Wednesday, March 19, 2014

But Mom...he did!



My mother had a very firm rule that we weren't supposed to smoke in our house. I know that she didn't want us to smoke at all but I don't know if she actually forbid us from doing that. I just know we weren't supposed to do it in the house. My parents' friends could smoke and even my sisters’ boyfriends could but not us kids.

Sometimes one of my sisters and I would smoke by exhaling into the fireplace. Because my parents now live in another world, and because they never would agree to have email, I think I'm now safe with that confession. Smoking with my sister was a rite of passage for me. Growing up I had two older sisters. When the oldest went to college I was no longer the odd one out.

Before long my middle sister went off to college and I was the sole kid in the house. I'm not sure how much I smoked in my room after my parents went to bed, cautiously breathing the smoke out the window. One night my mom came in my room and caught me. She made me promise never to smoke in the house again. So what did this smart 15 year old kid do? He got busted the very next night.

Having a father that was an ace lawyer taught me how to wiggle out of tough situations. I told my mom that Confucius said that sometimes it was better to lie. I believe that was his version
of "skillful means" like the Lotus Sutra story about the father who lies to his kids who are in a burning house so that they drop their playthings and not become ashes.

My mom became more interested in my comment than in my smoking. She said, “surely Confusion did not say that.” “But Mom,” I said, “he did!” “Show me,” she said. Well, the next couple days my mom and I scoured the little Modern Library book that I still have, The Wisdom of Confucius. Finally one of us found the saying. I have no idea if I continued to smoke in my room but I did persuade my mom to drive me every night to a college library so that I could study there and ... smoke.


P.S. I am now looking through the book to find the quote. So far, to no avail. But it was not easy to find the first time. I "Googled" it and could only find that Confucius said you should tell the truth. I'll add it to this post if and when I find it.

P.S.S. My cousin, Barbara, found this blogpost on lying in Confucianism and Taoism: http://uselesstree.typepad.com/useless_tree/2006/02/the_ethics_of_l.html

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

You Tell Me

I saw today a photo by Irving Penn of a pile of discarded cigarette butts. The photographer had made this as a large platinum print on beautiful paper. It probably would cost now in the 10s of thousands. I didn't like the series when I first saw it about 30 years ago, but today they made a lot more sense. Maybe I was too close then to being a recently quit smoker and remembered that I used to look through ash trays for barely smoked butts.

I was surprised to read recently that people with OCD aren't actually neatnics. I wonder what that is about.

As I sat down on the doan's cushion at the zendo tonight, I noticed a stick of incense on the floor. My mind was engaged in a vigorous debate of whether I should get up and pick it up. If meditation had begun I would not, but since it had not, I started thinking that our head teacher might be upset if (when) he saw it. I picked it up and put it on the incense table. Then I went back to my cushion and didn't give the incense on the floor another thought. Didn't, that is, until now. I also picked it up because I didn't want it to interrupt and occupy my mind during meditation. Thinking back on the occasion, I probably should have left it on the floor as an "opportunity for practice."

Should I have allowed this broken and renegade piece of stick incense where it wanted to hang out? Was the temple less holy because of its transgression?

You tell me.

Who's in the world?

Xiushan said, "What can you do about the world?" Dizang said, "What do you call the world?"