Confused Stasis

“I continue to experience uneven cycles which are combinations of a period of confused stasis, a period of productive ideation, a period of energetic resolution, followed by stasis, etc. Sometimes that fulfilled pattern takes a day, and sometimes a year.”

Me too.

Captain Petzel by Robert Heineken

A friend sent me this quote yesterday from the twentieth century artist and teacher Robert Heinecken who worked mostly with manipulated photographs. As a fellow artist, teacher and human being, I am grateful for his inclusion of ‘confused stasis’ and for the notion that there’s a cycle of creation that we go through. Life is not all ‘productive ideation and energetic resolution.’

As a life-coach, I sometimes help people clarify their deep longings and then take steps in that direction. But sometimes I just help people be where they are—especially when they are stuck. This is some of the most paradoxical and fruitful work I do. When people are stuck in a particular mind-state or feeling-state, instead of trying to get them out, I encourage them to be right where they are. Sometimes they are not very happy about this.

Being where we are is a challenging thing to do—especially when we are in a place that is uncomfortable and we just want to get out. It’s no fun to feel ‘stuck’, yet every human being I know sometimes feels stuck. It seems the work is not to try to live a life where you never feel stuck, but rather to meet everything that arises in your life with curiosity and kindness.

What if it’s not a mistake—not a failure to feel anxious or fearful or irritated or angry or uninspired? What if every place, even this one, has its unique gifts and offerings? What if your current ‘confused stasis’ is just part of the creative process of being a human being?

In Thessalonians I, Paul says it this way: ‘Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God.’   For those of us uncomfortable with theistic language we could translate this as: ‘Rejoice always, pay attention, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is not a mistake.’

This fierce advice that goes against our deepest instincts. We want to be comfortable, we want to get our way and we want to know what is going on. But the truth of human life is that suffering is unavoidable, we don’t always get our way and we can’t really know what is going on at any moment.

When the Buddha sat under his Bo tree and vowed to awaken to the truth of life, he was assailed by armies of doubts and distractions. The story goes that instead of fighting these inexhaustible armies, he saw into their true nature. He saw that everything is, at its root, life itself—sacred and holy.

This is what I find again and again with myself, with my Zen students and with my coaching clients. When we can find the courage and support to stay right where we are—opening our hearts and minds to that which is already here—then, this present moment blossoms and transforms. We are enriched by the dark angel we have been wrestling with.

Our miserable karma becomes our wonderful Dharma.

The stone that the builders rejected becomes the cornerstone of the Temple.

Personal Practice – What are the feeling-states that are most difficult to be with? What irritates you? With your boss, your partner, your friends, your self? Next time you are irritated or uncomfortable, see if it’s possible to slow down enough to be where you are. Is it possible not to have to struggle to fix something or to distract yourself? What happens if you let yourself be stuck right where you are?

The Foxes (and chipmunks)

Looking up from the kitchen window in the early morning twilight, I saw one across the street. Then another that had been invisibly still playfully pounced on the first and they dashed off. I was pleased to see these two fox in our urban neighborhood and welcomed their early morning shenanigans from a distance.

A few minutes later as I was about to go out the back door to verify the weather, a small red fox with an almost comically bushy tail went trotting by at the foot of the stairs, not even ten feet from where I stood. I was delighted with her (his?) insouciance and ease, moving as if this were her God given right and the garden she was headed into was made just for her. As I paused to take it in, another smaller fox, clearly a juvenile, jauntily padded past.

Neither had made a sound. I kept quiet too.

Urban Red fox (Vulpes vulpes) juvenile and adult, London, May

It was clear a baby fox was on the morning rounds with their parent. For psychological reasons that are unclear to me, I decided the little one was male and he was out on a training run with his mother. He must have been the leaper-oner from across the street. Jumping playfully on his mother as they make the morning rounds. She was in the business of hunting for breakfast and of teaching him how to survive.

I’m happy to have them in the garden. I hope they eat all the bunnies and the chipmunks. Now this may not be a nice thing to say but I have to confess a long-standing prejudice against cute animals that eat things in my garden—especially my sunflower seedlings which rarely seem to make it past a few weeks.

A friend once told me that chipmunks cause more damage to human property than any other animal. I don’t really believe this, but it justifies my irritation when a batch of seedlings are dug up or eaten off at ground level. It could be bunnies too, but I think the general nervousness of the chipmunks makes them the more likely suspect. They are cute, but their anxiety must come from the guilt they carry from all the damage they do.

Fifty years ago, a chipmunk gnawed through my nylon pack to get to some flour I had brought with me. I was an inexperienced but enthusiastic hiker—in the woods of northern Minnesota hoping to have a Walden Pond moment and encounter God. (I have to confess that I had not read the book carefully and my romantic intention was quite out of line with Thoreau’s careful observations and studied reflections.)

I brought the most nutritional flour I could find – soy flour. And I brought molasses as it was the most nutritional sweetener. And I made soy pancakes with powdered milk and one of my four precious eggs and ate them with molasses. I could barely choke them down, hungry as I was. After that particular trip, I tried to balance nutrition and taste on my adventures. (Though a week later I was high up in the Beartooth Mountains of Montana and spent three hours cooking pinto beans in a pot over an open fire. It gave me something to do, for which I was grateful, but the beans never softened due to the lowered temperature of boiling water at higher altitudes—something I hadn’t considered. And the molasses tasted no better on crunchy beans than it did on soy pancakes.)

But a particularly cute chipmunk had been lurking around my campsite by the lake in northern Minnesota. A couple times I shoed him away, but he was persistent. Around mid-morning, while I was reading Walden and trying to be spiritual, I looked up to find him, not ten feet away, happily gorging on my soy flour—and I swear he was smiling at me. I was incensed by his courage, determination and wonton destruction of my necessary property. Not only did he get at my food, he put a permanent hole in my backpack that subsequently sported a clumsy but perfectly functional patch for the rest of its useful life.

I determined to teach that chipmunk a lesson. I put a little bit of my food under a heavy rock propped up with a small stick. I attached a string to the stick and sat very still a small distance away. When the chipmunk returned and crawled under the rock to get more food I would pull the string and the rock would fall and crush him—just like I had seen in the cartoons.

I didn’t have to wait long. I felt a surge of delight at my cleverness as the chipmunk crept cautiously under the rock to get the food. Just as he got fully under, I yanked the string hard. But instead of pulling the stick out and the rock falling on the poor little chipmunk, the string stretched, the chipmunk scampered to safety with more of my food and the rock came down without incident. I repeated my experiment several times, working hard to keep the string taught, but it never worked and I moved on to another campsite.

I suppose I was lucky to fail. A crushed or damaged chipmunk would have actually been a messy and terrible thing—not at all in line with my alleged pursuit of God.

But the foxes here in the Temple garden might have better luck and will, of course, have no remorse. For them, it’s not personal, it’s just survival. They’re born hunters and scavengers. Small and quick and agile, they live fully in the immediate urgency of the moment. Without hope or regret—just rumbling stomachs and silent feet.

I, however, have nursed my grievance with chipmunks over these many decades and wonder if I might, at some point, come into a better relationship with these common and quite stylish little rodents. I suspect not, but if I meditate real hard, who knows what is possible.

Meanwhile, I’ll root for the foxes to keep the rodent population low and to continue grace the early morning garden with their silent and bushy tails.

The Koan of Systemic Racism

In Zen, we work with koans as a teaching tools. The word ‘koan’ comes from the Chinese and originally meant ‘public case’ – the brief of a legal case that was traditionally posted in the public square. Koans are very short stories of encounters between teachers and students. They are used in Zen training to help the student cut through delusion and waking up to the fullness of life itself. In working with koans, students are encouraged to become all the different characters, to penetrate the essence of the story which is beyond words and explanations, and then to present their understanding to their teacher in a private meeting

One well-known koan, Case 38 in the Mumonkan collection, goes roughly like this: A monk asked Zhaozhou, “What is the essence of Zen?.” Zhaozhou said, “That oak tree in our courtyard.” On first reading, many koans may seem rather opaque—like some kind of clever riddle designed by the teacher to test the student. As we go deeper into them, however, these enigmatic stories can become quite clear and luminous. The problem becomes the entry-place and we are grateful for everything.

I mention all this because the real koan is life itself. Like a traditional Zen koan, we are faced with a situation (our life) where we don’t have all the information. We only see that small part of the world that is visible from where we are yet we are required to make decisions and take actions that have important implications for ourselves and those around us.

Statue of Lee in Richmond, VA, surrounded by tributes to the victims of police violence

The current life koan that I am sitting with is the systemic racism and racial violence of our culture that has been exposed with the recent killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks. Though I have had some awareness of my white privilege since I was in college, these days I am deeply troubled by my continuing complicity in the violence and anguish of it all. What is my part in all of this and what actions I can and should take to help resolve this terrible stain that is woven into the fabric of our county?

And it’s not just racial oppression, but also the daily insults and even violence encountered by those around me based on class, gender, sexual orientation, physical and mental abilities, and country of origin. The relational system that treats me with respect (mostly) and offers me the safety and comfort, functions only through a cruel disregard for the humanity of so many.

My bubble of privilege is becoming psychologically untenable, yet I am unwilling to simply give everything away. Indeed, my white privilege and the privilege that comes with being well-spoken and well-educated is something I can’t give away. Somehow I have to find a new way to use what I have been given to continue to help shift the balance.

Right now, my strategy is to continue to listen and talk and write from this very uncomfortable place right where I am. This is the instruction offered to Zen students—to stay with the confusion and discomfort of not knowing until the next step reveals itself. Determination, faith and curiosity are required. Determination to keep going when you don’t know what to do. Faith that there is something unfolding that is not based on your own power or cleverness. And curiosity—the willingness to look for what is beyond anything you could have imagined.

May we all open our eyes and hearts to the stories of those around us. May we allow what we see and hear to touch us and to inspire us. May we transform this terrible problem into an entry point into a deeper connection with each other and with our shared humanity and with the source that animates us all.

Personal Practice – Take time today to turn your mind and heart toward the stories and pictures of racial violence. Know that the men and women on both sides of the violence are our sons and daughters, our sisters and brothers. Don’t try to do anything, just see how it is when you let your guard down. You don’t have to understand or hold a position or know what to do. Just notice how it is for you in the middle of all this. Then share what arises within you with someone else.

Treasure Hunting

A warm and humid morning. The barking dogs tumble through the open windows to wake me at 3:30 a.m. It’s dark and the blue glow of my bedside clock seems bright until I doze off again. Then it’s 4:50. I don’t think I’ve slept yet I have now memory of the time that just past.

I lie still in the faint light and do a quick assessment of my self. Each morning, I don’t quite know who I am. Or rather I don’t know which of my selves I will find myself to be. There’s such a range of me that I encounter.

Yesterday, I heard a Zen teacher quote another Zen teacher who said we all have 50 different people inside of us. The reason we get excited about some new venture and then fall away is that only one or two of the fifty get motivated while the other 48 or 49 are quite uninterested. Our work, if we want to get somewhere, is to get all 50 together headed in one direction. He said that getting every one of you to take a step or two is better than having one wild enthusiast run ahead only to pulled back by the others.

In the dark, I wonder what I’ll write about this morning. What is alive in me in this morning? Sometimes it’s surprisingly subtle and difficult to notice. Maybe it’s just so close and pervasive that I have no place to stand and view it.

It should be easy, this being myself—I mean who else can I be? But I often I struggle to find my way through the jumble of memories and hopes. Aspirations and expectations pile weigh me down like so many unnecessary blankets. I wonder if they are the unnecessary blankets of a warm night, or the blankets that keep me comfortable on the cold nights?

Now a slight breeze comes and the leaves of the crab apple tree near me sway back and forth. Bouncing up and down, they seem easy with themselves and with each other. Each leaf moves exactly in response to the soft energy of the wind and each movement is woven finely into the subtle dance of this bushy old tree.

I often feel like a prospector. I wander through the landscape of myself looking for something of value. I’m after what others have passed by—what is underneath and invisible. I go slowly and am especially interested in unpromising places. All the likely places have been picked over. Every terrain has its own treasures. I train myself to listen with eyes and see with my ears. My whole body is the Geiger counter I monitor. The entry point could be the squawk of a bird or the heavy feeling of the morning itself.

I can’t predict.

Even now as I stumble around looking, I know that this wandering is the thing itself. Yet I’m still looking for something else—or maybe just trying to follow this diaphanous moment. I make up rules for finding myself and leave treasure maps scattered along my path.

Just look up. Just spend time in the garden. Just sit still. Just take one step. Just do nothing.

All of them work and none of them work. This life that each of us is freely and constantly given can never be hidden. This is always it. But the looking and the searching seem to be part of the game of sacred game of hide and seek. If not for this precious problem, what else would I do with my mornings?

Personal Practice – What is alive for you in this moment? Take a few moments to notice whatever is here. See if you can stay with whatever you notice. What is the geography of this place? If you had to write some words about it, what would they be? What is a small gesture that might convey some aspect or quality of this place? What might be the gift of this place your find yourself?