Suffering Is Optional

The drought is finally getting to the katsura trees here in the Temple. The have stood silently and steadily beyond the torii gate that leads into the gardens all summer without complaint. But just now I see one solitary yellow leaf flutter to the ground. Now another. Looking closer I see that the leaves toward the end of the katsuras’ branches are turning brown around the edges and the grass below is already dotted with their yellowed heart-shaped leaves.

Autumn is coming though we haven’t yet reached mid-August.

All the trees here in eastern Massachusetts are stressed. I was going to write that they are ‘suffering’, but I don’t think they suffer in the same way we humans do. These trees are used to changing weather conditions. For all the decades of their lives; some summers are warmer and drier, some are wetter and colder. And while the long-term pattern of warming is a new factor that is beginning to cause problems in Massachusetts forests, the yearly variation of weather is not a big deal to these mighty trees.

We humans too are used to changing conditions through the days and decades of our lives and yet we still find reasons complain. And we do indeed suffer. We suffer from the belief that things should not change. We are somehow affronted that we should be confronted with difficult problems and painful situations.

Sometimes I remind my coaching clients that solving problems is not a path to a future with no problems, but rather simply part of being human. The point is not just to deal with this problem, but to learn more about ourselves and to grow in our capacity to meet our lives fully. I suppose the advanced practice is to begin to even enjoy our problems.

Our problems are our life. Not that things are always difficult, but the problems of our lives are the points where our knowing encounters something beyond itself. If our goal is to feel competent and wise and calm, these encounters with the unknown and unplanned for are very disturbing.

A friend recently told me that he has finally realized that his To-Do list is of infinite length. He says he used to work hard to complete his list and be frustrated when new items appeared. Now that he knows the list has no end, he says he is more comfortable with what gets done and what doesn’t.

When the summer is dry, the ferns die back and the trees drop their leaves early. No problem. Suffering is optional.

Dreaming Ourselves

Last night I went to my college reunion where I was afraid I wouldn’t know anyone. I first saw a classmate who quit the wrestling team as a freshman to get involved with the theater and artsy crowd. I remember him telling me about spend thirty minutes alone with an orange in a theater class. I was jealous of him even though I had beat him out for the varsity spot on the wrestling team. I always imagined he was a version of me that escaped the trajectory of struggle and competition for approval in which I lived. I later heard that after graduation he went back and inherited his father’s construction business in Long Island—so I guess he didn’t escape the gravity of his life either. I don’t know if either of those observations—of what he actually did with his life and what it meant to him—is really true.

In the dream, we hugged and were happy to see each other, but had little to say. Then I heard my roommate’s voice but couldn’t find him before being ensnared in another conversation. A little while later, a former girlfriend whose last name is lost in the shroud of memory, appeared and was really interested in me again. I was flattered and confused.

None of these people have I seen or been in contact with for decades and yet still they are a part of me. Memories of who I was include a wide range of dramatis personae. Friends, acquaintances, enemies and strangers all play ongoing roles in the shifting stories myself.

The funny thing is that the roles and the stories are not as fixed as they appear. Every once in a while I get a new insight about motivation (mine or theirs) and am able to replay the scene from a different angle. Like any good director, I’m trying to get to the essence of the story—to understand and elucidate the many layers of meaning. Some scenes are painful reenactments of betrayal, anger and confusion. Some are infused with the golden glow of freedom and intimacy. All these people and stories are parts of a me that is constantly in the self construction and renovation business. My self is endlessly fascinated with itself. Hours of entertainment and hours of trouble. How was I? How am I? How will I be?

At the end of the dream, at the reunion we decided to put all of our stories—all of our regrets and all of our triumphs—into the blender and whizz them up to a fine soup which we would then drink it to nourish our bodies.

Perhaps this is what we are all doing already. Going back over and over what was, what wasn’t and what might have been. Like a cow in the afternoon, contentedly chewing for the second (or third) time the grass it ate in the morning. Ruminating is a way of digesting our experience – chewing over it again and again to break down the hard cell walls of opinion to get to the juicy nourishment of life itself.

Meanwhile, the morning sun is once more illuminating the interior of the trees, my tea has gone cold and the small tomatoes by the railing are slowly turning red.

Receiving the Invitation

We’re nearing the end of our virtual/in-person meditation retreat in Belgium. Every morning since Sunday, Melissa and I have been magically whisked into a meditation hall in a small village outside of Brussels as we sit in the comfort of our living-room. in Worcester, Massachusetts. And every Belgian evening (our afternoon), the church bells from the nearby church ring and ring and ring. Not just the hour and the quarter hour, but pealing again and again as if calling us all to celebrate the sacredness of our lives.

Last night, Melissa quoted part of the poem Wild Geese by American poet Mary Oliver:

…Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh & exciting
over & over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Such a wonderful evocation and invitation. Oliver speaks of the terrible loneliness that human beings feel—the loneliness that can be so fierce it feels like there is no hope for connection—that we must bear our life forever trapped in solitary confinement of our minds. But she goes on to affirms that no matter the darkness or depression, the invitation of life is particular to you, is unqualified and endless.

The world calls to each one of us. This call is harsh and exciting. An oft-repeated observation about growing old is that it’s not for the faint of heart. But then that seems to goes for life itself. We find ourselves again and again in situations that have no solution.

Here we are, in the middle of a pandemic that has already gone on longer than any of us imagined. And the rising awareness of the extent and depth of the racial terrorism that has been at the heart of our country clearly cannot be fixed in any normal meaning of that word. And then there’s the personal stuff—the individual circumstances of our lives that we find have limitations and problems that have no solution.

It is this very unfixable life that calls to us—harsh and exciting. It’s not a Hallmark card, though there are moments of surpassing beauty. Subtle and wild, the splendor of life can reveal itself in any moment and in the midst of any situation. It is not something that is separate from the harshness and confusion of daily life. Paying attention and looking closely can help, but ultimately, life reveals itself in its own times and on its own terms.

But Mary Oliver’s assertion is that life calls to us over and over—and that this calling is the announcing of our place in the family of things. Such a wonderful evocation and invitation—that you and I belong—that we are not the outsiders we feel ourselves to be. We are part of the family. The things of this world are not the inert background against which we live our lonely lives, but rather they are part of us and we are part of them.

There is no credible teaching I know that says life is easy. But when we remember that the world is beyond our contrivance there can be a subtle unclenching, a relinquishing of the tight grip of our self-protection. When allow the sights and smells and sounds and situations of the world to touch us, we can begin to find our home right in the middle of this harsh and exciting and confusing and delightful world.

Migraine Medicine

I can’t quite see the computer screen this morning. Is it sleepiness or a migraine coming on? I close my eyes and type anyway.

Relaxing my eyes I notice that I was closing them tightly. I open them again – still the haloes in different parts of my field of vision. I close them again. I should go upstairs and get some migraine medicine but I don’t. These episodes usually don’t last long, but when they are in full swing, I can’t read or drive a car or do things that require clear vision. (I suppose I should not operate heavy machinery either while I am actively in a migraine, but this has never been an issue for me as I have never had the opportunity to operate heavy machinery, even though my mother thought that would be a great way for my brother and I to earn money to put ourselves through college. But we were never heavy machinery kind of guys and we ended up getting scholarships instead.)

I relent and go upstairs and take my medicine. It’s just an over-the-counter combination of caffeine and ibuprofen, but it always seems to help.

On my way back to the glider on the porch, I take a moment and look up at the full moon. Yup, there they are, the pulsating fields in my visual field. They mostly live at the edges but are incredibly distracting. When I try to focus, they move around and letters and words are hard to see. I go on writing and typing with eyes closed.

(My mother also thought my brother and I should learn to type. This was one of her ideas that proved quite valuable—including my capacity to type with eyes closed this morning. At ten or eleven, we were both practicing with ‘aaa’, ‘sss’, ‘ddd’ and ‘asd’, ‘ads’’ and ‘sda’. This was when typing was not considered something that professional men were supposed to be able to do.)

I don’t get pain with my migraines, so I consider myself lucky. I’ve tried to figure out what events or situations might be associated with my migraines. This morning I wonder if it is about dehydration? But my biggest migraine episodes, which have included brief periods of aphasia or not being able to speak, have come after stressful meetings or conversations.

The first time I lost my capacity to speak was after a meeting with two other perople in an organization I was leading. I really didn’t want to be at that meeting and, in retrospect, neither did they. Within two years of that meeting, both of them had left the organization and publically denounced me as a terrible person on their way out. They were two of the closest allies I had and their accusations and departures were very painful. Both had put amazing amounts of time and love and thought into the organization.

Was my migraine some kind of internal wisdom telling me that something was wrong?

For me, I have a problem of sometimes I stay too long. I try to be nicer and wiser than I really am. I overextend myself because I feel I ‘should’ keep going. At that meeting, maybe all of us didn’t want to be there. Maybe we were all being nicer and more responsible than we could be. When we extend ourselves beyond what we are truly able to do, we fall into resentment and irritation.

When I am over-extended, when I am staying and acting responsibly but in my heart I long to be somewhere else, then there are consequences. These consequences happens in me. Sometimes it is physical (the migraines?), sometimes the consequences that are hidden for a long while then suddenly burst forth. But going beyond the limits of your heart and soul is not a kind or wise thing to do, no matter how it looks.

It’s hard to say ‘I’ve had enough. I need to step down.’ But there is an end to everything. Sooner or later, we all leave. Sooner or later we all reach our limits. Honoring our limits and saying ‘No’ is a hard thing for many of us to do.

I’m still out on the porch typing with my eyes closed. Every once in a while I notice that I have squeezed them shut and I try to allow my eyes to soften. The waterfall gurgles below me. I don’t worry about the mistakes I am making as I type. My fingers are still pretty reliable even as my eyes have taken some time off. I’ll go back and correct the mistakes later.

‘Stop working so hard.’ I tell myself, ‘Relax. What if you didn’t have to work so hard? What if everything you have always longed for is right here?’ What if everything I say to everyone else applies to me as well? Of course I know it does, but there are levels and levels of understanding.

Like everyone else, I am still caught in the ancient patterns of trying to fix the world, trying to control the world, trying to please the world. The roots run endlessly deep.

This morning, can I just relax my eyes? Can I ease my trying ways? Maybe I don’t have to be a famous person or a wise person or even a responsible person.

I open my eyes and look around. The green trees of the temple garden fill my visual space. The seven-foot tomato plant I’m growing in a pot on the porch has survived yesterday’s tropical storm quite well. My visual field seems mostly stable.

I’ve vowed to myself to rest after each migraine episode—to take the day off as a medical precaution and mini-vacation. I actually have not minded the aphasia that has come occasionally. After the second trip to the hospital, everyone seems agreed that the condition is not a stroke or a TIA, but still, people around me tend to get worried when my words get jumbled. My internal thought remains clear, I just can’t express myself. The official diagnosis I carry is ‘complicated migraines’. This works for me,

How to take it all seriously but not gravely? The body has limits. Bodies send messages. Not clear-cut or literal, but how to use this migraine to move more closely into alignment with the life that is calling to me—to break free once more from the life of heavy (and irrational) responsibility that is my ancient default?

Eyes open now. Yesterday’s tropical storm has left leaves and small branches littering the parking lot, but otherwise no major damage. The migraine symptoms have passed, now to live this day remembering my proper place a place of ease and release. Perhaps rather than falling into aphasia, I should commit to voluntary aphasia – to say as little as possible for the rest of the day. To be silent in the midst of doing whatever it is that needs to be done. I think I’ll try this.

Creating the World

David Bohm, or was it Gregory Bateson?, I can’t remember and I’ve never been able to track it down, but one of them (I think) once said: The mind creates the world and then says ‘I didn’t do it.’ I read this somewhere, remembered it months later, then went back to try and find the exact quote and couldn’t. Maybe it was Krishnamurti or Ralph Waldo Emerson? No it was Einstein I think.

It’s funny, the cult of the quote in which we live. We collect fragments of meaning like shells on the beach. We gather the wet and glistening objects of beauty on our walks by the ocean or as we listen to some authority spout off in a TED talk or in a Dharma talk. We bring them home and keep them in a plastic bag in a drawer until we begin to wonder where the foul smell is coming from. Or perhaps we wash them off and carefully arrange them on our dresser or put them all in a jar. They are a lovely and inspiring reminder for a few weeks or months, but eventually they fall into the background and become invisible.

I myself am a stone collector and an incorrigible underliner of books. On my various adventures I have brought back more stones than I care to think about. Each stone and each phrase, picked up in a far away location is a treasure that, in the moment, represents some part of the beauty and poignancy of life. But everything, including precious stones and shells and quotes, seems to have a shelf life—an expiration date. They slowly (or quickly) pass from meaningful marker to more of the clutter of our lives.

Maybe the secret is to give everything away. When I received transmission as an official Zen teacher, my transmitting teacher gave me a beautiful green silk rakusu along with some other objects from his life and practice. When I asked him about what he had given me, he said it is best to give things away that we still have an attachment to—where we feel a little tug of resistance in the act of giving.

I loved the green silk rakusu so much that I eventually gave it back to him. And I still miss it sometimes. Perhaps it is more alive for me in having given it away than if I had held onto it.

But there are some quotes and teachings that stay with us—that seem to capture some important aspect of how we understand our world. The particular words coalesce the meaning that we have uncovered ourselves. But whatever meaning it is, it has to be re-uncovered again and again to retain its vitality and capacity to guide us.

Bohm (and I’ve found two people on the internet who agree that it was him and not Ram Dass), when he said: The mind creates the world, then says ‘I didn’t do it.’ was pointing to the fact that the world outside of us that seems so solid is actually created by the perceptual processes of our minds.

Perception is a creative, not objective process. It involves both data from the world (photons of light bouncing off objects in space), receptors in the body that resonate in some way with that data (the rods and cones in the eye that are stimulated by those photons), then, the brain itself which magically produces a coherent image of the world from the bits of light, sound, taste, touch and smell it receives.

We are not privy to this construction process, it happens beneath the level of our consciousness. To the everyday mind, what we’re seeing is simply what is there, we are just neutral observers receiving information. But when we look more closely, we can begin to see some of our part in this creative process. Many of us have had the experience of being certain that we understand another person or situation, then, when we learn more, we find out that the situation is actually quite different from the certainty we felt.

As Stephen Covey once wrote (and I know for sure it was him because I have it underlined in my dog-eared copy of his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) We see the world not as it is, but as we are, or as we have been conditioned to see it.

For all of us, to begin to become aware of this unconscious construction business is essential to living fully in the world. Without some awareness, we are helplessly trapped in the bubble of our opinion. While this can be comforting, it is ultimately unsatisfying and limiting. So we can begin to be suspicious of our certainty, to listen to others with more attention and to investigate what is really going on in these mysterious lives we have been given.