Risk Exhaustion

The last day of August already. The new abnormal drags endlessly into the fall. Trump is now claiming to be compassionate and skillful leader, the only one who can save us from the violence and chaos he fosters. Biden hopes to be the next FDR and rescue us with compassion and policies that support racial, economic and environmental justice. Biden is still up in the polls, but so was Clinton at this point four years ago.

I now instinctively (mostly) take a mask with me wherever I go. I don’t even think about going to places with lots of people. (Are there still places like that anyway?) But I’m wearing myself out trying to keep myself, and the members of my bubble, safe. It turns out that living with conscious risk is much more tiring than living with unconscious risk.

Life has always been a risky business. We’re never really safe. Crossing the street. Driving the car. Going down stairs. I remember once riding my mountain bike through a stretch of rocks and mud and standing water. Negotiating the treacherous terrain upright and wonderfully wet and muddy, I said to my friend: ‘Just think, when we’re old men we can have this kind of balance and coordination challenge just going down the stairs.’ And so it will be. If disease and accidents don’t get us first, old age certainly will.

The hardest thing is that, in the new social experience of pandemic, our risk calculations have to be made individually and consciously. In the past, our daily risk calculations were unconscious cultural assumptions that we rarely considered. We didn’t look at the accident rate in our county every morning before we drove to work. We didn’t wonder about the safety protocols at the hotel where we were planning to stay.

The human brain seems to have been designed for discerning immediate visceral risk. From instinctually fleeing large animals with sharp teeth, our ancestors progressed to avoiding large four-wheeled vehicles roaring down busy streets. (And the ones who did not make correct risk assessments didn’t survive to become ancestors.) We teach our children to look both ways when they cross the street, to avoid taking candy from strangers and to stay away from the edge in high places. This is ‘common sense’ and these constant calculations fade from our consciousness and allowed us to consider the more important things like whether we’ll have cold cereal or eggs for breakfast.

But the dangers and risks of our actual lives are far beyond what can be perceived viscerally. It has been this way for decades. Industrialization, global communications and the internet have brought us to a place of unprecedented interconnection. But the COVID crisis has brought our interconnection into sharper focus. This virus that is invisible and we can catch from people with no visible symptoms has brought us face-to-face with daily and intangible danger.

In this new place, without a clear social consensus of what is safe and what is not, we’re all required to make decision after decision to modify our behavior to keep us, and the people around us, safe. Though I only know one person who has died from COVID and only three or four who have had even a mild case, I am continually on guard.

Especially as COVID cases are staying relatively low here in Massachusetts and we all begin to move at least a little back toward normal, it requires constant assessment. While part of me would like to stay fully cocooned, another part is fed up with restrictions and caution and just wants to see my friends, go out to dinner and forget about it all. Is it really safe to have dinner at a restaurant if I’m outdoors? If someone offers me a glass of water in their backyard, is it safe to say yes? If I wear my mask, is it OK to go to Home Depot? To church? Do I need to wear my mask when I pass someone on the sidewalk if the wind is blowing strongly?

It’s exhausting. But here we are. Living our new normal lives. Taking solace where we can. Making decisions and meeting whatever comes next.

It will not always be like this.

It will always be like this.

Gathering Again

Yesterday morning we had our first in-person meditation practice here at Boundless Way Temple since March 15^th. Nine masked meditators gathered in the garden, placing our cushion and camp chairs in a wide circle in the designated spots. The rain that had been heavier early in the morning had let up to a light drizzle but we were a motley looking crew in our multi-colored raincoats, ponchos and umbrellas. But we were delighted to be together.

We began with a short chanting service, sung softly behind our masks. Then the meditation period itself began with the sounding of our traditional bowl bells which were sitting, gather rainwater perched on cushions protected by plastic bags. The three bell sounds carried softly through the lush green garden. We sat together in silence and stillness in our lovely open-air garden cathedral. The trees sheltered us and the rain blessed us.

Of course silence is never without sound. Even inside a quiet room the subtle sounds of breathing and digesting and blood pumping and the hum of distant life all bounce and play in the particular shape created between the walls. But outside, when you are still and silent, you can begin to perceive the fullness of the world’s endless and subtle sounds. In the Temple garden the waterfall’s happy gurgle, the bird’s call, the rain drops landing on innumerable tree leaves, and the sound of cars like distant waves crashing on the beach are all effortlessly received by our still ears.

We sat together in the drizzle—nine enthusiastic wayfarers happy to be together in the familiar silence of our Zen practice. We call it practice not because we’re preparing for the performance, but rather because it is how we remember and appreciate the sacredness of life. Meditation is both the path toward greater life and a full expression of that greater life itself. And, in the Zen tradition, we often do it together.

This together-stillness was one of the most surprising things for me about Zen meditation when I began some forty years ago. At first, it seemed quite silly to get together to do nothing. I was put off by all the ‘rules’. When you go into a meditation hall, you’re not supposed to talk or look around or, once the bells have rung, even move. I wondered why we even bothered to get together. Why not meditate alone and then we wouldn’t have to obey all these rigid rules?

But it turns out that we human beings are pack animals, we sense and appreciate each other’s presence. The human heart produces and senses electromagnetic pulses. Your heart and my heart sense each other, touch each other and comfort each other. This unspoken connection can become quite apparent in the silence and stillness of Zen meditation.

The physical distancing that we have had to practice for almost six months now has deprived us of much of this necessary nourishment. The human encouragement of proximity. Babies need to be held and touched and seen to grow and flourish. Humans of all ages need to be in the presence of each other to reassure and recalibrate our central nervous systems.

But being the creative creatures we are, we have all found work-arounds in this time of anxious distancing. Our Boundless Way Temple Zen community has continued our regular meditation schedule on Zoom. We sit together almost every day from all around the country. It’s encouraging to see all the people at home in their Zoom boxes on my computer screen, but it’s not the same as in person.

So now, while the weather is still warm, we’re beginning to find ways to be in each other’s presence outdoors using masks and distancing to protect ourselves and each other. Like yesterday. We sat still under the canopy of the Temple garden trees and did our best, each one of us, to be present to life. It is a mighty challenge after a lifetime of thinking and planning to simply let things be and notice what is already here. It is also a relief after a lifetime of thinking and planning to simply let things be and notice what is already here.

We’re having another small group meditation practice this morning, but mostly we’ll still be virtual for the coming months. But even if you can’t come to the Temple for our next in-person meditation, you can appreciate the beating hearts of the people around you. Beneath the drama and challenges of day-to-day life, we can notice the subtle and life-giving connections to those we live with, to those we pass by hidden by masks and especially to the beating heart of the universe that intimately contains, encourages and sustains us all.

Deep Work and Courage

David Loy, in his fine book Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis, makes many important observations and recommendations. The two that have lingered with me in the wake of reading his book are: 1) meeting the ecological challenges of our time will require a deep shift in view and 2) in order to meet these challenges, we need to connect to some deeper source of inspiration than fear.

He points out, as others have before him, that the challenge of global climate change is systemic. What is required is not a small shift in behavior, but a rethinking of our systems of social organization. And though he wrote this book several years before the current exploding awareness of systemic racism, Loy mentions racism and economic oppression as intertwined element of the systems that have led to our current and ongoing destruction of the natural world around us.

The shift in view that is needed is from what Loy refers to as cosmological dualism to a view of the interconnected realities of all life. The dualistic view sees the world we live in, ultimately including other people, as merely a background for our individual drama to play out. From this perspective we ‘take care of number one’ and get what we can when we can. More is always better. Trees and animals and the earth itself are simply resources to be consumed to enhance the bottom line of profit.

Science itself is often spoken of as arising from this western dualistic view. In the 17^th century science began separating belief in God from the realities we can observe and began looking closely at the stuff around us. But this so-called dualism of science has led us to see that no individual thing is separate from the world around it. We all live in circles of mutuality that are both minutely functioning in every cell of our body and vastly connecting our individual well-being with the health of the ecosystems of our planet from the rain forests of Brazil to the polar ice cap.

One of Jason Blake’s sisters spoke at a rally a few days after his shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin. She said that Jason’s shooting didn’t surprise her because her other brothers and sisters had been shot by police too. She said their names: George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor and the tragic list goes on and on. We are interconnected. Our fate is radically intertwined with the fate of all life. Jesus put it this way: ‘As you do it to the least of these people, you do it to me.’ And given what we know now about our interconnected and fragile biosphere, he should also have included all life and the water and soil and air as well.

But facing the seemingly overwhelming challenges of deeply imbedded systems of destruction of our natural world and of black and brown human bodies, how do we find the capacity to move forward? In exploring this crucial question, Loy refers at length to the work of Buddhist teacher and activist Johanna Macy.

Macy has laid out a framework that developed from her work in the 1970’s that she called despair and empowerment. Originally developed to help people deal with the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear weapons, she continued in the 1980’s with opening to all of nature in what was then called deep ecology. She has most recently proposed a spiral journey for the work the world work that needs to be done.

The journey begins with gratitude for being alive, then moves to opening to the pain that we all feel. This allows us to begin to see with new eyes and from this, we . She and her co-author Molly Brown put it this way: There is so much to be done, and the time is so short. We can proceed, of course, out of grim and angry desperation. But the tasks proceed more easily and productively with a measure of thankfulness for life; it links us to our deeper powers and lets us rest in them.

So let us, each in our own way, commit to the journey of awakening and healing—not just for ourselves, but for all life, human and inhuman and especially for this fragile and wondrous planet on which we depend. Let us be thankful and rest in the deeper power of life itself.

Overcoming the Inertia of Inaction

The Massachusetts police reform bills have spent the month of August languishing behind closed doors in the negotiating committee between the two chambers of the legislature. Meanwhile, another black man, Jacob Blake was shot in the back seven times by a white policeman in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Two nights later, a teenager, openly armed with some kind of assault rifle and wandering the streets in a misguided fantasy of imposing order, shot three more people, killing two.

The young man was an ardent supporter of Blue Lives Matter. “Part of my job also is to protect people,” he said. “If someone is hurt, I’m running into harm’s way. That’s why I have my rifle; I’ve got to protect myself obviously. But I also have my med kit.” A noble and misguided fantasy that was fueled by our President who inflames hatred to solidify his power and justify his own control fantasies. The young man, now arrested for murder, also had photos on his social media postings of standing in the front row at a Trump rally. How ironic that Trump is now running for re-election based on portraying himself as the only one who can save the country from the violence he has ardently encouraged.

The police unions are also mobilizing against the reform efforts here in Massachusetts and elsewhere. Their mission is to protect the status quo. Incremental change would be fine with them, but any real change will be fought with all the significant resources of money and political power they command.

A neighbor of mine here in Worcester just put up a ‘Friend of the Police’ sign in their lawn. I think the men and women who have taken the job of being police are, for the most part, decent and often devoted people. But the issue with systemic problems is that they are not a matter of individual morality, but of a structure that rewards and protects immoral behavior.

Without a profound shift in the training, oversight and accountability, the systemic racism and inhumanity of the police will continue, despite well-intentioned efforts of some or even many individuals. We must support our legislators to overcome the barriers and enact significant reform now. It won’t be perfect, but we must move forward to address the glaring and cruel pattern of police racial violence.

If the essential idea of the police is to keep ordinary citizens safe, it seems the unions should all be enthusiastically supporting these changes that they are so vociferously fighting.

Living Into Love

I was recently talking with a friend who said he wished he could take his current insight, wisdom and experience back with him to apply to the difficulties of his past life. I told him that I wished that I could apply my current insight, wisdom and experiences to the difficulties of my present life.

While it can be enormously helpful to reflect on and understand our past, the only time we get to choose and act and make a difference is right now. (Though I have to give at least a nod in passing to the wonderful bumper sticker—It’s never too late to have a wonderful childhood—that points to the fact that the past might not be as fixed and permanent as we imagine it to be.) One of the great challenges of the spiritual life is to live the insight and wisdom we have touched.

The great Christian mystic and writer Thomas Merton put it this way: The first responsibility of a man of faith is to make his faith really part of his own life, not by rationalizing it but by living it. I might paraphrase him and say: The first responsibility of a person of faith is to make their faith really part of their own life, not by rationalizing it but by living it. But you get the point.

It’s wonderful and important to talk about the Dharma and God and the path of awakening. But that’s not where the real work happens. Being able to discuss living in the present moment turns out to be not nearly as nourishing or as challenging as actually living in the present moment.

Many years ago I had a St. Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment when I had a life-changing experience of the oneness of the universe. I had the unshakable experience that we are never separate from God’s love—that the love and connection we seek is already here. Of course this experience came in the middle of a dark and confusing period in my life (college) when I felt utterly alone and cut off from myself, from others and from the world around me.

I was caught in my world of suffering and just wished I were someone and somewhere else. But in retrospect I see that it was precisely this darkness and struggle that gave energy or created the ground of openness or desperation for something else to come in. This experience of oneness was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me AND it also set me on a path of great suffering and great searching. Because after several months as the clarity of the mountaintop view began to wear off, what had been a visceral certainty became just a vivid story. Then even the vivid story began to fade as the necessities and distractions of everyday life exerted their inexorable pressure. I was bereft. Having found the certain treasure and the truth that set me free, I lost it again. Or I found I couldn’t hold onto it. I didn’t know what to do or where to go to get back to where I was.

My confusion and searching eventually led me to Zen Buddhism and the practices that I have been doing for the past forty-some years. At first Zen seemed to be a way to recreate that experience of oneness. Then I began to realize that my great urge to have a specific state of mind was not a particularly beneficial or realistic motivation.

Very slowly over the decades I have come to realize that my original vision of oneness and presence was actually true but that the point of life is not about achieving (and talking about) altered (and wondrous) states of mind, but about living ever more deeply into the truth and love that surrounds us.

This is the endless and joyous work we all get to do right now.

Dogen, the great Zen teacher of the 13^th century wrote about beginningless awakening and endless practice. The truth of our unshakable connection to love has always been here AND requires our continual practice to live the truth that has so generously touched and sustained us.

Locating the Source of the Problem

One frequent interaction on Zoom, is dedicated to determining the source of audio problems. It often goes like this: ‘Can you hear me? Can you hear me? You seem to be muted, check the lower left-hand corner of your screen.’ I repeat this, sometimes raising my voice to make sure you can hear, until the answer is ‘Yes’. The interesting problem that sometimes becomes apparent is that the person asking ‘Can you hear me?’ often assumes that they are merely helping someone else when the problem is as likely to be with them as with the person they are ‘helping.’

Let me explain. If my audio transmission is not working, when I say ‘Can you hear me?’ and you don’t respond, I often assume that, since I can hear myself clearly, the problem must be with you. So when I see your lips moving I assume you are struggling with your problem, rather than trying to give me information that might actually be helpful to me. The same is true if my audio reception is not working. I speak to you, you hear me but I can’t hear your response to me. I can still easily assume I am fine and the problem is on your end. Though these erroneous assumptions are usually cleared up fairly quickly and sometimes humorously on zoom, they are more challenging over email and in real life.

When I send an email, I assume that you received it, that you read it and that the meaning that was in my mind when I wrote it is accurately conveyed to you. So when you respond (or don’t) I interpret your response from the place of these mostly unconscious assumptions. My first assumption, that you received the message is likely true, though difficulties in Internet connection and hardware problems can arise with no awareness on my part (or yours for that matter). My second assumption, that you actually read the message I sent, is true or not based on your reading habits and other immediate factors in your life that I have no way of knowing. My third assumption is the most problematic and the most difficult to remember; I (mostly unconsciously) assume that when you read my email, you understood what I had in my mind when I wrote it. This is rarely true.

As we all know, these assumptions give rise to endless problems on email that can lead to wild reactionary statements on both sides. The polarization and amplification arises not from any intention but merely from the inherent structural problems in both the medium of email and the challenges of human communication.

These problematic assumptions of communication are present in person as well. But when we are more immediate in giving and receiving messages, we have a better opportunity to discern errors in delivery and reception and correct them immediately. Zoom and phone are better than email. In person is best of all. Because the closer we are to each other, the more information I get about the impact of my words and intentions on you.

I may think I’m merely making a helpful suggestion but when you respond with defensiveness or silence, I can deduce that something is off. Perhaps I didn’t communicate clearly or maybe I communicated more than I was aware of. Maybe something I said touched something in you (or between us) that we need to deal with. Or something else. In person, there is so much more feedback about the process of communication itself and we have the opportunity to learn something new in the moment itself.

As I think about this now, it even seems to me that communication is mostly about the problems that arise in the process of communication. Though I usually think I’m communicating clearly and with kindness, it turns out that I’m rarely saying what I think I’m saying. Like everyone else, much of what motivates me is hidden from me. Exploring problems in communication allows me to uncover genuinely useful information about myself. Though these unconscious parts of myself can be deeply embarrassing, they are also a genuine opportunity to grow in love and understanding.

So the moral of this morning is to begin to assume that whatever communication problem arises is as likely to be on my side as on yours. And since I have much more access to my side, if I remember to look there first, I’m much more likely to solve the problem and actually learn something new as well.

Avoiding Disaster

In a dream, I almost died last night. Melissa and I were in a small plane going to Binghamton, New York, near where I grew up as a boy. I happened to look out the window and noticed that we were very near the ground, flying low over a road where my brother and I used to ride our bikes in the country. In the plane, we were following the road because we were nearly at tree-top level. I assumed the pilot was brining us in for an emergency landing and hoping there was clear ground ahead.

But then we took a sharp left up Twist Run Road. A real road – steep and twisty with stone cliffs (only in the dream) on either side. The plane was trying to follow the curving path of the road to avoid shearing off either of the wings against the rock wall. But it was clear we were going to crash and the only question was whether or not all of us would die? I looked over at Melissa and felt so much gratitude. This is it. I love you, I said and smiled as I looked into her eyes. There was nothing else to be done.

In the dream, I remembered I was in a dream and didn’t want to die in a plane crash so I backed away from the dream so as not to have to go through with it. A moment later, I was walking around the intact wrecked fuselage of the plane with all the other passengers. Miraculously, the pilot had gotten us down safely. We were all in shock, grateful to be alive but stunned by how close we had come to death.

The pilot was walking up and down near the plane deliriously happy that he had saved us all. He kept saying to us I did a terrific job. I got the plane down safely. Didn’t I do a wonderful job? We were grateful for our lives and happily supported his shocked narcissism.

I’ve been reading David Loy’s Ecodharma and yesterday afternoon was the chapter that considered whether or not it is too late to do anything to keep our planet from warming to the point where life as we know it is no longer sustainable. And if it might be too late, why should we do anything. His argument is that though it looks bleak, very bleak, we can’t know for sure and even if we did know nothing would save us, what we do still matters.

Many years ago I was headmaster of a small private high school for a year and a half. I was promoted from part-time art teacher to head in the middle of a crisis that was threatening to close the school. (Artists get chosen for leadership only when things are really bleak.) I worked with a group of parents to raise money and the Board of Trustees narrowly voted to keep the school open. But we didn’t come anywhere near our enrollment goals and the next fall, six months into my glorious leadership experiment, I had to announce the closing of the school.

For the next nine months, we lived with the knowledge that the school was going to close in June. I realized that my job as the leader was to help create meaning in the face of death. Some people said we shouldn’t care and should do whatever we want. It was clear to me, however, that our actions were more important than ever. Since then, I have been keenly conscious of the importance of beginnings and endings.

Of course, we are all living with a death sentence. Life itself is a journey of creating meaning in the face of our certain death. While the awareness of death can be paralyzing or cause us to act out of a self-destructive narcissism, it can also bring a focus and beauty to our lives. Knowing that we are here only briefly, that we and everyone we know will vanish, allows us to appreciate the preciousness of this fleeting life.

And the plane of our biosphere is in danger of crashing. Saying that it doesn’t matter because it will all end someday or that it is all a dream is to deny the wondrous particularity that appears in the form of you and me, the trees and the flowers, the frogs and the crickets. How do we appreciate the dream-like and fleeting quality of life at the same time we work on every level we can to heal our planet and to mend the institutions of our world that are so toxic and violent?

It was just a dream. But the vision of a fiery ending was real to me in the moment and resonates even now on this cool morning in August. So many dreams. So many fears. So many possibilities.

I think of the character Elnor in Star Trek: Picard—a new reboot of the series. He is a trained warrior from a sect whose vows are to only use their skills in service of righteous and hopeless causes. Picard, as usual, is trying to save the universe against overwhelming odds. The young man joins Picard and fights nobly. I won’t tell you what happens but I will let you know there is a season 2 in the works.

Decisions and Elephants

There are some decisions, even important ones, that are easy to make.   In fact, most of the decisions we make are so easy to make that we’re not even aware that we’re making them. Or if we are aware, the choice is so self-evident that we simply know what to do.

I remember reading once about a condition of the brain that rendered it almost impossible to make decisions. As I recall (or as it seems to make sense to me in this moment) the problem that caused this condition was about emotional processing rather than analytic reasoning. While many of us pride ourselves on being reasonable and thoughtful people, it turns out that our unconscious emotions and intuitions are mostly running the show. Our conscious reasoning most often arises after the decision is already made.

One alarming study demonstrated that the conscious intention to move arises a split second after the message to move has already gone to the muscles in question. My decision to get up from my chair is made by some part of me deeper than my conscious awareness. My decision to move comes after the decision itself is already set in motion.

Jonathan Haidt, in his illuminating book, The Righteous Mind, uses the metaphor of an elephant and its rider to describe the mind. The elephant is all the parts (most of them) of our thinking that we are not aware of. The rider, who is ostensibly in charge of the elephant, is our conscious thinking. The rider appears to have some limited power to make small choices about the direction of the elephant, but spends most of his time making up reasons that justify the decisions the elephant has already made. We do not live rational lives. Our lives are shaped and mostly run by our unconscious selective perceptions and unconscious biases. Yikes!

Haidt goes on to say that if you want to convince someone who disagrees with you on an important matter (like who should be our next President), talking to them about reasons and analysis will not be effective. He memorably says: If you want to change someone’s mind, you need to talk to their elephant. You need to speak at the visceral level to the emotions and assumptions that are often below the level of our awareness.

This brings me to considering the decisions that are hardest to make. These are forks in the road that are both important and, in some way, balanced. Not only are we conscious of having to make a decision, but after weighing the options, both possibilities seem to be equally valid. The potential choices all have their pluses and minuses.

Now, sometimes the best solution in this sticky place is neither A nor B, but rather J or K. We often reduce problems to binary choices when, usually there is a whole range of things we have not even considered. Reducing reality to A or B is one way we manage the infinite universe of possibility, but it is also a way we needlessly disturb ourselves and limit our thinking.

But sometimes, either you go or you don’t go. A yes or a no is required. Sometimes there are two choices and both of them feel bad. This is the classic lose/lose situation. Or this is how it appears to the little thinking self.

Adding to the emotional weight of these difficult choices is the perspective we were taught in school that there is one right choice. Most of us have the sense that we need to make the right decision—that there is a right decision. When it is a matter of some importance, a decision that will have repercussions going forward, we want to make sure we get it right.

In the face of all this pressure and the impossibility of making a truly reasonable decision, one wise teacher (Yogi Berra) gave this advice: When you come to a fork in the road, take it. And of course, this is what we all eventually do. After soul searching and considering (which is often important), we simply do something. and the wonderful thing is that whatever we do leads us into our life.

It turns out that there are many answers to the same question, many choices and options that keep appearing and disappearing. We take one step, either skillfully or not skillfully, then we take the next step. Ultimately, life is not simply a moral quandary. Our lives are a woven fabric of small and large choices that offer constant possibility and challenge. We do the best we can and learn as we go.

In the midst of it all, perhaps we can enjoy the view from the top of our elephants and learn a thing or two about working together with them and our own mysterious elephant hearts.