Two Questions

1. What do I want?
2. What do I really want?

I spend a lot of time asking questions—not because I know the answers, but because part of my role as teacher and life-coach is to invite people into the possibilities of their own lives. These possibilities dance before us. Sometimes quite clear, sometimes shrouded by fog, and sometimes fully obscured. Yet, we all long for something and this longing is an important resource in creating and sustaining a full and authentic life.

Even in the midst of abundance and seeming ease, there is often a disturbance—sometimes just barely discernable and other times almost overwhelming. We all face the inevitable changes of growing up and growing old. Our friends and partner change. People come and go without warning—and even when we are forewarned, still the parting still surprises and shocks. Amidst these changes, we must ask again: ‘What shall I do?’ ‘Where shall I go?’ ‘Which path shall I choose?’ Sometimes the answers are quite clear but other times it’s hard to know which path to take. Or, if the direction is clear, how to we find the energy and courage needed to follow?

In these cases when things are confusing and we really don’t know, I find these two questions of great use. They are not magic potions to straighten out all the tangles of the moment, but they can allow us to settle into where we are and connect to some deeper intention that can both guide us and provide the courage to take the next step.

First question: What do I want? This is a question that we are often encouraged to ignore. We might feel that everything in our life is set and we have no options. Or we’ve been taught that we must be ‘realistic’ and that ‘dreaming’ is a waste of time. It is true that there are many things in our lives that are unchangeable. We can’t undo anything that has already happened. What we have done, what others have done cannot be undone. We can’t be anyone other than who we are. But ‘what has happened’ and ‘who we are’ is actually much more malleable than it first appears. Past, present and future all arise in this moment and are all shape-shifting constantly. The feeling-tone and the story that feels overwhelming at one moment can change in a heartbeat—can intensify, can vanish, can become something altogether new.

So the first question, What do I want?, is an invitation to stop trying to solve problems or to assign proportionate blame or even tell new stories. What do I want? focuses our attention inward. You may have clear answers for this question or you may have never given yourself permission to ask. Either way, it is a useful question because we all want something.

Now the Buddha taught that wanting is the source of our suffering. But the solution to this is not to pretend that we don’t want anything, but rather to clarify the wanting itself. Because the Buddha also taught that suffering is an unavoidable and essential part of life. Suffering, the discomfort and even the agony of life, are, paradoxically, the entry points into a larger life of freedom and connection.

So ask yourself: What do I want? Allow yourself to be selfish and want what you want. Don’t judge yourself or censor yourself. What do I want?

Then ask the second question: What do I really want? Another way of putting it: If I got what I wanted, what would that give me? If I had a comfortable cottage on the coast of Maine, what would that give me? I might answer ‘I’d be able to sit and look out the window and see the ocean.’ Then ask again, What would that give me? Keep asking this question until you get the same answer over and over. This is what you truly want.

We often imagine what we want is a particular set of circumstances. I want my body to be like this or my finances to be like that or my relationships to appear in this configuration—then I will be happy. But when we look deeper, we can begin to discern that our true longing is for something deeper. The surface configuration of our lives, while important, turns out to have not nearly as much to do with our happiness as we might imagine. Money, fame, even relationships cannot bring us what we truly want.

Next time you come to a decision point or are feeling disconnected or lost, try asking these questions and see where they lead. You may be surprised.

Hatred and Delusive Certainty

I ended my post yesterday with this inspiring quote from Martin Luther King, Jr:

‘Hating someone will destroy you, not the people you are hating. If you‘re in a place of hating someone, you need to let go. Choose love over hate.’

I’ve also heard King quoted as saying to a group about to engage in civil disobedience: ‘If we hate the people who hate us, they have won.’ King’s concern with our hearts, with our inner landscape, was a fully aligned with Gandhi’s understanding of nonviolence as not just a political expediency, but as a way of being. Gandhi was adamant that the path of nonviolence is only effective if the participants have done the necessary inner work.

Gandhi himself continually returned to his own spiritual community for rest and renewal between his many travels and conversations and actions. Daily meditation and regular fasting were part of his everyday life. Gandhi also called off several large scale campaigns of civil disobedience when violent incidents made it clear that the partisans of his cause were not yet able to live up to the demands of nonviolent action, that they had not found yet found a way through the tangle of their own inner hatreds and violence.

That’s a high bar for engagement.

Yesterday, I was caught by King’s words: ‘If you’re in a place of hating someone, you need to let go. Choose love over hate.’ This is inspiring advice and it sounds quite simple, but how do we do it?

I don’t think many people consciously choose hate over love, but we are always beset by the seduction of righteous certainty—the mirror side of hatred. The human mind loves the feeling of certainty. The mind was apparently designed to solve problems and move on. Uncertainty requires the ongoing energy of wondering and not knowing. And while we may generally be in favor of the idea of wondering, in practice, not knowing can be very taxing. Part of the brain simply wants to clear space in our consciousness for the next problem. Being certain, even if we are wrong, is often accompanied with a sense of relief and ease.

The brain cannot distinguish between its view of reality and reality itself. Stephen Covey once said ‘We see the world not as it is, but as we are, or as we were conditioned to see it.’ We live in a world that we unconsciously participate in creating. We live with strong psychic pressure to clarify things into black and white so we can move on to the next problem. Once we know that we are the good guys and they are the bad guys, we settle into certainty.

Consequently, hate and its near relatives of blame, resentment and righteousness often feel quite good. I mean they don’t feel good, but they are solid positions that allow us to create a sense of a stable self. And on some level, the brain only wants to create a stable sense of itself and the world—it often cares more about resolution than whether the resolution is accurate, beneficial or even if it really makes sense.

From the Zen perspective, the self—who we think we are—is the subject of great interest. As we look more closely at our actual experience, it’s quite hard to find the self who is allegedly at the center of it all. I might reasonably say, ‘I am writing these words on my laptop.’ But who is the one who is writing these words? I respond, ‘I am having thoughts that I’m typing onto the keyboard.’ But who is the one having these thoughts? Words and thoughts are certainly arising in my awareness, but where are they coming from? Who is the one who is doing the thinking? Who is doing the typing? To say, ‘I am.’ begs the question. Who is this ‘I’ that ‘I’ talk about so often? If I’m honest, I have to admit that I have no idea who is at the center of it all. There are thoughts. There is typing. There is wondering. That’s all I can really vouch for.

While this may sound interesting, it can be quite unsettling when we begin to realize that we really don’t know who we are on this fundamental level—that this self and personal history that we will go to extreme lengths to defend, is not as solid as we would like to believe. And this is not just academic because this unconscious urge to solidify the self is at the core of the hatred and self-righteousness that tear us apart.

The urgent work of our country and the urgent work of our planet is to find ways to cut through the separation of certainty that leads to hatred, violence and endless suffering. Courage is required to do the necessary work of the moment—courage to face our own internal demons and delusive certainties as well as courage to take action and stand up for justice, accountability and compassion.

These are not easy times, but these are times of great opportunity—to step beyond whatever bubble we have been living in, into the great diversity, confusion and vividness of life itself. We are called to do this for ourselves, for our brothers and sisters, and for this fragile planet that is part of who we are.

Continuing Commitment

The Joint Chiefs of Staff sent a letter to the 1.3 million men and women that comprise our active-duty armed services and the 811,000 more that are serving in the National Guard condemning the action of January 6 and reminding them of their sworn duty to the constitution. NPR reported part of the text:

“The violent riot in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021 was a direct assault on the U.S. Congress, the Capitol building, and our Constitutional process,” the memorandum said. “We witnessed actions inside the Capitol building that were inconsistent with the rule of law. The rights of freedom of speech and assembly do not give anyone the right to resort to violence, sedition and insurrection.”

This is good news. The coup has clearly failed and Trump’s support for his spurious contention of a stolen election has splintered. Though a small number of right-wing extremist groups have been roused to a white heat by his ongoing rhetoric, many of Trumps former supporters, both on Capital Hill and throughout the country are finally stepping out of his self-justifying and fear mongering toxic bubble. There is still real danger of sporadic acts of violence but the military and the FBI now seem to be taking this threat quite seriously and making preparations.

The Republican Party seems to be in the middle of extricating itself from its four-year love affair with a genius narcissist. This will not be an easy parting.   The reckoning between the Trumpists and those who would hope to reclaim the name and genuine meaning of conservative will be bitter and fierce. Then there will be the accounting for the lying and misdeeds on both sides. It will not be pretty or smooth, but for many of us it has been a long four years (or more) in the coming and the marginalization of Trump and all he stands for cannot come soon enough.

There will also be specific charges against Trump and those who have done his bidding. I suspect today’s impeachment proceedings in the House are just the first of many public trials for Trump and some of his most ardent followers. Trump has spent five years egging crowds on with ‘Lock her up.’ chants about his former Presidential opponent. Many of us were shocked with the idea of locking up one’s political opponents, but Trump’s behavior as President has been immoral and, I believe, illegal and he himself may end up with the fate he has so fervently wished for his opponents.

We should all continue to be nervous, but we should all resist the temptation to while away our days glued to our media sources. The wish for revenge is near to the wish to scapegoat. Though they rouse our passion, they do not lead toward lasting solutions to the very real problems we face as a nation and a world. As MLK Jr. said

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”

Let us not fall into the world Trump has created around us. Let us not fall into the facile escape of dividing the world into ‘us’ and ‘them’. We must acknowledge our common ground as human beings even as we stand firm for accountability and a reckoning with the truth. Reconciliation must be our goal but we must not forget.

Our democracy appears to be coming back from the brink of dissolution, but there is much work to be done. The inner work for all of us is to deal with the personal fear, anger and even hate that arises. Returning again to the words of MLK Jr.:

‘Hating someone will destroy you, not the people you are hating. If you‘re in a place of hating someone, you need to let go. Choose love over hate.’

Choosing love, as MLK Jr. demonstrated with his life, is not about inaction, weakness or sweeping things under the rug. It requires a fierce confrontation with the realities of institutional racism, classism, sexism that are woven into our better intentions for justice, equality and fairness.

So let us proceed together in facing the truth and re-weaving the fabric of this grand experiment in democracy in which we find ourselves.

Some Encouraging Signs

Our national crisis continues. Yesterday, the House of Representatives filed Articles of Impeachment against Trump. This time, the charge is ‘incitement of insurrection’ and includes excerpts from the speech he gave his supporters before they stormed the capital and also his January 2 phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State in which Trump asked him to ‘find’ the votes Trump needed to win the state. The House will vote on the Articles today and begin the impeachment on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Trump and his administration appear to be in hiding. There have been no briefings from the White House, FBI, Department of Homeland Security or the Justice Department about what happened on January 6 and what is being done to contain the ongoing threat of violence. The investigation of the insurrection, arrests, and preparation against future threats does appear, however, to be continuing.

But today, I am most encouraged by other events over the weekend:

• Twitter and Facebook have ‘deplatformed’ Donald Trump and all his accounts.
• Major US Corporations (BlueCross-BlueShield and Marriott among others) have announced they will stop contributing to Senate and House members that voted against counting the Electoral College for Joe Biden.
• Deutsche Bank, one of the only banks that would still work with Trump has announced it will no longer do business with him.
• The PGA has announced they are moving the 2022 golf championships from Trump’s golf course in New Jersey.
• Even my Wesleyan classmate and football coaching genius past Trump supporter Bill Belichick has turned down Trump’s offer of a Presidential Medal of Freedom saying: ‘Above all, I am an American citizen with great reverence for our nation’s values, freedom, and democracy.’

Though I don’t think Trump will lose sleep over being jilted by Bill, the tide has clearly turned against him and the backlash that many of us have hoped for for the past four years appears to be gathering momentum.  All of these sanctions and consequences of Trump’s actions diminish his power right now and over the coming months and years. This is indeed a good thing for us all. The economic ramifications for Trump and the whole Trump brand are significant and will greatly reduce his influence and power going forward.

In the midst of all this, we are engaged in coming to a new understanding of how a democracy can function in the time of the internet. Part of Trump’s power has been his ability to say anything, and we know this really means anything, without being held accountable. Twitter and Facebook have allowed him to make patently false claims as if they were true – without having to answer questions.

Trump’s steadfast creation of an alternate reality to suit his purposes has been the hallmark of his time as President. He and his allies in the media and online have created a full service information system that reflects and amplifies itself to the delight and detriment of millions of Americans. This perpetuation of misinformation has given cover for those Republican politicians who know very well that the election was free and fair, to falsely claim otherwise to satisfy their base and to maintain their power. These ongoing and mendacious statements led directly to the violent attempt to seize the Capital on January 6.

This kind of false free speech cannot be tolerated if our democracy is to function. While we are all against censorship, apparently we need to adjust our limits of what kind of speech is acceptable and useful. Already we have libel laws and other limits on public speech, so that there must be boundaries even to free speech is not a new idea for us Americans, but it will be a difficult discussion to have to find our way to new limits to protect our democracy and ensure that we are not as vulnerable to an authoritarian movement as we have found ourselves to be.

(For a more thorough exploration of our current issues of free speech see Thomas Edsall’s presentation of the issue and opinions both pro and con in his op-ed piece in the New York Times that came out on January 6, the day the Capital was stormed, Have Trump’s Lies Wrecked Free Speech?)

Some of Trump’s former Congressional supporters are now trying to avoid accountability by calling for ‘lowering the temperature’ and not moving forward with impeachment. Now, in the wake of an armed insurrection that came terrifyingly close to harming or kidnapping the three highest ranking government officials beneath the President, the Republicans who supported and stirred up this movement are now calling for moderation.

My friend Robert Hubbell calls this False Equivalency (though I have to claim prior trademark on that title from January 8) in his post today:

 As Americans continue to grapple with the ramifications of the Capitol Insurrection, we must refuse to accept false equivalency from those who seek “healing” without accountability. Those who encouraged or excused the violence must not be recognized as responsible members of our democracy unless and until they admit their complicity, ask forgiveness, and make amends. To date, those responsible for the violence are refusing to acknowledge their role in encouraging violence.

We should be moderate but determined. We must hold people, especially our elected officials, accountable for their words and their actions. But as we pursue this accountability, let us remember how easily we become infected with the virus of hate and either/or thinking. We are all always in danger of falling into our own self-reinforcing bubble of ignorance.

Let us proceed with courage and compassion. Let us act in alignment with the values of justice, truth and decency as we work to repair the ancient wounds that are woven into our country and to meet the grave challenges of this political moment.

(I would urge you all to at least occasionally read Robert Hubbell’s daily summary of the news along with Heather Cox Richard’s ‘Letters from an American’—both are referenced from a wide variety of news sources and well worth the time.)

#4 Zazen is Participation in Life (part 2)

My second understanding of the fourth of the 31 Fundamental Teachings of Zen (Zazen is participation in life) comes from a teaching my teacher passed on to me decades ago in the first years I was studying with him. I came to him one day distraught and in tears. I think it was about the pressure I was feeling in my new job of being Headmaster of a private school. Whether it was about finances or student or staff behavior, I can’t remember. But things were really not going well and I was feeling totally overwhelmed. I went to him as a teacher and exemplar of Zen, hoping he would have an answer.

He listened as I talked and cried, then said in the kindest voice, ‘You don’t expect Zen to save you from your life, do you?’ As I write it, it sounds almost cruel, but in that moment, it felt incredibly loving and shifted something deep inside. He was inviting me to give up the impossible task of fixing and controlling and to begin to fully participate in my life.

The path of Zen is not about withdrawing into states of equanimity and bliss, but rather to find our true home right in the middle of what is happening here. When I am feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, the way of Zen is to be fully exhausted and overwhelmed. Looking to fix or escape just increases the suffering.

Fully allowing what is here to be here can be a great relief. Our lives are continually flowing on—one mind state constantly turns into the next. Thoughts and opinions, feelings and sensations continually arise and pass away. We solve one problem, then the next problem appears. Control is impossible. Any fix we come up with is temporary at best. It appears increasingly evident that neither you nor I are the ruler of the universe. Everything around us and we ourselves are coming into being and then certainly passing away. A life spent trying to fix or manage reality is exhausting and futile.

Zazen is participating in life.

We are invited to give up our endless objections and join in. The entryway to our true life is whatever is going on right now. Right here where you sit and read these words. Perhaps you are feeling energized and inspired to fight for our democratic institutions that were so visibly threatened in the insurrection of January 6. Or maybe you are feeling discouraged and overwhelmed by the ongoing conflict and division of our country. Or sick and tired of it all. Or just enjoying how effortlessly life goes on amidst all the drama.

THIS IS IT.

As I continually delight is saying – This is the bad news and the good news. There is not some other place we should be. We cannot someday escape to the fantasy land of enlightenment.   There is no way around the impossible and truly ungraspable situation of this moment. But this is it, also means that this very place is the place you have been looking for. This very moment with all the thoughts, feelings and sensations that are here, is the entryway to your true life—a life of freedom and appreciation.

This is not an invitation to abdicate our responsibility to stand up for compassion, justice and fairness. Allowing things to be as they are creates the space for us to see clearly the pain and suffering going on around us and to act boldly against all forms of oppression, intimidation and injustice.

In our wholehearted participation in our lives, in the fully impossible and wondrous conundrum of being human, we can find a place to rest right where we are. Winning and losing, solving and not solving, engaging and withdrawing—life flows on unimpeded and available to each one of us.

I’m reminded of the wonderful song from the Native People of this land: ‘Why do I go about pitying myself, when all the time I am being carried on great winds across the sky?’

** I forgot to mention in yesterday’s blog that you’re all invited to join the Boundless Way Zen Temple in any one (or all) of our eight weekly meditation on-line practice periods. We practice participating in our lives together through zazen, chanting, talks and discussion. No experience necessary, just use the link at our website (www.worcesterzen.org) and come ten minutes early for a brief welcome and introduction.