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.