More Instructions to Self

The first challenge is finding a place to start. The second is trusting that starting place enough to take the first step. From there on, it’s just a matter of following through.

Easier said than done.

EASIER SAID THAN DONE—perhaps that’s the title of my new book. One teacher said that these teaching on how to wake up are so simple that an eight-year-old child can say them but so difficult that even an eighty-year-old person can’t live them.

We’re all trying to close the gap between what we know and what we live—between what we love and what we do. The first step in this approach is, as they say on the London Tube, to Mind the Gap. Becoming aware of the distance between our intentions and our actions is full of possibility and potential—a good place to begin.

I am lost and discouraged much more than I would like to admit. As many times as I include my daily struggles and investigations in what I write and talk about, there is another level that remains hidden. I write about a particular morning and in the writing, I am committed to finding a way through. The writing is true and, at the same time, a fabrication—a story based on a true story Perhaps a true story can never be told, for in the telling it separates from the thing it was and becomes something new. Perhaps something in the story resonates with the experiences of others, but the thing itself, the thing that is being written about never happened before the writing.

Bodhidharma didn’t come from India to China, didn’t meet with the Emperor and tell him the essential teaching of Buddhism is ‘Vast emptiness with nothing holy’ and wasn’t the first ancestor in the Zen school in a lineage that has descended unbroken through my teacher to me.

But easier said than done is also another story. Sometimes it’s true and sometimes it’s not true. Sometimes just walking down the street with a very young friend in the late winter and noticing the buds on the trees swelling and explaining to him about spring and warmth and green leaves is fully enough and there is no difficulty to be found anywhere. Sometimes we catch a current of energy and are saved from our endless struggle. Or is it more accurate to say we are caught by a current of energy?

I’m reminded of my brief career as a trapeze artist. It lasted all of one afternoon and it was again in Costa Rica, at a resort where my wife was teaching and I was playing consort for the week—just invited along for entertainment and distraction. (Note to self: look into this as potential next career.) It was just an afternoon lesson but it was on the high trapeze. I still vividly remember climbing the tiny rope ladder up and up and how much smaller and higher the platform appeared from standing on it than from the ground.

It was a simple trick they were teaching us: to be caught. All you had to do was step off the tiny platform high in the air. Holding (tightly) onto a metal bar, you swung down and down, then finally began to swing up. At the top of the out-swing ‘all you had to do’ is to put your knees where your head was, bring them under the bar, then back through over the bar to catch the bar with the back of your knees as you released your hands and swung back toward where you started—upside down.

And if you had managed to do all this, the next part was to swing backward and upside-down through space holding on with your knees with your arms and hands extended. When you reached the apex of the second out-swing, the muscular and good-looking young man (who actually did this for a living), would ‘catch you’—would grab your forearms with his hands as you grabbed his forearms with your hands. You released your knees and flew through the air, held in his grasp.

And what I really remember are the instructions I was given as I stepped off the little platform. ‘Don’t try to find the hands that will catch you. LET YOURSELF BE CAUGHT.’ Let yourself be caught. Flying backward, upside down through the air, extend your arms and hands and let yourself be caught. I did reach out into the vast moving space and I was caught and for a small moment, was caught and swung free. It was truly astonishing.

So…putting this mornings lesson all together we’re left with:
1) Easier Said Than Done – remember that this life of being human requires a life of learning,
2) Mind the Gap – it’s actually in paying attention to where we fall short that is where the true journey begins, and
3) Let Yourself Be Caught – maybe God is a handsome young man (or woman or non-binary person) who is swinging upside down like you and is ready to catch you if only you will reach out and allow yourself to be caught.

Maybe enough instruction for one morning.

Good News!

The ambitious American Rescue Plan to support people and stimulate the economy as we move through the rest of the coronavirus recession passed the Senate yesterday on a party-line vote of 50 to 49. We should celebrate. This is a historic moment, indicating that the Democrats, under Joe Biden’s leadership and with their slim majority in the House and their non-majority edge in the Senate, are willing to lead the country. This economic relief package has the support of over 70% of Americans but not one Republican Senator. As Heather Richardson points out in her March 6 ‘Letters from an American’, this bill indicates ‘a return to the principles of the so-called liberal consensus that members of both parties embraced under the presidents from Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who took office in 1933, to Jimmy Carter, who left the White House in 1981.’ Richardson points out it was Reagan, who defeated Carter who ‘told Americans in his Inaugural Address that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.’

Roosevelt led a dramatic shift in our country that was partially responsible for our recovery from the Great Depression. He vigorously used the levers of government to balance and restrain the power and greed of the most wealthy. His patrician colleagues felt betrayed and predicted the end of America as we know it. In fact, just the opposite happened. Republicans since Reagan have been espousing smaller government with the notion that the free market is just and will protect everyone worth protecting. The dramatic expansion of the gap between the most wealthy and the poorest as well as the erosion of the middle class over the past forty years show the pernicious impact of unregulated capitalism.

As summarized by the New York Times, the American Rescue Package includes:
• Another round of one-time direct payments of up to $1,400 for millions of Americans; an extension of the $300 weekly unemployment benefits through Labor Day; and a benefit of $300 per child for those age 5 and younger — and $250 per child ages 6 to 17.
• $45 billion in rental, utility and mortgage assistance; $30 billion for transit agencies; and billions more for small businesses and live venues.
• $350 billion for state, local and tribal governments; $130 billion to primary and secondary schools; $14 billion for the distribution of vaccines; and $12 billion to nutrition assistance.
By one account, the package just passed will reduce childhood poverty in America by 50%. The passage in the Senate yesterday moves the bill back to the House where the amendments are expected to be accepted and the bill will become law.

Though Republicans are claiming this amount of spending, $1.9 trillion, is too much and will have the opposite impact on the economy, these are just the arguments Roosevelt encountered when he fashioned his New Deal legislation. It’s also worth remembering, as Professor Richardson reminds us, that the 2017 tax cut under Trump cost at least $1.5 trillion and benefitted the already wealthy individuals and corporations without having a significant impact on the economy for the rest of us.

The American Rescue Package shows that the Democrats are willing to take the mantle of leadership given to them by the people of this country and take strong and principled action to protect the most vulnerable and support the working class as the path to strengthening our society. Biden has also made this position clear in his support for the unionization efforts of the workers at the Amazon plant in Bessemer, Alabama.

In a video recorded on February 28, Biden said: ‘America wasn’t built by Wall Street, it was built by the middle class, and unions built the middle class. Unions put power in the hands of workers. They level the playing field. They give you a stronger voice for your health, your safety, higher wages, protections from racial discrimination and sexual harassment. Unions lift up workers, both union and non-union, and especially Black and Brown workers.’

Meanwhile, the Republican party has re-coalesced around Trump. His lies about a stolen election and his stoking fears of a changing society seem to lead the Republican party toward an endless cultural war, thereby avoiding altogether the need for policies and conversations to address the enormous challenges of environmental crisis, economic stratification, systemic racial violence, and COVID recovery.

But today, we should be happy. We have a functioning government and a President who is willing to use his power to take principled stands and to take action for the good of all. We must continue to reach across the polarizing divides of party-line ideology, but we must also move forward on the urgent issues of equality and justice that are at the heart of our dream of democracy.

Nearly a Year

I’m nearing the twelve-month mark in this phase of my writing. Friday, March 13, 2020 was my first daily post: COVID-19, Boundless Way Zen Temple and Blogging. The night before, the Temple Leadership Council (TLC) had met and decided that we would not have any more in-person meditation sessions ‘for at least two weeks’ after our meditation the next morning. We were scrambling to put together an on-line meditation for that Sunday. We thought we were exercising an excess of caution—two weeks seemed like a long time. But looking back, we were incredibly naïve.

I suppose we are always naïve about the future. Our assumption is that the future will be an extension of the past—that what comes tomorrow will be a development of what is here today. We spend our time evaluating what has happened and making plans based on some version of that repeating itself. This examination and reflection of the past can be useful and is often helpful making plans and carrying out projects. But large asteroids, new viruses, and other unexpected occurrences are also a part of what happens. We go for a routine visit to the doctor and find out we have a major illness. We get a cough and fever and our COVID test comes back positive. We slip on the ice and twist our knee and can’t walk for months.

Life is both somewhat predictable and wildly contingent. The web of mutuality that supports us also ties us to each other and to everything in mutual dependence. We cannot be fully prepared for what is to come. We may be captain of our own ship but the wind and the weather, the icebergs and the other ships on the sea (both friends and pirates) are all beyond our control.

‘Unprecedented’ is the word that was thrown around a lot in March and April. Eventually we began to refer to the ‘new normal’ or the ‘new abnormal.’ What was unthinkable slowly became our daily life. Now, as the vaccine roll-out continues at a vigorous pace, we are all beginning to think what life will look like when we can get beyond this phase.

Much has been lost. Over five hundred thousand lives just in the United States alone. Countless businesses and millions of jobs are gone and will not return. Old habits of gathering and socializing have been interrupted. Which will return? How will we be different? What will be familiar? We can’t know.

Our best bet is flexibility and clear intention. As our nation slowly moves back to some semblance of normalcy, how do we not fall into reckless eagerness while avoiding unnecessary caution? Even now some states have removed COVID related restrictions. Will the people in those states be responsive to the information of viral spread and adjust their behavior accordingly or will resuming ‘normal interaction’ too fast lead to another wave of infections?

Politics and culture wars still rage on, severely impacting our capacity to work together in meeting this ongoing health crisis. Our inability to talk with each other across the political divide is an ongoing crises too. How will we reweave our country? Perhaps the whole notion of ‘reweaving’ is incorrect. Our nation has always contained sharp and violently defended divides of privilege based on geographies and birth and skin color. Perhaps this current polarization is the necessary step to address the lies of white supremacy and the only way to move toward a more just and truly inclusive society.

Meanwhile, kudos to the Biden administration for leading by both example and coordinating efforts in rolling out the vaccine. Now the challenge is to continue with clear intention to move toward opening up while remaining sensitive to the permutations and unexpected events that will surely arise.

Appreciating Mistakes

Dogen Zenji said shoshaku jushaku. Shaku generally means “mistake” or “wrong.” Shoshaku jushaku means to succeed wrong with wrong, or one continuous mistake . . . A Zen master’s life can be said to be shoshaku jushaku.

                                         Shunryu Suzuki, ZEN MIND, BEGINNERS MIND

I often paraphrase this to say that the spiritual path is one mistake after another. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to broaden this to say that human life is one mistake after another. No matter how good or pure or mindful we intend to be, we can never outrun our blindness. Greed, anger, and ignorance rise endlessly. Our righteousness is always, at least in part, self-righteousness designed to protect our position and avoid our full humanness.

While this sounds rather depressing, when we look more deeply, it can actually be quite liberating.

There is no life apart from reactivity. In fact, reactivity is part of the definition of life. We might even say that to exist is to react. Even a mighty mountain, while apparently standing immovable, is eventually washed to the sea by the rain that falls. The great earth continually reacts and responds to the gravitational pull of the sun. And the sun is held and dances in response to her sister stars in the Milky Way and beyond.

We are all pushed and pulled by everything else. We are all being worn away by the winds and rains of our lives. (Not to mention the needs and desires of the people we have been cooped up with for the last year COVID precautions.) To exist is to be in relationship to the world around us. We reach out our hand to touch a smooth stone and we are touched by that very same stone. Life and non-life appear together. All life is supported and sustained by all life.

So what is this nonsense about mistakes? What is a mistake? ? Is it something I do that has consequences beyond my intention? If this is the case, then everything is a mistake. Every single action I take has implications that only unfold after my action and can never be known. Is a mistake something that harms others or doesn’t turn out how we intended? In this case too, all our actions must be included.

Of course, all our actions differ in their impact on those around us. Sometimes we do things that are clearly selfish, mean-spirited, and hurt others (and ourselves). Sometimes our actions seem beneficial and supportive to the life around us. We all should aspire to the latter and avoid the former. But this is impossible.

We can never know what comes from what we do. We must assume that any story we tell about who we are and what we are doing is inaccurate, biased, and limited. I might take an action motivated by kindness and generosity and only later discover that my actions created problems that perhaps even made this situation worse—or they may have helped the immediate situation but had a negative impact on some other situation I wasn’t even considering.

Only in acknowledging our incomplete awareness and the impossibility of moral purity, can we honestly commit ourselves to lives of kindness and compassion. We vow to do the best we can to keep our hearts open and to see as far as we can into our interconnection with all beings and with the planet. We examine our motives and stay alert to our bias toward self-righteousness. We practice listening to perspectives and positions that disturb us so as to learn what we do not yet understand. We act with as much integrity and conviction as we can muster.

Then we accept the consequences, both intended and unintended. We learn as we go. We practice apologizing. And we go on.

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

Another Chance To Remember

In this very moment is there anything more vital
than the beating of your heart and
the breathing of your breath?

In this very moment can you slow your separate urgency
long enough to appreciate the life
that effortlessly gives itself to you?

Where else would you go? Who else could you be?
The time you imagined has already arrived and
connection richly sustains us all without reservation.

You must stop this pretense of poverty and return
your longing to the beloved who is already you
and is already here—incarnate everything encountered.

The generosity of the life that is beyond comprehension
will certainly hold you and will just as certainly
someday soon enfold you again into the infinite source.

Certainly, certainly you are not separate. Each particular thing
is the boundless presence of life
offering you another chance to remember.

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