Gemmon in Krakow

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 Goth'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 

Never here 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 is appeased only by loving-kindness. 

This is an ancient law.

For hate 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.

Empty

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

On the plane...to Auschwitz

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 or if she might be able to me me there.  She said she couldn't but why, she wanted to know, was I going to be 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...

Other people's lives

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.