To Do or Not to Do

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

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.

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....

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

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?

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

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!

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

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

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...

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

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

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

An expiration date on mothering?

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

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

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

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...

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

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

Dinner Party

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.