300,000 Words

When the COVID lockdown began in earnest in mid-March 2020, I decided it would be a good idea to write a morning reflection to send to friends, students and acquaintances as a gesture of solidarity and support in response to the ‘unprecedented and uncertain’ times we were in. My intention was to write most every morning throughout the pandemic, which I expected would last a month, or maybe even two or three. Like most everyone, I was wildly wrong about the length of time we’d be in lockdown, but somehow I have managed to keep writing almost daily pieces for these past fourteen months.

My urge to write also sprang from my sense that I have particular perspectives and experiences as a Zen teacher, life coach, artist, gardener and human being that may be helpful to some others beyond my immediate circle. A previous stint of morning writing had led to my first book: THIS TRUTH NEVER FAILS: A ZEN MEMOIR IN FOUR SEASONS, which, though not a best-seller, was exactly the book I had always hoped to write. It was honest, down-to-earth and people from many different backgrounds found it touching and encouraging.

As I’ve been writing these past fourteen months, I’ve also had the intention to get down on paper some of the things that I share on a daily basis with coaching clients, students and friends. Though I don’t believe there is any secret formula for life, I do see the power that wisdom teachings from many different traditions have to transform our lives. As I have been writing whatever comes to me in the moment, in the back of my mind has been that these writings might be shared with a wider audience. From the beginning, another book has been lurking in all this cyber-writing.

This morning, exactly fourteen months from the day I began, I woke up to the realization that I can’t continue my daily writing at the same time as I comb through my accumulated jumble of thoughts, observations and reflections. The four hundred some entries totaling over 300,000 words will need my daily attention to reveal some deeper patterns that might be turned into a book.

I’m reminded of the joke about the boy who gets a huge pile of horseshit for his birthday. He is delighted. When someone asks him why he says: ‘With all this horseshit, there must be a pony in here somewhere.’ I’m beginning to dig for the pony. Of course, as a gardener, I also love the horseshit itself, though it does need to be composted for the maximum benefit for the plants themselves. So I’m beginning to compost as well as dig.

The book I dream of is a collection of these short improvisational writings that could sit on your nightstand and be a source of comfort and joy. My working title (that has about a 1% chance of being the final title) is: DEPENDING ON WHAT ARISES: ZEN REFLECTIONS, CONSOLATIONS AND REVERIES. Like my first book, each chapter would be one day’s writing. It would stand on its own, but will also hang together with the others as a collection that has some kind of loose beginning, middle and end. What the thread that connects is is still to be revealed.

For those of you who have been regular or even occasional readers of these daily reflections, thank you so much for your attention. And for those of you who sent occasional shout-outs of the appreciation and encouragement via email, Facebook or in person—a thousand thanks. Knowing that a small group of people out there has found these daily meanderings of value has allowed me to continue to expose and embarrass myself.

As usual, I feel that I have been the primary beneficiary of these past 300,000 words. I’m always listening to what I say and write because I don’t really know it until I say or write it. All the advice and insights are really to help me remember and appreciate the broken/whole person I am.

I offer deep bows to the universal source—to the creator through which all things are born. Our thoughts, words and actions come through us but don’t really belong to us. Our job is to take responsibility for everything that arises and to use it in service of the healing and appreciation of the world. This is indeed the deepest joy for many of us human beings—to give away all we have as an expression of the love that runs through us.

Blessings upon blessings.

Maybe

I write a phrase, then wait for what follows. Then hold still as nothing more comes. Then I delete the first words and fall back into silence.

Maybe all that has been written before is enough. Maybe it’s time to say less—time to hide quietly beyond words and positions and insights. Maybe it’s time to allow what has come before to be what has already happened.

Maybe it’s time to stop. Maybe just this morning or maybe tomorrow too. Maybe only occasionally. Maybe not at all for a long while.

We’ll see.

The Song of Life

The rain has quieted things down this morning. It was pouring just a little while ago as I lay warm in my bed in the dark in my new bedroom. Now it has stopped and the contrast sounds silent. Just the cooing of a morning dove and the slight ringing in my ears as I strain to listen. And, of course, the distant hush of traffic.

Pleasant Street, where the Temple is and where I lived for the past eleven years, is a main thoroughfare between Worcester’s downtown and the northwestern suburbs—Paxton, Holden, Barre and beyond. The street where we live now is a couple blocks up from Pleasant Street and significantly quieter, yet still, as I have reported, the rush of traffic on a quiet morning is the background drone, even through closed windows. But it’s only in the morning, when my ears are tender with sleep and before the busyness of the day that I notice the ubiquitous drone.

This inevitable sound of civilization is modified by the morning doves and accompanied by a usual morning chorus of assorted and mostly invisible birds. I’d like to be an invisible bird—singing with no accountability—no reviews or opinions to worry about—no social media presence to be cultivated if one is serious about spreading one’s words. As an invisible bird, I sing only to sing. The song arises in me. I am the song that I sing and there is no before the song, or after the singing. In the moment of the call there is only the call—a blessed relief from the self I unavoidably drag along for most of my human life. (Was I good enough? Am I good enough? Will I be good enough?)

Yet, even now, I catch glimpses of the song that I am.

A friend who was recently part of a public ceremony in which he was celebrated, spoke of how amazing it was to hear from others who recounted small moments of being touched by his presence. Unknown to him, his song has been singing itself for all his life. We humans are finely tuned into each other.

Your song is not just the song you think you are trying to sing or hope someday to sing or are sure you cannot sing. Your true song is the one that sings itself through you. It began the day you were born. It’s the one you can’t help singing. Unbidden, each morning it arises on its own and through you. Each of us, regardless of intention, sharing as freely as the invisible birds that populate the trees around my new house.

This song, this light, is mostly invisible to us. We can never step outside ourselves to see who we are. We are invisible to ourselves and yet are invited to sing anyway—to let ourselves be who we already are—who we can’t help but being. It’s not about sophistication or knowledge or advanced degrees or power or prestige. It’s about the wondrous functioning of the universe through each of us.

What if this is really true? Or what if this is even partially true? What if the ancient internal critics that so fiercely defend your inadequacy are less true than the beauty of the song that you already (helplessly) are?

The crows squawk, the sparrows chirp and the doves coo. An airplane flies overhead and then disappears.

(Excerpted from forthcoming book Wandering Close to Home: A Year of Zen Reflections, Consolations, and Reveries. September 1, 2024.)

Hi Mom

I’m thinking this morning of my mother and my wife and my daughter and mothers everywhere—giving birth to other human beings and thereby open themselves to the great joys and sorrows of never-ending vulnerability and wondrous attachment.

Deep bows of appreciation and awe.

Here’s a poem for my mother and for all mothers from all sons and daughters:

Hi Mom

Inconceivably long ago, through you
came my two small legs and arms—
my eyes, ears, and all the rest—
surprised and bawling at first,
I imagine, then later on, larger
and laughing too— walking and
talking—full of wonder about this
beautiful world of flowers
that must also include the wild
sadness woven through each family
as we wander together and apart
in the great astonishment of being human.

059

Begin Again

My new stonewall isn’t going so well. I had begun a series of smallish terraces behind our new addition to follow the step-like rising of the siding and hide the cement foundation below. I began with the granite cobblestones I had lying around from other deconstructed projects. At first, it went well enough. Though the stones themselves are of various thickness and length, their overall rectangular dimension made it reasonably easy to stack them together.

I was about a quarter way through the project when I realized two things: 1) I wasn’t going to have enough stones to finish the project and 2) I wasn’t sure that the lovely looking walls I was constructing would be strong enough to hold the soil through its natural cycles expansion and contraction with water, ice and root systems. When I consulted my local rock-yard expert, John at Sansoucy Stone just up the hill from me, he informed me that: 1) my intuition of the containment issue was probably correct and 2) the granite cobblestones came from India and were relatively expensive.

So I wandered through the stone yard with John looking at various options. At the most ambitious end was the pile of stone that was random rocks to construct a true New England style wall, calling for the attendant balancing and fitting of wildly different shapes and sizes. At the other end was a pallet of thin and relatively flat shale from northern Pennsylvania which I had used several years ago to create a sculpture at the Temple. In between were many options, including a variably buff-colored schist from northeastern Connecticut that was relatively flat and came in relatively thin pieces. I was enchanted by the mottled rich color and, from the outside of the cylindrical stack on the pallet, it looked relatively easy to work with.

I had two pallets delivered to the end of my driveway and promptly got lost in other projects. Yesterday, I finally deconstructed the lovely quarter-wall of cobblestones and promptly repurposed them again to define the boundary of a new arcing garden on the other side of the addition. I also began laying the first courses of my second attempt at the terraced walls using my new schist. It is indeed a lovely stone. Each piece sparkles with evidence of its ancient provenance of clay, heat and pressure over inconceivable stretches of time.

This morning I learned a little more about these stones:
Schist is a foliated metamorphic rock made up of plate-shaped mineral grains that are large enough to see with an unaided eye. It usually forms on a continental side of a convergent plate boundary where sedimentary, such as shales and mudstones, have been subjected to compressive forces, heat, and chemical activity.

So the Pennsylvania shale that encountered the pressure and heat from the colliding tectonic plate of the Atlantic became schist in eastern CT—the schist I am now attempting to stack with elegance and solidity into series of small and rising walls behind my cottage here in Massachusetts. And, grabbing individual stones from the pallet, I find the variation in thickness and shape to be more robust than it appeared in the neatly stacked cylinder. They do not easily stack one on top of the other as they had in my imagination.

Such is the natural course of most worthwhile projects. Initial enthusiasm and dreams encounter the wondrous complexity and ambiguity of the real world. It is here that the real creativity begins and a certain amount of stubborn determination is required. The very real stones I now have demand more time and attention than the ones of my dreams.

So I take a deep breath and hold the vision of terraced walls stepping gracefully up the incline at the back of the cottage while I appreciate the variability and solidity of each stone—persisting in the process of attention as I learn what these rocks and this project have to teach me.

Between Apathy and Apoplexy

I have been avoiding thinking about politics recently, happy that we have a President who shares my views on general reality as well as on the necessity of government action to protect us from the worst aspects of our capitalistic system of individualism, accumulation and objectification. I am pleased that the former guy is not dominating the headlines and is not speaking and acting as the head of my country. I am spending less time reading the headlines and being outraged and more time considering whether the Patriots’ new draft calss will be relevant again in next fall’s football season.

The other day, I was with some friends who had CNN playing on their TV. It was surprisingly unpleasant to listen as the anchors do their best to gin up our outrage over the way some other people were behaving. The behavior they were reporting was indeed in poor taste, but CNN was clearly doing their best to rouse a particular emotionally reaction in us, the watchers. I could feel my latent outrage at ‘those’ people begin to rise again and asked my hosts if we could turn the TV off. They were getting pulled in too, and were happy, once I suggest it, to turn their attention elsewhere.

I don’t miss being outraged, but have not yet found the middle way between apathy and apoplexy. What is the third way that is not merely a watered down version of the two or simply swinging between the extremes? How do I stay engaged in the ongoing generational fight for equal rights for people of color? For the protection of our environment from the predations of industry? For the protection of the poorest from exploitation by the richest?

The polarization of our country between red and blue, is ongoing. Our former President continues peddling the big lie that the election was stolen and congressional Republicans are, for the most part, continuing to support this pernicious fiction. Liz Cheney, one of the visible exceptions, is encouraging the Republican party to separate from the cult of Trump, but she appears to be on the verge of being deposed by her fellow Republican members of the House. Republican controlled legislatures throughout the country have proposed a raft of legislative proposals that would limit access to voting in ways that would have disproportionate impact on low income voters and voters of color.

We are just four months out from the storming of the Capitol by the crowd egged on by our formerly sitting President after he had spent months doing everything possible to undercut the peaceful transition of power which has been a hallmark and bragging point of our democracy. Bidden’s focus on action to combat COVID-19 and to reduce the income gap, to protect the environment, and provide equal opportunity for all has been a welcome change from Trump’s glorification of greed and his constant stoking of fear and outrage at ‘those others’.

My hope is that Bidden will continue to take strong action to level the playing field and that the practical impact of his actions will touch the majority of Americans and thereby undermine the power of the lies of the far right. FDR too was opposed by wealthy industrialists and others who saw his proposals to create jobs and use the power of the government to reign in the excesses of capitalism as a certain recipe for national decline. In retrospect we can see that just the opposite happened.

But, I remind myself that we are not out of the woods*. We must stay engaged to lend our active support to the leaders both in politics and in our neighborhoods that are willing and able to help us move toward a culture that honors the worth and dignity of all.

* I also remind myself that I generally like being in the woods and we should all continue to spend time wandering among the trees alone and with friends whenever possible.

Right Here

Leaves flutter on the trees outside my window. Through the closed window, the low roar of rushing civilization in the far distance comes to my ears. This quiet early morning I remain steadfastly committed to doing less and less, even in the middle of the activity of my life.

At some place in the bible, it says ‘You should love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength’. At one point in my life I assumed that this was a literal command, so I broke up with my girlfriend—telling her that I could only have one true love at a time—to spend the summer growing a beard while looking for God (hitchhiking and camping) in Minnesota and Montana. Karma, destiny, or random chance propelled me through many diverse adventures to the doors of a small Vivekananda monastery near the shores of Lake Michigan. After a week of early morning and evening prayer and daily hard work with the mostly young brothers who were there, I was almost ready to sign up.

Vivekananda was a Hindu teacher, one of Ramakrishna’s main disciples. He attended the 1893 Parliament of World Religions in Chicago and was a great popularizer of Hinduism in the West and a great believer in the unity of all religions. From my brief time at the monastery, I remember three tenants: 1) our basic nature is divine, 2) the goal of this life is to realize that divinity, and 3) there are many paths (religions) toward that goal. It was the perfect path for an enthusiastic Presbyterian minister’s son who had been gently radicalized by the fringes of the ‘peace and love’ movement in the ’60s, touched by some depth of feeling through living in Japan for a year, influenced by a Marxist professor’s interpretation of Jesus’ anti-establishment message of liberation, and had had a personal experience of oneness on an LSD trip that the Christian ministers and priests he encountered did not seem to understand.

I felt at home with the rag-tag mix of mystics and drop-outs I encountered at the apple-farm monastery. I knew in my heart that this seeking of God, no matter what we call her, is the most important thing in this life. But I also knew that I was afraid to return to my ‘ordinary life’ and, being somewhat of a purist, decided that fear of the ‘real world’ was not a good reason to cloister myself. I returned to college for a wild senior year that involved a series of challenges (including multiple girlfriends) about how to integrate my glimpse of oneness into the complexity and ambiguity of daily life.

I found little support from spiritual teachers that year. My biggest teacher was someone I never met: anthropologist Joseph Campbell. His book, HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES, was given to me by a sympathetic, agnostic Jewish professor of sociology. The main teaching I took from Campbell, aside from his agreement with Vivekananda’s position on multiple authentic paths, was his observation that the hero’s journey is not complete until he comes down from the top of the mountain, back into daily life. The hero’s job is to bring the gift of her vision of God/Dharma/Life back to everyone through integrating what she has experienced into her everyday life.

It’s hard to leave the mountaintop, but since it’s impossible to stay, we don’t really have much choice. I have drifted away from my initial affiliation with the Christian church, but remain deeply inspired and touched by authentic Judeo-Christian teachings. When Jesus encourages us to be ‘in the world but not of it’, I hear him speaking to me. Separating myself from the world has never been my path, something about the challenge of the complexity of it all has seemed to be the point.

So, once again this morning, I vow to remember that the one most important thing is life itself. Through all the activity of daily life, the unnamable source of life itself is present. Getting things done is just a wonderful game we humans have invented to order to pass the time. May each thing I do today be an expression of my love and gratitude for the impossible miracle of just being alive.

New Work

Abandoning the pointed lance
of their winter darkness,
the beech leaves leap
quietly into plain view—
still small and feathery
as they commence
their mighty seasonal
work of nourishment.

Foundation Plantings

I think it was Tolstoy who dreamed of many lives woven into one—farmer in the morning, artist in the afternoon and philosopher in the evening. In Zen we advocate another version of this integrated life—to meet everything that comes, from dirty dishes to the electric bill to the late spring daffodils, with full attention and appreciation.  Yesterday, I had the chance to practice.

In between being with coaching clients and Zen students, I was outside arranging and planting the ‘foundation plants’ I bought: a small weeping Japanese maple, a wonderfully fragrant Korean spice viburnum, a dark-leafed pink azalea and a robust three-foot tall roseum elegans rhododendron topped with buds the size of pine cones. I bought them from Hank at the local nursery with one arrangement in mind, then allowed the future composition to shift as I contemplated the space and imagined the full-grown plants.

Planting a garden is about imagining the future. How will this small seedling look in mid-summer when it is blooming? Is it short or tall? What colors and textures will it bring to this area of the garden? What else around it will be blooming or past? Some people do this in an organized way, with lots of research and a carefully crafted garden plans and drawings. I’m more a seat-of-the-pants kind of guy and have learned to trust my intuition.

In life-coach training I learned that ‘intuition is always right–but sometimes only 5%.’ Just because I have a gut feeling about something doesn’t mean that what I imagine is actually going on or going to happen. But when I have that intuitive sense, it does mean that something is going on and going to happen. Acting on our intuitions as provisional truth leads us to learn more. Sometimes it is necessary to be 95% wrong to get to what is really happening. It may be awkward and embarrassing, but it can be quite useful.

With the garden (as with life) I often think it is better to make a pretty good decision than it is to try to make a perfect decision. Life offers us multiple possibilities at every moment and each possibility leads us into the fullness of our life. Some possibilities may lead to smoother outcomes that are more in line with our hopes and dreams, but even the decisions we make that get us into trouble and cause conflict are also true and necessary.

In the garden, sometimes I place the plant in exactly the right place. Other times the plants I place have to be moved again and again before they find their best place. And sometimes, they don’t even survive my intuitive decisions. But each place is exactly the right place and leads to the garden of the future and, hopefully, improves the mind and wisdom of the gardener of the present.

Wendell Berry says, in one of his wonderful poems, that the job of the farmer is not just growing the crops, but also enriching the soil and cultivating the farmer’s mind.

As I dig the larger hole for the lovely budded rhododendron, I note there are no worms in the recently filled soil around the new foundation. I work in some organic matter and say a silent blessing that this soil may, over time, be a nutritious home to worms, bugs and all kinds of fungus to support the plants—as well as for these wondrous plants that will be the backbone of my garden for years to come. I look forward to watching and working with the results of my intuitive decision and vow to keep learning and appreciating.

Dreaming of Danger

Dreaming of Danger

I was chased through the night by men from a homeschooling cult that called itself the Church of the Latter-Day Saints. (No relation, except in my mind, to the LDS religion or to homeschoolers I know in the real world.)

I had been invited to present to their community at the large compound where many of them lived in northern New York. My presentation went well, but after I talked I began to notice people shying away from me and I got the sense that I had said or done something that was quite wrong in their eyes. After several conversations about working out my return transportation schedule, I realized that they were doing everything they could to keep me there in the compound. They came up with one excuse after excuse as to why my departure had to be delayed. I was getting increasingly anxious and scared as I tried to work out how to get home.

Finally, they agreed to let me go, but the only vehicle they would give me was a rolling cart—like the big flat ones they have at Home Depot or a little like the one I used last week to move my parents into their new more assisted living arrangement. (Upon arriving, they both had to wear an anklet tracking device for the first three days, and then, they were told, it would be ‘evaluated’.) I could push the cart in my dream and hop on and ride for five or ten feet, but then I had to get off and push it again. I figured it would take me a long time to go the hundreds of miles back to Worcester. My fear, in the dream, was that they would let me go then send some guys to beat me up and leave me to die once I was well off the property—and then deny having any involvement in my disappearance. I began making plans for ditching the cart when I got a few miles down the road—hiding it and taking to the woods to find another way home.

(I listened to the book HOMELAND ELEGIES on my recent trip to Philadelphia. Beautifully written and narrated by Ayad Akhtar, the book gives a visceral sense of the suspicion and malevolence that has been directed at many Muslims in the decades since 9/11. His love for his homeland America as well as his confusion, helplessness, and rage are vividly portrayed in this semi-fictional autobiographical novel.)

My dream went on and on and my fear and anxiety kept ramping up. I partially woke several times through the night, aware that I was dreaming and wanting to change or escape the dream, only to fall asleep and into the same dream again and again. Dream-walking through unfamiliar territory, I came to a house and knocked on the door to ask for help. A woman who was on the board of a school where I worked came and invited me in. She too was a homeschooler with a huge family of children ranging from little ones to teenagers. I thought she could help me, but I was only partially right.

She made me breakfast and I did my best to engage the many children in conversation about their lives and interests. One teenage boy who was clearly a daredevil and troublemaker wanted to be sure to show me the terrible scar he had on his shoulder from one of his adventures. My friend, the mother, was about to leave with the girls when I asked if she was going toward Worcester and if I could have a ride. She said, no, she wasn’t going toward Worcester, but then relented and said she would take me anyway.

The father and all the boys quickly left the house, ostensibly to go to work. As the mother shepherded the girls upstairs in the homemade plaster house, I told them about how much I loved my two younger sisters growing up and how much I enjoyed playing with them and taking care of them when they were young. I was desperately trying to prove I was not a danger but knew it was futile and that the father and his friends and the boys would come back to get me soon.

I tried desperately to wake up, but could not. Men were now coming in the front door and I knew others were waiting for me out back as well. It was over. I woke myself up enough to know I needed a Deus Ex Machina ending to save myself. I imagined a helicopter descending to rescue me and realized that my friend, the board member and mother could have known this was happening and have called the authorities who would come to arrest the vengeful men and save me from death. I was working out how the police would be able to charge the men with assault if they hadn’t beaten me up when I woke up completely.