The Answer Isn’t So Simple

Precisely at five a.m. this morning, the birds begin to sing. Lying in the dark I hear them clearly though the windows are shut. I smile as I remember other mornings of other springs and I wonder what is on my mind this spring morning. It seems a simple inquiry, but it always takes me a while to come up with an answer beyond, ‘Not very much’. Fog and murkiness are a regular feature of my life.

I have a close friend who is irritated when they ask me a question and my response is silence. I try to explain that my quietness is actually a good-faith attempt to find an answer rather than an evasion or a dismissal. I love the British TV shows where the leading characters always say they are fine even when the suspected murderer has just held them hostage, blindfolded and tied to a chair for four days without food and water. A hoarse and weary, ‘I’m fine,’ accompanied by a faint smile is always their response to the question ‘How are you doing?’

Their thoroughly British friend immediately decodes the nuance of the answer, taking into account their recent near-death experience and noticing the trembling of the upper lip and the red-rimmed eyes. The good friend does not disagree with the statement that is clearly false, but rather offers a cup of tea and responds directly to the human truth of the situation as opposed to the verbal construction.

The fullness of any situation is far beyond whatever words we say. I used to think it was important to ‘talk things out’ and ‘get to the bottom’ of issues. I still believe in the power and necessity of words to help us go beyond our limited perspectives, but being close and being in relationship now appears to be a more mysterious and imprecise adventure than I had thought.

So I ask myself again, ‘How is it with you this morning?’ I now accept my slow response as information. All night I have been dreaming, both asleep and awake, of the satisfying solidity of the rectangular granite blocks I was working with yesterday. The terrace walls I am constructing to contain a new garden linger sweetly in my mind with their comforting repetition and variation of simple shape and muted color. Each roughly rectangular stone weighs between five to twenty pounds and I remember the satisfying thud each one makes as I drop it on the bare earth when I move it from place to place.

I once read that in making a wall, you should never pick up a stone twice. This may work for other longer walls with more skilled wall-makers, but I seem to be doing a lot of moving of rocks that don’t yet find their place in the wall. So I try to enjoy each stone I pick up as well as appreciate the warmth of the afternoon sun on my shoulders. I move granite blocks from place to place, finding the precise length and height and width for the next piece of wall. I am delighted by the heft and ancient provenance of these sparkling gray companions.

I make some neighborly ‘beautiful-afternoon-to-be-outside’ talk with a visitor in my neighbor’s backyard and he responds by telling me these granite blocks are cobblestones. That hadn’t occurred to me, but it seems likely enough. He claims to work for the largest distributor of these stones in New England and tells me they are imported from India where they have been cut by hand. With so much granite here in New England, I secretly hope this is not true. I don’t like the idea of their carbon footprint being so much larger than the stones themselves. But since I am repurposing them from former uses around the property, I am somewhat soothed.

Now I notice that I have successfully evaded my own question. Or perhaps the true answer to how I am this morning is: ‘Dreaming of the solidity of granite blocks.’ This morning they appear as the kindly mooring of my soul—a life-line to keep me happily tethered to this earthy world of dirt and rocks, of flowers and trees, of bird-songs and mental images. Each thing itself goes beyond murkiness and words to present the fullness of life as just this.

Only Two (or more) Right Ways

I started building a small terraced garden yesterday behind the south-side wall of the garage where I am starting to live. The ground slopes down gradually from east to west, about five feet over the twenty-foot run, but the siding on the wall steps down (and up) in three increments. I thought about just outlining a sloping garden there but then had the bright idea that it would look better to make some terraces that would repeat the steps of the siding (and hide more of the concrete).

When I begin a project, I rarely have a clear picture in mind of where I am going to end up. I used to envy people who seemed to know exactly what they are doing and where they are going. But then I realized that 1) most people actually don’t know what they are doing, even if they speak and act with great confidence, and 2) even the people who do know can end up quite wrong. I’ve had genuine experts offer various and contradictory opinions about the same problem.

When I studied Aikido, a Japanese martial art of self-defense, there were two Aikido Masters who taught the simplest and most basic move in diametrically opposed ways. The move, called tenkan, is a simple pivot and is usually practiced with the uke (attacker) grabbing the wrist of the nage (thrower) which is extended with the foot of the same side. (e.g. right hand and right foot forward) The nage then pivots on their front foot until they are side-by-side with the uke, all the time keeping their hand in front of their torso.

This simple move changes the relationship from face-to-face conflict to side-by-side collaboration, and if, as nage, you’ve kept your hand in front of your center, the uke is off-balance and you can easily extend forward and ‘throw’ your partner. (DISCLAIMER – do not try this with your partner at home as they may not be amused.) As an aspiring Aikido student, you do this over and over until your wrists get sore from the friction of being grabbed and then breaking free.

The disagreement between these two teachers was that one thought this simple move should be done with concentrated energy. He taught that, in doing this move, you should imagine energy flowing through your arm and out your fingers, extending this energy throughout the move. The other teacher taught that the key is looseness. He said not to focus on the hand but to keep everything in alignment during the move and allow the whole body to be relaxed and in a state of enjoyment.

Who was right? Each teacher was aware of and rather dismissive of the other’s position. Each would demonstrate the move in the ‘correct’ manner, then have a student try the other teacher’s method, which, of course, wouldn’t work at all. Physical reality seemed to shift depending on the views and teaching of the teacher.

At first, I was troubled by two masters directly disagreeing with each other and teaching contradictory techniques. But over the years, I have come to appreciate the creative and fungible aspect of reality. Not just Aikido Masters, but each of us participates in creating the world that in which we live. Our beliefs, assumptions, experiences, perceptions, thoughts, and actions all swirl together with everything we encounter to create what we call our ‘life’. It is (and we are) not a thing that can ever be fully described or understood. Any technique or teaching is only a provisional suggestion that may or may not apply to the current situation. You and I are ongoing processes that are constantly coming into being, maintaining, and falling away. Whatever worked yesterday may or may not work today.

But back to my intended terraced garden behind the garage. It’s 20% done and I’m now at the head-scratching place—stepping back considering proportions, available materials, and the myriad necessary decisions that were hidden from me in the vagueness of my good idea. I’m still hopeful that I can learn enough and be responsive as I go to create a simple terraced garden that rests easy with the garage wall behind it and brings a small portion of delight to me and others who may wander by.

The Peepers Call Out

Yesterday’s warm drizzle spread quietly into the sleeping earth and roused the cold blood of us all, including the tiny amphibians, the peeper frogs, who suddenly came alive and began singing for their lives. From puddles and vernal pools throughout the neighborhood, the males began their shrill chirping and whistling–enacting the ancient call of life for attention and sex.

I suppose the little frogs have no awareness of their purpose. The male frog does not think ‘I’ll call out especially fast and loud to attract a really hot babe so we can have sex and have a nice family of eight or nine hundred little ones who will be so cute and fun to play with.’ He calls out because he calls out. In his pure expression, there is no gap between intention and action. The calling, as well as the subsequent conjugal activity, serves life’s essential purpose that is unknown to the one who calls out.

On some level, for all our painful human self-consciousness, each one of us too lives by instinct and acts without knowledge. Current research shows that our awareness lags several milliseconds behind our actions. Like the little peepers, we act first, before we even know we have decided. It is then, a fraction later, that the thinking mind comes online and scrambles to figure out a ‘reason’ why I ‘decided’ to do that which I have already done.

Aside from the vast majority of our ‘thinking’ which happily trundles on beneath the level of our consciousness and beats our heart and breathes our breath and constantly maintains our precarious constantly moving exchange with the world we live in—aside from all this, most of our thinking is post hoc—it comes after the fact of our activity. Our thinking is simply our best guess as to why a certain feeling is arising or why I said or did what I just said or did. Its assertion of agency and authority is an elaborate (and often quite convincing) charade.

Mostly we’re like the eight-year-old boy who trips and falls, then quickly leaps up and looks around to see if anyone was watching. And if they were, he defiantly proclaims ‘I meant to do that.’ The ancient delusive claim of purpose and control. Though I spend a lot of time encouraging people to clarify their purpose and to act in alignment with whatever that deeper direction may be, in the end, I find life to be much more mysterious (and interesting) than that.

Our lives unfold through each action we take or don’t take. I have no idea why one day I get out and go for the brisk walk that I know is good for me and the next day hardly get out of the house. Why I have continued to meditate and lead Zen groups for the past thirty years is also a mystery to me. I can, of course, make up a thousand reasons and some of them feel true, but really, my life is simply what I have done.

I’m not advocating we let libido run wild and imitate the licentious behavior of this season’s cacophonous vernal pools. But maybe I am. Maybe I mean to say that we can appreciate the ten thousand joys and sorrows of our lives as part of a bigger movement of life, as not quite so personal and therefore not quite so fraught with regret and anxiety. Maybe we are not as separate as we think and we are all simply calling and responding to the ancient necessities of attention and reproduction. In that case, I’ll just follow what calls to me and sing as quickly and as loudly as I can and hope for the best.

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

On Being Related

The birds sing enthusiastically in this morning’s drizzle though the skies are still dark. My laptop opened to an op-ed piece in the NY Times by a Korean-American woman, Mihee Kim-Kort, who is a Presbyterian minister, theologian pondering motives for the shooting of eight in Atlanta last week.

Rev Kim-Kort begins the piece by referring to the Korean practice of using filial names rather than given names. As the oldest in the family, her parents referred to each other as “mi-omma” (“Mihee’s mother”) and “mi-appa” (“Mihee’s father”) after her birth. Before Rev. Kim-Kort knew their names, she thought of the Korean women killed in the shootings as Daughter, Big Sister, Mother, and Aunt. Rev. Kim-Kort suggests that this custom of relational labeling reflects the Korean understanding that we are inseparable from who we love and who we are loved by.

All of us are sons and daughters—murderers and victims alike. Many of us have brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles. We may have sons and daughters and non-binary children ourselves. We may still live with or near our parents and grandparents or they may no longer or may never have been part of our lives. But we are all related.

Family is a blessing and a struggle. In close families, we may have to fight for enough space to feel that we can be seen for who we really are. In a distant family, each member can feel alone and cut off. Yet our relationships and the issues of our family of origin are with us through our lives. What we learned, how we were treated, what was acknowledged, what was hidden—all this stays with us as the great source and the great challenge of our lives.

Acknowledging and appreciating our connection to each other begins with understanding our connection with the particular gifts and burdens of our familial heritage. None of us are independently appearing individuals that get to create ourselves ex-nihilo. We are all wired through our biology and through our upbringing to see certain things and not others. Studies show that our capacities to distinguish one face from another is directly related to the faces we see in our world in the first years of our lives. To individuals who have never seen ‘white’ faces as children, their capacity to distinguish one from another is physiologically limited.

The issues of our family come down through us and are our opportunity to make a difference. Each successive generation works the rich soil of confusion and clarity that has been passed on. To work with the legacy of our ancestors requires humility and determination because these inherited forces are both subtle and fierce. Going beyond simply enacting the beliefs and blindnesses of our ancestors requires intention and effort over time.

Rev. Kim-Kort goes on to say that the Atlanta killer was responding to a toxic brew of anti-Asian and anti-woman prejudice as well as to the ‘purity culture’ of conservative white Christian teachings—what she calls ‘toxic theology’ that leads to an ‘extreme fear of God and an equally extreme self-loathing.’ Another perspective is that the Atlanta killer was just a disturbed human being with mental illness. Perhaps the correct answer can only be ‘all of the above.’

But the birds sing undaunted and the morning light gives brings shape and color to the world outside my window. My eyes see and my ears hear. We are all related—to each other and to the calling birds and to the rain that falls this morning to bless and nourish the flowers. Let us not forget.

Going Beyond Limitations

I have a bad memory for names and I don’t do much better with faces. This is why I never became a politician. It hasn’t been a terrible liability, but it is a hindrance in my spring project of getting to know the neighbors.

I already know some of them and have been conversing casually with some for a number of years. The thing is, I don’t know some of their names. I asked them so long ago and have had so many brief conversations that I am now afraid to ask again for fear of offending them. But I’m actually not afraid of offending them, I’m afraid of looking stupid or like I don’t care. It’s very important for me to appear to others as a person who cares.

I suppose I learned from my parents: #1—the most important thing in the world is to care about other people. If you don’t care about other people, you’re selfish, mean-spirited, and not worth very much. The corollary of this is #2—the worst thing others can think of you is that you don’t care about them. And the hidden assumption from which #2 arises is #3—your worth as a person is directly linked to what other people think of you.

This all leads, in a way that makes perfect sense until you think about it in more detail, to a life of spending a lot of time trying to look good. ‘Trying to look good’ sounds pretty selfish and mean-spirited when I put it so bluntly, and I would generally and passionately deny its truth, except that I realize it’s getting in my way of getting to know my neighbors.

My other hurdle is that I’m an introvert by nature. In spite of my wild self-revelations in these small reflections, I don’t generally feel a need that others know how I am feeling or what I am thinking. Not everyone who practices Zen is an introvert, but sitting long hours in silent contemplation is clearly a practice that appeals more to some than to others. One of our standard jokes at the beginning of a Zen retreat is that this is a ‘party for introverts.’ We get to be in close proximity with others without having to talk and make polite conversation.

But my vow is to do my part to heal our divided country by making connections to the people around me. I have the advantage of living in a fairly mixed neighborhood in terms of race and national origin. And, due to my natural reticence and fear of looking bad or causing trouble, I have no idea how most of my neighbors voted in the past election—or the shape of their lives—or the issues that mean the most to them.

So yesterday, I asked the guy who often has the boats in his driveway and who I have spoken with several dozen times, I asked him to remind me of his name as I introduced myself. He said ‘I know who you are, you live up the street and do meditation. I haven’t forgotten.’ I took his implied criticism and repeated his name silently to myself over and over after he said it. Was it Dick? or Richard? or something else? I can’t quite remember.

It’s a shaky start, but a start none-the-less. Note to self: learn how to use cell phone to record all new names within thirty seconds of hearing them.

Too Much To Do

It’s been a squirrely few days for me. While the warm and delicious spring weather has melted all but the most stubborn piles of snow, I have felt overwhelmed and lost amid all the to-do lists of my life. I have lost my sense of what is most important and have been wandering in a world of a thousand equally urgent things calling out to be done.

Of course, there is always more to do than we have time to do.

Of course, this statement is not necessarily true. Or perhaps it is only true when we make certain assumptions. Perhaps any statement that presents itself as presenting the obvious truth should be approached with caution. ‘Of course’ encourages the mind to travel the familiar pathways of opinion rather than consider afresh the matter at hand. A warning sign for the careful traveler.

‘Always’ should probably be another alarm-bell for the aware reader and thinker. ‘Always’ statements can be quite comforting as they lead our mind toward the fantasyland of a dependable world that conforms to our understanding. Nothing ‘always’ happens. Some things, like the coming of spring, may happen on a fairly regular basis—we can safely plant our seeds at a certain time—except that sometimes snow comes in May as it has on occasion.

So then, what is this ‘more to do?’ Is it that my mind can always imagine things I could do? In a split second, I can imagine having breakfast, reading a book, responding to email, having a conversation with a friend and going for a walk. Yet, as I think ahead to this morning, I know I probably won’t have time to do all these things. I will, most likely, have to choose.

And what is this time that I have or don’t have to do or not to do? There is this moment of living action in which I am sitting on a brown faux-leather couch with a laptop in my lap and a cup of tea that sits patiently on the bench beside me. Is this ‘my’ time? And what about all the time I can imagine having or not having?

Today will be a ‘busy’ day. Really?

We order the world with the thoughts of our mind, and then we complain at the order of the world. There are days when I seem to ‘do’ more things than other days. Or would it be more accurate to say that some days I’m more active than others? I suppose some days even have more breaths in them than other days – when I’m moving and my muscles call for deeper breaths at a quicker pace.

But can you find busyness except in some combination of images in the mind and feelings in the body at this moment? The mind in this moment dreams my past and my future—makes infinite predictions of what will happen and what won’t happen. Each instant I am doing one thing and not another.

Now that I have thoroughly confused myself, I feel a little lighter. Today I will do some things and the things I do and the thoughts I think will be my life—the life that I create together with the world that I encounter. Sometimes at ease, sometimes feeling lost. Today, I’ll try to just follow my feet and see where they lead. I’ll ignore the opinions of the many others that reside in my head and trust the emerging moment to lead me truly.

Spring Dancing

Astronomical spring has officially arrived and yesterday’s weather, here in New England, was right on schedule—a cool morning giving way to warm sunshine and clear skies. It was the kind of day where you start off with a light jacket and then, at some point, are compelled to disrobe in response to the delicious and unfamiliar sense of the sun’s radiant warmth.

The clumps of crocus that had the good sense to be planted in south-facing locations have finally joined the snowdrops to be available to the small bees and the other ardent admirers who carefully search them out. Small splashes of purple and gold are the new and welcome decoration to the still mostly gray and brown landscape.

Out for a Sunday morning stroll, two veteran observers of spring and one small rookie ‘keep our eyes open’ and call out the sightings as they come. We walk to the edge of each garden and crouch down for a better look. We’re a good team. We wouldn’t crouch down to look closely if it was just us old folks, and our two-year-old rookie probably wouldn’t think to stop if he were by himself.

Watching for a few moments, we see the nodding white snowdrop blossoms quiver in the light breeze while the crocus stand upright with unmoved intent. Is the movement of the snowdrops a functional adaptation? Is their small white dance on a green stem a necessary device to attract the attention of pollinators (both human and insect)? Or is a slim stem simply the most efficient way to hoist aloft the reproductive organs for better access and all the wiggling without purpose? In either case, we appreciate their delicate and concerted response to the breeze we can barely feel.

Later, sitting lazily on the deck talking about things of small importance, I am overwhelmed by the unfamiliar brightness. Unused to so much warmth and sun, my head begins to ache and I go inside for a nap.

Still later, I give a Zen talk about how the ‘Dharma a thusness has been intimately transmitted by Buddhas and Ancestors’ and illustrate it with a poem by the great Japanese poet-monk Ryokan:

The wind has settled, the blossoms have fallen;
Birds sing, the mountains grow dark—
This is the wondrous power of Buddhism.

The intimate transmission is nothing but the seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and imagining of this moment and all the Buddhas and Ancestors are here with us as the earth once again dances the slow and sensual dance of spring awakening.

Saying the Names

Soon Chung Park, age 74
Hyun Jung Grant, age 51
Suncha Kim, age 69
Yong Yue, age 63
Delaina Ashley Yaun, age 33
Paul Andre Michels, age 54
Xiaojie Tan, age 49
Daoyou Feng, age 44

These are the names and ages of the eight people who were killed by a 21-year old white gun-man in the Atlanta area on Tuesday. Seven of them are women and six of them are Asian-American. On Friday, President Biden and Vice-President Harris visited Atlanta and met with Asian-American leaders in Atlanta, and spoke publically in response to this violent tragedy.

“Whatever the killer’s motive, these facts are clear,” Harris said, “the shootings took place in businesses owned by Asian Americans…The president and I will not be silent. We will not stand by…We will always speak out against violence, hate crimes, and discrimination, wherever and whenever it occurs….Racism is real in America and it has always been… Xenophobia is real in America and always has been. Sexism too.”

The President followed her remarks with messages of sympathy to the families and friends of the victims, but also with a vow: “Because our silence is complicity. We cannot be complicit,” he said. “We have to speak out. We have to act.” Biden

The swirling debate in the aftermath of these killings this past week was: were they racially motivated hate crimes, were they crimes against women or were they random acts of violence? The answer to this question has to be yes. We live in a world where gender, race, and religious affiliation intertwine. There can be no separation, we are all, all of the above.

These terrible murders call attention to the rise in violence against Asian-Americans over this past year and also to our country’s long and shameful history of racism and violence against Asians.  They are also a terrible reminder of the ongoing national and global reality of violence against women. UN Women, a United Nations entity dedicated to gender equity and the empowerment of women, estimates that ‘Globally, 35 percent of women have ever experienced physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, or sexual violence by a non-partner. This figure does not include sexual harassment.’

Racism is real in America and it has always been… Xenophobia is real in America and always has been. Sexism too. (Misogyny—the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls—would probably be a more accurate term than sexism.) The degree to which these forces and fears limit us all and are embedded in the fabric of our society is becoming more and more evident.

We must stand in solidarity with all of our brothers and sisters, for our wellbeing is directly tied to theirs. We must name hatred and violence wherever it appears and do what we can to publically stand against it. We must continue to raise awareness of our complicity through our actions and inactions so that we can find ways to continue to move toward a safer and more just world for all.

The Path Back to Normal

A short walk to the lake with my grandson yesterday gave way to a longer conversation with his parents about how we’re going to handle the safety and boundaries of our COVID bubble over the weeks and months ahead. Melissa and I are scheduled for our second vaccine shots in a little over a week, then we wait two more weeks, and then comes the surprising question of post-vaccination behavior. Somehow I had imagined that all this caution and careful behavior would all be over for me after the vaccine—but that’s not the case.

After the waiting period after both shots, we vaccinated folks appear to be quite safe. While no vaccine is 100%, all the COVIC vaccines on the market greatly lower our risk of contracting COVID and also appear to guarantee us against hospitalization and death. (I’d always hoped for a ‘guarantee against hospitalization and death’, but as I looked closer into this claim it appears to only apply to COVID-related instances and does not protect us from runaway busses, falling trees or germs, diseases and morbid conditions of other kinds.)

I have to admit that even as I feel the strong urge to resume ‘normal’ activities, I have also grown quite used to how things are now. I do want to gather in our meditation hall again with real people rather than with flat images on the computer screen, but I don’t want to have to work out all the details and figure out all the things we will need to do to protect ourselves and those we go home to.

The 1.9 trillion dollar question is: ‘Can people who have been vaccinated be vectors of transmission to others who have not yet been vaccinated?’ It looks unlikely, but unlikely is not the same as a clear answer. (Or as a friend who used to teach sex education to high school students said, ‘Hope is not a method.’)

After a year of avoidance, uncertainty, and fear, how do we find our way back to some semblance of ease in each other’s presence? How do we begin to unclench our lives? Living always involves risk. And for risks below a certain threshold, most of us don’t actively worry. Each time I get in the car, there is a chance that I could be seriously injured or die. While I try to be a careful and alert driver, I don’t spend my time driving worrying about that small likelihood. How do we transfer our daily unconscious care for our human vulnerability into this new sphere of ongoing concern?

And, perhaps equally important, how do we talk together with our families, friends, and associates about how close we come and under what situations? Communication and appreciation of differences in comfort levels are critical to help us move together through this unsettling and encouraging time. ‘Too fast’ and ‘too slow’ are phrases that convey important information both about our perception of danger and our perception of reality. Both parts of the equation need to be honored.

A student once asked a great spiritual teacher, ‘How do we cross the raging torrent of the river of life?’ The teacher replied ‘By not straining and not tarrying.’

So may it be as we individually, within our families and within our various communities and nations, move beyond this fearsome pandemic. Can we together discern the middle way together? Not too fast and not too slow. Can we deepen our trust and understanding of each other as we move with determination, patience, and courage toward the ever-evolving world of full engagement that awaits us?

Grateful

1.
Too many candles now
to count on the wondrous
birthday cake that is
the life you have lived.

Born in the center
of the twentieth century
to parents whose parents
parents had traveled far to be here,

you have faithfully continued
their courageous journey
through your relentless search
for the truth of the human heart.

2.
So always this day on the cusp
of new spring rising
from the dark winter,
we remember and celebrate

you.

3.
I am happy for all
the years and stories
and wrinkles that are
our life together.

Yet beyond the two of us
you have touched many
and amended the world
with the gifts of your heart—

humor and wisdom,
clarity and compassion,
determination and doubt
all swirled together into

a confection so definite and
delicious that even after
all these years I still
smile in awe and delight.

— for Melissa, March 19, 2021