Friday, April 18, 2014

Original Dukkha


Dukkha is:
Disturbance, irritation, dejection, worry, despair, fear, dread, anguish, anxiety; vulnerability, injury, inability, inferiority; sickness, aging, decay of body and faculties, senility; pain/pleasure; excitement/boredom; deprivation/excess; desire/frustration, suppression; longing/aimlessness; hope/hopelessness; effort, activity, striving/repression; loss, want, insufficiency/satiety; love/lovelessness, friendlessness; dislike, aversion/attraction; parenthood/childlessness; submission/rebellion; decision/indecisiveness, vacillation, uncertainty.
— Francis Story in Suffering, in Vol. II of The Three Basic Facts of Existence (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1983)
There are the mysteries. Where did we come from and where are we going?

But there are also very common problems. When are we not only expected to know but to act wisely?

I went to the grocery store to buy a jar of applesauce. I didn't want corn sauce. I wanted applesaucejust like granny made. I bought original applesauce. When I get home I see that it is corn sauce. What is original about that? Did the caveman adulterate apples with corn syrup?

So I call Motts, the people who make this stuff that no one should be consuming, and complain. I ask, What is original about corn sauce? Oh they say, Would you like us to send a coupon for some unsweetened applesauce. Yes, I said, And next time I'll read the whole label.

At the time I thought I had learned something. With my newfound wisdom, I went to buy soymilk. I see the sign, buy one and get the second one for $1 off. I was in. I put two original soymilks in the cart and check out. When I returned home, I started drinking the stuff, and was surprised at how good it tasteduntil I read the fine print. Corn syrup. Once again I was taken by that word original.

Luckily it is the sugary one that my grandson drinks so my daughter took it out of my hands.

Next time at the store I bought some unsweetened soymilk. Today I opened it to drink some and then realized that I should shake it up a bit. Thought I had closed the tab, soymilk went everywhere. I immediately called 800soymilk and complained, Your lid doesn't work. After I read them off a liturgy of numbers the nice woman said she send me a new box.


Why am I so particular? Why do these simple shopping tasks become such horrific and painful challenges?

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

The Joyous Bodhisattva

I mentioned in an email to some old friends that one of their daughters appeared to be a bodhisattva because she befriended a homeless person and helped him out. One of the friends wrote back and asked what a bodhisattva was. I tried to explain that it was one who, finally enlightened, decides to stick around to save the rest of us.

Unsatisfied with my explanation, I decide to read what a Buddhist priest had to say on the subject. A few years ago I had heard an art historian speak about bodhisattvas and could hardly recognize what she was talking about, let alone what religion they were representing. There are many brands of Buddhism. I suspect that that most Buddhists believe that their religion is the real McCoy and that the other practitioners are charlatans.

As Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche explains, “those who take the bodhisattva vow make one simple commitment: to put others first, holding nothing back for themselves....” He continues,
“One of the obstacles to bodhisattva discipline is an absence of humor; we could take the whole thing too seriously. Approaching the benevolence of a bodhisattva in a militant fashion doesn’t quite work. Beginners are often overly concerned with their own practice and their own development, approaching Mahayana in a very Hinayana style. But that serious militancy is quite different from the lightheartedness and joy of the bodhisattva path. In the beginning you may have to fake being open and joyous. But you should at least attempt to be open, cheerful, and, at the same time, brave. This requires that you continuously take some sort of leap. You may leap like a flea, a grasshopper, a frog, or finally, like a bird, but some sort of leap is always taking place on the bodhisattva path.”
I liked the joyful aspect of this practice. Even a guardian angel (as in Drop Dead Diva) needs to have fun. To make giving a laborious and painful task serves no one.



Thursday, April 3, 2014

On Intention


I'm interested in the idea of intention. When we hurt someone is that our intention?  We complain to someone that they did this or that. Let's say they embarrassed us. They think to themselves that they didn't do what they did to embarrass. We are confused about how could they not have realized the effect of their actions. But we usually don't think that through. We do what we do because we are hurting in some way or not getting what we need. Yet, in retrospect, when various parties are hurt, then, and only then, might we realize that the results are different from our actions? That's why we  judge others by their actions and ourselves by our intentions. We don't know someone's intention. We do know that they might have caused pleasure or pain. If it is pain that they caused, they might eventually see that and ask for forgiveness.

Now it gets interesting. If someone says to you, "I forgive you" because you've been a louse, do you necessarily feel any better? The perpetrator still feels bad because he messed up, and the hurt one still feels hurt. Things may be a little better. But believing that all is well is a delusion. Words are exchanged but wounds abound. The perpetrator has wounds because they realized that they were hurtful, and the victim has wounds from the action. 

Sometimes we ask for forgiveness. We say, I didn't intend to hurt you. I didn't know the repercussions of my actions. And you say, that's all I saw, the repercussions. How could you not see them? 

One Zen teacher says that everything, even our dreams, are intentional, and another says that they are not. Can we live intentionally? Thoreau said,
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
My third Zen teacher said we want both to be intentional and to not be intentional. If we are too intentional we will plow right through situations without seeing what they require. Maybe a horse with blinders is intentional. Maybe, instead, we just want to open our eyes and do what the situation demands.

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.

Who's in the world?

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