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.

Friday, January 24, 2014

Who is Perfect?


Prompt: I was thinking about the first time MLK was asked to join in a march. He said no, explaining he was the new minister in town and that he didn't want to make waves or endanger his family. A few days later he changed his mind. That's the MLK we know.


t was once very impatient with a student. I actually wanted to strangle her. I kept telling her something and she didn't get it. It was one of those "I want a cigarette" moments. But I didn't smoke. I just pretended to maintain my cool and repeated myself over and over again.

The next day she thanked me for being so patient with her. I felt pretty bad, remembering my impatience and being so ashamed that I wasn't the person that she was thanking.

When I was in college, at one point I had nine dogs. Well, I had three ... Bonnie, Clyde, and Blackbeard. Bonnie got kind of stuck one day when I was walking her before classes. I tried to separate her for this very aggressive male but failed. Soon, 64 days later, I had the six ugliest puppies I had ever seen. Or maybe I should say that Bonnie had them. I had no idea how to contend with so many dogs, esp. without a fenced yard. And as you can imagine, the six little ones started to use my floor as their yard. Just after cleaning up one mess, one of the still unnamed puppies made another mess. I started yelling at the small innocent being. Her mom took one look at me and went over and cleaned it up. How small did I feel!

We tend to glorify heroes, but, for me, it is the fact that they were humans rather than gods that makes them so special. I've known a few heroes in my life. They were bigger than life. They could do no wrong. They only had the best of intentions. And then I learned a little more about them and realized that they too were just human beings ... special, but not because they were perfect, but because they were not.

Thursday, January 9, 2014

It’s a Boy … Or Is It?

Knowing Fish
One day Chuang Tzu and a friend were walking by a river.
“Look at the fish swimming about,” said Chuang Tzu, “They are really enjoying themselves.”
“You are not a fish,” replied the friend, “So you can't truly know that they are enjoying themselves.”
“You are not me,” said Chuang Tzu. “So how do you know that I do not know that the fish are enjoying themselves?”
My god, I told my friend it was going to be a boy, forgetting that she had told me that she didn't want to know. It came to me as I was sitting. So then I started thinking, “what lies could I tell to deceive her into thinking that it really wasn't going to be a boy but rather some worthy alternative?”

I could say that I had lied and told her the opposite because she said she didn't want to know. But knowing and not knowing are different. It isn't a surprise, at least not the same surprise, if you know, even if you are wrong.

We rarely hear of people mistakenly not knowing. We all believed the world was flat until it became round in 1492. We love to think we know everything. Kids ask "why" until they learn that's a sign of being a kid, and then they stop asking. In school they aren't told about all the things we don't know—just about the stuff we do know.  Wouldn't it be great to have a textbook of all the things we don't know? Do fish enjoy themselves when they are swimming about? Does anyone know?

Michael at the temple said the other day that he was an agnostic at best. That's a little bit of a mind twister. What would an agnostic at worst believe? I guess in the continuum of believing, Michael goes from 0 to 50, while the at worst agnostic would go from 50 to 100. My father was once an atheist, but then he softened because he didn't want to offend anyone. He became an agnostic, he said, never adding "at best" or "at worse." Right before he died he said that now he could be with his wife. Did the morphine change what he knew?

So perhaps this is all some very elaborate scheme to divert her from thinking she knows. I was reading about a movie on Wittgenstein. It said that at age 32 he solved all the problems of philosophy and then was tormented the rest of his life realizing that he could be wrong about everything.

I said it was a boy. My daughter (perhaps lying to really surprise us) said she heard that from the doc. But perhaps she didn't want anyone to know. Telling the opposite is a good way to pull that off, especially when there are multiple choices. Are you sure it is a boy? Do you know if fish enjoy swimming around? Someone once told me that the great high for a fish was getting caught with a hook? Who knows that?

I'll let you know in July whether it is a boy or a girl. Only the babe knows for sure.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

My Former X-rated Mind


I was surprised when Jimmy Carter said that he sinned with his mind, not with his body. I would have though that a president was 1) better disciplined than that or 2) better at knowing what to admit and what to lie about.

I’ve often become distressed at some of my thoughts. What is wrong with me, having such obscene thoughts? And what dreams I’ve had! What is that about? I imagine hurting people I love, having sex with people that I shouldn't, and on and on. Who is it that thinks these wrong thoughts? Who is feeding me my stories?

I was surprised learning in my Jewish Torah studies that Jews don't worry about their thoughts, but rather focus on their actions and/or lack of action. That seemed to lift a heavy weight off my shoulders and actually, since learning that, I’ve noticed that my day dreams and night dreams have become a lot less interesting. There is nothing that encourages bad thoughts like trying to not have bad thoughts. So the rabbi, giving me permission to think anything, actually put a break on my x-rated mind. (I just watched the Linda Lovelace film on Netflix and didn’t have a lewd thought … just felt sorry for the poor woman.)

Now to the Zen story of the two monks. One carries the woman in the beautiful Kimono across the river and sets her down. The other, a younger monk, doesn't touch her ... and ends up (lustfully) carrying her in his mind the rest of the day. The suggestion in the story is that the older and wiser monk acts correctly, doing what presumably needs to be done. And the younger monk’s action follows the rules of his religion, though his mind is somewhere else.

This is not an unusual occurrence. I often censure my actions but not my thoughts. I somehow thought I could get away with it. I thought I could whiz through a grocery store and not care about others. Then I realized the other day that I was releasing negative energy throughout the store, pushing my way through the crowds, looking for openings for my shopping cart like it was a football game. Now I'm trying to construct shopping as a loving dance, focusing first on my body and letting it lovingly move the shopping cart. I haven't come yet to the maiden in the kimono who wants to cross the stream, but now I know what to do. Or do I?

Friday, November 29, 2013

... then or now?

Part I:

In a workshop
on mindfulness
I wondered
whether I’d
let go of my past
or
turn to the present.

I worked so hard
on that past,
why throw all that
away,
I wondered?

What a waste!

Why would anyone
throw out the baby
with the bath water?

A Buddhist monk claimed
there is a way to be present
thinking about the past.

Convinced
by what he said,
I understood
nothing more than
he believed he could.




If nothing else,
I was convinced
by his sincerity.

Six years later,
I remember
the monks conviction.

I consider now,
looking back,
how my feet planted
in THIS ground,
thinking
about THAT ground.

If a gust of wind came,
would I blow over
or stand my ground?


Part II:

I remember,
fifty years ago
a loss—
the other guys walked
my girlfriend home.


I discovered jealously,
chasing them down
the asphalt road,
turning to sand
as it neared the surf.

Funny thing was,
now that I go back,
I had never
walked her home,
or even
thought about it.

I missed out
not doing that.

Something incomplete
about that day.

I was so angry
I threw my bike
in the bushes
and yelled something
vile at them
as they passed
over the dunes.

So how do I,
sitting in this chair
many years later
return to this little town,
a few feet from the ocean,
without forgetting
how many miles
and how many days
I am from that ocean.

Without forgetting
how,
on her wedding day,
they drank too much
and went over a cliff.


Part III:

I hear a dog barking.
Is it that lab
that I had picked up roving
near my house
50+ years ago,
or is it a dog
here and now?

And how do
these worlds intersect?

Where might
I be?
Where am I,
there or here,
then or now?

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Do ships return?


I wanted to write a poem. The first two lines came to me when I was sitting. They were perfect—so perfect that I knew that I would not forget them. Who forgets something that is so perfect? You? Me? Oh, wait … I just remembered that it was two lines. And there were no fancy words in those lines.

It is coming now. The ship goes off to sea, leaving me behind. It was something like that. Do you ever feel left behind? Like when someone goes on a trip. There we have the crack (this was written in a Zen writing group and our prompt was from my classmates’ (Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge) book, poemcrazy.

We see the ship leave and we know that it is going to another world. We stay in our world. But our world is not the same because the ship is not in it any longer.

I didn't want to think about any more of the poem. I knew that I should be calming the sea and not making waves. I was trying to settle my mind and I had this fantasy that the bell would ring and the meditation session would be over and the rest of the poem would come to me effortlessly.

The ship goes off to sea,
leaving me behind.
What do I do with myself,
waiting for it to return?

Do ships really return?

This isn't going well. Sounds like some dumb sophomoric philosophical journey. Yikes!

But really … Have you had the experience that ships never really return? They have their grand adventure and then are reborn into something else.

Maybe I should write the poem more abstractly? Maybe a haiku?

Ship off,
Me behind, waiting
for nothing.

But maybe that wouldn't be so clear. You know what I mean by nothing. Right? Since the ship can't come back, I can't wait for it. Or I guess I could wait, if I want to set myself up for disappointment.

What is it that we wait for anyway? And is it ever the same when it comes?

Not that thinking again. Feel like hitting myself over the head.

Ship goes off to S E E
Someday to return
a different ship.

Maybe that's closer.

Where is the ship now? Is it dark and still as it is here, or is the sun rising and the waves bellowing? Have the people on the ship bonded into a tribe, making it impossible for anyone else to intervene?When the ship returns will it look the same, even if it is not the ship that left?

Returned ship never left,
only to fool
the watchman
counting the days ...
believing this or that.

Who's in the world?

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