Too Much

Saturday morning—leading a Zen koan workshop in Belgium this morning, then gathering with our community for Zen meditation in the afternoon. Meanwhile (which is quickly becoming my favorite word) my two hopefully planted sweet pea seedlings have survived our recent slightly sub-freezing temperatures and arctic winds in the garden and their compatriots of all green shades and shapes are growing lush under the constructed circadian rhythms of the grow-lights in the predictable warmth of the empty meditation hall.

I love to live at the edge. Edges are said to be the most diverse and interesting parts of any ecosystem. The region in between the forest and the meadow—between the land and the sea—between too many and just enough seedlings. Fascinating things happen at the edges. Studying these in-between regions we can begin to realize that clear edges are much more a linguistic construction than a property of the world.

Language is about the boundary between this and that. Life is about everything all together. Many of us have been encouraged to have clear boundaries. Yes means yes and no means no. I am here and you are there. But it turns out that language functions better when we remember it is simply a temporary expedient, not the thing itself. I am certainly not you, but, dear reader, as you read this, part of me is becoming part of you. Your eyes scan these black squiggles on your screen and form words and sentences and images in your mind. Whatever happens in your mind is clearly you, isn’t it? But some vague idea that comes into my mind from whatever its source and finds its way into this morning’s wandering exploration of life has now found its way into the dark mass of electrical processing we call ‘your’ brain.

Not only that, but I think I have once again been overly enthusiastic in the number of seedlings I have begun. Zinnias tend to be my downfall. The first flower seeds planted in my early spring indoor growing season are usually the tiny ones that take a week or two to germinate. They then emerge as the frailest green threads holding aloft little flakes of green leaves. They grow quite slowly, and only after six or seven weeks gain enough heft to be transplanted.

Zinnias, on the other hand, are large (comparatively) flakes of seed that sprout in a few days as vigorous actors that push the growing medium willy-nilly aside to proclaim their lofty aspirations. This year’s crop of Benary Giants and Cupid Mix has not disappointed. In less than three weeks they have filled in the growing trays and now need to be transplanted into larger pots. So today or early tomorrow morning, I’ll transplant them. But then will I have room under the grow lights? And now it will be a race between the weather and their growth. Too long under the grow lights, even with adequate sized pots and they will get too leggy or tall to transplant successfully into the garden. The guaranteed last frost date around here is the end of May, but it’s usually safe by May 20, but not always…

So, I have once again successfully allowed my enthusiasm to take me to the edge of what is possible. Will the timing work out? Have I planted too many to be able to keep them all going while the weather is still unsettled? Meanwhile, who will be able to care for my emerald menagerie while I take a six-day trip to see my mother for the first time in 18 months and help her move from her independent living apartment to the support of the medical wing of her retirement community where she can receive more support for the daily necessities of her life and for her care of my step-father who often needs attention?

We’re always in the middle of so much—always in transition with ourselves, with those we love and with whatever wild projects and plans we undertake. It’s really all too much, but also kind of exciting.

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

Reading Well

I pretty much have to wear my glasses now when I want to read. I can still make the print big enough on my kindle and computer to escape my fate, but the print in the paperback and hardcover books I love is slipping away from me. If I squint and concentrate I can still do it, but it’s not an easeful activity and I’m starting to resign myself to picking up my glasses more often.

I’ve always had an ambivalent relationship with reading. In fourth and fifth grade, I was one of those boys who dreaded when it was my turn to read out loud to my peers. It seemed like a test with no upside—if you read well that was expected and they just went on to the next person, but if you mixed up your words or couldn’t sound one out, everyone knew how clumsy and stupid you really were.

But I loved the adventure stories of Beau Geste, Ivanhoe and others that my father read to me and my brother. We also delighted in going to the library with my mother and returning with as many books as we were allowed. I was thrilled by getting to choose my own books from amongst the many wondrous topics and illustrations. I loved the heft and feel of my own private stack of books which I carefully kept on my lap on the car ride home—obediently not reading until we got home because reading in the car is bad for your eyes.

But reading myself was never as much fun when the pictures diminished and I had to do it alone. That was until I discovered the ‘We Were There’ series, a collection of first person re-imaginations of significant events in American history. I think it was ‘We Were There at the Alamo’ that first hooked me.

From my father, and from some natural and culturally encouraged tendency toward romance and righteous questing, I loved adventure stories. The hero is always set to right some obvious wrong against impossible odds. Through his many trials, he never waivers. His courage and strength are steadfast and he ultimately prevails and is recognized as the true hero he has always been.

At eight years old, I was mesmerized by the lush, violent and romantic movie ‘The Alamo’ which my Dad too me and my brother to see. John Wayne directed it and played my name sake, Davy Crockett. The women and children are spared, but the men carry out their duty of honor and die for freedom and love. At sixty-eight, I’m now rather critical of this one-sided vision of imperialism and misguided violence masquerading as manhood, but to and as and eight year old, with my father’s support, this seemed like a good and true vision of how to be a man.

So I remember taking out ‘We Were There at the Alamo’ from the school library on Friday, coming home from school and sitting in one chair for two or three hours and reading the whole thing. I was swept away. When I tearfully looked up at the heroic and tragic conclusion, I didn’t know where I was. It was a wonderful feeling, but it was balanced by feeling so physically awful and even nauseous from having sat in the same position concentrating on the small type for so long. From then on, I tried not to read so long at one time, but I was hooked on the possibilities.

I always read numerous books at a time now. One that is especially delighting me these days is Wallace Stegner’s classic BEYOND THE HUNDREDTH MERIDIAN: JOHN WESLEY POWELL AND THE SECOND OPENING OF THE WEST. My paperback copy has small print so I always put on my glasses when I dive it to marvel at the vastness of the west and the eternal battle of romance and realism, between principled courage and self-promotion—all filtered through Stegner’s luminous prose, prodigious knowledge and inspiring insight into human nature.

Even in the full flood of springtime, it’s worth putting on my classes and sitting in a chair for—at least for a little while.

Overnight With Family

Everyone else is asleep and the sun has just risen over the northeastern horizon. A few clouds gently flow southward, above the main event. I myself sit on a half-couch by the second-floor windows looking east.

I slept well but was troubled by meeting someone who seemed quite nice, but later I discovered he had been an adherent of the psychotherapy/cult my father had espoused. He was nearly my age but had a young girlfriend who was eager to make my acquaintance. I was tempted but then things got fuzzy and for the rest of the dream I didn’t know if something had happened or not. If it had, I was sure I had ruined my life and would live in fear and shame forever. Every once in a while I would gratefully realize I was dreaming, but most of the time I was fully enveloped in dreaming of dreaming and waking.

Yesterday afternoon it was in the high 60’s. This morning it’s below freezing. I wonder about the two sweet pea seedlings I planted in the garden. I knew it was too early, but they were growing so fast—sending roots down through the bottom of the peat pot and climbing toward the grow-lights—and I read in an article in the Irish Times that they can tolerate a light frost so…we’ll see.

Spring is like this. While the overall trend toward warmth is assured, variation within the clear direction is to be expected. Most everything is like this. Nothing is just one thing. My father died years ago and still he shadows my dreams. Things that have happened in my life are the ground I sprouted from—those things and my stories and reactions then and now to those things have made and are continually making me who I am. And the things that haven’t happened to me, unfulfilled plans and dreams—things I have read about or seen images of—all these things are part of me too.

Life does not unfold evenly toward maturity and wisdom but seems rather to bounce around—zigzagging back and forth within as many dimensions as we can imagine. Foolishness and delusion mix endlessly with their opposites just as stories of the past mix with the hopes and fears of the future to create the present dream of now.

Yet the sun rises this morning slightly further to the north from where it did yesterday. Several months ago, in the midst of winter, from this vantage point, it rose over an entirely different neighborhood. I suppose this is relatively invariable, the seasonal trek of the rising sun from the northeast in the winter to exactly east on the spring solstice to the southeast in summer and then back again.

Meanwhile, we dream our dreams and call them our lives. We do our best to wake up and make something of ourselves. We are told the long arc of history bends toward justice but many of us wonder how to add the weight of our lives to this hopeful but uncertain proposition how to spend ourselves wisely.

Back home, my sweet pea shoots may or may not have survived the overnight cold. Being naturally cautious, I only planted two of the seven that sprouted in the warmth of the grow-lights. So I continue to dream of fragrant and delicate blossoms climbing the wooden wall and keep my options open.

Guilty

I just happened to be driving in the car a little after five o’clock yesterday afternoon. I turned on the radio just in time to hear the announcer say that they were going to be cutting away to a live feed of the judge reading the verdict in the George Floyd trial. I, like many, had been afraid that the jury would be deadlocked, or worse, that they would do what so many previous juries in America have done: let white men and women avoid punishment and accountability for their acts of violence against people with black and brown skin.

I was surprised that the verdict came so quickly and suspected that meant there was a good chance that they were going to find for the prosecution. I had just reached my destination, the parking lot of the Temple, when the judge read the verdict that Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all three counts. I was relieved and saddened. Relieved that the jury had agreed with the seemingly incontrovertible evidence of the ten minutes of video. Relieved that, at last, our criminal justice system has held a police officer accountable for the use of excessive force. And relieved that the pent-up rage at centuries of white brutality and intimidation would not erupt in our cities across the country as it would have if Chauvin had been acquitted.

I was also saddened. Saddened that this event happened—that innumerable causes and conditions led Chauvin and his accomplices to view their brutal actions as justified and acceptable, that many of us find ourselves relieved and even amazed that simple justice was served, and that a man lost his life and another man’s life was destroyed by his own actions.

The ongoing nature and scope of our human brutality one to another is nearly incomprehensible. We organize ourselves into families and tribes and nations and then find reasons to dislike, hate and kill each other—and do it with an attitude of righteous necessity. Many years ago, in the middle of one of America’s small wars of aggressive self-protection, a man I know was banned from the St. Patrick’s Day parade because he wanted to carry a sign that said: ‘Do not kill means do not kill.’ Jesus and the ten commandments are not equivocal on this point, yet so many have been killed in the name of Christianity—and in the name of just about every other cause, religion and government I can think of.

As usual, our current President responded immediately, empathetically and put this event into the larger frame of our country’s ongoing struggle to live up to the high ideals of our founders (who also found it impossible to live up to their lofty words.) The NYTimes captured Biden’s remarks this way:

President Biden praised the verdict in a nationwide address at the White House but called it a “too rare” step to deliver “basic accountability” for Black Americans.

“It was a murder in full light of day, and it ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see,” Mr. Biden said. “For so many, it feels like it took all of that for the judicial system to deliver just basic accountability.”

Biden went on to say:

The battle for the soul of this nation has been a constant push and pull for more than 240 years — a tug of war between the American ideal that we’re all created equal and the harsh reality that racism has long torn us apart.

At our best, the American ideal wins out.  So we can’t leave this moment or look away, thinking our work is done.  We have to look at it — we have to — we have to look at it as we did for those 9 minutes and 29 seconds.  We have to listen.  “I can’t breathe.  I can’t breathe.”  Those were George Floyd’s last words.  We can’t let those words die with him.  We have to keep hearing those words.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President, for calling us again to join in the ongoing work of our nation. The momentum of institutional racism, misogyny and economic oppression is strong and it is only through our everyday thoughts, words and actions that this country will continue to move toward the land we aspire to be—a land of justice, freedom and dignity for all.

Creative Process

I tag along whenever I can,
like a younger brother
though, in truth, I am the older.

He is brighter and smarter
yet I know more and
am purported to be
the responsible one
though others in the
family do not always
agree on the later point.

Yesterday we made
dandelion soup outside
using only the warm spring
sun, five fresh-picked
dandelion blossoms and
available rainwater. He
did the pouring and
the stirring while I
closely observed the full point
of his easeful attention.
I’m happy to follow
his idiosyncratic process
and I like to think we
have developed quite
a creative partnership,
the two of us. He thought
it needed more spice and I
suggest the tiny tree
blossoms recently fallen.
I pointed to the intricate
structure of their sepals,
stamen and radial pistols,
and was going on to a further
discussion of pollination
and the wonder of so
many small green flowers
showered down from such
large trees, but the tender
things themselves were
plenty enough for him
and right into the soup
they went.

Later, we added potting soil
from the yellow bucket, sang
Old MacDonald many times
through passing melody and
lyrics casually back and forth,
used the watering can
to refill our rainwater sink
and delight over and over
in the pouring wetness of it all.

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

Don’t Be Upset

In the second century, Marcus Aurelius wrote about how we should respond to events in our lives that don’t turn out how we think they should:

First, don’t be upset. Nothing happens that isn’t in accord with universal nature, and before long you won’t exist at all…

I would like to explain and perhaps amend his first sentence, because it now reads in a way that could exacerbate the very upset he is advising us against. Perhaps this moralistic reading is simply because of the force of the stream of what William James called ‘once-born religions.’ In looking at American religions, James divided them into two categories ‘once-born’ and ‘twice-born’.

Once-born religions assert that the problems we encounter are of our own making and if that we change our thinking we will be successful and happy. Norman Vincent Peale’s bestseller of the 50’s THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING and Rhonda Bryne’a more recent THE SECRET are two expositions of the essence of this kind of religious perspective—if you are upset, don’t worry, nothing is wrong. Just change your thinking and you’ll be fine. Zen Buddhism is sometimes mistakenly lumped in this category as we are encouraged to ‘get our Zen on’ and not be bothered by the events of our lives because all suffering is just in the mind.

Twice-born religions believe that salvation, or true freedom, is only possible when we are willing to die. This process of necessary death is imagined and presented in a variety of ways. For Christians, the central imagery is of Christ dying on the cross. As believers, we are encouraged to follow his example as we surrender our small life to attain everlasting life. In Zen Buddhism, we talk about dying to our ‘little self’ so we can realize that we are part of something much larger and that the ups and downs of life are not an aberration but are simply how life is. (Or, in software speak, suffering is a feature not a bug.) Our true peace (the peace that passes understanding) comes from dying to our opinion of how things should be and finding our freedom within the circumstances that are already here.

My first understanding of ‘don’t be upset’ in the above quote is as a command telling me that the next time I am upset I should just tell myself I shouldn’t be upset and everything will be fine. Occasionally this works for me. But when I am really upset or disturbed, verbal instructions like this mostly don’t work.

In fact, when I am upset, telling myself that I shouldn’t be upset often just adds to my upset. Not only am I upset, but I feel that being upset is another example of my failure as a person so now I am even worse off than I thought.

Perhaps we could change the sentence to read ‘you don’t have to be upset.’ This is better but could still be used by my judging, self-improving self as another way in which I have failed. ‘I don’t have to be upset and yet here I am upset again.’

Maybe more editing is required. We could say ‘When you’re upset, be upset, but you might also consider that Nothing happens that isn’t in accord with universal nature, and before long you won’t exist at all…’ But then it becomes my plagiarized and altered quote rather than Aurelius’s.

It’s tricky territory because most everyone I know suffers so much because of our opinion of how things should be. On the other hand, disappointment, failure, ill-health and death are inevitable parts of our lives. We clearly need a new religion—a ‘thrice-born’ religion that can include everything. I would want it to involve a lot of singing and dancing and being silly—a lot of crying, discouragement and confusion. A lot of walking in the garden, wandering in wild place, and being with young children. In this new religion we would be allowed to feel whatever we feel and to notice whatever we notice. We could compare notes, tell stories and investigate together the wonder and terror of being human.

Garden As Teacher

Yesterday’s snow covering has receded and should be gone by noon. My menagerie of green seedlings has weathered the storm from under the comfort of grow lights in the meditation hall. In the continuing absence of human beings, I have converted part of the Zendo to a greenhouse. A few largish houseplants stand by the windows and keep guard over the eerie glow emanating from beneath two oblong metal hoods. Scores of seedlings geometrically arranged in trays bask in the artificial light as they begin their small and miraculous lives.

I suppose I should write about something other than my garden the delight I take in how it organizes my life, but a friend the other day told me that after reading one post about my garden, he went out to look at his garden with new eyes. That’s all the encouragement I need.

And what is your garden? A garden is whatever we pay attention to, for everything everywhere is always growing and changing. A garden is any place where we appreciate life-and-death. A garden is where we witness life rising up, manifest itself in some particular form and behavior, then vanishing. This is the way of the universe, from single-celled algae in the pond to the swirling galaxies of our immeasurable universe.

When we pay attention to something, life itself becomes our teacher. We learn how to be human—how to be responsive and flexible to the dance of coming and going. If we are persistent, we can sometimes begin to get a felt sense of the reality that holds us so precisely. Paying close attention to any piece of life can begin to counteract the false evidence of our senses that we are separate, discrete and self-determining beings. The more you pay attention, the more the swirling patterns of life become self-evident and reassuring.

A friend asked me how I keep track of all the seedlings and all the various rhythms and needs of the garden. I told her that I can’t keep track, but I just put myself in their proximity and then it becomes clear what needs to be done. Sometimes more water. Sometimes more light. Sometimes transplanting. The wonderful cacophony of rhythms, needs, and stages comes to my ears without effort. I give a hand here, change positions of something there—doing my small part while the plants and trees and soil themselves manifest their miraculous nature.

I feel lucky to be included. Lucky to have meaningful work. Lucky to have a way in that is beyond words and achievements. I just spend time and help out. I feel like a little boy hanging out at the corner barbershop who is happy to be among the coming and going of real people. Amidst the smells of lotions, the snipping of shears and the buzzing of electric clippers, I run little errands for the barbers and help out where I can. Here, life is alive and bustling and I am held in the warm comfort of it all.

So what is your garden? Growing things of any sort, from houseplants to small window box of flowers is plenty. Cats, dogs, fish and even snails too are teachers sent from life itself to teach us life itself. Or playing and listening to music. Or preparing food. Or paying attention to the placement of furniture or the folding of our clothes and sweeping of floors.

As another friend (Walt Whitman) once said: All truths wait in all things. Today, I remind myself to learn as I go and join in the swirling rising, the particular manifesting and the gentle falling away that is the endless dance of the universe and me.

Spring Snow

Through the morning,
wet flakes fall heavily.

Daffodils bow down
while undaunted
ferns unfurl.

Not Looking Away

Another black man killed at the hands of a police officer in Minnesota. Duane Wright was killed in his car after being pulled over because of expired plates and an air freshener dangling from his mirror. Mr. Wright had an outstanding arrest warrant from a misdemeanor weapons charge and was being handcuffed as he attempted to get back in his car and drive away. Kimberly Potter, the third police officer at the scene, then said ‘Taser, Taser, Taser’ as she shot Mr. Wright in the chest with her handgun, apparently mistaking it for her Taser. She was arrested yesterday and charged with second-degree manslaughter.

This happened earlier in the week but I have not written about it because I don’t know what to say. How can this keep happening? Just as the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, the ex-police officer charged in the brutal death of George Floyd, nears its completion, we come up against this seemingly ongoing police campaign against Black men again.

One protestor in Brooklyn Center where Mr. Wright was killed told a reporter, ‘Black people can’t take anymore. We can’t bear the responsibility of the change of the system that must occur for us to be acknowledged and be able to exist as humans.’

I feel grief, anger and helplessness at the unending violence being directed at Black people, Asian people, and all people of color—at women and people of non-binary and non-standard gender identities. This violence is a lived experience and continual threat to the lives of so many. The violence arises from fear and leads to more fear. This violence is perpetrated by individuals, but those individuals are acting out the deeper terrors of a culture that undergoing an existential crisis.

This country was founded on lofty principles that were inextricably intertwined with a system of slavery and the subjugation of women that was viewed as necessary and acceptable. On many levels, great progress has been made. But beneath this progress, the roots of violence and oppression remain baked into our psyches and our cultural institutions. Black and brown bodies and women’s bodies continue to be subjected to the terror of ongoing random acts of violence. No one is safe.

So I again pledge to not turn away from the horrors being inflicted on my sisters and brothers at the hands of the institutions that seemingly make my life safe and secure. I vow to keep showing up and using my power and privilege to acknowledge violence wherever it happens and to support ongoing actions and conversations that can lead, ever so slowly, to some kind of accountability, healing and new possibilities.

A Small Offering

This morning, many entrance points appear, but all are overgrown with the brambles of self-consciousness.

Every inspiration, left to its own devices, deteriorates to a technique that the little self uses to reinforce its defenses against the true and generative shape-shifting reality.

In my ritual of daily creation there is danger—the allure of imagining I know what I am doing. Then, lost in reliance on some self-conscious skill, I fall away from the hazardous heart of things and am condemned to wander in the dreary world of what I already know.

My audacious intention is to live on the edge of the unknown.

I want to pitch my tent on the edge of the great and mysterious forest. Like the great explorers of old, I want to make forays into that uncharitable territory that is the interwoven source of all.

I want to slip into the realm of illuminated shadows to see what I can learn about appearing and disappearing. I aspire to join in the great rising and falling of it all then to report back of wondrous creatures and fresh vistas.

Each small journey, if I can lose myself clearly enough, becomes its own life and death. I practice following some thread I can never know—waiting patiently until what arises offers its own shape and meaning. I do my best to use what I know gently and tentatively, never sure if what applied yesterday is still valid today.

So, this morning, just this. A few cautions, a few intentions—a small offering from the dark forest.

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