Blazing hot stuffy air, barely moved by a little breeze…
Meadowlark sitting quietly on a fence post in the dawn sun, his gold vest bright in the light of the east, his black bib tidy is turning his head this way, that way. This is Zen quietness without comment.
Thomas Merton
On those mornings that I do not read something spiritual I find myself lost during the course of the day. It need not be a holy text but it must be focused on something beyond the day to day demands that our urgent world places upon us. Thoughts about meaning and value or simply directions to practice zazen that is silent meditation these prepare me for those challenges I will see in any given cycle at the office.
Prayer, meditation and ritual all faiths seem to involve one of these. Many a person without faith has ritual. A morning stroll for a paper and coffee or an evening beer on the back porch these can be as important as a vespers service. Maybe we are hard wired for this stuff. Maybe it is something we need intrinsically.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Dance in Light-Gratitude
One of the Buddhist maxims I stumbled across last night said that as a part of ritual to start the day I was to look at someone with gratitude. Other things involved in the ritual for commencing the day involved carefully preparing my meal, washing my bowl afterward, meditating and reading something silently.
Most of the stuff I do already. It is funny but one can be very mindful when preparing oatmeal and tea at the start of a day. And I usually read something spiritually/morally focused before I begin my first case.
When I first thought about the suggested look of gratitude I wondered how difficult it would be. Conveying gratitude is conveying appreciation or thankfulness. While I have contact with many people during the day, their acts carried out toward me are just done in the normal course of the stream of existence; they aren’t favors or kindnesses. Most people are just part of the world and on a basic gut level it doesn’t seem like I owe them thanks just for being.
As I thought about this I circled back to the concepts of mindfulness and acceptance. Each person I interact during each day is a sentient being and I owe them respect. Their lives are as fraught as mine with sadness and pain, struggle and doubt. In many cases the people I deal with are more tormented than I am. Many have sought refuge from the burdens of this world in chemicals and have allowed addiction to overcome their selves. Still it is easy to think that I don’t owe them thanks.
The people I work with as coworkers are just trying to make it from sunrise to sunset. They do what life has trained them to do in giving their effort. For the most part they are not overtly hostile. Sometimes they are downright helpful. Okay sometimes I owe them thanks but it is not a continuous thing.
However as Pablo Neruda said in his Noble Laureate acceptance speech we are all doing this clumsy dance of life together before a fire in a great unknown wilderness in an infinite night. Life is the fire itself in my mind and the dark wilderness and night is all that lies beyond this life. Using this metaphor I can appreciate that each and every person I come into contact with is doing the same dance that I am. I can look at them with gratitude for I am grateful they are willing to dance with me in the light and warmth of life’s fire.
Most of the stuff I do already. It is funny but one can be very mindful when preparing oatmeal and tea at the start of a day. And I usually read something spiritually/morally focused before I begin my first case.
When I first thought about the suggested look of gratitude I wondered how difficult it would be. Conveying gratitude is conveying appreciation or thankfulness. While I have contact with many people during the day, their acts carried out toward me are just done in the normal course of the stream of existence; they aren’t favors or kindnesses. Most people are just part of the world and on a basic gut level it doesn’t seem like I owe them thanks just for being.
As I thought about this I circled back to the concepts of mindfulness and acceptance. Each person I interact during each day is a sentient being and I owe them respect. Their lives are as fraught as mine with sadness and pain, struggle and doubt. In many cases the people I deal with are more tormented than I am. Many have sought refuge from the burdens of this world in chemicals and have allowed addiction to overcome their selves. Still it is easy to think that I don’t owe them thanks.
The people I work with as coworkers are just trying to make it from sunrise to sunset. They do what life has trained them to do in giving their effort. For the most part they are not overtly hostile. Sometimes they are downright helpful. Okay sometimes I owe them thanks but it is not a continuous thing.
However as Pablo Neruda said in his Noble Laureate acceptance speech we are all doing this clumsy dance of life together before a fire in a great unknown wilderness in an infinite night. Life is the fire itself in my mind and the dark wilderness and night is all that lies beyond this life. Using this metaphor I can appreciate that each and every person I come into contact with is doing the same dance that I am. I can look at them with gratitude for I am grateful they are willing to dance with me in the light and warmth of life’s fire.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Do not speak- unless it improves on silence. *
Ah my soul felt empty this morning. The kids are home from school and camps have not begun. Things that might benefit them like reading books or riding their bikes are not even on their radar. Instead the allure of computer gaming draws their focus. The house is disheveled. My school board meeting last night was brutal so I spent the hour between its end and my going to sleep by watching a weird science fiction show that I really don’t care about. But I was drained. When I got up my soul was empty.
When that happens I have to pull out the tried and true resources, the Bible, Merton, Portals of Prayer, Moon in a Dewdrop or maybe my new read Everyday Zen. Merton won out this a.m. Merton’s reflections today in my Year with Thomas Merton were tied to a visit from a fellow monastic who was versed in both Christian and Eastern faiths. As Merton noted the visit he noted his perturbation with a loud tractor in a field near the monastery. It seemed to him that this year’s model was louder and more aggressive sounding.
To paraphrase Merton, our new machines, our bright shinning “improved” tools represent our fury, our restlessness, our avidity and ultimately our despair. Around and around both our machines and our “paths of progress” go; he viewed it as so many meaninglessly pieces of clanking metal on a giant circular path. In search of something better we travel on an empty sad path.
Our desires to get the next thing to fill a hole in our life never actually fill it. And we have repeated the cycle often enough to know at least at the subconscious level that the new boy or girl friend, the new blouse, the new car will not change us and make us happier. So often our attempts at making “it” better leave the problem (or perhaps a better term is the emptiness) worse than it was before.
There is an ad out now trying to sell an upgrade program at a big box electronics store. In essence the advert goes like this, if you buy a computer today the computer with the x factor will be released tomorrow and the little kid next door will make fun of you. If you buy into the optional upgrade program you will get some allotted portion of your current purchase price applied to the next best thing when you buy that. Did I mention meaningless clanking? In this case the meaningless clanking becomes ritualized. What we need is acceptance of ourselves in place in our world.
I guess this is just a long winded way of getting to the point of acceptance and mindfulness as a way to approach the day. What is mindfulness? “Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience. It isn't more complicated that that. It is opening to or receiving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is, without either clinging to it or rejecting it.” Sylvia Boorstein said this. Take today on its own terms mindfully you don’t need to fill any holes. Maybe it is better to say lose the passion to fill the holes.
The beauty of life is, while we cannot undo what is done, we can see it, understand it, learn from it and change.
So that every new moment is spent not in regret, guilt, fear or anger,
but in wisdom, understanding and love.
Jennifer Edwards
When that happens I have to pull out the tried and true resources, the Bible, Merton, Portals of Prayer, Moon in a Dewdrop or maybe my new read Everyday Zen. Merton won out this a.m. Merton’s reflections today in my Year with Thomas Merton were tied to a visit from a fellow monastic who was versed in both Christian and Eastern faiths. As Merton noted the visit he noted his perturbation with a loud tractor in a field near the monastery. It seemed to him that this year’s model was louder and more aggressive sounding.
To paraphrase Merton, our new machines, our bright shinning “improved” tools represent our fury, our restlessness, our avidity and ultimately our despair. Around and around both our machines and our “paths of progress” go; he viewed it as so many meaninglessly pieces of clanking metal on a giant circular path. In search of something better we travel on an empty sad path.
Our desires to get the next thing to fill a hole in our life never actually fill it. And we have repeated the cycle often enough to know at least at the subconscious level that the new boy or girl friend, the new blouse, the new car will not change us and make us happier. So often our attempts at making “it” better leave the problem (or perhaps a better term is the emptiness) worse than it was before.
There is an ad out now trying to sell an upgrade program at a big box electronics store. In essence the advert goes like this, if you buy a computer today the computer with the x factor will be released tomorrow and the little kid next door will make fun of you. If you buy into the optional upgrade program you will get some allotted portion of your current purchase price applied to the next best thing when you buy that. Did I mention meaningless clanking? In this case the meaningless clanking becomes ritualized. What we need is acceptance of ourselves in place in our world.
I guess this is just a long winded way of getting to the point of acceptance and mindfulness as a way to approach the day. What is mindfulness? “Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience. It isn't more complicated that that. It is opening to or receiving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is, without either clinging to it or rejecting it.” Sylvia Boorstein said this. Take today on its own terms mindfully you don’t need to fill any holes. Maybe it is better to say lose the passion to fill the holes.
The beauty of life is, while we cannot undo what is done, we can see it, understand it, learn from it and change.
So that every new moment is spent not in regret, guilt, fear or anger,
but in wisdom, understanding and love.
Jennifer Edwards
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Stuff in our Father’s Drawers-Performance
According to my child’s psychologist and his physician my youngest son is suffering from moderate depression. There have been suggestions that the relationship with his brother with Aspergers may be playing a significant part in gestating the depression.
This is a difficult time for me. Trust me when I say I too understand that living with ASD as part of the household, almost a family member in and of itself, can be hard on the psyche. Many a night I have lain down to try and take my rest only to find my mind racing with what ifs of now and of the future. Only when I take a stance of mindfulness, that is letting my mind empty and simply watching the wild thoughts fly by, do I ever find rest.
Since the diagnosis of depression has come to light I have been trying to address some things that are challenging to my youngest son’s life. While I thought I had been making time for him in the past I am clearly setting aside time for him and him alone. Being with him alone and talking to him seems to have had some benefit. Some days now when in response to my questions about how did school go, the words “suck” or “sucked” don’t come out in the first sentence.
Secundus is a fledgling pianist. For whatever reason he has ditched learning classic tunes. In the past year he has moved into the study of what we call the standards. These songs are the compositions that Nelson Riddle arranged around the voice of Frank Sinatra that made women just want to jump his bones backstage at clubs in New York. These songs are the pieces that Nat King Cole and Miles Davis each took to completely different but very beautiful places none the less.
How we got here was a one of those flukes. A couple of years ago when Halloween rolled around Secundus could not come up with a costume. He searched magazines, he looked on the internet, he confabbed with Mom. It was only when he was surfing You Tube that he saw a clip of Sinatra singing “Fly Me to the Moon”. He knew he could pull off that style. He grabbed an old rat pack hat and an old jacket and memorized the song. As he went from house to house he would sing the fist four or five lines while adopting a hipster’s pose. He pulled in more candy than anyone. At that point he knew there was something to this.
Last night was his spring recital. He had opted to play “It was a Very Good Year”. His piano teacher encouraged him but had her doubts. In practice his use of the pedals was on the mark but transitions between parts of the song were not fluid. He would almost get it right, but in reality the piece was never quite right. Even up to the moments before we left the house for the recital he was seemingly struggling.
One of the last acts before we headed out was to get him dressed. He put on some chinos and pulled out a white French cuffed shirt. I don’t remember where we got the shirt but he had never worn it before we had never gotten him cuff links. With the performance imminent I had to drop back and begin the search for links. Through drawers and boxes of knick knacks stuffed in my highboy I rampaged. I knew I had some cuffs from when I was his age. In the 1973 French cuffs were all the rage. I believed I had at least one set because they had been my father’s and had set on his dresser in ashtray with pins pulled from new shirts for the majority of my life. When he passed they become mine. They were nowhere to be found although I did find an old hash pipe, a beer stein from my German trip in 1972 and my ticket to the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City.
Never did I find a matched set. What I came up with was one blue and one ruby red cuff of completely different styles. Secundus loved ‘em. Putting the cuffs on him you could see he was ready to perform.
It wasn’t the cuffs that made the difference and I know that. Secundus is a performance junkie. Whether it is debate or singing or recitals the rush of being in the public eye charges him and changes him. I know in my heart of hearts he loves the spotlight and that he cranks it to level 11 each time he walks out onstage. The cuffs were nothing more that a thread connecting him to the men of his family through the years none of whom shied away from the spotlight. Not Dad, not Granddad, not uncles; this larger than life onstage persona is probably genetic.
My thought is that so is depression. While Secundus’ challenges are impacted by his environment all the men in my family have had dark moments, dark periods. Nobody stepped up early to help us manage it. Nobody had a name for it, or a course of treatment for it. Me I went for positive thinking ala Dr. Norman Vincent Peale and years of reefer therapy. Eventually I came to sober quiet reflection/meditation/writing and I am okay with that. My hope is that by using a psychologist I am doing the right thing. My hope is that with some external insight emphasizing positive approaches to life Secundus can come to a point where he knows how to get back to balance when things start to grow dark.
I don’t want him to lose the joy of performance. Neither do I want him to have to travel the dark roads I have seen in the past. Being a parent is a balancing act and while others can offer suggestions a parent is ultimately the person who has to make the tough calls.
This is a difficult time for me. Trust me when I say I too understand that living with ASD as part of the household, almost a family member in and of itself, can be hard on the psyche. Many a night I have lain down to try and take my rest only to find my mind racing with what ifs of now and of the future. Only when I take a stance of mindfulness, that is letting my mind empty and simply watching the wild thoughts fly by, do I ever find rest.
Since the diagnosis of depression has come to light I have been trying to address some things that are challenging to my youngest son’s life. While I thought I had been making time for him in the past I am clearly setting aside time for him and him alone. Being with him alone and talking to him seems to have had some benefit. Some days now when in response to my questions about how did school go, the words “suck” or “sucked” don’t come out in the first sentence.
Secundus is a fledgling pianist. For whatever reason he has ditched learning classic tunes. In the past year he has moved into the study of what we call the standards. These songs are the compositions that Nelson Riddle arranged around the voice of Frank Sinatra that made women just want to jump his bones backstage at clubs in New York. These songs are the pieces that Nat King Cole and Miles Davis each took to completely different but very beautiful places none the less.
How we got here was a one of those flukes. A couple of years ago when Halloween rolled around Secundus could not come up with a costume. He searched magazines, he looked on the internet, he confabbed with Mom. It was only when he was surfing You Tube that he saw a clip of Sinatra singing “Fly Me to the Moon”. He knew he could pull off that style. He grabbed an old rat pack hat and an old jacket and memorized the song. As he went from house to house he would sing the fist four or five lines while adopting a hipster’s pose. He pulled in more candy than anyone. At that point he knew there was something to this.
Last night was his spring recital. He had opted to play “It was a Very Good Year”. His piano teacher encouraged him but had her doubts. In practice his use of the pedals was on the mark but transitions between parts of the song were not fluid. He would almost get it right, but in reality the piece was never quite right. Even up to the moments before we left the house for the recital he was seemingly struggling.
One of the last acts before we headed out was to get him dressed. He put on some chinos and pulled out a white French cuffed shirt. I don’t remember where we got the shirt but he had never worn it before we had never gotten him cuff links. With the performance imminent I had to drop back and begin the search for links. Through drawers and boxes of knick knacks stuffed in my highboy I rampaged. I knew I had some cuffs from when I was his age. In the 1973 French cuffs were all the rage. I believed I had at least one set because they had been my father’s and had set on his dresser in ashtray with pins pulled from new shirts for the majority of my life. When he passed they become mine. They were nowhere to be found although I did find an old hash pipe, a beer stein from my German trip in 1972 and my ticket to the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City.
Never did I find a matched set. What I came up with was one blue and one ruby red cuff of completely different styles. Secundus loved ‘em. Putting the cuffs on him you could see he was ready to perform.
It wasn’t the cuffs that made the difference and I know that. Secundus is a performance junkie. Whether it is debate or singing or recitals the rush of being in the public eye charges him and changes him. I know in my heart of hearts he loves the spotlight and that he cranks it to level 11 each time he walks out onstage. The cuffs were nothing more that a thread connecting him to the men of his family through the years none of whom shied away from the spotlight. Not Dad, not Granddad, not uncles; this larger than life onstage persona is probably genetic.
My thought is that so is depression. While Secundus’ challenges are impacted by his environment all the men in my family have had dark moments, dark periods. Nobody stepped up early to help us manage it. Nobody had a name for it, or a course of treatment for it. Me I went for positive thinking ala Dr. Norman Vincent Peale and years of reefer therapy. Eventually I came to sober quiet reflection/meditation/writing and I am okay with that. My hope is that by using a psychologist I am doing the right thing. My hope is that with some external insight emphasizing positive approaches to life Secundus can come to a point where he knows how to get back to balance when things start to grow dark.
I don’t want him to lose the joy of performance. Neither do I want him to have to travel the dark roads I have seen in the past. Being a parent is a balancing act and while others can offer suggestions a parent is ultimately the person who has to make the tough calls.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
My Oasis
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Another month has sped by. Memorial Day the first holiday of the summer has come and gone. Time is taking me quickly to that indeterminate place called old. My good friends’ last child just graduated from high school. Oh how that makes me feel aged.
As I said the first holiday of the summer passed and I did very little. I watched a movie; I watched part of a TV marathon. I cleaned my desk about 2/3rds of the way toward functional. Oh there was that hiding in the basement for the tornado warning thing, I did that too.
In the silence of the afternoon all is present and all is inscrutable. –T. Merton
On one of the three afternoons of this long weekend I did spend a few moments reading out by the fountain in the backyard. I sat at a chair and listening to the bubbling of the water for a time. Shifting locales I lay in a hammock for an hour or two also.
Being there in the small space behind my home I can offer that there is no silence in either nature or in a suburban locale. However there is a sense of presence in the world. I can’t put my finger on why sitting in my backyard reading about losing anger feels right but it does. Maybe the distance from the world I sense in my act of focus on the article while hearing background birdsong is what Merton was talking.
Another month has sped by. Memorial Day the first holiday of the summer has come and gone. Time is taking me quickly to that indeterminate place called old. My good friends’ last child just graduated from high school. Oh how that makes me feel aged.
As I said the first holiday of the summer passed and I did very little. I watched a movie; I watched part of a TV marathon. I cleaned my desk about 2/3rds of the way toward functional. Oh there was that hiding in the basement for the tornado warning thing, I did that too.
In the silence of the afternoon all is present and all is inscrutable. –T. Merton
On one of the three afternoons of this long weekend I did spend a few moments reading out by the fountain in the backyard. I sat at a chair and listening to the bubbling of the water for a time. Shifting locales I lay in a hammock for an hour or two also.
Being there in the small space behind my home I can offer that there is no silence in either nature or in a suburban locale. However there is a sense of presence in the world. I can’t put my finger on why sitting in my backyard reading about losing anger feels right but it does. Maybe the distance from the world I sense in my act of focus on the article while hearing background birdsong is what Merton was talking.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Bicycle Moment
When I was young I was fat and socially isolated. My situation was not helped by the fact that due to nystagmus I was nearly blind. What social skills I possessed were abysmal. No matter what I did the outcome never seemed right.
Only when I learned to ride my bicycle did I find a place of respite. Living in a farm town there were miles of empty roads to ride about on. Some were smooth, some were bumpy and some had big dogs that chased you. When you rode down those roads your butt bounced, you wheels slid and you lifted you feet up to the handle bars so the dogs in pursuit wouldn’t get a nip of your ankles. Most of those dogs would chase you no farther than the edge of the yard in front of the farm house that was their abode.
Every day unless it was pouring outside I rode my metal flake purple W.T. Grant sting ray bike about two miles. I really didn’t have a destination I just had a duration of time to be spent on the road. One route went down and across Oldman’s creek and back, another took me out to Lerro Lane and then to B.F. Goodrich and then the Baptist church and home. Or maybe I would ride to the church first and then down Straughn Mill Road over Freed Road and then up the Pederickton-Woodstown road home.
Whatever way I went I knew every divot in the macadam and every stone that would fly out from under my wheels. I knew when to pedal like a madman and where to coast. Time passed but I am always in that moment on my bike free of my daily worries. Time does not just fly away in the passage of hours and days.
If time’s flight were its only function then you would be separate and distinct from time. You are not. Understand the time being is not time just passing you by. All things in the world are linked with one another in moments. All moments are the time being. All of these linked moments are your time being.
Vigorously abide in each moment in the time being. Lift your feet up and fly past the dogs of existence.
Only when I learned to ride my bicycle did I find a place of respite. Living in a farm town there were miles of empty roads to ride about on. Some were smooth, some were bumpy and some had big dogs that chased you. When you rode down those roads your butt bounced, you wheels slid and you lifted you feet up to the handle bars so the dogs in pursuit wouldn’t get a nip of your ankles. Most of those dogs would chase you no farther than the edge of the yard in front of the farm house that was their abode.
Every day unless it was pouring outside I rode my metal flake purple W.T. Grant sting ray bike about two miles. I really didn’t have a destination I just had a duration of time to be spent on the road. One route went down and across Oldman’s creek and back, another took me out to Lerro Lane and then to B.F. Goodrich and then the Baptist church and home. Or maybe I would ride to the church first and then down Straughn Mill Road over Freed Road and then up the Pederickton-Woodstown road home.
Whatever way I went I knew every divot in the macadam and every stone that would fly out from under my wheels. I knew when to pedal like a madman and where to coast. Time passed but I am always in that moment on my bike free of my daily worries. Time does not just fly away in the passage of hours and days.
If time’s flight were its only function then you would be separate and distinct from time. You are not. Understand the time being is not time just passing you by. All things in the world are linked with one another in moments. All moments are the time being. All of these linked moments are your time being.
Vigorously abide in each moment in the time being. Lift your feet up and fly past the dogs of existence.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Where I Am
Equanimity, poise, and a state of calm composure I am trying to develop these. Each day I dip my toe into a little aspect of Zen. I read a passage here or there. Either I go out to the Tricycle online Buddhist community or I read a bit more from Master Dogen’s writings. Some of the things I find are as odd as you would find in any other organized religion, maybe even odder. But there are small bits about non attachment and awareness that just draw me into a sense of wonder. At my age a sense of wonder about anything is good. Take a lungful of air slowly and let it gently escape.
Next to where I work is a little exercise store. The other day I went and bought a mini workout mat. It is simply a little piece of foam. Each day at noon I lock my door here in my office. I turn off all but one of my lights. I turn on some ancient hymns and I sit legs folded on the mat. All I try and do is clear my mind. For 10 minutes I simply try to think of nothing. Thoughts fly by but I try not to grab them and I let them pass. It isn’t real Zen I don’t think but it sure does seem to help the day seem more manageable. $8 of foam rubber and 10 minutes of time can and do make a difference.
Next to where I work is a little exercise store. The other day I went and bought a mini workout mat. It is simply a little piece of foam. Each day at noon I lock my door here in my office. I turn off all but one of my lights. I turn on some ancient hymns and I sit legs folded on the mat. All I try and do is clear my mind. For 10 minutes I simply try to think of nothing. Thoughts fly by but I try not to grab them and I let them pass. It isn’t real Zen I don’t think but it sure does seem to help the day seem more manageable. $8 of foam rubber and 10 minutes of time can and do make a difference.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)