My Father's Knot

I was going to write something about the difference between grieving and compassion. If we are all suffering, as Buddha surmised, then we might grieve for others as we are feeling compassion. But I'm not going to write about that. Maybe.

My relationship with my dad was complicated, as people like to say on Facebook. There is no doubt that he was a stellar guy. He was smart and kind and funny. He knew so much, but never rammed his opinions down anyone's throat. In fact, many of his friends held ideas diametrically opposed to his, though that never shook their deep admiration for him.

He had one father who died when he was an infant, and a step-father who was not very nice. He basically was fatherless. He married a woman who thought that she knew everything about raising kids, and despite his intelligence, she felt that he could do no right. She'd say, “Shut up, Edmond,” when he'd try to be the parent. So I didn't have much of a father. If I tried to remember things that he taught me, like tying shoes, it would be a very short list.

On the other hand, he taught me a lot. He taught me how to deal with difficult situations. One day he told me, “you can never move too slowly.” I asked my students what he meant by that. Finally we made some progress toward understanding this koan. So I called my dad and told him that we figured it out. He said, “figured out what?” “What you said last week, that you can never move too slowly.” “That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard,” he said.

That was my dad. He said things not because they were set in stone, but because they might get someone to consider a new way of looking at the world.

When he was in hospice, they asked whether he'd like a priest, a minister, or a rabbi. “A philosopher,” he said.

He was generally disappointed with his kids. It wasn't that we were complete failures, thought sometimes we were headed in that direction. Rather, we had cousins that went to better schools and were very successful before they were 30.

In the passage “Knots” we read tonight, a knot kept the father from expressing his love. Or maybe I should say, “his like.” Both of my parents were full of love, but in their very critical mode, found it difficult to like many people. We all had faults. I couldn't tie my shoes. My sister couldn't keep her bangs out of her eyes. Someone else raised their kids wrong. And on and on. It got to the point where I didn't want love anymore. I just wanted to be liked.

The other day I went to a performance by three-year olds. It was a marvel how the teacher was totally ok with the students’ ineptness. It was a joy how she made all the kids feel comfortable and do their best... and even if they weren't ready for center stage, that was ok too. I wish she was the one who taught me to tie my shoes.

P.S. (Credit card track) Wasted time today looking for a credit card bill. Finally found it, but the vendor had put down the wrong last four numbers that really messed me up. I did cancel one card today. My wife said she'd come home if I cut my cards in half. Actually I have eight in her name to cancel. Is it ok for me to pretend I'm her when I call them (and save her the grief of calling them)? Another moral dilemma.

Learning to Mourn... Wanting to be Grief Stricken

She insisted on going to visit her granddad after her grandma died. She said that she wanted to mourn.

Mourning wasn’t part of my experience growing up. When my father was a small child, his dad died. He experienced his mom crying, screaming, and tearing her clothes off. When my grandpa died, whom I was very close to, my dad only mentioned it at the end of a conversation I had with him. “Can I talk to mom,” I asked. “No, she’s at your grandpa’s funeral,” he said.

Jews have some unusual ideas about death. For one, a grave yard is called, “land of the living.” For another, if a funeral procession and wedding procession are going down the same road, and if the road narrows, then the wedding procession should go first.

Funerals were rarely attended by my parents. They weren’t part of the business of life. Echoing a Jewish saying, my mom would say, “Life is for the living.” However, my mom felt great grief when tragedy struck our extended family if it was a kid. When my cousin died, or when another cousin was found to have a serious impairment, she fell apart. But we were generally shielded from death. I discovered that a dear neighbor had died when I was shuffling through my sister’s desk. I asked my mom why she didn't tell me. She said that my school work was more important and she didn’t want to distract me.

Buddhists have an idea of impermanence. They believe everything forever changes. Jews too have such an idea, though a rabbi described it the other day as every moment is new. I then asked A, a Zen priest, and she said that this idea of “new” aligned with Dogen more than just changing. It is a new day. It is a new moment.

I sometimes worry that I’m a sociopath, or perhaps a little on the autistic spectrum because I don’t fall apart in grief when confronted with death. I could not do well in a Shakespearian tragedy. It seems hard for me to realize that a person really is gone because they remain so much in my mind. And if they weren’t in my mind, there certainly wouldn’t be any grieving.

P.S. (Credit card track) He asked why I had ten credit cards. “Ten,” I exclaimed, “I have 29.” So I asked him if he had $800, would he toss it to the wind? That's approximately the value of the 50000 that you get from AA with a new credit card (on a good day). “No,” he said, “I wouldn't throw $800 away.” “So why wouldn't you take the credit card.” “I'm trying to simplify my life,” he said.

Obviously there are costs and benefits to playing the credit card game. There is risk, some loss of credit, and time expended. It takes some discipline and some organization to keep track. I seem to do ok.

Is it dishonest to take a credit card just for the money? I actually once asked this question to a bank. They want you to fall for their offer. They hope you will screw up and incur fees. Capital One Bank told me that. Does that mean that we should do it? It is somewhat a moral dilemma.

Pray that All Things are Born in Heaven

We read the story today of an old woman who asks Buddhist Master Zhaozhou Congshan how she can be free from the world of suffering. He tells her to pray that all things are born in heaven and that you yourself suffer forever in the sea of hardships.

I don’t think she wanted to hear that. It reminded me how once I called one of my favorite teachers and told him that I’d been rejected from some competitive exhibitions. “You must not be any good,” he retorted.

A rabbi was telling us the other day that it takes three to four generations to change behavior, and that education doesn’t help. As we talked more, it became clear that he thought of education as “instruction” and I thought of it as “experience” (à la John Dewey). He then agreed that it might be a little easier to change with experience. In the story, Master Zhaozhou is providing an experience for the old lady. She is taking on suffering for everyone. What she’ll hopefully discover is that she’s not separate from them, and she will be “reborn” (to use a Christian term) in heaven.

I think this idea of suffering for all people is workable. For one, it is all we can do. If you consider suffering is how one responds to life then you can’t really help another. But you can model for others by going into your own suffering and reducing it.

When Buddha was enlightened he said that all beings were enlightened. He realized that we aren't separate. Like with suffering, the real culprit is believing that we are not separate and that we don’t really suffer alone. What the old woman was asked to do wasn’t really possible. Can a finger suffer without affecting the rest of the body?

Perhaps the wise teacher, in telling his student to take in all suffering, was creating an experience where she would focus on good thoughts about others. Perhaps she would realize that she too was born in heaven. Perhaps the Master’s instruction was using a little bit of reverse psychology.

It would take a lot of compassion to suffer for all, as Mary and Christ did. It is the ultimate benevolent act... to take a bullet for a friend (or even for someone you don’t know.)

P.S. Too many credit cards saga: Did successfully cancel one credit card today. Almost did another, but then they offered me $50 if I spend $300 on groceries. How many carrots is that at 99 cents a lb. and bananas at .45 cents a lb.?

Homage to Dorothy

Grandma Dodie did it. Lifting 202 N. Allen, Leroy, Ill.

I get speechless when something important happens... like my mother-in-law moving today to another world. She's been so much part of our lives for 46 years. She never hesitated to give us what she could. And she was an incredible witness. She noted everything that happened, apparently without judgement.

She was very different from my mom who evaluated and judged everything. When we’d go to visit my mom, the 2nd day (after she slept on it), she’d tell us what was wrong with us and what should be changed. I was so use to it that I never objected. Sometimes Linda did.

Linda’s mom was different. She seemed grateful and duty-driven. Her great pleasure was in participating in the unfolding of life. But she also got pleasure from following directions... lovingly... that was Dorothy.

Our kids would come and go to them as they were growing up. They’d always come back well-behaved... and that would last a few hours.

One time we had a big tree cut by our house and she eyed a large piece of the tree. She asked for a hammer and chisel and carved our address in the wood. It lasted for about 10 years.

They lived in our house-to-be for a year when it was enlarged (and did much of the work)... and then another year when we built a studio. I soon realized that what we really built, besides a house and studio, was a pretty incredible and long-lasting relationship.

A friend told me today that when someone dies, something leaves the room. With machines, they aren’t much different whether they are turned on or off. With people it is different. What emanates... that life force... appears to vanish when the person leaves. May Dorothy find peace in her new life. We will miss her.

Del, Dorothy, Josh (with camera), and Melissa

Nudging History

A Black student, Nissy Aya, at Columbia said, “It's traumatizing to sit in Core classes. We are looking at history through the lens of these powerful, white men. I have no power or agency as a black woman, so where do I fit in?”

Dennis Prager claimed that Columbia made a mistake listening to her and following her lead. http://www.creators.com/opinion/dennis-prager/a-response-to-a-black-student-at-columbia.html

He said that Columbia should keep up pushing the laurels of the great white men, because it would be sad if someone missed learning about these men.

I doubt that Nissy was asking for that. She wanted balance. She didn't want to throw out the baby with the bath water.

I’m more in line with Nissy. I attend a group (all women except for me) where we look at stories about Zen woman. It provides some balance for me.

There are extraordinary examples of great women and people of color that students could study in their core curriculum. Prager is just defending the establishment.

I remember when I was at a meeting at the College Art Assocation around 1971 and Jansen was there (author of the leading text for Art History I & II)… someone asked him why there were no women artists in his book (or very few). He got up and walked out.

I came to learn from Beaumont Newhall’s photo history that he wasn’t writing about the famous photographers as much as he was deciding who will be remembered and will be forgotten.

History sometimes forgets some of the heroes of the past. So it has to be nudged to correct the inaccuracies.

Failure and Plagues

Yesterday I talked about dying. Today I’m going to talk about failure… and maybe about plagues, another uplifting subject.

I tried to cancel another credit card. I think I have twelve more to cancel. It was the same racket. If I spend so much in three months they will give me $75. I can’t say no. That is 75 cans of diced tomatoes (with tax). Would I throw that away?

And then there is Scandal. I need to buy 4 episodes to get to the last 5 episodes. I bought two today. Probably tomorrow will buy the next two.

Failure. But it was so nice to meditate tonight and just breath deeply. We think of all this stuff we want… steaks, travel, sex… but when you are having trouble breathing, you want one thing. To take a deep breath without coughing. It was great.

This week’s Torah portion has to do with the seven plagues. We read this tonight in our little meditation/Torah study group.

There are only two groups of people for whom the Plagues do not present a problem—those who accept the Bible literally and those who dismiss it as book of tales on par with the legends of King Arthur or Robin Hood.  For the rest of us there are lots of questions with only partial answers. What really did happen in Egypt? What were the authors trying to tell us happened? What message is there for us at the dawn of the 21st century in these Plagues? The easy answer is that God sent the Plagues to establish His power and might, to prove that He was Master of the Universe. This may be an easy answer, but hardly a satisfying one. From: http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/2016/01/torah-readings-for-saturday-january-9.html

If we’ve been bad, I can see how we will believe that we caused the Plagues. And if we’ve been good, we believe that life is unfair (why didn’t God listen?). Maybe there is some third alternative, that life happens as it happens. Earthquakes and floods come and go. If we want to read something into them, we can. Or we can do our best to live a good life irrespective of the cards we are dealt.

Goodnight.

Recovery from Life and the Plagues

In 24 minutes my alarm will ring telling me it is time to write.

I’ve been thinking about the idea that death is recovery from life. Linda thinks that’s silly… that it is a misuse of the word “recovery.”

I started to see life as a marathon (which I’ve never literally have ran). When you are done, I assume you need to recover. So it may be with life.

I read the other day about an urn that makes a tree out of a person. You put in the ashes, add some water, and presto, a tree is born. Granted this happens eventually, but it takes a long time. Imagine waiting in a grave to become a tree. With a good tomb, it might not happen over night.

And I finished the first 4 years of Scandal. Whew! That was rough. I’d have to pay $2.99 each to see the next four. That is something I can wait to see next year on Netflix.

Back to this idea of recovery. Some die fast and some die slow. When you die fast, it doesn’t seem like a recovery. It is more like you just had your life taken away. But when you live a long life, and then your body starts to fail… well, that may be more of a recovery.

In all this morbidity, our clock in the kitchen wants to be an hour slower. I replaced an ok battery, but still, it is slowing down like my mother-in-law. I told Linda I would rough up the contacts… she said that we had it in St. Louis and that it has lived a good life.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll write about why God apparently chose the Israelites over the Egyptian. How else do you explain the seven plagues? Though… it wasn’t like it would be smooth sailing for the Israelites… so maybe they weren’t so chosen. More tomorrow. Maybe.

Heaven and Hell

There is a story of a Heaven and Hell that are the same except that in Heaven people feed each other with long spoons and in hell they starve because their spoons are too long to feed themselves.

There seem to be two points. One is that H and H are the same place, and two, that the difference is that when you care for others you'll be in Heaven.

So what makes us think that if only I had x y and z I'd be so happy. Supposedly, dentists have the highest rate of suicide and the poor Burmese are happy beyond belief. What does that say?

How do we reframe the life we have so that it is Heaven? Other than feeding the other, what can we do.

The people in Hell are just thinking about themselves. They are not part of a whole, but rather believe they are single entities. The are miserable and starving—not only from lack of food, but from lack of loving and being loved.

We talk about being nurtured. When we are young, we think happiness is getting what we want. But soon discover that has problems in itself. We might have what we want and then worry that it won't stick around. It might grow stale. It might fall on the floor and break.

In Heaven and Hell we find the same food and the same silverware. And we find people acting differently. This is counterintuitive in a sense. Feed others to be fed?How can that be? Is that different from our primordial instincts?

I heard about an elephant that died, and all the other elephants came to the elephant corpse and mourned for three days. Why should other elephants care about an elephant that they might have rarely interacted with previously?

I keep thinking I should say something more personal about my particular quest for happiness. When have I tried to feed myself with an impossibly long spoon? And have I realized that I'm not separate but rather part of a team?

What is the food? What can I do to help others eat it? Perhaps not interrupting and letting others tell their story is one way (Lao-Tau)? What are other ways?

Scandal and Meeting Others on Equal Ground

I've been watching Scandal... heavy duty... now in the fourth year, and one to go. But my 10pm alarm rang, so I had to turn it off to write.

Linda asked if the world is really that crazy. I said yes. And Scandal doesn't hold a candle to the Torah for the crazy things that men and women do.

Linda's mom is on her last days on earth. Between the roller coaster of Scandal, and the roller coaster of Linda's mom, and all the other roller coasters (like the Chinese stock market today)... life is pretty crazy.

What is a lull but a moment before an explosion? Why are we surprised with each explosion? How does one stay sane knowing that at slightly random intervals something tragic will happen. And at other random intervals, something beautiful will happen.

I'm reminded of a book I saw 50 or 60 years ago... called The Miracle of Birth (now a YouTube). Life seems a lot more than that. It is not just the land of milk and honey. It is the whole shebang.

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On another subject, I promised someone I'd write something about the idea of meeting others on equal ground (a Buddhist “precept”). We tend to judge others. And doing so means that we compare them to us. And we always win... or at least most the time... because we judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions.

I can often hear myself thinking when judging others thoughts like:

“He doesn't stand up straight.”

“He mumbles his words.”

“He doesn't have an advanced college degree.”

And on and on. I carry a bag of these thoughts... and no one can win because I pull out one for every situation.

And in reality, when I do it, I'm the loser. I lost because I had a chance to connect with someone and instead cut them off.

Guess I have my work cut out for tomorrow.

Tragedy vs. Misery

Another resolution was to cut my number of credit cards in half. That would leave me more than 10. So I called Discover, and they offered me $100 if I spend $1000 in three months. I said “yes.” Yes, a sucker is born every day.

One of the benefits of being sick is that you lose a little weight. I was going to go to Weight Watchers and renew my lifetime membership, but I'd get in trouble with Linda. As it is, I'm going to sneak out twice today... one more than allowed. (And ended up just sneaking out once.)

I loved this quote by D.H. Lawrence, “Tragedy, ought to be a great kick at misery.”

I guess it would be like pinching someone who is depressed. Misery is looking inward and tragedy is looking outward.

So tomorrow... the next day in this saga... a few more kale tamales... a few more pills... a massage... make a smoothie with all the scraps of veges...

Good night.

Closer to Normal Today

Feeling closer to normal today. I woke up at 6:30 am, with a great line on my tongue that I should have written down. Instead I went back to sleep and forgot it.

I'm not supposed to do any physical work. So I sit in a chair and ask Linda to do this or that. I kidded her last night that she doesn't have a 24/7 smile. I guess she's human!

Will, no fever today. Looks like a couple of people who were praying for me were successful. Or, more successful than those praying for the pneumonia.

Get to go to Torah study now... and then the hardware store for six screws. I have recently organized all my screws and nuts so I wouldn't have to keep going to the hardware store. Yet, I always come up not having the ones I need. Is there a lesson there? Preparation doesn't work?

And I continually mess up by not reading instructions. It seems I'm wired to think that is cheating. Maybe after I'm 70, soon, I'll start reading instructions. But I'd rather make mistakes.

There are actually a couple of ideas I wanted to write about.

One is from Torah class today, where Moses is told by God to take off his shoes because the ground is holy. One thing I've learned in the last year is that saying x is y (this ground is holy) says nothing about z being y or not. But, the odds are a little greater, if x is y, then z is y. Just a little greater. You reach into a bag and grab a M&M. Generally, if you hear objects clanking around in the bag, they will be M&Ms too.

If Jews are chosen by God, and given “the promised land” that sways the chances that others are chosen as well, and given their “promised land.”

The second is from when I used the phrase with Michael today that one has to step outside of their shell. As I said it, I could see a shell of a body opening up, and the inside becoming the outside. It made me think of Flint's blog post (http://flintsparks.org/2015/12/the-space-between/),

“Many of you have heard me say, over and over, that awakening does not happen “in” a person. It happens “between.” If our lives are woven as a single fabric and linked as one inconceivable network of relationship, then to “attain individual enlightenment” has no meaning. However, the realization of liberating intimacy through profound meeting is the great gift of all contemplative practice and spiritual inquiry. But opening the space between us requires courage — the courage to see and to be seen. This capacity is grounded in the practice of loving presence which is the embodiment of wisdom and compassion.”

Perhaps when Socrates said that the "unexamined life is not worth living" he meant “life” not to mean my individual trials and tribulations, but rather “life” meaning interactions and intersections with others. In Torah study we read from a book called the Aura of the Torah (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0827609485/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=43209081026&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10674722123649549816&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_7ueyorf35u_b). Aura is something we often miss as we get caught up with the trials and tribulations of our lives. As Wordsworth wrote, ”...Little we see in Nature that is ours;....”

Happy New Year—Resolutions and Worrying

There seems to be some disagreements about whether New Years’ resolutions work. Like most things, they probably sometimes do and sometimes don't.

I'm making one today. To write something on my blog everyday. But not like before. Maybe. I'm going to focus on being honest rather than being wise. Somehow I realized this year that I am pretty stupid. Not so much in a demeaning way. More about realizing that we can know so little.

And I fight pneumonia... looking like I'll be the winner for now, mostly. Funny to think of the pneumonia as "not me" and "me" as the warrior. I tell others to embrace their enemy. Maybe I should take my advice?

Barbara writes about worrying. My mom and grandma were the worriers that I knew.

I commented on her fine blog:

Bertrand Russell wrote in his autobiography that as a youth he was fraught with worry, but then realized that anything that might happen in the grand scheme would be of such little consequence that it wouldn't matter. He claimed that he stopped worrying then. I once talked with someone in the early days of AIDS. He said waiting for the test results was excruciating, but finally learning about his death sentence was exhilarating. He had been liberated, in a sense.

Response to the poem “Mayfly” by Ellery Akers. Her poem starts: A mayfly struggles in the muddy water. I tell myself not to interfere, but ....

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The angel helped the mayfly whose lifespan was only one day. It was not one of those acts that will appear on the front page of the New York Times.

I was struck by the reflection of the angel: how she felt better helping the mayfly escape the muddy water. Was “to feel good” the angel’s stimulus, or simply something she noticed after the fact.

The other day I helped a little bug find its way from our dining room to our garden. Why did I do that? If my motivation was simply for my own pleasure I would consider myself pretty selfish. Or if it was to avoid feeling bad for the demise of the bug in a foreign environment, I would think of myself as equally selfish.

So why do we help our struggling siblings? Are we separate from them? Are there really lines in the sand where I end and you begin? My mom used to say that when we mourn, we mourn our own death. Do we feel nothing for the other?

Why does the angel first tell herself not to interfere. Is it because the bug’s life is so short? My mother-in-law is at the end of her life. Yet she probably has many mayfly life spans ahead of her. And many angels. Yesterday she was dressed in her street clothes even though she couldn’t make it to the streets. It made her angel daughter very happy to see her ready for another day in the big world. Last night she fell out of her bed and survived without an injury (talking about a cat having nine lives).

In any case… Do angels give us life by taking care of us? Is life given and taken? We see daily incidents where life is taken prematurely, either accidentally or on purpose. We are saddened when this happens. It is as if a person was meant to live much longer than they actually do. But imagine they were only suppose to live as long as they lived. And imagine the mayfly was suppose to have a longer fluttering in the muddy water. Suppose suppose. Endless thinking takes me away from making someone’s day a little easier or happier.

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.

“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.

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.

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

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.

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.”

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.

How the ♥♥♥♥ do you kill a Turtle?

I'm not going to tell them how my sister killed her sick turtle by putting it in the freezer. They might not understand how that is Zen writing.

Well, if her intent was to relieve the turtle from suffering maybe we could forgive her. But it was just that, who wants a turtle covered with fungus who could barely move?

Our freezer wasn't the modern type that auto defrosts. It was more like a cavern mostly filled with ice. I'm not sure we ever defrosted that thing with its big chrome handle and obnoxious heavy curves.

Wait, I wasn't going to write about that. “No, Kim, don't you dare mention that,” she said. “If you ever say that I'll never talk to you again.”

“I just didn't know what else to do,” she said. “It was so sick, and it would have died anyway, you know.”

A few years later we had a Fourth of July party, and Alex, the kid closest to my age, went with me to our garage where I had a goldfish. “Let's see what happens,” I said, “when we put iodine in the water.” So we did. At first it did bother the fish, but later….

Why didn't I speak up and save the turtle? Why did Alex save the fish? We were both responsible for the demise of these helpless creatures.

Today my wife was bothered that someone didn't give as they had promised. “Should I say something,” she asked? I told her that I called up and complained to a lawn care company because they cleaned up one yard by blowing all the debris across the street. Tonight they used a hose rather than a leaf blower. A little progress in Austin.

I can imagine the turtle and the goldfish exchanging stories in pet heaven about how there owners were missing their hearts. I wonder what stories the lawn debris tell about how they happened to be relocated by a noisy wind machine.

P.S. My wife claims it was she or us that froze the turtle… not my sister. Is there a statute of limitations on turtle and fish abuse? She claims it was the most humane way to send it to the next world. We didn’t have Google to ask, “How the ♥♥♥♥ do you kill a Turtle?”

P.S.S. My sister Gail just wrote, "I never put the turtle in the freezer. I think it was Linda (my wife).

But I did bury my alive turtle along with Sandy's dead one to see if it would get to China. In Grandma and Grandpa‘s yard in Portland." So I wrote her to see if they made it to China.“

P.S.S.S. “You can use my name. They got to China I think but I'm not sure.”

P.S.S.S.S. Our parents shielded us from death. So I guess we had to do our own experimenting. When we did kaddish tonight at prayer service, I asked if we could say a prayer for some animals that I killed when I was a kid. The rabbi said sure, we can do that.

I'm Sorry... or I'm Wrong

I get in a lot of trouble trying to defend myself. Someone says something, I respond, and then they really get angry. Why don't explanations make things better? And why don't I learn from my mistakes?

Should I just let it be? There is that expression about adding insult to injury. The alternative seems to be to let it be according to both the Beatles and a Zen koan.

I've given others the advice that if you add wood to a fire you'll hardly squelch it. Rather, you make the fire hotter and last longer. Why don't I take my own advice?

I've also used the expression that it is better to be right than alive. Letting it be seems closer to being alive. A flower is trampled on. Does it rise up and hit the trampled? Or does it simple enjoy its new posture?

The flower didn't exactly do anything to cause its trampling. It just happened to be growing in the wrong place. Yet, if it were human, it might have taken its trampling as personal as I often do.

When I dig a little deeper I often find that my trampling had little to do with the situation at hand. Often someone had a bad day or week, and I'm available to be stomped upon. Again, turning the other cheek seems like a better way to cool the flames.

P.S. I talked this over with my wife. She suggested saying, "I'm sorry." How can some people be so smart?

P.S.S. Then I let my wife read this. She said, “You know, there is one other possibility.” "What’s that," I said. “That you are wrong.”

If Life is Accidental...

I wrote this pertaining to the comment in Opening the Hand of Thought... that life is accidental.

If life is accidental (as are the ping pong balls falling into a bell curve at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago), it would seem that it should be that way all the time. When we think of an untimely death we are implying that "such and such will happen (long healthily life) unless... an accident occurs." But I think the guy who said that life is accidental is saying that even the expected result is an accident. If you say heads and the coin lands on heads then heads is an accident rather than an event caused by one flipping a coin and predicting a result. Perhaps we should feel gratitude that we can flip a coin over and over again, and not begrudge too much when it is tails despite our calling "heads."

Does that make sense?

The Velveteen Rabbit

I saw a photo of me 60 years ago. “What a cute kid,” I thought. Then I remembered how I thought of myself then and was surprised at how different that was to how I think of myself now.

There is a Buddhist meditation where we scan our innards (see: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/khantipalo/wheel271.html). The idea is to not get attached to our youthful stupendous looks and to just see ourselves as nothing too appetizing.

This is more in line with the Velveteen Rabbit, who has developed her charm and grace over many years. She is no longer our prom queen. The beauty she now maintains is far deeper and more substantial.

In Europe we see buildings that are a couple of thousands of years old. Some have been maintained and others are mere skeletons of what they once were. But they all have a patina and a presence that is not seen in our modern buildings.

We are a society of the new. Models have a short life span. Unfortunately or fortunately, they don't look like the rest of us. Wouldn't it be nice to see people in the fashion ads that had bald heads and beer bellies and used a cane or wheelchair to get around? People might not look like Miss America, but on the inside, they have the patina of a building that has been around for a while and have acquired a big heart and much wisdom that has lit up the lives of many.

Sadly, some mourn their aging. They look at how they aren't as they were, not at what they are. Some attempt to change their exterior rather than paying attention to the beauty of their interior. They are looking in the wrong mirror. Hopefully they will figure it out before it is too late.

Tackle Hunger in Texas

Making choices. I don't eat cookies. But yesterday I was hungry and and had one. Mmm. Then another. If one didn't kill me, another should be ok. Right?

And next to the cookie was a piece of chocolate cake. It was a small piece. Why not, I asked myself?

Then I went home, feeling like I had to confess to my wife how I had strayed from my path. She’s heard me before. Being from a Republican family, she gave me that pull yourself up by your bootstraps look. 

Recently I've become more aware of the multiple voices within me and how each decision seems to come from a jury. The hungry part of me presents his case, “I'm hungry and these cookies in front of me are there for the taking.” Then my rules part says, ‘But cookies aren't on the list.” My lenient part chirps in that just today my rules part shouldn't listen to that Scrooge. 

And one thing leads to another. Over and over again. Two cookies and half a piece of chocolate cake! Glad there is nothing stronger around!

A researcher in St Louis works with pigeons who will delay gratification for a bigger award. Some recent experiments with kids found that those who could delay gratification would go further in their careers. I wonder how delaying can be learned? Is it too late for me? I wonder, too, if there are emotional and physical ills that come from the denial of gratification? 

Freud described the ego as that which negotiates between our parents, the super ego, and our instinctual desires, our id. How we manage to walk steadily between these two voices separates the men from the boys, or is it the cookiers from the non-cookiers? 

Go Straight Ahead

The Old Woman of Taishan

Master Dogen's 300 Koan Shobogenzo,* Case 29

Featured in Mountain Record 17.2, Winter 1998

---

 The Main Case

There was an old woman on Mount Tai path. A monk asked her, “Where is the path to Mount Tai?”
The old woman said, “Go straight ahead.” The monk went on.
The woman said, “My dear reverend, you too go off like that.”
Monks came, one after another, asked the same question, and received the same answer.
Later, one of the monks told Zhaozhou about it and Zhaozhou said, “Wait here for awhile. Let me check her out.”
He went to the woman and said, “Where is the path to Mount Tai?”
The woman said, “Go straight ahead.” 7 Zhaozhou went on.
The woman said, “My dear reverend, you too go off like that.”
Zhaozhou came back and said to the assembly, “I have checked out that old woman for you.”

Peter said 50 years ago why don't you just become Kim the photographer?  He was telling me to go straight ahead. He was an architecture student and then became a landscape architect. 

I didn't focus. I wanted to try everything. I had to ten majors in college. I moved from perfectly good jobs to other jobs. I taught new stuff all the time and always wanted to do new things. I never sensed that I was going straight ahead. Or was I?

I had a great uncle who had been a rabbi but gave it up partly because he realized that all religions had so much the same wisdom. He is my spiritual leader. The lamp I photographed was his. I am surround by his objects in my home. He taught me, as did my parents and teachers, to listen to everyone America believe no one. 

Maybe it is my ADD. Maybe it is how I see all things as so related to each other. When the wise woman told the monks to go straight ahead she was saying that you decide and do not waiver. But what do I do, where my straight ahead is rerouting continually? I guess that is my straight ahead. 

1959

I remembered first looking in the mirror and wondering if anyone would notice the two zits on my face, or the braces on my teeth. Did my breathe smell? I wish I could chew gum but the orthodontist told me that it would make my braces come off and then I'd have to start all over.

I put the butch wax on my hair so that it would rise up to the sky, making me just a little taller. They called me “Mouse” at school because I was so short. Still am, but I don't think about that so much any “I could have been a basketball star,” I thought, “if only I was a few inches taller.”

I would go to a few parties, but I had no idea of what to say so I would just dance every dance. I liked the slow dances mostly because I could feel a warm body pressed against mine.

Finally I found a girlfriend I could talk to. We'd talk on the phone every night. I can't remember a thing we might have talked about. But one day see invited me to be on Chicago bandstand with her and I broke up with her. But that was after I had bought her an engraved bracket with my name on it. It must have cost a couple of dollars. There was a little Chinese store around the corner from my house where I ordered it. It was run by a little old Chinese woman. I remember the smell of the store and how everything seemed to twinkle. 

I had two older sisters. Boy did I envy them because I wanted to be older. Being the little one in the family and being a Freshman in high school were about the worst positions in life that one could have. Or, at least, that's what I thought at the time.

Recently a zen teacher said that the greatest source of our suffering is wanting to be someone we aren't. I wanted to be tall like Mark, a better athlete like Billy, a better student like Jon, and 16 like my sister's boyfriend. I wanted to be so many different people. I probably just looked out the window in classes and played "what if" with myself, wondering what it would all be like if I wasn't me.

I think that was the year when my horse fell on my foot, slipping as we went down a muddy hill. I started the year with a cast on my leg and managed to be on the basketball team for a few weeks, even with the cast. But homework was too tough, ending my hopes of becoming a professional athlete. 

It was also the time when I stared taking pictures. Finally I could express myself. Finally I could do something that others couldn't do. Finally it was ok to be me.

Perfection: One Leg Shorter than the Other

Kim Mosley

I once had a teacher in college who asked me, “isn’t it terrible being as stupid as you are?” To which I replied, “Oh, not at all, I have so much to learn.” It is much easier when you don't know anything. If everyone had one leg shorter than the other they wouldn't look down at their own legs with disdain. But they do know. When they buy a pair of shoes they discover they have to buy two pairs of shoes… or lop off some toes, or go to a speciality shop.  

I've returned to taking pictures with a real camera rather than an iPhone. I had to have the perfect camera. Well, not exactly. But at least a really good one. But now the question arises: what pictures should I be making?

I forgot that with real cameras, when you shoot in low light, only part of the picture is sharp. I did a picture of a bouquet of bananas and my wife complained that the stem was out of focus. I had missed out of focus. There is a term bokeh that refers to how a lens renders something out of focus. My lens is suppose to do that well. I love the soft look of things. It reminds me of how tentative we are. We don't really stop here or there. We are mostly hot air. And when we have a fever, we are even a little warmer.

But back to the challenge of photography. Such a simple idea of walking around with this box and telling it to "shoot" at just the right time. But when is that?

So I’ve had it with focusing. My camera only has manual focus and it is a little hard to see whether I'm in focus or not, so I ordered some focusing screen from Taiwan that is suppose to improve that. But in the mean time, I remembered that a student used to call infinity “eternity,” so I wondered why don't I just focus on eternity and let everthing else fall where they are. So what is close to me will be bokehed, and what is far will be sharp. I gave it a try and my wife said “scary.”

P.S. I got the focusing screen from Taiwan, but alas, I’m told it won’t fit in my camera. As to not focusing, I was showing my pics to a friend today and when she saw the out of focus pictures she said, “Ugh, out of focus.”

His Imperative

In response to “imperative” by Steven Schroeder.

So his practice,
shouting blessed day,
was not so
anyone would hear.

It was bitter cold.

his mouth
was frozen shut—
he could only mean
the words.

His hat, begging
for coins,
remained cold
and empty.

What was blessed
about this day?

Was it
his practice?
His intention?
His trying to share?

Did it matter
he was frozen,
yet blessed?

In the Dark

"They are not rearranging the room. They are turning on a light to see what's there.” From The Hidden Lamp

I often think of change as altering my environment. Yesterday I quit eating meat. This morning I found a new place for my old printer so I could have a place for a new one.

The confusion I have about turning on a light is what to do if you don't like what is illuminated by the light. I saw the meat as dead stuff entering my body, and saw that my printer needed to be moved to make a place for a new (bigger) printer.

Am I missing the Zen idea of accepting the world as it is? Or maybe after illuminating the meat, I notice that its life force expired some time ago. And illuminating my room I see that there is no space for my new printer.

But what if I illuminate myself? What would I see? What would I accept? And what, now illuminated, would I want to change?

P.S. After writing this, our Zen teacher walked in and asked us why we were in the dark. I said that we were reading about illumination. She flicked on the lights—way too bright for my eyes.