The Trouble We’re In

Buddhist thinker and eco-activist David Loy writes persuasively in his book Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis about the need for new ways of thinking about what we’re doing here on this planet. He points out, as many others have, that what is required is not simply for us all to take slightly shorter showers and ask for paper bags instead of plastic at the grocery store but rather a fundamental shift in the stories we collectively tell about the meaning of life and about our relationship to each other, this fragile planet, and the cosmos itself.

Loy quotes Loyal Rue who observed that the Axial Age religions (which include Buddhism, Vedanta, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam) all emphasize cosmological dualism and individual salvation. Cosmological dualism refers to the belief that there is another higher or better world someplace else. Embedded in the notion of a heaven where we go if we fulfill certain requirements here on earth, it places God above and earth below. Some traditional Buddhist teachings explicitly say that the point of life is to go beyond life in escaping the world of birth and death. Even the Mahayana (Zen) notions of enlightenment can be interpreted as transcending worldly concerns to live in a world beyond this painful world of suffering.

Cosmological dualism is part of what has created the worldview where we forget that we fully enmeshed and dependent on the so-called inanimate things around us. From this place of separation we see the earth and even each other as merely a means to an end. Our attention is on getting to some better place rather than realizing that our non-separation requires us to include not only each other, but the trees and the earth and the water and the sky in our calculations of self-interest.

Individual salvation is the idea, that though we live in community, each of us works toward salvation (or awakening) on our own. We each, we are told, must work out our own salvation in fear and trembling. We each must do the individual work to cut through our delusion and wake up to life itself. Every man, woman and child for themselves.

These two core ideas do not, however, represent the fullness of any religious tradition. In Ecodharma Loy goes on to illuminate the teachings of Buddhist traditions that could be the basis for a realization of the oneness of the sacred and the profane (non-dual teachings) as well as the teachings that no one individual awakens until everyone awakens. I have Christian friends who are doing this same work within their tradition—seeking new interpretations that will allow us to use our faith traditions to energize us in meeting this unprecedented challenge of global ecological collapse.

I’m reminded of Marx’s remark that ‘Religion is the opiate of the masses.’ And certainly religion has been used to justify centuries of cruelty in our economic and social systems. Systems that are focused on maximizing profit with no thought of the human consequences nor the unaccounted for cost to the earth, water and sky on which we all depend. Good Christian ministers preached centuries of justification for slavery and unspeakable cruelty to those with brown and black skins. Not to mention Christianity’s muscular support for the accumulation of vast wealth and the exploitation of workers of all colors and ethnic backgrounds.

Donald Trump, though he doesn’t appear to be any kind of Christian except in photo-ops, is the perfect exemplar of this strain of impoverished radical individualism. Winning is everything. Money is all that counts. Laugh at the losers. Take what you can get. Protect what you have against all comers. Compassion, sacrifice and collaboration are for those who are not strong enough to defend their true and solitary interests.

I was, however, deeply heartened last week by the images and the rhetoric coming out of the Democratic National Convention. The idea of at least beginning from a place that stresses we are all in this together, that we need each other, that we have a responsibility to the earth that supports us is refreshing, to say the least.

In Ecodharma, Loy makes a clear and unhysterical case that our immanent environmental collapse is part of a larger way of thinking that is also manifested in the violence of racial injustice, economic oppression and rising rates of depression and drug use in almost every (over)developed country. To make the changes we need to avoid the potential annihilation of life as we know it, we must work at this level as well as every other available to us.

Now for the cheery and clever ending. Hmmmm…..

It’s a cool morning. The sky is blue and the sound of a nearby fan is loud. I breathe in and out. I take a sip of tea. I suppose to look into the social and environmental suffering that surrounds us, we have to make sure to come back again and again to the ongoing miracle that is who we are. We are, each one of us, fully embedded in the most astonishing fabric of stars and crickets—of whales and nasturtiums.

 

Don’t forget.

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Crabapples and Coronavirus

The crabapple trees have passed their peak here in the Temple garden. The extravagance of white blossoms is giving way to equally miraculous but more ordinary looking green leaves. Soon, their glory days will be behind them and they will hide through the summer as unremarkable trees of medium size.

Spring’s extravagant bloom passes to the slower work and pleasure of summer.

This late May morning, as the social constraints of the pandemic are beginning to loosen, I wonder if the bloom of Covid has come and gone? Experts disagree and politicians use scraps of information to construct a banquet of questionable projections. Yet each one of us has to make important decisions for ourselves and those we love.

Governors are allowing, state by state, the reopening of certain businesses and allowing the re-gathering of certain groups. Interestingly, beauty salons and churches are at the top of many of the lists. And we here at Boundless Way Temple are beginning to think about when it might be safe to gather again in person for Zen meditation. (Though some of us with very short hair remain unconcerned about visits to the barber.)

No one says the virus is gone. People are still coming down with the virus and people are still dying at an alarming rate. In some places, the rates infection, hospitalization and death are holding steady or diminishing. In others, rates are still rising. But it all depends on where you look and how you measure.

When is it safe to go out? When is it safe to come together? Is it now enough to have the windows open and masks on? The future course of the virus is still closely dependent on our individual and collective behaviors. Some of us are still sheltering in place. Some of us are having our close friends over for drinks and dinner.

A recent poll here in Massachusetts found that nearly 80% of respondents report that they are maintaining social distancing behaviors strictly. These same people also reported that only 25% of the people around them were doing the same. Both of these observations cannot be true at the same time. We humans are irreparably biased. The obvious truth of our observation is likely to wildly influenced by our hopes, histories and fantasies.

Yet we have to make our best choices. We should all be careful to read (and watch) widely and to check the inevitable biases of our sources. Being provisional in our pronouncements and being diligent in looking for new data will serve us well. It might also help us be more accurate in our speech and actions as well.

But the crabapple trees are not bothered by their fame or their obscurity. They stay firmly grounded in the season of the moment. Blossoms and birds come and go without regret as the nascent fruit of the unimaginable fall begins its slow swelling toward fullness.

Personal Practice – Be aware today of how your opinion is shaped as much by your previous opinions as it is by what you are encountering in the moment. Notice the emotions that arise unbidden when you consider certain people and situations. Don’t try to change anything, just see if you can perceive and appreciate whatever is arising in the infinite interplay between perception, thought and feeling.

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Why Sesshin?

Our recent virtual retreat was a great success. Forty-one of us gathered from around the region and across the ocean to practice Zen together. For two days, we wove formal silent meditation practice with everyday life—going back and forth between sessions on Zoom and informal practice at home. By our final gathering, it was clear that even though we had not been in physical proximity, the power of our combined efforts over these past days had touched us all.

Every spiritual path I know of involves at least a periodic withdrawal from everyday life to gather in community for intensive practice. Even the great spiritual teacher Jesus periodically withdrew to the hills to escape the crowds and pressures of his life. Stepping back from busyness appears to be essential for human beings who want to see beneath the surface—who want to break free from the trance of everyday life.

In the Zen tradition, we refer to these retreats as ‘sesshin’—a Japanese word which literally means ‘to touch the heart-mind’. Sometimes we also call them ‘training periods’ because, as anyone who has been on a Zen meditation retreat can tell you, ‘retreat’ is a rather misleading term. We are up early in the morning and spend our days sitting in stillness and silence. Though sitting meditation alternates with walking and with other practices such as eating, chanting, listening to Dharma talks and meeting individually with the teacher, a sesshin requires great effort on the part of each participant.

But the point of sesshin is not simply to work hard or to be uncomfortable, but to practice cultivating a basic friendliness toward ourselves. As human beings, we usually spend a lot of our time evaluating and judging ourselves and our situation. We want to be comfortable and peaceful. We don’t want to suffer or be agitated. However, the truth of human experience is that discomfort and pain cannot be avoided.

No matter how positive you are or how many skillful techniques you have for calming your mind, your life will not always go your way. You will not always get what you want, people you love will go away, you will sometimes be sick and, ultimately, you will lose everything you think you have. I don’t say this to be depressing, but rather to honor the truth of our experience as limited and mortal beings.

The question then is not how to escape the natural suffering of being alive, but rather how to meet and appreciate this life of ten thousand joys and sorrows. One of the wonderful things we can learn on a sesshin is that even though almost nothing is happening – we’re just sitting and walking – our minds still run through the whole spectrum, from ease to anxiety, from clarity to confusion. No one outside us is ‘causing’ us to feel however we are feeling.

On retreat, with the time and the simple structure of practice, we can begin to see that the difficulties of our lives actually come and go within the boundaries of personal awareness. The problem and our subsequent suffering that seems to be generated by our situation or by the people around us is in fact the transient (and natural) working of our minds. Over time, if we are willing to stay, we see that sensations, thoughts and mind-states simply arise and pass away. It’s almost like everything that feels so personal and real is just a kind of weather that comes and goes on its own.

Of course there are wonderful ways to work with the mind and powerful techniques to meet our life more skillfully, but in the end, our life is beyond our control. We can, however, learn to appreciate our life for the wonder it is. We can cultivate the capacity to meet whatever circumstances we encounter, even when we are overwhelmed and lost, with this basic friendliness. Rather than judging ourselves and others, we can open our hearts, see what is here, do what needs to be done and appreciate this precious and fragile gift of life.

While this may be easy to read or even write about, it takes a lifetime of practice and intention to live in this spirit. This is why we go to sesshin.

Personal Practice: Play around with the idea of meeting your life with this ‘basic friendliness’. Maybe take ten minutes to sit still and just allow yourself to be as you are—being present to whatever thoughts, sensations and feelings are present—without having to evaluate or change anything. Let yourself be as you are. You don’t have to like what is arising or feel good about it—but you can just let it be.

Or maybe hold this spirit of basic friendliness with you as you go about some of the activities of your day. What if it’s all OK, even right now? What if you can just be who you are and allow others to be who they are?

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Sudden or Gradual?

One of the debates that has enlivened the Zen school for centuries is the debate between sudden enlightenment and gradual cultivation. The Rinzai school of Zen is famous for working with koans and for emphasizing the power of achieving a sudden flash of understanding that is called enlightenment. The Soto school is usually associated more closely with ‘just sitting’ and with the ongoing nature of practice. Rinzai practice traditionally focuses on the notion that there is something to accomplish, some realization to be had. While Soto practice maintains that we are already awake and that any effort we make to achieve something is based on our deluded thinking.

You can see what a delicious and endless argument this could be. Each side can easily stand in the fullness of their position and look down on those poor people with incorrect understanding and inferior practice. And, as you may have observed, we human beings sometimes save our harshest judgments for people who are closest. The feelings that arise between committed partners can swing quickly from great fondness to strong aversion. The criticism and judgments that appear between different branches of the same religion can be especially energized as well.

One great Zen master of 13th century Korea, Chinul, settled these seeming polarities in this way: sudden awakening leads to gradual cultivation. He maintained that enlightenment is not something you practice Zen to achieve, but rather that you would not begin a meditation practice like Zen unless you had had some kind of realization.

The Zen way asks that we take on the practice of sitting still and being present with what is here. Anyone who has tried this, even for ten minutes, has a sense of what difficult work this is. So much of what arises in the mind and so much of life is unpleasant. Why would anyone want to sit still and feel what is here? Better to be busy running around distracting yourself or trying to fix what is wrong.

Chinul maintained that those who are willing to try this arduous path have had some moment when they have seen through some of the illusions of daily life. These moments of seeing through can be very brief – just a moment of walking out into the coolness of a spring morning, or when a toddler runs toward you with delight and throws his arms around you with unreserved love and trust, or while sipping tea reading a book with a beloved pet curled up nearby. These are moments when the endless struggle of life drops away and we are touched by the fullness of life itself.

Every human being has moments like this, but often we are looking the other way. We are too busy to even notice these micro-joys that appear spontaneously. Some of these moments of intimacy with life are so strong we are stopped in our track. But mostly they come and go, like fragments of a dream.

But some of us notice these moments of ease and peace and want more. We begin to see that our usual strategies of effort and accumulation don’t work in this field. Because the habit force of the human mind is strong, our daily worries quickly overwhelm any moments of intimacy and freedom we have. This is where gradual cultivation is necessary. This is where Zen practice begins. Only by looking deeply into the matter can we begin to find a sustainable way of living the freedom that is our birthright.

A moment of insight, even a life-changing experience of the oneness of all life, quickly fades into memory—becomes something we talk about, think about, and even torments us with its necessary passing. What is left to us is to commit ourselves to the path of gradual cultivation.

Hongzhi, the Chinese Zen master who lived a few centuries before Chinul, put it this way: “The field of boundless possibilities is what exists from the very beginning. You must purify, cure, grind down or brush away all the tendencies you have fabricated into apparent habits. Then you can reside in the clear circle of brightness.”

Daily Practice: Noticing moments of ease and intimacy. As you move through your day, see if you can tune your attention to the moments ‘in between.’ We all have a narrative of what we are doing moment to moment, but what if our day is actually filled with moments of ease that are not included in the story we are telling ourselves and our situation? Let the sights and sounds, the smells and textures of your life come to you. The sound of the cars going by on the street. How the eyes blink of their own accord. How the breath comes in and out as if God himself were watching out for us. Notice the generous life that surrounds you—that is you.

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Koan Salon

Yesterday, during our Zoom Koan Salon, we took up a story from about Zen Master Dongshan, the 9th century Chinese teacher who was one of the co-founders of the Caodong (Soto) school of Zen Buddhism. The story goes like this:

Shenshan was mending clothes when Dongshan asked, “What are you doing?”
“Mending,” said Shenshan.
“How is it going?” asked Dongshan.
“One stitch follows another,” said Shenshan.
“We’ve been traveling together for twenty years and that’s all you have to say?” said       Dongshan. “How can you be so clueless?”
Shenshan asked “How do you mend, then?”
Dongshan replied “With each stitch the whole earth is spewing flames.”

Koan salons are a practice innovation first introduced by John Tarrant, a poetic, wild and creative Zen teacher who lives out in California. John is also one of the honorary founders of Boundless Way Temple. He was James Ford’s teacher who was Melissa’s teacher and then one of my teachers.

A koan salon is a community gathering to look into one of the thousands of Zen teaching stories that are called koans. These koans are often brief encounters between students and teachers like the one above. They are often enigmatic, leaving the student to puzzle out what might be going on. In the Zen tradition, teachers will often give talks using these stories as entry points into some aspect of Zen and our lives. In our Boundless Way Zen school, we also have a set curriculum of hundreds of koans that students study sequentially, one-on-one with a teacher.

The koan salon format, however, relies on the associative power of the mind and the collective wisdom of the community. After some discussion yesterday, we asked everyone to sit in meditation, then we read this koan and encouraged people to notice what arose in their hearts and minds. Then, after some silence, we read it again. And then again for a number of times. Allowing the silence to hold us in between and simply noticing the feelings, images, thoughts and associations that arose.

Usually when we ‘study’ something, we engage our analytic brain and work hard to understand. Study in Zen is different. Zen teaches that we already have what we need. The understanding and wisdom we seek is not embedded in some esoteric teaching outside of us, but rather is already present in each moment. I think it was St. Paul who said that the true ‘law’ (Dharma) is written on our hearts. It’s not something to run around trying to catch and memorize, but something much closer and more subtle than that. The truth of live cannot be gamed. But we can learn to be still and to allow our hearts to open to the deep truth that is already present.

So we sat still and listened to this simple story weaving in and out of collective silence. Then we talked in pairs (through the magic of Zoom) and then with the whole group. In this process of talking and listening, we were touched by the many dimensions of this koan. All of us heard things we hadn’t considered that led us to consider things we hadn’t thought of before. In the space between us (literally from Thailand to Colombia to Europe to the US) a rich tapestry of meaning emerged and seemed to weave itself. We were grateful for the wisdom of each and the wisdom of all.

Personal Practice: Find yourself a place and a time where you can take fifteen or twenty minutes. Settle yourself into a comfortable and upright posture. Sit still for a few minutes and just be present with how it is for you right in this moment. Notice sensation in the body, emotions, thoughts. Whatever arises, let it be as it is.

When you’re ready, read the above story to yourself. Then go back into silence and notice what arises. What words or phrases or images stand out? What makes sense and what is puzzling? Just notice. Repeat this three or four times.

For extra credit, you can write down some of your insights and puzzlements. Or better yet, tell the story to one of your friends and share with them some of the meanings that arose within you.

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Buddhas Over Worcester 2020

One of my projects in March and April was to create a piece for Boundless Way Temple’s annual Buddhas Over Worcester sculpture show. Every year we invite local artists and non-artists to create a sculpture for the Temple garden that expresses their understanding of what it means to be awake—to be a Buddha. Each artist is also invited to title their sculpture and to write a short haiku-like poem to express some intention or understanding behind their creation.

And for the past eight years, every year around the first Sunday in May, we have our grand opening. Scores of people wander through the garden examining the twenty-some sculptures, reading the titles and poems, wondering about awakening, eating sweet treats and enjoying the company. It’s one of the highlights of the year for our community.

Not this year.

Though the garden remains open with the six-foot social distancing rule in place, in mid-March we decided that the safest course of action was to cancel the show for this year. But several artists, including myself have gone ahead and created pieces anyway. Over the next few weeks some sculptures will be installed in the garden.

The official theme for the exhibit that is not going to happen this year, Waking up to wonder in the midst of the joys and sorrows of being human, still seems like a worthwhile enterprise.

The first two sculptures are in place and a third was being constructed yesterday afternoon. Below are the first two artist’s descriptions.

Title- The Three Refuges, 2020
Artist- Christine Croteau
Medium- Wood, rocks, marble
Dimensions- 12”x12”x12”
Haiku Artist Statement-
Through Awakening
Embraced By Arms of Sangha
We Find Our Path Home
(located on a square of marble to the left of the brick path just you can see the pond after you pass through the torii gates)

Title- Waking Up to Life-and-Death
Artist- David Dae An Rynick
Medium- Tibetan Prayer Flags, fallen branches, composted leaves, dirt, plants from around the garden
Dimensions- 9’ x 9’ x 4’
Haiku Artist Statement-
Falling completely apart
We give ourselves back
To nourish what comes next.
(located by the red shed in the very back of the garden)

Come visit! Spring does not care about quarantine, delights in the cold rainy weather we’ve been having and is fully blossoming in the Temple garden. Come visit! Boundless Way Temple Gardens, 1030 Pleasant Street, Worcester, MA 01602

All are welcome. We ask that you bring a mask for the protection of all beings and that you maintain our continuing social distance from other humans while you get close to the flowers.

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Living With Uncertainty

Many commentators refer to these days as a time of uncertainty. This uncertainty is often cited as one of the most challenging aspects of our lives in the pandemic. But is this uncertainty really a bad thing? And whether it is or not, if this really is a time of uncertainty, how can we meet it in creative and constructive ways?

The human mind seems to like a clear and simple stories that explain the world around us. Our minds naturally move toward binary categories: Is our current uncertainty good or bad? Are we safe or in danger? Will we be OK or not? We just want to know.

Once the mind forms its opinion, we often feel a sense of relief—‘Well, at least I know.’ The opinion does not need to be true to be comforting. I don’t have to be accurate or complete in my thinking to feel right and settled in my opinion. The settledness of mind simply feels good. As long as there is uncertainty, some part of me is thinking and wondering and trying to solve the problem.

But one of the problems with ‘knowing’ is confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the tendency human beings have to notice the things that confirm our opinion and either not see or not give the same weight to things that contradict our viewpoint. We tend to like people who agree with us (the ones who see the world as clearly as we do) and struggle with or avoid those who have other opinions.

In the Zen tradition, we say not-knowing is good. Rather than a problem to be solved, not-knowing is a way of directly meeting the reality of our lives. (As I write this, I am aware that I am now encouraging us to put ‘not-knowing’ in the binary category of ‘good’ as opposed to ‘bad’. While this is slightly ironic, creating the same feeling of certainty I was recently criticizing, it does seem useful in helping us meet and work skillfully with the ever-changing world around and within us.)

Shunryu Suzuki, the teacher who founded the San Francisco Zen Center, once famously said “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”   Being an expert means approaching a situation with a lot of experience; you already know what is going on and you know what you are going to do. While this can be wonderfully beneficial in some situations, for life in general, this kind of ‘knowing’ causes a narrowing of engagement with the world around us and fewer options going forward. We don’t see what is here, we simply see what we expect.

Part of our Zen training is learning to be comfortable with the discomfort of this sometimes unsettled feeling of not-knowing. As long as we think we ‘know’ we are stuck in the world of the past – the world of the mind. When we realize that we don’t know everything (or even very much at all), we can move with greater ease in the world that is constantly changing and evolving.

The truth is that we don’t ever really know what is coming next. You may think you know what the day will bring, and you may be right some large percentage of the time, but you never really know. Instead of trying to base our lives on how much we know, can we begin to create a foundation of not knowing – of openness to what arises from moment to moment?

Can we notice our natural desire for certainty and rather than trying to fix it by making up some fixed position, can we simply to allow ourselves not to know? Can we be more curious about what is here than about our opinions about what is here?

The great 20th century poet William Carlos Williams carried a pad of paper with him as he moved through his work day as a doctor making house calls. The top of the page was always titled ‘What I noticed today I have never noticed before.’

Maybe today we can all keep our eyes open just like he did.

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Just Like the Astronauts

Here in Massachusetts we have been told for the past two weeks that the peak of the coronavirus will come sometime in the next two weeks. It still has not come. Or has it?

We don’t know. The rate of rise in number of infections has continued to bounce around. Some days it is lower, some days it is higher. Without knowing exactly how many tests are being administered and processed, it’s hard to make sense of these daily reportings. The number of cases and the number of deaths continue at a horrific pace, but still below the worst projections. Hospitals are still functioning. Perhaps our extreme social distancing has ‘flattened the curve’. But no one seems to be able to accurately be able to predict the timing or the amplitude of the coming peak.

Meanwhile, we go on as best we can with our daily lives of social distance. It’s as if we have all been recruited by life to be part of a giant social experiment: What happens when you cut people in a society off from physical contact with each other? Part of the answer is visible in the explosion of creative new ways of using the internet to connect with family, friends and the world around us. Virtual exercise classes, meditation, family meetings, cocktail parties and dating are now the ‘normal’ stuff of our lives.

The other impact I have noticed is a growing personal sensitivity. This sensitivity cuts both directions. I think I have been more aware of smaller things—of the pleasure of chopping vegetables and cooking food, of how much I rely on my contact with a few friends to share my ongoing story, of the number of people who make my life possible by growing and picking and transporting and stocking the food I take for granted, and of how much I love my mother.

I have also noticed that I am more sensitive than usual to the people and things around me in a not so good way. Like my issue with the weather of Wednesday. Cold days are a part of spring in New England, but Wednesday, it felt like a personal affront. Like how easily I get annoyed with the people I love most. It’s quite amazing how little things, that are usually no big deal, sometimes become the center of my attention. It’s like my skin suddenly becomes paper-thin and every contact feels like an irritation.

How did the astronauts manage those days and weeks in their tiny tin space capsules floating in space? What did the NASA training manual say to do when the way your co-astronaut was gulping their Tang began to drive you crazy? Should you tell them flat out to quit slurping like a barbarian? Or is it better to begin whistling your favorite song so you don’t hear the incessant lapping? Or perhaps begin a conversation about the weather to interrupt the guzzling? I wonder.

For me, I’m trying not to say everything that comes into my head, nor to investigate everything that might be going on behind my friend’s pained expression when I enthusiastically drink my morning coffee. I’m also trying to notice the rising and falling of the irritation itself. When I really pay attention, I’m amazed at how reactive I actually am.

Beneath the calm interior I usually imagine for myself, is wave upon and wave of rising and falling emotion. Both like and dislike constantly arise. Sometimes I hardly notice. Other times the emotion and sensation are strong. Looking closely, I find that even the most urgent arising, has a half-life and fairly quickly subsides. Irritation and annoyance are, for me, often a kind of heat that surges through my body. I feel a flooding of emotion that has a certain kind of urgency to it. This urgency rises and, if I do nothing, subsides on its own. Like a my grandson who can be screaming one moment, then get distracted by a book or a bouncing ball the next moment and seem to totally forget what the screaming was about.

Perhaps patience is just the ongoing awareness this natural process of rising and falling of emotions. Maybe we can be supported by our intention to be good and kind to those around us as we observe, rather than act on, the roller coaster of internal experience that is our birthright as humans?

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Snow and Daffodils

My trusty Google calendar* assured me that April 15 was the day of the last frost. I assumed they (and the NSA) know precisely where I live and have access to the weather records for the past gazillion years for this particular location. But I didn’t believe them. Even before Thursday night when the temperature descended into the high twenties. And my distrust is fully verified this dark morning as I look out at the street light and see the heavy wet snow flakes lazily drifting earthward – toward my sweet daffodils.

Fortunately, rather than believing Google, I did some research (on Google) and found that mid-May is a more common ‘last frost date’ for Worcester county. I also learned that this ‘last frost date’, like all predictions, is more a matter of probability than of certainty. The truth is, some years we don’t get another frost after mid-April and some years the last frost comes in late May. And, scrolling through my calendar, I see a second ‘last frost date’ on May 22nd. Maybe April 15th means ‘it’s possible we won’t get another frost’ and May 22nd means ‘it’s very unlikely we’ll get another frost.’

My ‘sweet’ daffodils are actually quite hardy and can usually take care of themselves quite well. They’ve been blooming around the Temple for over a month and seem to be quite at home in the variable temperatures of this time of year. They must have some particular substance in their cells that prevents the water in them from freezing. Or some specific quality of elasticity of their cell walls that allows the water to freeze (and expand) without damaging the cells. However they do it, they’ve mastered the art of living well right where they are.

Of course, even the daffodils have their limits. If the temperature goes below twenty I would be worried for them. And this morning, I’m not worried about the temperature as it’s only around freezing, but I am worried about the weight of the snow. These elaborate yellow, white and orange trumpets, so jaunty and hopeful in yesterday’s bright sun, were not designed to carry a load of wet snow. Most of them will probably gracefully bend over, giving way to the unexpected weight of the white flakes. But some of the stems will crease and break for good. And of the ones that bend, some will never recover their upright posture.

As the gardener, there is much that I do not control. The ordained variability of the weather of each day and each season is a necessary and sometimes frustrating condition of all growing things. Bright sun, heavy snow. Some flowers bloom for weeks, others just for a day or two and others fail to bloom.

My job is to work with whatever is happening and to do my best to appreciate it all.

The falling snow is soft and enchanting. Later today I’ll go around and collect the fallen daffodils to bring them in for bouquets around the empty Temple.

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Death and Taxes

It’s like when someone who never calls you back and never appreciates all you do for them finally calls you back and expresses their gratitude for what you’ve done. It’s a good thing, but it is also inconvenient. We count on the world to be as we imagine it to be and when it deviates, even to our benefit, we are required to do the work of redrawing our internal map.

Until this year, throughout my whole life, death and taxes were reliable. Death happened at some unknown point, and taxes happened on April 15th. Every year. Now, even though the iconic day has come, taxes still aren’t due. This isn’t right. (Though in fairness to the reliability of the universe, I do have to admit that taxes will certainly still be due.)

And when will we be able to eat out at restaurants again? When will we want to eat out at restaurants again? When will be feel safe enough to go to a public place with other people around to relax and share a meal? What if the waiter comes too close? Or if someone comes over while we’re sitting down and wants to talk?

I do predict that all this will happen, but it won’t be soon and it won’t be like it was. Going out to eat will involve behaviors and feelings that were unimaginable only three months ago. We are living into a future that will not be like the past. Things we counted on will be slightly or greatly shifted. New assumptions will be normal.

But for now, the full social distancing orders are still in effect here in Massachusetts. The number and the rate of rise of infections, hospitalizations and death continue to climb. The peak of our pandemic is due in the next two weeks.

The nature of a ‘peak’ is that you can only know it’s come after it’s gone. A peak is defined by the decline that comes after. Is today the peak of blooming cherry blossoms behind the Buddha statue in front of the Temple? Is today the time I felt most discouraged about the endless quality of this weird time? We’ll have to wait and see what tomorrow brings to tell the story.

Meanwhile, let’s turn as best we can to whatever is here.

April 15th. Birds sing outside my window as the darkness of night slowly disperses. My plan: take a shower, make the rumpled bed then go check out the momentary appearance of the reliable old cherry tree.

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