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?