important teachings -- if not the most important - in all of Mahayana Buddhism. It's considered by many to be a concise summary of the central tenets of one of the two main schools of Buddhism. There are many many different translations of it. The non-English words in it are Sanskrit terms that largely remain no matter what version you read.

Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, while contemplating profoundly the Prajna Paramita, realized that the five skandhas are empty, and thus he was able to overcome all sufferings.

Sariputra, Form is not different than Emptiness, Emptiness is not different from Form.

Form is in fact Emptiness, and Emptiness is in fact Form.

This also applies to feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness. Sariputra, Emptiness is the nature of all the Dharmas. It can neither be created no annihilated, polluted nor cleansed, increased nor decreased, therefore, in Emptiness, there is no form, feeling, perception, volition, or consciousness. No eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body or mind. No form, sound, smell, taste, touch, or conception. No object of sight, and no consciousness; no ignorance nor its extinction; no aging and no death nor their cessation; no suffering, causes, cessation, nor the path; no wisdom nor attainment.

As there is nothing to attain, a Bodhisattva who relies on the Prajna Paramita has neither worry nor obstruction. Without worry and obstruction, there is no fear, away from confusion, daydreaming, and thus reaches Nirvana.

Buddhas of the past, present, and future also rely on the Prajna Paramita to attain Supreme Enlightenment. Thus one should know that the Prajna Paramita is the great mantra and the supreme of all mantras. It is unequalled and able to emancipate all sufferings.

This is true and not false. Thus proclaiming the Paramita Mantra, one says, "Ga-te, Ga-te, Paraga-te, Parasanga-te Bodhisattva."
11 July 2007

Suffering and compassion

2007-07-11T17:00:00.000-07:00

Compassion. At least once a day someone says the heart of Buddhism is compassion. Today one of the Venerables – that’s the title of the women in black robes – said instead of getting angry in our minds about the Discipline Master’s actions and barked commands, we should recognize the difficulty of what she’s doing and the selfless compassion that’s involved.

Okay…

My first reaction to that statement was relief: if she felt the need to address angry reactions to what was going on, then at least I had company. I mean, one of my feet was developing a deep blood blister where the cotton shoes were rubbing, my back and thighs were coming up with odd twinges from kneeling and standing motionless for long periods on marble floors, it was over a hundred degrees at midday, and people were yelling at us because we couldn't flawlessly follow dozens of rules we'd just heard for the first time 48 hours ago - in Mandarin. I was feeling especially mortified by my glaring imperfection, me, Miss Teacher's Pet Rule-Follower, unable to kneel when I was supposed to kneel, bow when I was supposed to bow, stand when I was supposed to stand.

That morning, when I’d blown it yet again, and was looking frantically through the chant book, I suddenly noticed the commands to kneel, bow and stand, in some cases, were actually in the chanted words themselves. So most of the people knew when to kneel, bow, and stand because it was actually in the words they were saying, the same words I was chanting but couldn't understand. I started to cry. Right there, in the front row, in my gray and brown robes. I felt like I was six. Unfair! It’s all unfair!

I sat in the air conditioned auditorium afterwards. A nun was speaking Chinese into the microphone up front when the teacher from Torrance passed me a note. It said: "If you would be interested in similar experiences without the frustrations, look into the Shambala Center in Eagle Rock – very American - or anywhere that’s oriented towards laity.”

I scribbled "thank you" on the note and gave it back to her. I was grateful for the kindness of this stranger I’d been wordlessly muddling along with for four days. But I had another reaction as well: Sure, I am pushed to my limits by all this but I don’t think I want diluted Buddhism, one made palatable for my American idiosyncrasies. Certainly not for this project because that would be off-point but I'm not sure I'd want that anyway. First, it’s unfair to think I was learning how to become just another practicing Buddhist when this retreat's very title, "Short-term Monastic Retreat," told me otherwise. I'm quite certain the rigors of clergy training in any faith would put me into the same state, no matter what the religion. But if the point of Buddhism is, as they said, to reveal the true nature we all have hidden by our greed, anger and ignorance, well, it was plain that this retreat was certainly kicking up a dust storm of my defects.

The Venerable standing in front of us in the auditorium was talking about our attitudes towards this retreat, the challenges we were facing in ourselves because of its rigor, she said that the lack of complicated morning skincare should feel freeing. “You should be happy because no one will be looking at you anyway. No matter how good your skincare products, you cannot use them on your mind.”

Someone laughed. I thought it was in appreciation of the idea. It does make its point in a funny way. But the Venerable barked, “You laugh? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Where is your mind? No one’s going to look out for you. We have this structure, these corrections to help you.”

I was shocked. I felt like I’d fallen into some alternate universe where conventional social niceties were violations and what would be rude disregard was a virtue. It sure felt anything but compassionate to me. If that’s compassion, it’s a pretty muscular definition unlike any I’ve known. I don’t think of stern admonitions demanding to know “where is your mind?” as compassionate. But perhaps I should consider it.

My mind is usually on anything but where I am or what I’m doing. Instead of concentrating on the rituals I'm learning, I'm almost exclusively focused on pleasing those around me, doing it "best" and, therefore paradoxically, doing it worst. I've had jobs where practically my entire concern was over what people thought of me rather than the tasks at hand. Right now, I get in the car to drive the boys to school and I swear the car drives itself. I remember none of the actual driving because I’ve nursed whatever worry I have to some kind of action plan for the day. And it's never occurred to me that this might be a problem. I love the world that swirls in my head – most of the time – and I think I even use it to protect myself.

I remember when I first realized that I didn’t have to actually be in the car with my squabbling family, that I could look out the window and conduct thought experiments in my head – If I can see that man walking his dog on the street, can he see me? Will any boy ever want to kiss me? If I broke my leg like Helen Pilling, would as many people want to sign my cast? – and, whatever imperfections I decided my family members had, would fade. I could no longer see them or even hear them.

A lot of the time, I am still that little kid worried about what the world thinks of me. My head is crammed full of it.

On the other hand, the very idea to do what I’m doing came from one of those mind-wandering drives. About a year before 9/11, I’d gotten tired of feeling bewildered when I listened to news reports of people of faith in disagreement or at war with each other over matters of faith so I decided to take two freshman survey courses at the local state university: Intro to the Bible and Intro to World Religions. On my final drive home from the classes, I felt a deep relief that at least I now understood some of the basics of what people believed, of what was actually written in the Bible. But, as my car left one freeway for another, I began to think, "I still have no idea what it feels like to actually practice any religion. What would happen if….?” And this project is what came of that mind ramble. I’m not so sure I want to give those rambles up. Or if I should even try, what the purpose might be, and what any of this has to do with religion.

But the central purpose of Buddhism is to alleviate suffering and there is no doubt that these nuns think suffering comes from our thinking, from an out of control mind. And, believe me, I could see and feel my mind run riot almost moment by moment in the four days of not talking and just doing.

On the retreat schedule, every morning after breakfast, we had a walking meditation. Sometimes it was a normal deliberate walk, other times it was as slow as our breathing. We were supposed to be utterly conscious of our bodies as the weight shifts from one foot to another. We were always in a line, always behind the same person.

This morning, Ven Miao Hsi was busy so we had had a new leader, an earnest young nun who was concerned that we looked so nervous. Well, yeah, we were nervous. There seemed to be so many ways to go wrong, so many ways to be "unmindful." She seemed particularly concerned about my furrowed brow. "You seem worried. I can tell by the lines on your face."

I thought: well, I suppose there's botox for that. Unfortunately, I could ever pay someone to inject paralytic toxin into my face so, instead, I choose to think of the deep lines around my mouth as my "smile" lines and the twin vertical lines over my nose as my "thought plumes." On my sane days, I'm even rather proud of those. But the collision of all of these present moment-by-moment rules with my people-pleasing performance anxiety and churning storytelling brain was eye-opening. I hadn’t considered the extent to which I fundamentally operate from “I think, therefore I am.”

If thinking is the source of suffering, (which it’s pretty hard to argue it isn’t) I think I embrace suffering. In fact, I might go even one step further: I can’t think of a lesson I’ve learned in my life that was worth anything that I learned without suffering. I mean, would I be on this retreat if I didn't believe in the value of suffering?

Well, maybe there is one.

When I gave birth to my sons, I learned I was capable of sustained, unconditional love. I suppose some might argue there was suffering involved, physical and structural life changes, but I can’t call any of it that. Although sitting here right now in front of this keyboard, I can go into the future, the future when, if I’ve done the job right, my boys will leave without a thought for their independent lives and, yes, I will suffer then. I can weep right now, thinking about it.

Is this evidence of the damage thought can do? Is this an example of how not being where you are, where your body is at this moment, can saddle life with unnecessary pain, wiping out present joy?

“Anyone can be a Buddha,” the shorn nun said. “All sentient beings are equal. No one is more likely than anyone else.” We just have to come to know that, to be able to see this “precious pearl” we all have hiding under the muck of our greed, anger and ignorance. And this “compassionate” stress on being present in the here and now is meant to help us see everything that we contribute to our own muck.

One of the Venerables asked if we thought our life was tough, if we thought this retreat was tough. “Easy or tough, depends on your mind. Happiness and suffering all come and go. Nothing is permanent.”

Not even this retreat.

11 July 2007

Collision

2007-07-11T13:11:00.000-07:00

Silence is a powerful force. It changes your brain.

The retreat had been, by no means, a meditation retreat (we'd only done that twice for less than an hour each time) and we'd sat through a couple of lectures a day but, aside from two group meetings, none of us were supposed to talk. Ever. Not in our rooms, certainly not at meals, not even on bathroom breaks or while we worked together in the afternoons on our assigned chores. (Our group mopped marble, vacuumed the long red indoor/outdoor carpet; cleaned the office windows, sills and ledges.)

So, when our gray-suited line opened the dining room door to leave the silent hall and found ourselves in a parted sea of regular folks - dads in plaid shirts, moms holding their small children back, a cacophonous school group eager to get in to eat, their voices caroming from marble floor to cement ceiling and back, all curious to get a gander at us as we streamed by without looking at them -- the sound, the energy was overwhelming.

Just months before I'd been in one of those school groups with Matt's class. It's how I knew about Hsi Lai. I'd been one of those unconsciously noisy people, unaware how I was affecting others. None of them were especially noisy by American standards, by my normal standards, yet there I was, in effect, unable to stand my own noise.