Dialogue with a Squirrel

The Art Institute of Chicago started as a storehouse for plaster casts to support the students‘ need to draw Greek and Roman statues. Eventually, it became a museum of art. I’ve been thinking about training and my long rejection of the idea. And then I met up with a verse on the training of an elephant in ancient India, and misread the verse, thinking they had the same problem with training that I did.

Yesterday I had a little thing going with a squirrel. He was trying to stay cool by laying his belly on a branch of a tree in the shade. I watched him, and he watched me, and eventually, he went back to work, scavenging pecans from our not too fruitful pecan tree, and I going in the house to get more garbage for trash collection day tomorrow.

Squirrels seem to have been well designed. Their natural instincts seem to work. Animals seem to share that quality of being authentic and functional. They don’t need the training to accomplish their higher needs unless they become domesticated.

Elephants do well without us. But when we want to ride them we have to tame them. I’m not sure that they become happier and more fulfilled. I’ll have to ask my elephant friends.

It seems that humans need a lot more work. Our natural instincts get us in all kinds of trouble,  We pass the fridge and eat more than we need for energy. We get infatuated and our life goes astray. We sit on a meditation cushion and drift off into Lala land. Why? Why can’t we just follow our instincts?

We train and train. All of us are doing one ironman or ironwoman after another. I had looked forward to retirement so I could stop trying so hard. I thought I could just be me, and follow every whim. Little did I know I’d have to face one boot camp after another.

Hard or Soft

For about 10 years we have been holding weekly zen writing sessions at the Austin Zen Center. We have it as a MeetUp group, with 850+ members, and also advertised on the Austin Zen Center web pages. We have each time a combination of people who have been coming for years, and newcomers. Last night I started by talking about the difference between consciousness and mindfulness in relation to photography. Ernest Haas (http://ernst-haas.com/), who came to St. Louis Community College to talk eons ago, spoke about the difference between looking and seeing. When looking, he said, you are merely orienting yourself. I don’t remember what he said about seeing, but he did suggest that is what the photographer tries to do. It seems much like mindfulness.

“With a bit of mindful observation, we can in fact easily notice how spacious and allowing the mind can be when we are open to differences and variety, and how narrow and cramped the mind can become when we are self-righteous and judgmental. Becoming aware of this difference can serve as a good signpost for noticing when the mind shifts from open-mindedness to closing down.” —Analayo. Satipatthana Meditation. Windhorse Publications. Kindle Edition.

In this wonderful book on one of the two basic sutras by Buddha that explain meditation, Analayo talks about the feminine quality of sati or mindfulness. I suspect that it is the difference between sprinting and long-distance running. I know nothing about either, but I suspect that when sprinting you are trying hard, and when long-distance running you are trying soft. Some of you runners might want to correct me.

Perhaps it is more like someone driving on a long trip and a race car driver racing in the Indianapolis 500.

“Once the crops have been harvested, however, the cowherd can relax and just observe the cows from a distance. All he has to do is to be aware that “there are the cows.” For this distant watching, the simile uses the term sati (Anālayo 2003: 53 and 2014a: 87). I picture the cowherd sitting relaxed at the root of a tree and watching the cows grazing in various places. All he has to do is just be aware of them from an uninvolved distance.”

Analayo is associating the cowherd with the meditator. Part of the reason for the “soft” approach is that the “hard” approach is unsustainable, even for a minute (try to stare intently at something for a minute).

Dog’s Best Friend

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about someone who changed my life. But my first thought was that it was really me who made the difference. People did various heroic acts to save me from my own doings, but in the end, it was I that changed my life. They did just what they did to me to others with little effect so it was our relationship that was the cause of something happening to me. They tried to lite a candle, but most of the time the wind blew out their match. Somehow their match lit my candle. And usually, it took a fair amount of persistence on both of our parts. Surprisingly, some of these generous folks have now gone on in their lives. I have a nagging feeling with some of them that somehow I disappointed them.

I had a geometry teacher, Mr. Moulton, who said that the best mathematician was the laziest one. He challenged us with proving theorems. It was probably some of the most fun I’ve had in my life. Much of school didn’t make sense. I didn’t have any affinity with learning facts, but I loved math. Something seemed so elegant and clear about math.

Then there was my grandpa. We worked together in the summer. He would let me do as much as I could. I think of him more like my father during those years. He accepted me in a way that my parents did not. My parents always wanted me to do better. My grandpa always admired how I could figure things out.

My parents and my sisters were very verbal. I couldn’t keep up with them. Then there was my art teacher who told my parents that I had made a beautiful photo. He encouraged me for years. He taught me about being creative. He was a gift of the gods for me.

In college, I had some wonderful teachers who taught me so much. The saw in me something that I did not see. All of a sudden I had a voice, and they encouraged me to use it.

My sister Gail was always a special soul in my life. She saw me in a very loving way. Somehow I could say anything to her and it was ok.

My wife of 50 years has been such a special friend. We have grown up together and like one another more and more as the years pass. I still miss her when she’s been gone all day and I am so glad when she returns home.

And then there is a dog who actually found me and became my friend for many years. He taught me quite a bit about friendship.

My kids were quite a surprise. From the beginning, they were so smart and independent. They seemed to develop into such fine people through some kind of magical spell.

And I’ve had a few good friends. Each gave me so much in their own ways.

Now I’ve had a number of Zen teachers, again each giving me so much care and teachings. I am grateful for the energies they expend and for the wisdom that they share.

It seems that my only regret is that all these influences are impermanent. Some of these people have died and others gave me what they could and went off in different directions. Luckily, I still have a number of them still around, and find new special ones everywhere I turn.

Fluctuating Emotions

Fluctuating emotions. I made coffee and it smelled good. I planned to take the coffee with me. I was happy. But I left it at home. Because we were late I rushed. I had just bought a new coffee maker and it worked well. I was unhappy because I left the coffee at home. Then at the doctor’s office, they had one of these pods coffee machines. I was a little happier. Usually, the coffee is about 3 or 4 on a scale of 10. This one had better coffee, maybe a 7 or 8. I was happy. Yesterday I taught my grandson to express his feelings on a scale of 0-10. Going to Sunday school was a 3 or a 4. His public school is a 7 or 8. I’m curious about why the difference. (I found out today that he got in trouble at Sunday school because he was too wild. Alas, maybe that’s why the 3 or 4).

It is hard for me to hear him when he’s in the back seat. When we had kids they could survive childhood in the front seat.

I wonder if the grandkids should pursue Bar Mitzvah? Should it be their choice? I’m divided in my mind about it. I don’t like the identification with one being Jewish or Christian or white or black or yellow. I like the idea of being a human being first... not even a man or a woman. But I do like the idea of the kids learning about religion. I rejected history (and religion) most of my life. I didn’t understand that it was who I am. I have an alternative idea that each Sunday I would take the kids to some different experience. But that wouldn’t create the bond and community that the kids get when they do Bar Mitzvah.

I’m always surprised by how many kids quit practicing after Bar Mitzvah. The ones who do come back do so after their kids are grown up. There are exceptions but generally, I see a void of people practicing from 13 to 30.

Peep Show in Flor.

When I saw Michelangelo’s David in Florence I was unable to look at it. I could just see the hoards of women admiring the 17’ perfect man. Even though he was 515 years old (today) he looked like he was made yesterday. I didn’t realize until reading something today that David was actually 30 when he was finally finished. First one sculptor, Agostino, worked on him before he gave up. Then a second sculptor, Rossellino, worked on him, again giving up. Finally, Michelangelo at age 26 took over the project and, unintimidated by the giant piece of marble, completed the project, despite the mistakes from the earlier sculptors efforts, in two years. Originally David was supposed to be the buttress for the Florence Cathedral, but because 30 years had passed, the marble had become too weak to do anything structural, so that idea was abandoned.

So here’s the perfect man, unable to hold up anything. What’s the meaning of that? If the marble was that soft, how would it have held up anything, even if put in place 30 years earlier?

What can I hold up? We are seeing pictures of the hurricane’s destructive path indicating that not much can withstand wind and water. We say someone is just a lot of hot air, thinking they can’t do much damage. But air can be lethal, as can be water.

Dantika and the Elephant

K many years ago was doing a multi-projector slide show and it was messing up like nobodies business. She was absolutely calm as she fought with the technology. It was the first time I had met her and I was very impressed by how she handled a very imperfect technology.

A number of years ago the senior Zen teacher, Norman Fischer, was bent out of shape because we didn’t have his books on hand when he came to do a talk. I’ve talked about this many times because I often have that thought that seasoned Zen practitioners shouldn’t “leak”—they should in all situations maintain equanimity.

I read the story of the Dahlia Lama visiting a hospital where there were many with serious illnesses. He cried with each person, but when he left the hospital dropped his sadness and started laughing at a funny joke.

Last night my Zen teacher was bent out of shape because her Apple TV wanted a code that wasn’t appearing on the screen. I told her about K. She said there is no should about how a Zen priest should act.

My chance for equanimity came today. I wanted to go through the new self-serve checkout line at Central Market. A clerk was there to help people. I told him that I wanted to do it by myself. He started pressing my buttons. I said again that I wanted to do it by myself. I started thinking that he was assuming that I was a non-technical old man. He pressed one button too many, and I quit the check out process and started over on another station. I repeated, “I want to do it by myself.”

I’m sure he had the best of intentions and was somewhat shocked that someone might not want help. I’m very conscious of this habit I and others have of giving too much help. I wanted to be challenged by the machine, and I didn’t want another human interaction.

I was aggravated by someone’s good intentions. What I rediscovered today was how I was the source of the aggravation. He just did what he was probably told to do. And I blamed him for aggravating me. That happens to me four or five times a day. Maybe I can get quicker at recognizing the aggravation and then dropping it, realizing that it was I who had created it, not the other person or situation.

Here’s a sweet verse we studied today. Dantika and the Elephant is a story about the first women of Buddhism. She is attempting to tame her mind like the elephant was tamed.

Dantika and the Elephant

translated from the Pali by
Thanissaro Bhikkhu
© 1997

Coming out from my day's abiding
on Vulture Peak Mountain,
I saw on the bank of a river
an elephant
emerged from its plunge.
A man holding a hook requested:
“Give me your foot.”
The elephant
extended its foot.
The man
got up on the elephant.

Seeing what was untrained now tamed
brought under human control,
with that I centered my mind —
why I'd gone to the woods
in the first place.

Certainty and Honesty

I saw my neighbor at 6:15 this am and he asked me as he was driving to his grandson’s school, what are you going to attack today? Or something like that. Then he told me I needed an editor because I sometimes misspell words. I do have Grammarly but sometimes it misses. He says I spelled irk erk, but I can’t find it to correct.

My first thought was to write about certainty, which irks me. Anytime I hear people, including me, spout an opinion, I’m irked. We say doing such and such will result in such and such. Especially in an interdependent universe we never know the result of an action. Pinch your kid and he might end up to be the best kid in the world. Or he might be the worst.

But we do need to act. And we need confidence behind our actions. So how to be both have a “not knowing” mind and also act with confidence? I welcome your opinions on this.

The second item is only tangentially related. I’ve had many jobs this week, between my blog, the temple, grocery shopping for a special occasion, etc. Sometimes I asked the help of others and they didn’t come through. They were rightfully apologetic, but that didn’t help. When I thought I’d have a couple of hours I’d have to jump into my car and do whatever.

I think part of the reason I’m not honest is that I want to be liked. But when I perceive people running over me I’m not liking myself, feeling like dirt, to put it lightly. I told someone today that he didn’t meet my expectation. It was probably as much my fault as his. We both had a different idea of what “earlier” meant. But after telling him what I felt something opened up between us.

My neighbor lent me a book on absolute honesty. My wife and I do that pretty well… most of the time. But others, not so well. I think I’ll practice a little more of that, and not be the guy who always says, “no problem.”