Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Kerbey Lane, Austin, TX

The waiter asked if I had any questions. Not about the menu, I said. Well, he said, what's the question? "Who were you before you were born?" I answered. Then I added, "You don't need to give me an answer now." When we were through eating, he said that he had a question for me. "What?" I asked. "What is free on earth?" he asked. "I think I've heard that one, but I don't remember the answer," I answered. "Your breakfast," he answered. Then he handed us a check with a $0 total!
When I got home, I told my wife. "Pay forward time, " she said.

Friday, October 23, 2015

“I still believe, in spite of everything that people are good at heart.” —Anne Frank


My first thought, when I came across this quote yesterday, was that I wondered if the quote was still true. Is this a worse time than it was 70 years ago? When I read her diary in high school I don't remember questioning whether people were really “good at heart.” I asked my neighbor what he thought this morning, and he said that it was true if the person hadn't been indoctrinated. I wanted to ask him whether Christ would agree, but I didn't, assuming that he'd say that he didn't know.

Why would someone whose life had been turned upside down say that people were good at heart? Is it because the frontal lobe of her brain hadn't developed and that's what led Anne to such a ridiculous realization?

What was amazingly similar for Anne Frank and perhaps the rest of us who are under the mortality death sentence is that we tend to live pretty normal lives even though the death gremlin could knock at our door at any moment. i think the book is read in high school not because it is about the holocaust but rather because it is about a normal adolescent girl. Her unusual circumstances don't shift her life. She has the same thoughts, crushes, and insecurities that most of us did at her age (and still do).

So I've been evading the issue about whether I agree with her statement... And why? And how? On the one hand we have bands of people who not only hate others but proceed to kill them mercilessly. If all people were good at heart, then we have to include those people who were indoctrinated.

There I go again, avoiding the question about what I believe. I started thinking about my student who killed his teacher (not me). My mother, trained as a social worker, asked me if he was violent. "No," I said, "just confused."

Anne's statement struck a chord for me. Do I believe it, or just want to believe it? Would I believe it if I was in hiding? I don't know.

I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are good at heart.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Sand in the Eye

Comment on Jiaoan’s Sand in the Eye

I too had the thought that not expressing emotions was something you were suppose to do in Zen. Then I heard that it was more about letting them come to their natural end.

I have been in two concurrent political discussions lately. I stood on one side of the fence and my friends on the other. We all feel that we are not being heard. When I hear the expression "sand in the eye,” I am reminded of my recent conversations. We have something, deep down, that attaches us to our positions. We are like the scientist who works for a drug company. We want to show how effective is a medicine. We are not trying to find the truth, but rather trying to win the debate. The sand in our eyes—what we believe—is keeping us from exploring the issue.

“Beyond the sand there is the eye.” That could be called the letter "I" or me. It is the sand in me that no one is going to change.

In the koan, Jiaoan said “erasing views to become free.” Then we won't have sand in our eyes. We'll be able to see clearly. We will realize that we don't know the consequence of anything we do or propose because all is interdependent and impermanent. What worked yesterday may not work today or tomorrow.

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Take What is Given


 "Just to be is a blessing
 Just to live is holy.”

—Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

The second precept that we take in Soto Zen is “do not take what is not given.” At the San Francisco Zen Center they added a line to each of the precepts to give them a positive spin. “2. A disciple of Buddha does not take what is not given but rather cultivates and encourages generosity.”

Perhaps it should be, “we should take what is given.” Someone suggested that I should add an only to that: "we should take only what is given."

In any case, I thought it would be an interesting generosity practice to focus on taking rather than giving. Rabbi Heschel's statement suggests that being on earth is a blessing. Appreciating that seems transformational. I feel, “Thank you, universe, for letting me be. Thank you for the innumerable gifts that you shower on me every moment.” (This may introduce a dilemma: as a generous and loving person, do we thank the coyote/universe who enjoys our neighbor’s yelping dog for supper?)

I imagined myself starting to focus on these blessings. How lucky I am to be surrounded in my life by so many jewels! How lucky to live in an environment so conducive to my interests!

The second line of the Heschel quote, is “just to live is holy.” In Buddhism we talk about the rarity of being born human. It is the rarity of the possibility that one tortoise would rise to the surface of the ocean and its head would go through one floating oxen yoke. That's how lucky it is to be born in human realm.

In the Torah, God says that you shall be holy for I'm holy. Here, too, it is a recognition of what it is that which makes us special. It doesn't matter what you call that which created us. It also says that we should revere our mother and father. We revere holy things, and  that makes us holy, for we came from holy parents. And our mother and father, metaphorically, are everything that comes together to give us this life.

What a great tattoo this would be, with each line of Heschel’s quote on a different arm! Then the words could be easily shared when we reach with both hands to accept what is given to us.

And we can smile and say thanks.

Kim Mosley

Monday, September 21, 2015

Shoun and His Mother/The Voice of Happiness

101 Zen Stories aka Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

Shoun said he lived the best that he could. He couldn't live in the monastery, he bought fish for his mother, he played music and he visited a woman of the streets. He didn't follow the rules that the other monks followed.

But he was doing what was required in each situation. He wasn't embarrased about visiting a woman of the streets. He was a man of much personal integrity.

It seems easier to defend one's actions when those actions are according to some law. But that is not what Shoun did. He was true to his own heart and did what the moment demanded.

At the end of his life, all was perfect. “The rain had ended, the clouds were clearing, and the blue sky had a full moon.”

But Shoun was perfect in another sense. He had responded to each challenge in his life with a open hand and gave to it what was demanded. He went against the rules because this allowed him to give what was needed of him.

I have a sister who, like Shoun, is not seduced by authority. She broke most of the rules in the book, and probably some laws along the way. But she was always there for her friends, and now is a helpful and loving psychoanalyst. She shunned most if not all the good advice that her parents were so willing to give to her.

The other day I compared myself to my ideal self. I came out with a flunking grade. I wonder if the ideal self was what one would look like if they followed the rules, and if what I was now was closer to Shoan's statement, “I did what I could.”

How do we navigate the rules of society and the rules of our institutions and still walk proud? What was it in Shoun and my sister that allowed them, as they heard “the beat of a different drummer” to walk so confidently down the street. “Without shame,” my sister would add.

*101 Zen Stories is a 1919 compilation of Zen koans[1] including 19th and early 20th century anecdotes compiled by Nyogen Senzaki,[2] and a translation of Shasekishū,[1][3] written in the 13th century by Japanese Zen master Mujū (無住) (literally, "non-dweller").[3] The book was reprinted by Paul Reps as part of Zen Flesh, Zen Bones.[4][3] Well-known koans in the collection include “A Cup of Tea” (1), “The Sound of One Hand” (21), “No Water, No Moon” (29), and “Everything is Best” (31). (From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101_Zen_Stories.

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Love is all that matters


(Blanche Hartman is a Zen priest at the SF Zen Center. Our AZC temple was named after her, and she transmitted the two head teachers that have been/is at AZC. Our temple is named after her.

Last night we wrote about her statement, “… love is all that matters.”)

“Love is all that matters.”

Why didn't anyone tell me that? Actually there was a guy (Leo Buscaglia) who preached love. He had a college course called love and it would fill every semester. But generally we are led to believe that other stuff will make us happy, like having an ocean view, a college degree or lots of money.

Love will tell us what something needs. My wife will look out the window and hear one of her plants screaming for water. She'll drop everything to give them a drink.

“Love is all that matters.”

Blanche devoted much of her life to Zen practice. Both the former head teacher and the current abbot at Austin Zen Center were transmitted by her. AZC is named Zenkei-ji which was Blanche’s Dharma name (meaning Inconceivable Joy). She was responsible for teaching many to sew robes. And yet, at the end of her life, she is proclaiming

“Love is all that matters.”

Imagine what the reaction might be if the New York Times were to print in big bold letters on their front page

“Love is all that matters.”

Would road rage disappear? Would waitresses smile at their customers? Would the subway come to a gentle stop? Would the stewardesses, rather than instructing us on the use of the life preservers, tell us that

“Love is all that matters?”

And does she really mean it? Why didn't she just practice

“Love is all that matters?”

rather than Zen.

Maybe Zen, at its best, is about

“Love is all that matters.”

As we pay attention to ourselves and the world we would naturally care for things. We would handle thing “gingerly.” We would evaluate our actions as to whether they were an expression of love or not.

And this is where it can get a little hairy. I put out poison so our house isn't a den for cockroaches. Is that love? Maybe for us, but not the blessed little creatures.

If it were so simple, life would be that simple. What is the loving thing to do is sometimes quite difficult to figure out. It might take meditation to see the challenge clearly. It might take a college degree. It might take going to jail for what you believe to be the best action. It might take every ounce of our energies to act on that most import maxim

“Love is all that matters.”

Monday, September 7, 2015

Impulses

I had a friend who did things on autopilot, or so she claimed. We've been there, driving long distances and being surprised when we get there.

I read this morning that what keeps us procrastinating is impulsive behavior. Sometimes I rationalize that it is more important to do something rather than the task at hand. That something might be going to a gym or looking out the window. And after looking out the window, I need to walk around a little... perhaps to explore what is in the refrigerator or to see if we have received any emails.

Soon 70 years have passed, and the job is not done. Funny how procrastinating one minute can become an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade, and then a lifetime.

The impulsive behaviors become riding a horse with a mind of its own. I am holding the reins, but the horse has a mind of its own. I think that one more trip to the fridge won't set me back more than five minutes. What's five minutes in a lifetime? And then that five minutes insidiously becomes a lifetime.

There is a Zen saying that when you are hungry you should eat and when you are tired you should sleep. Is that saying that I should go wherever the horse wants to go?

“What shall I do now, what shall I ever do?” TS Eliot wrote that in the wasteland. We look back and see that we wasted time. How did the horse take charge?

I suspect that an untrained horse just follows it impulses. A good trainer can teach a horse to obey the rider's whims. But what is involved in training my horse?

P.S. Since I wrote this last Tuesday I’ve been feeling that I’ve been run by impulses. Today I turned over a new leaf and took the bull by its horns. We’ll see who wins.

Who's in the world?

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