Toward Election Day – November 3rd

I notice that I have not been writing about the coming election or COVID-19 or racial injustice recently or the environmental crisis. This is only partly intentional. I remain convinced that this coming election is hugely important for the future of our country. In order to move toward meaningful action on the pandemic, institutional racism and environmental destruction, we must elect a new President and flip the Senate on November 4^th.

The plurality of Americans seem to feel this way as Biden is ahead in almost all of the polls. This is not cause to relax whatever efforts we have been making to support Biden and Democratic candidates in general. Many of us still vividly remember our shock and pain when Clinton, who most polls predicted would win the election, was defeated by Trump four years ago. We must do what we can to lend our voice, our time and our money to support Biden and Democratic Senatorial candidates.

Please make a plan to vote. My wife has already voted by mail. I have decided to vote (carefully) in person to be part of the votes that are registered right away. Trump has been utterly transparent in acknowledging that he will do everything in his power to stay in office, regardless of the outcome of the election. I have seen no evidence that he actually has the capacity to admit defeat about anything, let alone being voted out of the White House.

Trump will do his best (worst) to confuse, obfuscate and throw things into chaos after the election. A landslide victory for Biden that is evident the night of the election is the best defense against Trump’s coming machinations. But due to the record number of mail in ballots, much will be unknown even on November 5^th. The nightmare scenarios of Trump trying to steal the election are terrifying and utterly unprecedented in my memory of our Democracy. His incessant cries to ‘lock up’ his political opponents and calling for ‘something to happen’ to Adam Schiff for his role in the impeachment proceedings are right from the strong man dictator/mafia boss playbook.

While American politics at the national level have always involved people (mostly men) with huge egos and an outrageous need for power, there have always been limits—checks and balances to hold the institutions of democracy together through the predations of the worst impulses of human green, anger and ignorance. This is where I fault the Republican Senators (and House members) who have ignored Trump’s lying and law-breaking and have refused to speak up and take principled stands against this President’s predations.

Though as I write this I think again about my black and brown brothers and sisters. To say that our democracy has been working well is to ignore the treatment of people of color and the indigenous peoples of this country. Our precious democracy did not grant them the personhood and the respect to be included in the bubble of representation, respect and support that I want to associate with democratic principles.

But there have been strides forward and as much as Trump has activated and inflamed the festering grievances of some white people who feel their assumed supremacy threatened, he has also activated women and men of all colors toward a level of activism and change that are also unparalleled in my lifetime.

As much as I want Trump out of the White House, these terrible years of his Presidency have been the context for the arising of the ‘Me Too’ movement and Black Lives Matter. Women have entered politics and been elected to office in unprecedented numbers at the local, state and national level. And a generation of young people have led the country in demanding recognition of and an end to police violence against blacks and to institutional racism.

Things are not all bad. The seeds of change have been planted. Our job is to make our voices heard and be part of the larger move to create a civil society that supports and protects the rights and opportunities of all, not just a select few.

Political commentator Robert Hubbell recommends a long view of our current situation.   I conclude my thoughts today with an extended quote from his October 16 newsletter:

Whatever happens—win or lose—the earth will continue to spin, and the sun will rise on November 4, 2020. While we may not gain clarity on the day after the election, life will go on. I suggest that everyone make plans now for the day after, for the week after, and for the year after the election. Keep those plans. We must expand our field of vision and extend our time horizon beyond November 3^rd, both because that is necessary to defeat Trumpism and because the struggle against Trumpism must not consume our lives. We are engaged in a generational fight, but we must also attend to the important work of raising future generations to carry on after us. November 3^rd will be a momentous day in a decades-long fight. But it will be only one momentous day among many. Plan your life for the long-term. Live your life in hope and expectation, not fear and despair.

Advice to Self: Don’t Give Advice (even to yourself)

Whenever I can, I try not to give advice. Rarely is my opinion about someone else’s life necessary, accurate or helpful. Even when people directly ask for advice, they don’t really want it. They may want to be listened to. They may want help in thinking about options. But nobody really wants or needs me to tell them what to do—and that includes me.

I am often filled with well-meaning advice for myself. I am sure I should be more of this and less of that. I should be more organized. I should walk every day at 11:00. I should set blocks of time in my calendar to make sure I’m progressing on my new book. These are all good ideas, but I have learned that my advice is always opinionated and partial. Life is much more interesting than simply trying to get myself to do what I think I should be doing.

I am continually amazed at the mysterious suffering and wisdom that pervade our lives. There is simply no solution to life and yet freedom and possibility abound. Good ideas and clever interventions are just good ideas and clever interventions—they don’t touch the deeper currents that catch us up so completely in the ebb and flow of actual experience. Things are not what they seem to be—or rather things are not just what they seem to be.

The other day a friend said she was appreciating that life is much more impressionistic than she had realized. I thought this was a lovely way to describe this quality of life I am pointing toward. When you look closely at an impressionistic painting, the water lilies that are clearly evident from a distance turn out to be just splotches of paint as you get closer. These delightful daubs of green are thick and viscous. They delightfully dance on the white weave of the canvas that holds them in place. Back away and the lilies reappear—floating serenely on Monet’s imaginary pond—that was definitely not imaginary for him.

Life is like this. Fear, anger, sadness and confusion are not what they present themselves to be. They are not monolithic, true and never-ending. Nor are insight, clarity and connection the final resting place. They are all true and important. But nothing is as solid as it seems. Everything is vivid and provisional. We should cry when we are sad and laugh when we are happy. But it can be comforting to remember that the seeming solidity of the moment is a trick of the eyes.

This is all preamble to my confession that I gave advice to a friend yesterday. I couldn’t help it and I tried, even as I was advising, to be as provisional as possible. I advised him to leave the protected confines of his house and spend more time outdoors. I told him to wander in the woods and look up and the sky—to allow himself to receive the vast light of the universe into his heart. I was so inspired by this advice that I told him that I suspected it was just as much advice for myself as for him.

I had some time yesterday afternoon and I could have gone into the woods as I had so wisely recommended, but I didn’t. I just took a book of Wendell Berry poems out onto the side deck for a better view of the flaming maple tree across the street. I sat there flipping to the familiar poems on the dog-eared pages. I looked up again and again trying to receive the message of the brightly colored tree.

No revelation or burst of insight or sudden clarity appeared. But it was lovely to sit for a little in the warm overcast of the afternoon in the midst of this beautiful falling world.

Released Once Again

I’m happy to report that I have been released from the dark realms that held me so tightly yesterday. Isn’t that the way it goes? No guarantee on how long or how short the hard times (or the good times) last, but for sure everything changes and everything ends. I easily fall into thinking that if I work hard enough and am skillful and compassionate enough, I can make the good things last and the bad things go away when I want them to go away. For some stretches of time, this may appear to be so, but when I step back just a little I see the great rhythms of life are fundamental. Everything comes and goes. Everything that rises falls. Life leads to and includes death.

Yesterday I used the image of the darkness and difficulty we encounter being like a cocoon that holds us. Cocooned without reason / I am slowly digested / by the darkness / that embraces us all. Indeed we are all in the dark about what that comes after this life or what comes after this death. Theories and beliefs abound, but what comes next—even what comes in the next moment—is unknown. Sometimes this is more obvious than others.

In writing the poem No Choice, I pondered for some time whether the darkness embraces us or presses in on us. These two phrases came to mind and I felt I had to choose one, but I was quite ambivalent. To be embraced by the darkness is much more hopeful than being pressed in on by the darkness. It was more comforting to go with the embrace rather than the more ominous pressure, but I think the darkness I was speaking of includes both aspects.

This morning, on the internet, I found this resonant description of what is going on in the cocoon:

Inside the cocoon, the caterpillar is transforming into a new creature. … The fluid breaks down the old caterpillar body into cells called imaginal cells. Imaginal cells are undifferentiated cells, which means they can become any type of cell. Many of these imaginal cells are used to form the new body.

I don’t suppose the caterpillar likes the whole breaking down thing one bit. But the idea of imaginal cells—cells of possibility that come only after being broken down–feels deeply right to me.

Despite my best efforts, I find myself in dark places again and again. Years of meditation and coaching don’t seem to protect me from the natural rhythms of life. I suppose this is a blessing, but it is one of those hard blessings that I have to take a deep breath before I’m willing to say I’m grateful for. But I have increasingly learned to trust the landscape and the process of darkness. There is a death that is required—and not just the death when the heart stops beating.

Moving through our lives, we lose so much. We have to let go of our children as they grow up and move on with their lives. We have to let go of who we used to be, what we used to be able to do, of friends and colleagues gone from our lives. Some endings are so slow we hardly notice them and some happen with such speed and power that we feel ripped apart.

In Zen we talk about the possibility of participating in loss – about joining in with the very process that is breaking us down. It still is sometimes wildly painful, but when we say ‘yes’ to what is going on, there can be some ease in the middle of the dying itself.

The Christians talk about resurrection. I don’t know what happens when our hearts stop beating, but I do believe that we all die and are reborn again and again in this lifetime. When we allow ourselves to die to who we were, to die to our opinion or whatever we were clinging to, then we are reborn as a new version of ourselves. In the dying and the breaking down we are humbled—brought to the earth. Our conceited illusions of power and control are dissolved and we are able to proceed on with some slight bit more of wisdom and compassion for ourselves and for our fellow human beings.

No Choice

Coherence dissipates
and resolve flees headlong
in front of the forces
of night. Overmatched
once again I resign
myself to the underworld to
impatiently await the end
of my infinite sentence.
Held prisoner and perfectly
cocooned without reason,
I am slowly digested
by the darkness
that embraces us all.

On Not Working Hard

This morning I wake up with a headache. Allergies?   Lingering cold symptoms? It’s hard to say. I’m not feeling inspired. I start writing about the fall colors which are now peaking and then switched to the story of my first COVID test (negative) but both feel contrived and boring. So I figure I’ll take the risk of hanging out here in the doldrums and see if there is anything to notice right where I am.

It’s a challenge to avoid working hard. My new definition of working hard is doing what you do because that’s what you do. Working hard is losing touch with the purpose but going on with the activity. ‘I write every morning so I must write every morning because that is what I do.’ If I follow this logic, I end up becoming a well-intentioned copy of myself. I go through the motions and follow the pattern but the joy is lost. When I lose my connection to intention, it’s all hard work. I can still put words on a page, but it’s not fun or alive in the writing nor, I imagine, in the reading.

One of the things I learned in the improvisational dance company I was with so many years ago is that you can tell the difference, both from the inside and the outside, when performers are genuinely in the moment. In our time rehearsing, teaching and performing, we explored the possibilities and the challenges of presenting the creative process itself as the performance. From the inside of a dance, the work was to be aware of what was arising within yourself, within the other dancers and within the space as a whole. We practiced not planning in advance—which is much harder to do than it sounds. When the mind comes in to ‘help out’ in a self-conscious way, the dance becomes artificial, predictable and boring. The best dances were surprising to both the dancers and to the audience.

This improvisational presence is the discipline I am most interested in—in writing and gardening as well as in meditation and in life. I want to practice and live in intimate responsiveness to what is arising in the moment. True beauty is a kind of courageous authenticity—a willingness to follow some inner necessity—not a carefully curated arrangement of appropriate materials. This is what most interests me in my daily writing. Of course I want to offer whatever wisdom and experience I have, but I want to do it in such a way that I get to learn too. I don’t want to blab on about what I knew yesterday, I want to find and share what is arising new in this moment.

As I write, I’m conscious of meaning and shape and the craft of it all even as I hold fast to not knowing where the thing itself is leading me. I go back over what I have written several times, both in the process of writing and after I finish to adjust and refine. I am trying to use my self-consciousness without being ruled by my self-consciousness. A high-wire balancing act. I am curating my presentation self in service of presenting some authentic self. I’m always choosing and editing—revealing some parts of myself while hiding others. But my intention is to use all these kinds of awareness to more clearly present some moment of aliveness that is beyond my conscious control.

When I know where I’m going, or even when I think I have to go somewhere, it’s not much fun. It’s hard work. And I am increasingly determined to avoid hard work. Life is too short and too precious to just go through the motions. I don’t mind working hard when there is some inner necessity. When the thing itself is alive, it’s all adventure. I’ll happily dig holes, pile rocks, or sit in the chair with my laptop morning after morning—as long as I have the sense of following and offering something more than myself.

Like a dog sniffing and sniffing, I wait for and follow the arousal of that invisible scent. Sometimes I dash off into the dark woods and get totally lost. Other times this impossibly sweet and subtle fragrance leads me leisurely forward. Other times, there’s barely a trace. Still I wait and trust as best I can.

Learning to Jump

My grandson is trying to learn how to jump. I don’t know where he got the idea. Maybe this is part of the curriculum at his nursery school. Walking, running, then jumping. He’s a good little runner and easily runs ahead when we walk together. It makes me a little nervous as falls are common, but he shrieks with pleasure in the running and who could deny him that?

Yesterday, after his two hour after-school nap where he recovers from how much he’s learned at nursery school, he go very excited when I asked him if he wanted to go out for a walk in the rain to go to the corner and watch the cars. Getting him into his blue unicorn rain suit is not an easy task. So I distracted him by being silly and dancing with my bright orange raincoat while his mother and grandmother double-teamed him into the rain suit.

But he drew the line with boots. For some reason he has decided that rain boots are an abomination and to be avoided at all costs. He cooperates in holding his feet up for sneakers, but mounts a vigorous and boisterous campaign whenever someone tries to fit his feet into the boots. Whether this is a principled statement of fashion, a misguided fear of rubber objects or a comfort issue, we don’t yet know. He won the battle so we both headed out in the light rain in sneakers and rain gear.

We both love rain and puddles, me and my grandson. I remember playing outside in the summer rain with my brother, creating dams in the gutters to make giant pools as the rain cascaded down and we got soaked. I remember walking in the fall rain on the residential streets on the outskirts of Nagasaki, Japan. I was sixteen years old and feeling very far from home as the night fell. I walked and walked and was somehow comforted by the familiar rain that fell on me and on my family so far away. I remember starting a fire in the rain after a wet day hiking in the woods with my sister. We gathered a cache of the tenderest small sticks that were still somewhat dry and carefully nursed our small flame until it was a warm and cheerful hearth in the middle of the wet forest. And this, is my newest rain memory—holding a small already wet hand, walking down the large steps by the back door—in palpable anticipation of puddles.

The first one we encountered by the corner of the house was only an inch deep. My grandson immediately dropped my hand, darted to the puddle and began stomping his feet with great delight. Little flurries of stomping would yield to small shrieks of laughter and looking up for my approval of his wondrous functioning. What is it about stomping in puddles? Is it a walking on water thing? Or the power of making the water jump and dance?

Later in the day I heard short item on the radio of some 12,000 year-old footprints that have been unearthed in White Sands National park. The big discovery is the mile-long trail of footprints of a mother or young man carrying a toddler at a quick pace. (Apparently there was danger and anxiety even before our current President.) The same news cast also mentioned large footprints of prehistoric animals that also contain hundreds of little human footprints. The current theory is that the large footprints made a puddle and the little footprints were our toddling and dancing ancestors splashing like my grandson.

But back to our rain and our puddle. As he was stomping his sneakered feet (which were already wet two minutes out of the house), my grandson began crouching down with both feet on the ground and the straightening up quickly. At first I wasn’t sure what he was doing, then I realized he was trying to jump—trying to go airborne—to get both feet off the ground at the same time. Though his coordination and his likelihood of success seemed quite low, his determination and joy was boundless. So I joined in.

I don’t do a lot of jumping up and down these days. Not that I’m against it in principle, it’s just an activity with very little practical value. Occasionally walking quite fast, or even running gets me somewhere (across the street?) as necessity dictates, but getting both feet off the ground is almost never necessary. But yesterday was different.

People driving by, in the rain, on the outskirts of Boston, saw two jumping figures – a large one in a bright orange raincoat and a small one in a blue unicorn rain suit. And if someone had been patient enough they would have even seen the unicorn clad one leave the ground for just an instant – both tiny wet feet happy to self-power themselves off the surface of the earth for the first time.

And which was more miraculous—a small chubby toddler rising briefly toward the heavens or an old man jumping up and down in the rain, laughing and laughing?

Everything Is

Everything is
the full expression
of its own explanation—
complete in its
flashing particularity.

Just this
specific
revelation.

Don’t dream
of some other heaven
heaven or otherwise
let yourself be
distracted from the
holiness at hand.

Only when the mind
surrenders its endless
search does This
reveal itself.

All avenues of pursuit
close and hope
for something else
dies. Then the embryo
of the true self is
born at last into
what it has always been.

Discrete incarnation.

The Possibilities Unfixable Problems

A friend of mine once told me there are three kinds of problems in long-term relationships. First there are the ones that you solve together effortlessly and hardly notice you’ve solved anything. Second, there are the problems that require joint effort, but after some time yield solutions—we can feel justifiable pride in our working together to bring these issues to conclusion. Finally, there are the problems that you never solve—they come back again and again and you can never quite seem to resolve them. These are the perpetual issues of the relationship. My friend said that not only are these insoluble, these ongoing issues present in every relationship are the bridges to intimacy.

I distinctly remember hearing this framework with relief and puzzlement. I was aware of these categories in all my relationships – with my wife, with other family members, with colleagues and with myself. There are always areas of easeful functioning, some places of working hard together to work out differences and then there are the ongoing points of tension that don’t ever get really solved or figured out. I was relieved to hear that these ongoing difficulties are not simply a failure on my part, but are inherent in the nature of relationships.

I was surprised, however, to hear that these insoluble issues are (or can be) bridges to intimacy. I’ve never quite understood what that meant but the very least it encourages me to hold ongoing problems in a new light. What if the problem is not a problem? What if the ongoing tension, at whatever level, is not something to be fixed, but something to be explored and wondered about—a path to deeper understanding and connection? What if there is something going on that is mysterious and interesting rather than annoying and problematic?

Ongoing issues in relationships rise and fall in their intensity and in their purported meaning. Sometimes the fact that I like to leave five minutes early and you like to leave on time is only a minor irritant that I can easily adjust to. Sometimes it is the incontrovertible evidence that you never really respected me and we should never have gotten together in the first place.

The longest (and most problematic) relationship we have is, of course, with ourselves. We all contain many different selves and often have quite stormy relationships within ourselves. Like any relationship, some things we do quite well, some things we have to work hard to manage, and some things get us tangled up again and again. What if these unfixable parts of ourselves are essential and can lead us to deeper wisdom and intimacy?

In Zen, we sometimes put it this way: Our miserable karma becomes our wonderful dharma. Karma is a way of talking about the innumerable currents of the life in which we find ourselves. Our current situation, our personality, our strengths and weaknesses—all of this is just what it is—our karma. We can protest our situation and call it miserable and problematic, but whatever the circumstances in which you find yourself as you read this, this is who and where you are. Dharma refers to the teachings or the Way. It can mean formal Buddhist teachings, but on a deeper level dharma points to the revelations of life itself, in whatever form they arise.

Our miserable karma becomes our wonderful dharma encourages us to hold our problems, especially the ones that come back again and again in a new way. That the unsolvable problems of a relationship are the bridges to intimacy is a similar teaching of the possibility of transformation.

All of this presupposes only one essential skill for relationships and for life: the skill of STAYING. To cross the bridge, to find intimacy requires staying in the fire of discomfort—requires hanging around long enough to allow something else to happen. Staying is a skill that does not mean just being physically present, but being wholeheartedly present—turning again and again toward that which is hard to be with.

Personal Practice – Notice places of irritation and judgment that arise today – toward yourself and toward others. (This in itself is an extremely difficult assignment as irritation and judgment arise so constantly that they appear just to be part of the world rather than mind-states that arise within us.) When you are able to catch the rising irritation and/or judgment, take a moment to notice what it is like for you. What are the thoughts? What are the sensations in the body? What feelings arise? Then (and this is the really hard part), just do nothing. Stay in the place without trying to fix or push away or get through anything. Notice what happens.

Forgetting Class Two

We had our second class on forgetting yesterday. The teachers, Ann Jacob and Stan Tomandl, are wise and gentle. They live and work and teach together in Victoria, BC, Canada. They describe their work as:

specializing in working, learning and teaching about
altered consciousness that comes during life’s joys, grief, 
creativity, dreams, illness, trauma, memory loss, remote states, 
delirium, coma and other tender and strong moments
in our living and dying   

I first spoke with them when my father was in a nursing home. He was nearing the end of his life and was physically very weak and was occasionally disoriented as he tried to recover from a stroke and a subsequent brain surgery. My step-mother and I set up an appointment to speak with them to get some tips on how to deal with his disorientation which had begun to include fits of anger and paranoia.

I remember sitting in a small institutional room in the facility with my step mother and Ann and Stan on speaker phone. Their support and kindness was palpable. They were also wonderfully curious. How was it for us? What were the challenges? What were we noticing? They affirmed everything we said.

I suppose this is the key to everything, isn’t it? To affirm what is here.

The way to connect with ourselves, with others and with the world around us is simply to say yes. We don’t have to object or correct or judge or even understand. Whatever presents itself is true. Of course it’s not the whole truth, but it certainly and definitely is one aspect of the truth. Why not be curious rather than suspicious? Why not explore what is here rather than trying to make it conform to how we think it should be?

The world so generously presents itself to us in a thousand different forms. Our everyday response is often to refuse what is offered in favor of some opinion of how we think it should be. It’s as if we were given a gem of immense beauty and rather than appreciating and marveling, we spend our time wondering if the color might be adjusted or the shape might be improved upon.

In the class yesterday Ann spoke of a time when she got a call from the care facility where her elderly mother lived. The facility was in Cleveland, but her mother was convinced that she was in Mexico, not Cleveland. When Ann talked with her mother, instead of trying to convince her that she was in Cleveland, Ann invited her to talk about Mexico. Ann said her mother was quite delighted to be in Mexico and gave vivid descriptions of the colorful goings on. Eventually, Ann’s mother noticed that she was sitting in her favorite chair and was curious how that got to Mexico. Then she noticed the familiar painting on the wall and other bits of her everyday life. Eventually she re-oriented to her agreed upon geographic status and the staff was reassured. But not before a delightful visit, for Ann and her mother, to Mexico.

Of course, when people are in altered states, it’s not always this sweet and easy. When my step-mother and I spoke to Ann and Stan about my father’s fits of anger and paranoia, they were equally affirming. When we mentioned that he was worried that the staff were talking about him, Stan laughed and said that he was probably right. When we talked about his anger, they encouraged us to appreciate the appropriateness of this emotion as a response to being forced to live in a strange place. They affirmed my father’s experience and offered us a new perspective to bring to our dealings with him.

During the class yesterday, I was struck by how applicable these teachings of how to connect with people in altered states are for our everyday life. What if we approached everyone as if they were in an altered state and needed special care to be with? Aren’t we all in Mexico in our heads? It may appear that we live in Cleveland, but we each live in the middle of our own universe. Many of us appear to be relatively normal, but our inner worlds are wild and mysterious. And we often long for the affirming attention that will allow us to lower our walls of defense—allow us to let someone else in, and perhaps even allow us to be curious about the universe that they live in.

Affirming someone else’s experience does not magically smooth out differences and make hard problems go away, but it does soften the painful divide of separation and judgment. With this softening of the boundaries, the possibility arises that we can be together to face into the challenges and opportunities that endlessly arise. And this, in itself, is a blessing beyond measure.

Missing the News Cycle

I have just returned from a three-day Zen retreat. Though I didn’t go anywhere, my Zoom Zen retreat included a retreat from my daily writing and from the news cycle. I have not looked at or heard the news since Friday afternoon. It’s now Tuesday morning. I feel slightly proud of my news fast and am quite ambivalent about checking in again this morning. I’m eager to look and I’m enjoying the current smallness of my world—safe and cozy in my warm room as the cold autumn rain falls in the morning darkness.

Before the retreat, I had slid into the habit of not just reading the Globe, the Times and a few other news sources in the morning, but also checking in periodically through to day to see what was happening. I enjoyed the little thrill of briefly clicking on the rising headlines on the Times web site. What’s the latest outrage and disaster? Tracking Trump’s steady deterioration in the polls was like seeing my football team slowly wearing down their opponent in a game it looked like we were going to win.

But I also noticed an addictive quality about it all. ‘Just a peak,’ I’d tell myself, but then I’d scroll on for longer than intended and only break away with the ringing of the phone for my next meeting. I had decided once or twice not to look anymore that particular day, only to find myself clicking on again, ‘Just to check in.’ Not a good sign.

While I believe it is important for all of us to stay informed in this time of gross misinformation and with the upcoming high-stakes election, I am also aware of the pernicious impact of this constant checking on the quality of my life. If you’re working on a political campaign and have to respond to the latest moves of your opponent, then staying glued to the latest actions, rumors and insults is essential. If you’re an ordinary citizen, the moment-to-moment developments may actually be more distracting and disturbing than informative and necessary. (Of course, the appeal of being distracted and disturbed should not be underestimated.)

Beneath the current political battle however, another more subtle and dangerous struggle is raging—the digital competition for your eyeballs on the screen. Huge amounts of money are being made on getting people to click onto particular sites. Our digital attention is a commodity that is being bought and sold in huge quantities. The more we click and the longer we watch, the richer and more powerful some people are getting – regardless of who wins or loses the election.

The digital world is wondrous. Our recent Zoom-Zen retreat included participants from around the world. We easily and clearly joined together to practice the Zen meditation that first arose in medieval China. And staying up-to-date with the developments in this time of turmoil is important. But the digital world is one of the culprits in the current crisis in our democracy—the very one it is purporting to help us with. The amount of disinformation that has funneled us all into our competing tribes also maintains the animosity that is tearing at the fabric of our society. Animosity and outrage are bad for us (personally and socially) but wonderful for getting people to spend more time in front of their screens.

Having not received word otherwise from the outside world, I’m assuming there have been no seismic shifts in the national and international landscape. Republicans are pushing through their nominee to swing the court and Democrats are still sputtering with the unfairness of it all. (My blood temperature rises a few degrees just thinking of this.) Trump is still tweeting outrageous lies and half-truths to rally his diminishing forces and to undermine the coming election in any way he can.

I will go to our morning Zoom meditation, then click open my digital newspaper while I eat breakfast later. Regardless of what I read, I plan to continue actively writing letters, talking and giving money to support Joe Biden and Democratic candidates for the Senate. We should all do whatever we can to remove our current aspiring autocrat and the Republicans that have empowered him. Our democracy has always been imperfect and fragile. It now needs our full participation to ensure its continuation.