Egg Donors

I read this interesting article in the NYTimes today about women getting up to $50,000 for good eggs, while men are getting $100 for good sperm (is this a little bit of a disparity?).

If I wanted some great kids on a limited budget, I'd opt for the sperm. Of course, the combination ($50,100) would be really amazing (a.k.a. Superwoman?).

I've often asked people what would they like, a kid with fantastic genes or a kid with run-of-the-mill (my words) genes like their own. They answer, almost in unison, that they want to stick with run-of-the-mill genes "because it would be their's." What is wrong with them? Don't they want to provide every opportunity for "their" kid. Or are there egos so large that they (secretly) think they have the best genes in the world?

Mulling it over, I'm certainly glad that Linda and I used our own ingredients. But that is hindsight, seeing that the kids turned out so well. I suppose that if they didn't, I might regret our choice to "use our own." But Linda wouldn't.

Mother's Day

When I hear "mother" complaints,
or "you're lucky you
have a mother
you can stand" comments,
I wish for just another
moment with my mother,
who left me
more than
ten years ago,
after promising to
live forever.

When she was with us,
we would often take
her for granted,
engrossed in our
own thoughts and lives,
until now,
when we remember
how our mom
was always here
(or there) for us,
on the other end
of the phone line,
waiting
for our call.

She couldn't hear
so well, so we'd say
a few things until
she could latch onto
a certain word
or phrase that
she'd understand.
Then she'd
issue a soliloquy
with
passion and vigor,
and,
when through, would ask,
calmly,
if we wanted to talk to
dad.

If only I could find her number
now.

Sucker and Dokusan: the tablecloth is still there!

I am a spot. No, I'm really just a t-ir-ed part
of a never ending (confused) tablecloth.

In the last week, as so many of you pointed out, I've been suckered twice... first for wanting a free ipad and second for wanting to see who is looking at my profile. I need to put up a sign above my computer, "There is no such thing as a free lunch!"

Dokusan, which I've written about before, is an "interview" with a zen teacher. I hadn't done it for awhile because I was still trying to answer his question to me about what I thought about the precepts (the subject of many of these posts). But it had been almost a month since my last "interview," so I started to feel "overdue."

I wanted to talk to him about my ideas in yesterday's blog... that I was starting to accept my "MO" about what I do. Maybe my "MO" is folly, but it is what I am right now.

In any case, when I went to sit this am at 7:30 (today was a half-day sesshin) he read a quote from Suzuki Roshi about how we shouldn't try to be perfect, and I thought of a painter in St. Louis (deceased) who would make a white bread bologna and cheese sandwich, and then go into his studio in the morning and not come out until dinner time. Wow... that's perfect. I wanted to be like that!

Then the Zen turned Burmese monk gave a talk and mentioned renunciation, and I started thinking that I was focusing on me me me and needed to renunciate that a little.

So by the time I finally got to dokusan I had these thoughts added to thoughts added to thoughts. My teacher suggested thinking less of me and more of it ("big mind," though he didn't use that term). Later, I imagined a spot on a table cloth. You clean the spot, and it is gone. What is gone? The tablecloth is still there.

If this doesn't make sense and makes your head whirl, you aren't alone.

Dog Gifts Turned Around

Today I started to figure out my routine. I've never quite understood it, though I think I've been suspicious about my "MO" (modus operandi) for a long time.

When I was around 14, I was walking to school with my neighbor, and I told him that I thought I wasted a lot of time. In his infinite wisdom (he's gone on to become a star in his field) he said, "no, in some way you are using what you do." (Don't expect an accurate quote after 50 years... I'm far from being Ananda.)

I've wanted to be like those who focus on a job like a pitbull, and don't let go until it is done. My wife is like that. She's making a kimono for an event tomorrow and has been working on it all week, and she couldn't care less about anything else. Anything, that is, but her plants getting water... but they are her babies... so I watered them.

So what is this "MO" that apparently is going to follow me to my deathbed?

I get up in the morning, either by virtue of a clock radio that is frying my brain according to an energy consultant that inspected our house recently, or because I've had enough sleep for one night. Then I get ready to go out into the world and either take a walk and stop at a little mexican hideout to have a couple of tacos, or eat breakfast at home. After that is over, I would go to work if I hadn't of retired... but now face a quandary of what to do. I find something that is useful (so far)... probably not earth shaking... but needed within our lives at least.

In the back of my mind I think... I should be painting on a canvas (or some other kind of exalted activity). But no, I might decide to cancel a few credit cards, or replace a door threshold, or do something on one of websites I work on, or or or...

What came to me today was that all these activities are kind of like what the homeless people do who stand by the highway with a "feed me" sign. Like me, they are waiting for something good to come their way. I try to have an adventure each day (it hasn't failed yet). Then I usually sit at the zen temple at 5:40... and let the day pass through me once more... eat dinner, and then try to make something of it all. I remind myself frequently of Wordsworth's words, "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility."

Today I drove to the other side of town to buy some silicone. My GPS kept insisting that I take the wrong highway, but I disobeyed and all went well. I listened to a moving dharma talk on my iphone as I drove, and then went to two different stores where incredibly nice merchants gave me lots of kind vibes and good information.

In the process of all this mundane activity, I kept waiting for something to hit me... something that I could make a drawing about and a poem about, or maybe write about. Throughout the day I received emails, with a number from our neighborhood elist complaining about dogs leaving gifts in other people's yards. Which all started me imagining all the non-humanoid emails to the non-humanoid elists complaining about us (humanoids) polluting their oceans and their lands and their skies. And we complain about dog gifts?

When I heard his poetry...

When I heard his poetry,
I wondered what became of those
poems I hid, tucked away
in different parts of my body.

There was the poem about
scraping my finger as a kid,
hidden on a knuckle,
and a poem about the pencil
lead stuck below my eye
from the third grade.

Everyday I'd pull one out
from my heart, and innocently
wonder where it had
come from... a whisper,
so to speak, that I could
hear so clearly

until, wanting them to come
out just a little better,
I took a "workshop" from
a pro, and didn't write
a poem again.

P.S. If you are wondering what the drawing has to do with the poem... well, don't waste your time. Other than one being done right after the other one, they are very distant relatives... by marriage, perhaps.

What shall we do tomorrow, what shall we ever do?

Title from the Wasteland by T.S. Eliot. As I drove to the zen center tonight, I wondered what I'd write about today. In fact, when I woke this am, I wondered what I would write about.

The ad is back on my website, since my friend never said that she was offended. I finally found a source to sell a civil war flintlock that I've had since a kid, so now I can buy an ipad... and now wondering if I should wait for the next version. Nothing very interesting to write about.

After sitting tonight, the director of the zen center gave a "way-seeking" (spiritual growth) talk. I've known him for over a year, yet didn't know what to expect. In fact, I had such a premonition that I needed to go that I cancelled another engagement to be there.

He told his story and it was very beautiful. He knocked my socks off.

If he had more secrets than those he told us I'd be surprised. Imagine letting it all out. All your secrets. Out!!! How freeing that must be. Yesterday I talked about nakedness and clothes. When you tell your secrets you are naked, but soon people see that you are real, and you can then wear who you really are. And he told my secrets, and your secrets too. We do all have the same secrets, with just minute variations.

My favorite aunt Reggie (a psychotherapist) talked to me once about stories. She said that we all have our stories, but sometimes we need to look at the self behind the story. Maybe we think of the story as our secret, where really it is our self that is our secret. What does it really mean to be honest? Totally completely honest? Would it be about the candy you stole when you were a kid (funny, I remember thinking about stealing... but I don't remember if I did or not). Or would it be about something far more profound?

Stories, and then more stories, and then strip those away, and what's left? That's really naked. Who we are when our clothes are off, our confessions have be exhumed, and nothing but the truth is left. Nothing but who we really, really are. Naked.

Why not Sit Alone?

She wrote, "I sat for an hour yesterday in a chair. I don't understand why a person should sit in a group when they can sit at home, longer? Then there is no driving. Drive to the center, take shoes off, go in, sit, put shoes back on, leave. To me going to the center is just for people who lack the discipline to meditate at home."

Yesterday I wrote about Marina's exhibit at MOMA. The figures, in meditative postures (maybe trances would be a better word), were nude. No, naked. No, nude. Oh, I don't know. Models are nude, strippers are naked.

As I sat today, I was doan. It is the person who faces everyone who is facing the walls and rings the bells for the sitting and the service (I'm really a beginner at this role). I though about the question above as I sat and looked at the "sitters."

Earlier I was talking about the issue with a priest and the director of the zen center. I said that I thought sitting was much more intimate than talking. Sometimes it seems we talk in order to hide what we are feeling. Like clothes. When we sit, we are naked. Intimacy in zen is enlightenment. And I suspect part of enlightenment is seeing one's connection with all. Therefore... therefore... therefore...

It appeared to me that some, though literally sitting with others, might be just sitting by and for themselves. But part of sitting is that we are sitting for others as well as for ourselves. The pain in my leg is the pain of suffering throughout Earth. The joy of a deep breath that makes a pleasant journey in and out of me is the joy of someone seeing a newborn emerge from their mother's womb. Sitting is not a solitary activity, no matter where it is done.

In one day, according to a fellow sangha member's blog, 40000 thoughts pass through our head. We are naked when we are sitting because those thoughts are now revealed to us. Nothing is between who we are and who we pretend to be.

We feel the presence of others in the room. Sometimes we hear them wiggle a little, or cough, or hear their stomach's growling.

But still, why would we want to be in a room naked with others? Or are we really with others (who are actually other parts of ourselves), linked together by a web? I read a description once of a number of monks going into a three month practice period (wrote about this recently as well) and they were told to think of themselves as oarsmen on a ship. If they didn't all keep rowing, the ship wouldn't make it to their destination.

Is sitting a social activity? It certainly isn't a cocktail party, where we have the tendency to wear a lot of clothes, hoping to hide our secrets.

Some of us feel like we need our daily sit. It is our chance to share very private moments with our selves, and with each other.

I don't think I really answered the question. But maybe that's ok. This article, Why We Chant, seems to say well some of the joy in sitting together.