Metabolizing Pain

Ruth King, in her wonderful book Mindful of Race, writes about the pain and fear that arises around issues of race. Whatever the color of our skin, whatever our racial identity, we all carry deep and unprocessed pain around our individual and collective experience of race. To protect ourselves from this pain we lash out, run out or numb out—King’s memorable take on flight, fight or freeze—our human response to that which feels overwhelming.

King also mentions another protective response she used to use. When walking by white people (King is black), she noticed that she always smiled, often without even being aware of it. Noticing this pattern, she looked deeper into what was happening inside her in the moment. She discovered that her smile came from her fear that if she didn’t smile she would be judged as ‘an angry black woman’ or be harmed in some way. Her smile was a way of managing some danger she instinctively felt.

This kind of automatic defensive response is sometimes called tend and befriend. It’s often associated with women, but it’s one of my most habitual responses to conflict and trauma. I figure if I am nice enough and kind enough and understanding enough, I will be safe and I won’t be attacked.

While all four of these are natural and necessary human survival strategies, none of them deal effectively with the source of the problem. They may allow us to move through a difficult situation, but they also add another layer onto the original problem. Lashing out, walking out, numbing out and ‘nicing’ out all leave the essential pain and conflict untouched. We then carry the unprocessed pain with us in ways that make us more likely to avoid it again next time a similar situation arises.

The poet Robert Bly used the image of a black bag to imagine the cost of all of these things we avoid. He said we are all given a black bag when we are young. When something happens that we don’t want to deal with, we simply put the experience in that bag. At first, it works pretty well. Put it in the black bag and it goes away. But over the years the black bag gets heavier and heavier as more and more gets stuffed into it. Eventually the weight of the bag gets to be so much that we can barely move. There is a cumulative cost of our avoidance strategies.

But there are other ways of meeting the pain and difficulty of our lives. King writes about the possibility of metabolizing pain—the possibility of facing our difficulties directly. This is the essential and paradoxical intention of Zen and mindfulness meditation. The great 9^th century Chinese Zen teacher Linji put it this way: Do nothing!

Linji’s Do nothing! is an invitation to stay right where we are. To feel what we are feeling and sensing without trying to escape into blame or running out or fading out or smiling until it all goes away. Metabolizing pain is possible when we stay with the pain, not the story of the pain, but the experience itself.

Though we rightly try to avoid pain and discomfort, the truth of life is that suffering is unavoidable. While this appears to be one of the problems of life, the Buddha referred to this inevitable pain as the first Noble Truth. The first step in becoming fully human is to stop trying to avoid what we don’t like.

King’s metabolizing pain points to the possibility of not just surviving but of being nourished by that which we have avoided. The black bag contains the life and energy we have avoided. Pain often feels like what separates us from each other. But the pain we feel, what we suffer in small and big ways, is what connects us to ourselves and to the world around us.

Whatever difficulty you are in, other people have experienced this before and even at the moment you are going through your difficulty, there are many other human beings in the world going through a very similar experience. When we can say This is how human beings sometimes feel, there can be a widening field of experience where it’s not so personal. This pain, this difficulty is not just a problem to be managed, but is an integral part of being human.

We often think about ‘growing up’, but like the trees, we also need to grow down—to send our roots deep into the dark soil of life. The difficulties we encounter are what lead us forward to be nourished by what is unseen and unknown. We can learn to stay with our pain without shutting down. Or, as we shut down, we can learn to come back again and again. In staying and returning, we can begin to discover in the pain itself some hidden and essential gift that has the possibility of transforming us and the world around us.

Reading, Sorting and Education

I have always had a love-hate relationship with reading. In elementary school I found reading out loud to be very challenging and I think if it hadn’t been for my brother, I might have been sorted into the lower ability group. I struggled through and eventually got the hang of it. Fortunately for me, my brother was a year ahead of me in school and I almost always got the teachers he had had. He was always good in school. He had (and still mostly has) a mind that can retain facts and theories and then organize and use them appropriately. I never felt that bright, but assumed I was tracked into the ‘smart’ group because my teachers assumed that I had the same natural ability as my brother.

In high school, when it came time to consider what colleges to apply to, I brought my list of Dartmouth, Amherst and Princeton to the guidance counselor who said that although these might be appropriate schools for my brother, I should look into the next tier. American schools are essentially about sorting children into various ability groups. This sorting presents itself as necessary, rational and merit-based, but is actually unnecessary, irrational and privilege-based. And college admissions is the ultimate educational sorting mechanism—the ultimate manner in which the privileged can ensure their privilege passes on to their children. All presented in the guise of a meritocracy.

My father was a small-town church minister and growing up, we didn’t have much money. But he was a ‘professional’ in the community. My mother and her mother with to Smith College and my grandfather had a PhD from Cornell University in soil science. From the time I was twelve years old, a paper-back copy of somebody’s guide to colleges and universities was in permanent residence on the coffee table of my grandparents’ house. My brother and I eagerly poured through it with the same enthusiasm we looked at baseball gloves in the Montgomery Wards’ catalogue.

In the ‘Monkey-Ward’s’ catalogue, there were always three categories of gloves and Louisville Slugger bats and bicycles and the other things we coveted: good, better and best. The best was clearly extravagant and while we were careful to say that we would be happy with good, we figured that better was probably worth the extra money. So we were well-trained in quality ratings and understood that ‘most selective’ meant most desirable.

I loved looking through that catalogue of colleges. The thickness and weight of the book was a reassuring reminder of the wondrous life that lay ahead of me. The exotic names of schools in far places—Occidental, Harvey Mudd, Pomona—had me dreaming of the hidden worlds of promise that would open to me. I carefully studied and read each school’s strengths and considered whether big or small, urban or rural would be best for me.

In my family it was important not to appear inflated in expectation or wants, but it was clearly important to understand the relative positions of these schools and, if possible, get into the ‘best’ one possible. Doing well enough in school to get into one of these schools (on scholarship) was one of the many never spoken assumptions of my upbringing.

I ended up going to Wesleyan University, not a brand-name school at that point, but clearly a ‘quality’ school. I had done an overnight visit to Amherst College and was incredibly impressed that the fraternity house where I was put up was ‘on tap’ 24 hours a day. I even had a half-glass of flat beer one afternoon that tasted like soapy water. This was clearly the good life even if I didn’t quite understand it all yet. But someone told me that if I liked Amherst, I should check out Wesleyan.

Wesleyan changed exposed me to people and ideas far beyond the world in which I grew up. I learned to read enough to get the gist of things and found out that it was not just my brother paving the way for me, but that I had the capacity to absorb and consider new ideas and perspectives.

I actually meant to write this morning about the piles of book that regularly grow in my bedroom where the bookshelves are filled beyond capacity and I still order important books. I’ll never be able to read half of what I would like. I wish I loved sitting and reading more than I do. After half and hour, I get creaky and impatient to move, but I treasure the knowledge and perspective I continue to get from reading. I love the feel of a book in my hand and the thrill of new ideas that spark connections in my head and I underline the important parts and make my notes of agreement and association in the margins.

But I am grateful to my parents and grandparents who did, through this all, instill in me a love of ideas and a curiosity about the world. How can I repay their generosity in supporting me to go into a world beyond their understanding with their blessings and wishes that I might find my way and use my talents to serve this burning world.

On the Dangers of Hearing Only Part of a Radio Show

The other day on radio I heard that everything in the universe is moving away from everything else. I didn’t catch the whole story, but apparently, due to the energy of the big bang, distances between things are increasing. (This explains a lot that I’ve been noticing recently.)

The big bang’s energy of dispersal is countered by the constant and inexplicable force of gravity. It turns out that everything in the universe is attracted to everything else in the universe. (I feel this too sometimes.) The astrophysicist being interviewed went on to talk about one theory that suggests that at a certain point, the energy of the big bang will wear itself out. (Like a small boy who runs around all day will eventually falls asleep). At this point, gravity gains the upper hand and everything will begin coming back together.

This coming back together will not, however, be the Age of Aquarius. Gravity, as its name implies, is not a lighthearted or limited matter. The astral prediction is that the attraction of everything to everything else will eventually collapse all known (and unknown?) universes back into a primordial point. There won’t be much room to move around and real estate will be in short supply.

I suppose it will be a cozy relief from the vast empty stretches of separation that many of us encounter. We’ll be right on top of each other. We’ll be so close, we won’t even need our cell phones. Since we’ll all be the same very very small thing, communication of any sort will be merely a quaint relic of the past. Single cell microbes will be remembered as fairy tale monsters of inconceivable proportion.

Personally, I predict any number of disputes will arise in such crowded conditions. A lot of toes will be stepped on and inappropriate touching will be unavoidable. These disputes will likely try to enlarge themselves but with no legroom, arguing itself will be severely limited. Spring, summer, fall and winter will most likely have to be canceled for to lack of space. Likewise rain and clouds, rivers and oceans. Even the smallest wind will find no place to blow.

Then at some point, within the point, things will get to a point (where they have already been) and everyone will vote for another big bang—another fantastic adventure outward. We’ll be so sick of each other’s bad breath and irritating habits, that anything will be preferable. Of course there will be trepidation—‘What if I get lost?’ ‘What if I forget my way home?’ We’ll do our best to reassure each other. We’ll remind ourselves that gravity stays with us and that we’ll be back together in just a few trillion gazillion years. Then we’ll pack our bags, say farewell and be on our way.

Delivery Instructions

I often go missing—
find myself lost
and slightly confused.

But the familiar story
of lost and confused
is suffused with
unmeasured moments
of ease that come
tumbling one after
the other to rescue
me from my
self-ish duties.

The Judge, however,
routinely finds me
and charges me with
abandoning my post.
‘What about the
host of obligations?’
he says ‘Who will
take care of it all
while you are out
and about on another
aimless escapade?’

In spite of my self
I feel his point
and willfully relent
and grudgingly return
to bear the full weight
of my various
self-requirements.

But no sooner am I
back in the harness
than I am planning
my next escape.

It’s really so easy.
Wherever you are,
just stop. Stop
in the middle of any-
thing and the spell
is broken. The doors
come unhinged
of themselves and you,
you are the one
to step across
the well-worn threshold
into the world
of grass that grows
green by itself.

Cherry Tomatoes on the Porch

I grew cherry tomatoes in a pot on the porch this year, in the southeast corner, next to the nasturtiums. I had an extra plant and there wasn’t room in the garden. At first I staked it up, but after it got up to five feet, I tied it to the column. Since then it’s bent over with the weight of the carefully clustered fruit. For the past month, they have been sequentially ripening and I have been sequentially picking. It’s all quite convenient.

I like cherry tomatoes, the small red spheres that bring a burst of sweetness in the mouth. The fruit, and it is a fruit not a vegetable, sets itself in paired arrays of four or five. Tiny green peas are magically born from the yellow flowers. The peas swell to marble size before green turns to orange and, eventually, all goes red and ready to eat.

I’ll sometimes eat one in the morning just as the light comes up. Cool from the September night, it’s a little treat. I suppose I could eat a nasturtium blossom to go with the cherry tomato and have a truly ‘al fresco’ salad. But the nasturtiums are too peppery to eat alone and I’m not sure the combination would be good on an empty stomach.

My eyes water in the early morning. My tea is hot. The cars rush by on their important journeys. I’m becoming an old man—not so interested in rushing anymore. Happy to sit slowly on the dark porch and write about flowers and fruit. I pick my way through perception and memory trusting the words to find their own coherence and lead me somewhere I have never been.

I’m a writer of some sort, though I don’t know what sort I could be or what my point might be. One should always have a point. But I write small (and unfinished) essays and poems. Daily I write and send them out over public airways to a few friends, students and colleagues—or whoever else happens to find them. I fancy myself distant kin to the medieval wandering poets of Asia. The ones who didn’t seek fame and fortune but were content to brush their poems onto rocks and scrap pieces of paper.

But the only hermit poets we now know are the ones who had someone else to take over their public relations duties. Or the teachers like Hakuin who began all his writings with a disclaimer of how he was only doing this because his students were begging him and how he would rather remain silent. All the while, it turns out, he was writing letters to wealthy patrons to raise money for his next publication enterprise. A healthy ego, a large ego, it turns out is useful for publication and dissemination.

But not so much for happiness. Large ego, small ego is just one more thing to work with. More and bigger is rarely better. I read a study many years ago that claimed to have discovered the optimum number of lovers for happiness—turns out it was one. The cultural imperative for more and bigger and better is the endless trap. Well-published and best-selling authors are not happier than those of us that write in smaller ways. (Even if we do dream…)

The morning moon glitters through the dark leaves of a maple tree to the east. Light seeps in everywhere and seems intent on hiding the moon before it can rise to the open sky. The gurgle of water falling into the koi pond fills the sound space between cars. The rushing cars too sound, if you listen in the right way, like water—like waves rushing up on the beach and falling away. Everything comes as it is and I’m the one who says good or bad. This reminds me of that. That reminds me of this. Nothing is a thing alone.

If I stay very still, I can find my way right to where I am. And if I sense the faint scent that invades my nose, I can follow it right to where I am.

Journey Forward with Care

Buddha’s final words to his few remaining disciples (most had fled or denounced him as an inconsistent teacher) were ‘Journey forward with care.’ It wasn’t about being loyal or never forgetting. No promises extracted from them or pledged by him. Just ‘Journey forward with care.’

I imagine walking into a dark forest. With no moon everything is dark. Without me seeing, the trees wiggle their branches in silent greeting. The forest animals and insects know exactly who is here. I alone am blind. Without plan or destination. I simply find myself walking. Slowly. Slowly.

I am nearly overwhelmed by the weight of the darkness. I feel like falling to my knees in despair. But one more step. And then another. The terror passes and I keep moving. No destination is evident, only this boundless darkness.

Slowly, my feet learn to follow the path and the sounds of the night forest reflect shape and distance to my dim eyes. Shapes and sense appear even without light. Even as I learn the darkness, the faintest light reveals itself. My body eases into itself.

Morning comes and my feet follow the path that guides me. Now the world is bathed in light. The tall trees continue to preside over the dedicated inter-twinkling of the many forest beings. They sing and call to each other—sending favors and receiving gifts. Each one precisely related to each other.

And with each step I glimpse again my belonging. I am a tree that walks—the patterned insect with soft exoskeleton—the complex microbe who moves toward ease and away from discomfort. I am part of the darkness and the light. Lost and found are simply the unique weather patterns of my being.

‘Journey forward with care.’ I begin again to sense what this might mean.

Disturbed Again

Bird calls crackle the moist air. The dull roar of distant traffic seeps through the shelter of dark trees. The damp morning twilight is unbothered. I, however, am disturbed once again. Is it all louder in the morning or are my ears just more sensitive? These irresolvable quandaries of life. One poet says God disturbs us toward our destiny.

I can’t help myself from looking for the cracks in things—for those places where I can glimpse past the glossy surface—where I can get lost somewhere I have never been. The snotty nosed neighborhood of my mind gets too confining. The same opinions are repeated again and again—each time with full sincerity and accompanied with an imperceptible wink which indicates a willingness to collude. In this neighborhood we agree not to ask hard questions like: How does racial injustice help benefit me? Where does my coffee come from? What happens to the RoundUp after it kills the irksome weeds in my lovely brick walkway?  In this neighborhood we don’t look too far over the fence under shared agreement to pretend. Don’t look too closely.

In The Truman Show movie, Truman (True-man/Jim Carrey) slowly realizes that his life is actually a TV show where everyone else is in on the joke but him. Truman lived a charmed life with everything anyone could want, but it wasn’t enough. Just like us, whatever the surrounding luxury and good fortune, it’s never enough. The only way out for Carey was to sail into what he feared most and be willing to die for that ungraspable and life-giving truth beneath the surface.

So too for all of us. In this time of racial reckoning, evolving environmental disaster and an increasingly desperate authoritarian President, we have to look beyond our inherited beliefs and opinions. We have to look beyond our cozy lives of denial and fear. Into the heart of things.

We must. We must. Not out of kind-heartedness, though that may be part of it. But because there is no true freedom without leaving everything. There is no true rest until we have given everything away and head out beyond the familiar.

And there/here, waiting for us, is a life beyond measure. An authentic life is not for the faint of heart, but is available to everyone willing to set out. The necessity must be uncovered again and again. And then, only one step is required. Again and again.

Still Waiting

Days are shorter these days. Autumnal equinox is approaching and the sun travels noticeably lower in the sky. As the great blooming of summer comes to a conclusion, I feel my connection to the garden loosening and already I’m beginning to think about which seeds I want to start next March.

The fourteen morning glory seeds I planted in mid-May have created a lush screen of green on the north side of the pergola. While every small sprout that comes from a seemingly inert seed is a miracle, the height and the abundance of the morning glory foliage is astonishing. The heart shaped leaves, each the size of a human hand, have grown in abundance—launching out from every inch of twisting stem which keeps seeking support to rise. Hundreds and hundreds.

But my lush morning glories plants that twine delightfully on themselves and whatever is offered are empty of flowers. Each day when I water, I check for buds, the small conical pods that portend the azure trumpets that delight me so. But not one has appeared. And just yesterday, my helpful google photo app showed me some pictures of my morning glory plants from several years ago—covered with blooms. I suppose I should just appreciate the foliage, but….

I’m not a careful gardener. I’m an enthusiastic gardener. I don’t like to keep detailed records or work too hard to get things just right. This spring I did try to keep track of exactly when I planted my seeds, but even in that, I was rather sporadic. I much prefer to let the garden do the work. This serves me well on the enjoyment front, but I think I miss some of the subtleties of what is going on—like maybe why my morning glories aren’t blooming.

I admire detail people—people who take careful notes of what they do and learn the subtleties of the process they are involved in. I care about details, but only in the moment, then my wayward attention is taken by the next details. I want the immediacy of the thing itself—the touch, the smell, the shape. I care about the sense of the whole and how the particulars come together to create something more. It’s the something more I study and depend on. I want to be surprised. Purposefully vague in my intentions, I trust that what emerges will be better than any detailed plan I could draw up.

I try to watch and learn as I go. Of course I remember which plants are happy where. I have a sense how much sun falls where and whether it is the easy morning sunlight or the demanding afternoon blaze. I notice the naturally damp places and the drier spots. But I don’t remember and am not consistent in exactly what mix I use for my potted plants. Sometimes I mix compost and leaf mold with growing medium. Sometimes I use only growing medium. Sometimes one brand, and sometimes another. Fortunately, usually it doesn’t make any difference.

Mastering any creative art, like gardening or cooking, is partly about learning what differences make a difference. A recipe that calls for one cup of onions, will probably be fine with a quarter cup more or less. But a tablespoon of salt where a teaspoon is called for could be disastrous. Certainly each plant has its own preferences for water, soil and light. I have learned that some are flexible and some are fussy. I tend to prefer the flexible plants which are able to cope with the vagaries of my memory and the weather itself.

But with the annuals I grow from seed and buy each spring at the local nurseries, once something flourishes in a particular place, I repeat it again next year. Nasturtiums are always nestled between the three columns in the southeastern corner of the porch. (Though trailing nasturtiums are lovely in the garden itself, in this garden, the seedlings are quickly gobbled up by the bunnies that are not gobbled up themselves by the foxes who are not run over by the cars when crossing the street.)

For eleven years now, I have planted morning glory seeds in large rectangular planters that rest in hangers on the pergola behind the weeping cherry tree behind the Buddha. They always flourish and obediently climb the five strings I place for them to guide their way to the top. As the ratio of leaf surface to volume of soil in the container rises, I have learned to water them more and more. These days it’s a gallon of water in the morning for each planter and then an afternoon top off if the day is especially hot.

But still no blossoms. There’s been plenty of sun and I know they like the hot weather. They say that if the soil is too rich they won’t bloom, but I haven’t put any fertilizer on them all summer. They also say that God takes her own time.

So for now, I’ll practice appreciating the rising and tangled green cloud of leaves while I keep an expectant watch for signs of cerulean delight.

What if it’s true?

What if it’s true:
God loves you and holds you
in the palm of his hand?

What then of all this
worry and fear?
What of the terrible things
that really do happen?

What if it’s true:
what you are looking for
is right here in this
moment, in this place?

What then of the dull
ache in my head and
the children who are
cold and hungry?

What if it’s true:
‘The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want?’

What then of this endless longing
for beauty and peace–
for intimacy and connection?

Impossible. Unbelievable.
Incomprehensible. Fantastic.
Preposterous. Wondrous.

I can’t guarantee
or even come close
to understanding except
in those moments when some
thing interrupts my carefully
curated dream of separation
and I find my self once again
in the boundless particular
of what has been so freely given.

Therefore instructions to self:
Stop your wild searching.
Don’t run off and try
to be good. It’s not that
kind of thing. Slow down
and slow down, then
slow down some more.
Now, take a breath and
look around. Forget
everything you’ve been
told and you will find yourself
where you have always been:
at the very center of it all.

What if…

I read a book once that proposed the following thought experiment: imagine that everyone you encounter today is a fully awakened Buddha whose only intention is to help you wake up. It’s an interesting thing to consider because it both exposes our underlying assumptions and invites a shift in our perspective.

Most of us assume that we live within a world where we have to compete with others for limited resources. Our collective culture sanctifies the notion of private property and holds its highest accolades for those who accumulate the most. We worship ideas of self-effort and self-determination as if they were the main source of the shape of our lives.

In school we are constantly measured to see who is ahead and who is behind. We are encouraged to work hard and make it to the front of whatever line we are in. Not everyone can be at the top of the class so we learn to compete against each other. Success and praise are limited quantities so you had better work hard to make sure you get enough.

This mindset is terribly motivating. We learn we must rouse ourselves into action through activating our sense of lack and our desire for more. The problem is that since there is no end to desire, nothing actually soothes the deep sense of not being enough that is hard-wired into human experiences. The Buddha called this fundamental human discontent dukkha. He also said that the cause of our suffering is desire for more. The Buddha taught these two truths and taught a path that can lead us to a radically new way of living.

The thought experiment of imagining everyone you encounter is a Buddha whose only intention is to support your awakening is one way to explore both our own endless desire and the possibility of living in a different way. Imagining the wisdom and beneficial intention of those around us invites us to notice our constant competing and complaining and to even consider that the separation we take for granted might not be true.

I tried this yesterday. I was doing well until someone said something that upset me. I felt criticized and unappreciated. I felt unseen. ‘I work so hard and the only thing that counts is what I don’t do’ I thought. How could this person be a Buddha trying to wake me up when they were so critical?

But as I stayed with my reactivity, I could notice its power. Though I can sometimes get lost in uncertainty, when I am upset, I feel 100% certain that I am right and whatever is upsetting me is wrong. In Buddhism, we call this delusive certainty which is a particular kind of ignorance, one of the three poisons (along with greed and anger).

I also saw how easily I am distracted from my deeper intentions. I want to live a life of generosity and love, yet sometimes I am so reactive that I forget what is most important. I want to be the one who is right and good and blameless. No, I want to be the one who is seen as right and good and blameless. This is embarrassing to admit and mostly I try not to notice how tied I am to other peoples’ opinions of me.

Gradually, over a couple of hours, I was released from my realm of complaint and delusive certainty. I realized there was truth in the comments that had upset me and that perhaps some changes I could make to live a little slower and a little more aligned with my deepest values.

I suppose that these Buddhas that surround us will use any means possible to help us see where we are stuck and where we have tried to co-opt the world to support our small and deluded fantasies of perfection. Waking up is sometimes uncomfortable, as we are required to acknowledge our part in the suffering that seemed to be someone else’s fault.

So if you’re up for a challenge, imagine today that everyone you encounter is a Buddha whose only intention is to help you wake up—to help you break out of your delusive certainty into the wider possibility of life. But don’t expect it to be all hearts and flowers for you (and I) appear to be hard-bitten cases that sometimes require rather extreme interventions.