Not even a good likeness.

Jagged stroke on rice paper.

A solitary tree trunk?

Merely a line.  One black stroke.

It is garbage day today.  Thank God!  I have a lot of it to get rid of today.

First of all, I’m feeling depressed. The primary elections aren’t going the way I would prefer. While I look forward to change, especially the change of US administrations in 2009, it seems as though the term “change” has become sufficient unto itself and has become the sole criterion required. One recognizes this political fact when one hears every Republican and Democratic candidate tout him/herself as the change agent. I’m no political pundit, but I wonder how much of this change phenomenon is really just an expression of Bush fatigue, a desire among voters to latch onto the best sounding messiah to get the country out of the mess it is in.

So that should go into the garbage for sure.

Waste Management dropped off new recycling bins in our community. Pretty snazzy ones. Yellow lids. Wheels. Makes it very easy to get the recyclables out to the street for pick up. Just toss the cardboard, news print and magazines, glass, cans, and many different types of plastic bottles and containers into the bin.

I wonder how they will recycle my container of depression. Maybe they won’t even notice the depression swirling around inside the container. They’ll just sell the container to a recycling plant. Then when the recycler starts to melt the container down, the depression will burn up. Or possibly some enterprising entrepreneur will recycle the political depression for use right after the November elections take place. Look for colorful plastic bottles filled with ExChange inhalant, but be sure to read the warning label before inhaling too deeply.  ExChange: It’s the way you feel when life gets too real.

Another thing that will go into the garbage is the shredded paper from all the fiscal year 2000 bank statements and expense receipts. I know a lot of people – my dad was a firm believer – never throw those things away. But I only clutter up the filing cabinet with them for seven years. Then they get shredded and dumped. So that goes as well today.

The real reason I am feeling down, depressed, and full of garbage is because a beloved friend passed away last week. She had suffered with her illness for many years. So on the one hand I am happy that she does not need to deal with her pain any longer. But, I miss her, and I have to work through my grieving and come to grips with the unpleasant change in my life. I’m not ready today to toss that grief and depression into the garbage.  That will take more time. It will take its own time and manner to work itself through my consciousness.

The way I feel today reminded me of the photograph I’m posting with this blog entry. This is the Buddha dying with his arahats assembled around him. The statue is a part of the Buddhist site at the DaZu Rock Carvings in Chongqing Province, China. I didn’t see the subject matter – that is, the death of the Buddha – as emblematic of my feelings.  It’s really the physical state of the limestone carvings themselves. Exposure has corroded the limestone. So even though the Buddha is dying in calm repose and his devotees seem totally unconcerned about him, it looks as though he needs some good plastic surgery. Life is like that some days, some weeks, some years.

I do not wish to make light of my friend’s passing. I do not mean to soften what her death is by sandwiching it between paragraphs of political sarcasm and odd bits of stuff for the recycling bin.

I am grieving today. And, I do need to get the garbage cans out to the street curb.

Eyes closed in contemplation,

she traces the trajectory,

feels arrow alight in target.

Success!  Power!  Ah, the joy!

What a crap last line to that poem!  It sucks the air right out.  I could envision  Donald Trump making such a comment.  It’s like the arrow hitting dead center in the wrong target.

“There are, of course, many ways to act compassionately toward others.  The discipline of Buddhism includes both practice for oneself and practice for others, with the idea that giving others the means to continually enhance their own capacity to overcome misery and become absolutely happy is the ultimate compassionate act.

“We chant for the happiness of others.  We teach others how to chant.  And we study Buddhism together, those more experienced sharing their knowledge and insights – and, in turn, having their practice refreshed by the realizations of new comers.  We continually work to expand our ability to create harmony with others in all our environment – among family, friends, coworkers, neighbors and so on.

“Fulfillment arises from recognizing this mission of helping others realize their potential and from exerting oneself to make it a reality.  Living without compassion is a shallow existence.  The Bodhisattva way, the path of helping others, is the certain path to absolute happiness.”  Hochswender, Woody, Greg Martin, and Ted Morino.  The Buddha in Your Mirror: Practical Buddhism and the Search for Self.  Middleway Press, 606 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90401.  2001.  Pp 118-119.

No.  No.  No.  No!  This passage about the Way of the Bodhisattva misses the mark.  It misses the target and just tunnels into the grass where, one hopes, it will not be found again.

Yesterday Babs volunteered to go help two friends who had furniture arriving.  We had visited our friends two days ago and heard the news that the furniture was on its way.  One of our friends had lined up younger members of her family to help shift things around after the movers had delivered the boxes and furniture.  So Babs called the lady late in the evening to see how the delivery had gone.  It hadn’t.  The moving van was snarled up in snow storms and road traffic.  It would arrive the next morning (the “yesterday” in this story).  Babs, of course, volunteered to come up in the morning to help because the family members would be at work.  We went to help our friends yesterday.  As the day wore on order grew out of the chaos that naturally happens when one gets rid of some possessions and replaces them with other things.  Clothes got sorted into the proper drawers.  TV sets got hooked up.  Boxes stacked in the garage got re-stacked in groups of similar items.  And our friend who was feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of doing all the work by herself heaved a sigh of relief.  She was over the top of the heap of confusion and could see daylight again.

I think Babs’ spontaneous and natural response while talking with our friend is a really good example of something my guru used to teach.  He made a great distinction between “trying to be kind” and just “being kind”.  It has always taken me a lot of effort to see this distinction.  Babs, on the other hand, doesn’t need to worry about such a distinction.  She is kind.  She doesn’t have to try.

As I was reading the Buddha in Your Mirror and ran across the passage I quoted above, it struck me that what the authors were proposing is the kind of worthy goal one hears about in business programs.  Use your product.  Learn to love it.  Then, get out there and sell the product.  If you love the product, how can others not love it?  OK, I’m being facetious here.  The authors mean well.  They mean to encourage Nichiren Buddhists to chant not just for their own spiritual progress but for the happiness of others so that these others may in their turn become Nichiren Buddhists.

Yet what the authors inadvertently advocate is building an attachment.  Sure it is an attachment to a positive activity, chanting for other’s happiness and edification.  But it is still an attachment to outcome, “absolute happiness”.  It’s still trying to act the way a Bodhisattva  acts rather than just being a Bodhisattva.

Contrast that kind of activity with Babs’ spontaneous offering of help.  In essence, she responded to a friend’s need for no purpose other than to be of aid.

Perhaps the authors would have been closer to the mark if they had worded the last sentence in the quote a bit differently.  What would the reader get if the sentence read, “The Bodhisattva way, the path of helping others, is a beautiful path to being in this life.”

And as for rewriting things that miss their target, let’s go back to that opening poem.  If the writer (me) was writing about the process of spiritual visualization, then that last line has got to go. 

I wasn’t.

Jue ju verse: curtailed poem,

Four lines, seven syllables,

Tells no story, creates mood.

The universe in a mustard seed – more or less.

Last week I decided to pull out all of the jue ju poems I’ve used at the beginning of these blog entries.  I wanted to look at them as stand alone poems.

Now, I have a friend who is a really accomplished poet.  Even though we haven’t written each other in a long time, I decided to get her comments.  So I emailed her the whole lot.  No message other than “Hi” along with the poems.  (Well, I didn’t want to prejudice her response, did I?)  The next morning I had back her response, a lovely and poetic improvisation on the winter morning at her house. 

Crossed communication.  No helpful commentary regarding my short poems.

On further reflection, however, I realized she had given me some insightful constructive criticism.  For one thing she showed me what a skilled poet could do extemporaneously.  More to my needs, she told me, in effect, that critiquing my poems was my own business.  It was a tough love lesson for me as a would-be poet.

We have all had experience with crossed communications.  Last Thursday at the Joliet Buddhist meditation evening, we had a discussion of how attachment (suffering) arises in one’s mind.  We pieced it out of our own experiences and the thoughts of a Theravadan Buddhist monk in the area.  We got it pretty clear that suffering begins at that moment when one attaches to a desired interpretation of reality or a desired outcome in a situation.  We settled in to meditate where upon one of the participants opined that she wished Chicago were San Francisco.  San Francisco had beautiful weather, exciting views, and real curb appeal.  Chicago had cold, grey weather, was flat, and sprawled all over.  Hmm.  Maybe we should have spent more time defining what attachment was as well as why suffering came from attachment and less time theorizing about the insufferable workings of the human mind.  Crossed communication.  It occurred because those who were exploring the Theravadan concepts and how it explained times of suffering in their own lives really weren’t paying attention to the other meditators who, in hind sight, had other needs, other questions to be answered. 

Of course, one could brush it off and say that those others should have jumped into the discussion, asked their own questions, and helped to redirect the conversation so as to meet their needs as well.  But, that’s not what happens when talking about something comes across as highly theoretical, when the discussion seems to be among the intelligentsia.  What does happen is that the conversation becomes limited to the few who are ready to discourse about theory.  The rest become excluded, become members of the unwashed masses.

As a would-be poet, I fit into that great mass of the unwashed.  When I wrote to my friend, I didn’t know what to ask, and I just flooded her with a bunch of unrelated jue ju poems.  Fortunately, she tossed them back to me without comment.

So I downloaded as much as I could find from the Internet.  Definitions of jue ju poetry. How to translate jue ju poems into Spanish and English.  Jue ju poems found on the walls of an American prison in which Chinese immigrants had been incarcerated.

And I have sent a couple to Poetry Magazine.  Let’s see what happens. 

This is one of the ones I sent:

Finger opens my email --

empty today too of you

save your smile in memory --

and hovers above delete.

It is said Chen Rong would soak

his cap in ink, bash it on

paper, and with fine tipped brush,

paint dragons while drunk.

Imagine the film of a walk around a foggy outcropping, each frame unrolling across your view like part of a story.  The mists stir like smoke with light breezes.  Rocks are outlines of a larger, more solid body.  Tree branches swim forth like claws.  A large eye pops open to view you.  There is movement throughout the landscape.

If you are a Westerner, this could be the opening shot sequence of a movie about impending danger, the appearance of magic in dimly perceived landscapes.  If you are an Easterner, this could be the story of the power of insight, the sighting of reality beneath outward appearance.

As I was creating the opening of this blog entry, I had dragons in mind.  Dragons and communication.  Communication and the way we humans are so willing to find an explanation for what we see and so very willing to believe the explanation we invent.  This is my contention: One of the evolutionary strengths of human intelligence is the ability to scan reality for patterns and to extrapolate an explanation for what is observed.  That is helpful to survival.  If a human being can spot black and tan stripes and a flicking tail and if a human being can remember that past experiences indicate the high probability of a tiger, then said average hominid would have a greater chance to get the hell out of the area and live to pass on his/her wisdom to the next generation.  His/Her sons and daughters, having heard the story countless times over many camp fires, would come to believe that tan and black stripes in nature indicated a moment of life/death need for appropriate action.

Wikipedia has this entry on European dragons: “Many European stories of dragons have them guarding a treasure hoard. Both Fafnir and Beowulf's dragon guarded earthen mounds full of ancient treasure. The treasure was cursed and brought ill to those who later possessed it.  Though the Latin is draco, draconis, it has been supposed by some scholars, including John Tanke of the University of Michigan, that the word dragon comes from the Old Norse draugr, which literally means a spirit who guards the burial mound of a king. … Many others assume the word dragon comes from the ancient Greek verb derkesthai, meaning ‘to see’, referring to the dragon's legendarily keen eyesight. In any case, the image of a dragon as a serpent-like creature was already standard at least by the 8th century when Beowulf was written down. Although today we associate dragons almost universally with fire, in medieval legend the creatures were often associated with water, guarding springs or living near or under water.”

For the Easterners among us there is this: “To the man in the street, the dragon was a benevolent and generally auspicious creature, bringer of rain and emblem of the emperor.” (Michael Sullivan.  The Arts of China.  University of California Press, Berkley.  4^th Edition. 1999.  Page 185.)  “Hidden in the caverns of inaccessible mountains or coiled in the unfathomed depths of the sea, he awaits the time when he slowly rouses himself to activity.  He unfolds himself in the storm clouds; he washes his mane in the blackness of the seething whirlpools.  His claws are in the forks of the lightning.  His scales begin to glisten in the bark of rain-swept pine trees.  His voice is heard in the hurricane which, scattering the withered leaves of the forest, and quickens the new spring.  The dragon reveals himself only to vanish.”  (Okakura Kakuzo.  The Awakening of Japan.  n.p., 1905.  P. 77.)  Each definition a wonderful explanation of the dragon. 

I am particularly attracted to Kakuzo’s lovely depiction of the dragon.  It’s a depiction that could only be written after the term dragon had been conceived, elaborated, and believed.  It is the description by an author who was trying to get back to the original cause of the term.  Poetic.  An overlay of metaphors on the merely real.

The emperor – yellow gowned –

calls his heavenly power,

clasps seed and soil in union,

controls the realm with dragon claws.

But, here’s the definition of dragon that frames my contention: “Here be dragons.”  It was the phrase used by medieval map makers to explain what lay just beyond the edges of the known world.  

A fresh wind stirs the mists, swings the tree branches, and dislodges a discarded pie tin, glinting faintly on the hillside.  The tin slides down and comes to rest in another crevice.  The scrolling film unveils more of the outcropping.

Geese graze now on the golf course,

process in ritual steps

in lines along the fairway,

leave shit, and take wing again.

In prasad, does one bring food to the feet of the guru out of devotion or out of gratitude?

I had the good fortune to attend the American Meditation Society’s Thanksgiving meditation retreat for 24 hours last weekend.  I got to enjoy the company of friends I hadn’t seen since the 2004 Thanksgiving retreat.  AMS is the meditation group I have been a part of for some twenty years now.  So chanting and meditating and hanging out with friends was like feasting at the family church.

At supper one of the discussions had to do with attending mediation and spiritual retreats offered by different spiritual masters.  The discussion finally came up with the question, “If the Buddha were here, wouldn’t you go to see him?”  I took that question to mean why wouldn’t one want to be in the presence of a spiritual master.

The next day that question was part of the morning satsang, the spiritual sharing presentation.  Now the lady giving the morning satsang was not guilty of being a proto priestess.  She spoke her own thoughts woven from her experiences at the retreat and from passages taken from Gururaj’s lectures.  While alive, Gururaj quite often described himself as a tour guide.  When he lectured, he taught how one could step onto the spiritual path and how one could move along it.

“Just be your natural self and live in compliance with nature itself, for nature constitutes the entire universe.  You flow with the current.”  “This must be recognized.  Every moment that you live; it's a lesson.”  “Do you see?  Awareness!  Be aware!  And once a certain awareness is developed to a certain degree, then choices come on their own.  You do not need to choose anymore.  You are chosen.  You are the chosen people of Divinity.  Is it not true? That's what all theologies say, nothing new which I'm telling you.”  Gururaj Ananda Yogi.  Audio tape: US‑85043—Being Chosen, Not Choosing.  © American Meditation Society, 1985.

“The secret of life is this: to be involved in the process and yet experience the calmness within.”  “Be involved in the process and yet at total peace and calm and filled with joy all the time.  The ocean cannot exist without its calmness [nor without] its waves.  And so, that is the secret of life – when man can live the process and that which caused the process in this procession of life.  It is very easy.  To find the calmness, it is instantaneous.”  “Be as a child to enter the kingdom of heaven.  Now a child is not encumbered by all the scheming imaginations of the mind.  What this means is that we have to still the mind.  And yet, it is impossible to still the mind, for the mind is a process.  Then what can you do?  What is the answer?  The answer is to go beyond the mind.  To stand above the mind, observe the play of the mind, observe the processes of the mind, observe the likes and dislikes, the loves and the hatreds.  Observe the greed and the lust and the avarice and covetousness.  Observe it.  And, for that you require spiritual strength.  You require that inner force, for in a systematic manner, you take the little conscious mind and gradually step by step you lead it through the highway of the subconscious… to that area of stillness which I term the ‘superconscious’.”  Gururaj Ananda Yogi.  Audio tape: “BC 83-2”.  © Canadian Meditation Society, 1983.

(I have excerpted and edited these two quotes.)

Now the woman giving satsang returned to the dinner table question from the night before.  Pointing to her heart, she asked the question, “If the Buddha were here, wouldn’t you go to see him?”  Pointing to another meditator, she continued, “If the Buddha were here, wouldn’t you go to see him?” 

My reaction to the question was a bit strange.  I remembered the old admonition, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”  I understand that admonition to mean that one should not seek to be like the Buddha so much as to be enlightened.  Hence, sighting or fixating on the Buddha when one is on the path to enlightenment is more a distraction than an aid.

As I listened to the presenter and puzzled through my sudden memory of the much darker sounding Buddhist admonition, I wondered why such a respectful reference to the Buddha should have evoked that particular admonition in me.  It is, I think, the difference between laying Prasad at the guru’s feet in devotion or in gratitude.  A true devotee worships the guru.  A grateful seeker admires the role model.  I have always preferred a guru who was a tour guide rather than a savior.  It is my expectation that I am the one who has to walk my spiritual path and that there is no magic way to get from here to there on that path. 

The satsang speaker had gently placed prasad at the feet of Gururaj’s teachings, her feast of gratitude and her own spirituality.   And I was fortunate to be among those to partake of her Prasad before continuing along my path.

Four glass glints found. She grinned.

Three fine red leaf falls.  She dined.

Two splendid silk shards.  She winced.

One salient blue sigh.  She belched.

“Stuff and nonsense!” my grandmother would have said.

They are trying to do it again.  Call us “tax and spend liberals”!!!  Those damned, Bush-loving, run up a trillion dollar national debt, start another war anywhere, give tax breaks to the super rich, right to life in the womb but no health care for the children of impoverished tax payers, Republiscum, right-wing nut cases.  It makes my blood boil when I hear a candidate – speaking as a compassionate conservative – advocate bombing Iran and putting girls who have abortions in jail.  When I read neocon pundits talking about a strong economy – that means outsourcing the entire manufacturing sector to China – I am tempted to take a flame thrower to Wallmart’s clothing department.  Every time I watch TV reports about the private lives and political dealings of Vitters, Craig, DeLay, and all the rest of those hypocrites, I just want to go throw up in the porcelain bowl.  And don’t get me started talking about Charles Krauthammer, Sue Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, or Billy Kristol.  Impeach!  Impeach!!  Impeach!!!

I made that paragraph up all by myself.  I could have taken it from hundreds of the online comments posted to Internet newspapers and political blogs. 

That paragraph is a working definition of the word, apoplexy.  Apoplexy is rage and righteous indignation run amuck.  It can be a license to kill or a sufficient reason for revenge.  [Stewardess on intercom: “We are approaching our destination, the state of Justifiable Homicide.  Please have your passports and weapons ready upon arrival.  We hope you enjoyed your ride on Air Apoplexy and will travel with us again soon.]

How does anyone get to such a crazy state of mind?

Consider that many religions describe human life as one based in freedom and nonattachment, a state of existence in which each person can live in spontaneity, compassion, acceptance, a sense of unity with everything, and love.  This is a state of no name and no form. 

Still how does one get from a state of no name and form to apoplexy?  How does one go from a state of existence in which one can act with spontaneity, compassion, love, et al. to a response charged with judgement, righteous indignation, and justification for aggressive action?

What strikes me when I read the online papers, blogs and reader comments is the use of labeling.  Name calling.  Justification based on over simplification.  As though if I just put a label on someone or some action, then I can understand the critical factor about the person or the action and respond accordingly.  [Q: Mr. President, if you knew then what you know now, would you have invaded Iraq?   A: We had to do it.  I’ve said this before.  This administration will protect the country from terrorist attacks.  We have to win the war on terrorism.]

Somewhere in the human journey of experience, of stimulus and response, the moment of labeling the stimulus becomes the turning point that allows one to become attached to a desired outcome.  It’s part of making sense of how the stimulus relates to me.  It’s making stuff of the nonsense and getting what I want out of the possibilities.  It’s avoiding the silk shards after I remember that the last one gave me a bad cut.  It’s wanting to have more glass glints to break the sunlight into rainbows.  It’s the way I fall into picking by habit the outcome I am convinced I need to have occur in order for me to be happy.   Once I’ve picked out my plan of action, it’s the emotional attachment that cements my actions to the successful accomplishment of the only outcome that I believe to be the right one.  And, it’s the fear and anxiety I have that things won’t work out the way I need them to. 

Of course there are always other possibilities, other responses, other possibilities.  [Q: Mr. President, if you knew then what you know now, would you have invaded Iraq?   A: Probably not.  We really misread the intelligence.  The war is costing us an arm and a leg.  Oh well.]

Interesting nonsense such stuff.

Perpendicular to page,

his brush trails the line in mind,

inks a near perfect circle.

He selects a new sheet.

I think we human beings have told all our stories already.  We really have relatively few to tell.  The one about relationships.  The one about sex.  The one about loss and grief.  The one about overcoming obstacles and winning.  The one about having power and manipulating other people.  The one about hurting each other.  The one about the better way of living.  You’ve heard the story lines already.  I have too.  So there really isn’t anything of interest there. 

I wonder sometimes if whales and dolphins tell stories about changes in water pressure and temperature.  Maybe about the audio reflection of a school of fish.  I have no clue.

I wonder if life forms on other planets would create sagas and myths.  Would they look out at the stars and invent their own zodiac.  Would their UFO’s return from Earth and write reports about life on that planet?  I have no idea; it’s beyond me.

I wonder if stars tell stories about gravity gradients.  Would binary star systems wax lyrical about their complex orbital configuration?  Would one of their stories take a billion years to tell?  Would they begin to shout their stories to each other as they moved further apart?  No clue; pure speculation on my part.

I wonder if branes tell each other stories at the moment they slam together and infuse each other with primordial energy.  Would they whisper “Let there be light!” at the moment of ecstasy?  Pure science fiction on my part; no clue.

It’s the infinite variations on the stories that are interesting.

Here’s one of my stories.  I do know you don’t know about my new key chain.  I bought it in the gift shop at Schloss Neuschwanstein, probably the most famous of King Ludwig’s ruinous residences.  It has a short chain, a double coil ring for the keys on one end of the chain, and a coin shaped fob on the other end.  On one side of the fob is a German eagle with the word, Deutschland, and on the other side there is a depiction of the castle and its name, Neuschwanstein.  It’s a sturdy and pragmatic key chain.

The new key chain reminds me of an earlier one I had from my first stay in Germany.  That one lasted for 30 years.  I should say the fob lasted for 30 years.  I put it on key chains too numerous to count.  Then like the galaxies in this universe being forced apart by dark energy, the whole key chain was lost to view and, for the last few years, lost from my memory.  The new key chain also reminds me of my years of attachment to things German – the language, the customs, the sights and sounds.  It even reminds me that tourist trinkets can be useful and have a valued place in my life.  Enough of that story.

So, boringly few and repetitious as the story lines are, I tell stories.  They share my experiences and provide a kind of experiential history and the precipitated street wisdom there from.  Santayana says, “Those who do not study the past are doomed to repeat it.”  Ah, the purpose of the past is to inform the present more wisely – if the past needs a purpose.  OK, I get that.  I do know that when I looked at the new key chain in King Ludwig’s gift shop, I checked it for strength and durability.

Here’s another key chain story.  The other day I ran across the white, draw-string pouch in which I put old key chains.  Imagine my excitement now that my new key chain had reminded me that I had lost the old fob.  I knew that bag could have the old key chain in it.  It didn’t.  Worse yet it had rings of keys to doors and locks I can no longer remember.  I threw out a couple of car key sets.  We only have one car now.   All the keys to it are accounted for, and one set is on my new key ring.  There were two sets of house keys.  One, I think, was to my mother’s former home.  One may have been a spare set to a condominium I owned.  Several keys looked like they might lock suitcases or desk drawers.  I put them all back into the pouch and pulled the drawstring tight again.  Time will soon enough push the memory of those keys away.  More dark energy at work.

Speaking of being doomed to repeat the past.  Some cosmologists speculate that about every three trillion years the universe – at least this ten-dimensional, brane universe – recycles.  Yep.  By the end of the three trillion years, dark energy will have pushed the rest of the matter and energy in the universe so far apart that one couldn’t see the nearest star anymore.  The universe would have spent all its energy and come to the end of entropy.  Even dark energy would have lost its lusty push outward.  In effect, the universe would become brane dead.

(I forgot to mention that there is another brane universe an infinitesimal distance away from ours.)  But the force of gravity working in this brane and the other one slowly draws the two branes together.  As they finally slap together, they reenergize and refill each brane with a blast of energy.  The energy begins to cool.  Subatomic particles form.  Particles congregate on the street corners and become electrons, protons, et alia.  The atoms get together and become stars.  And, you know the rest of that story. 

I wonder if maybe in some twenty dimensional universe, one that contains our puny ten-dimensional branes, some god-like child has a perpetual motion toy.  To get it going the first time, the big kid pulls these two branes apart and watches them slap back together.  There is a brilliant burst of energy in each brane, and the two branes are blasted apart.  Quick as a wink the light from the energy begins to coalesce into tiny swirls and disks of bright pinpoints in each brane.  The lights shift and change until slowly they burn out.  Meanwhile gravity gradually pulls the two branes back together until they slam into each other again. 

I wonder if the toy would make a good alarm clock to get the big kid up for school the next day. 

I wonder if the kid writes any stories or paints circles on rice paper.

Fingers crumble the cookie.

I read the future writ large

and race to place my money.

For sure the lotto is mine.

My sister and her husband came to visit us a couple of months back.  They’re pretty devout Methodists.  My religious beliefs have been the subject of their interest for quite some time.  So maybe it was the seven Buddha figurines or the many Chinese paintings scattered around the house that led them to conclude I was now a Buddhist. 

But they failed to notice the feng shui dragon horse holding a Susan B Anthony silver dollar in its mouth and facing the front door.  They also missed the two small Chinese chop stones sitting side by side, the ones with the character, fu (good fortune), engraved across the two front sides.  So I am sure that they missed the fact that as a mostly retired educator living on a pension, I really worship Mammon.  Perhaps that’s a bit too strong.  Let’s say I keep a wary eye on the monthly balance sheet and seek to draw all the good cosmic fortune forces to my side.

That makes me a superstitious person.

I was born in a year of the dragon.  Here’s the dragon fortune for 2007.  “Dragons are trailblazers, and you will get many opportunities to put your maverick ingenuity to good use in 2007. By heading in a new direction, you could net both recognition and financial rewards. The key lies in expressing your true talents and following your heart. Nothing less will get results. Leave behind your fear of not having enough, and cultivate abundance consciousness. Let your enterprising spirit soar.”  So I am praying that St. George remains in Europe this year.  At the very least, I hope he doesn’t notice my dragon horse should the devout saint find his way to my door.

Still, I look askance at superstition. 

When I see a TV evangelist quoting passages from the Bible in answer to people’s questions, I question the questioner and the evangelist.  I wonder which one is more in need of understanding.  Let it be clear here, however, that I am impressed that TV evangelism seems to be such a good paying job.

When I read an op-ed columnist online – pontificating, say, about the merits of a new Attorney General candidate – and read the comments submitted by readers, I realize that a lot of us are looking for reassurance from pundits and experts.  It is a dangerous world out there. 

All of this would fall into the Locus of Control orientation in one’s personality.  Within psychology, Locus of Control is considered to be an important aspect of personality.  Locus of Control refers to an individual's perception about the underlying main causes of events in his/her life.  Or, more simply:  Do you believe that your destiny is controlled by yourself (an internal locus of control) or by external forces such as fate, god, or powerful others (an external locus of control)?  These beliefs, in turn, guide what kinds of attitudes and behaviors people adopt.  [Online references – James Neill and Wikipedia]

Superstition would fall into the external Locus of Control orientation in as much as it fosters the belief that one can manipulate life by belief in benevolence – or condemnation – from forces in nature such as dragon horses.

One would think meditators would fall into the internal locus of control group.  Meditation, by its very nature, involves observing one’s mental, physical, and emotional processes or absorbing oneself in the use of a mantra or the like.  So it would seem that meditation leads to an internal orientation, an action of observing and becoming honestly aware of one’s personality at many levels and over time. 

Still meditators do get caught up in the external trappings of meditation.  Must one sit in a specific posture?  Does one eat no meat?  What are the minimum/ maximum amounts of time to meditate?  So in a way doing meditation the “right way” can be a sort of superstition.  And, in the meditation society to which I belong, I have often heard people speak about “the guru” having something to do with the trials and tribulations they are enduring.  Mind you, our guru has been dead since 1988.  That would seem to be putting the burden of one’s life on the shoulders of an external Locus of Control.

Yet I do think that meditation leads more naturally toward an internal Locus of Control orientation.  Specifically, that part of the meditation process in which one dispassionately observes what one is thinking, feeling, or sensing.  Dispassionate observation lends itself toward honestly and objectively viewing life and one’s interactions in life, of being the owner of one’s own actions and reactions.  Likewise, dispassionate observation leads to an attitude of nonattachment, of recognizing that there is a flow of events and interactions in one’s life, and of accepting that “this too is passing”.

Still, if we go back to teach in China next semester, I plan to add a one yuan coin to the Susan B Anthony in my lucky dragon horse’s mouth.  I am consciously choosing to play all the angles.

“I read the news today oh, boy”

Day in the Life? Was that song

before The Fool on the Hill?

Last chord fades beyond my ears.

Could have been a TV show.  Was it an accidental death?  Was it a murder-suicide?  Were they both killed by government agents?  Unfortunately, this all took place in 1886 in upper Bavaria so there was no CSI Munich to send out a crack team of detectives to gather up all the evidence and solve the case.  It remains an unsolved mystery.

King Ludwig II comes to the throne of Bavaria when his father dies in 1864.  He is eighteen years old and has grown up secluded from court life in a castle in the lovely countryside of upper Bavaria.  The castle, set apart high above the surrounding countryside, is full of wall paintings of medieval knights and quotes from famous poems and sagas about honor, duty, and beauty.  Between 1864 and 1886 Ludwig spends the family’s entire accumulated fortune building lavish castles.  In 1886 he asks his government to use the kingdom’s funds to complete work on two of the castles and build an additional two.  His government hires a psychologist to determine Ludwig’s sanity.  The professor declares Ludwig insane.  He is placed in confinement.  The psychologist goes to check on him in order to send the court a status report.  Ludwig and the psychologist go for a walk around the grounds where Ludwig is being held.  That evening, their bodies are discovered floating in a lake on the property. 

You can buy the story in the gift shop at each of Ludwig’s castles.  You can get it in German, English, French, Japanese, Spanish, and, coming soon, in Chinese.  You can hear the story as a part of the guided tour at each castle.  The story, the unsolved mystery at the core of the story, is what actually sells the castles.  Was he really mad?

I find an interesting personal parallel in the story.  I had a similar question about my guru, Gururaj Ananda Yogi.  Was he crazy or for real?  

My first encounter with him in 1982 came when I went to the house of a dear friend.  My friend was already very involved with the American Meditation Society founded by Gururaj.  And, Gururaj was in the Midwest prior to a week long American Meditation Society course.  He was doing an introductory talk at my friend’s home.  I was intrigued to see a Hindu guru at first hand.  As the evening wore on I became convinced he was just a spiritual snake oil salesman. 

Still, in 1986 I took the Society’s meditation classes myself, and I was interested in hearing Gururaj speak again.  I went to the next American Meditation Society course.  Gururaj was teaching each day at the course.  I was dumb struck.  He was so spontaneous and so without concern for social acceptability and his lectures seemed to be such rambling, off-the-cuff musings that I couldn’t follow them.  So I still came away wondering if he were for real.  The next time Gururaj was in the Midwest, I went to that course.  And to the next one.  And the next.  Each time I left one of his meditation courses, it was with a deep heart-level connection to Gururaj and the same burning question.  Was he for real?  It proved to be the perfect unsolved mystery that drew me onto his spiritual path. 

Gururaj died in 1988.  That ended the problem of his lack of social etiquette.  It still left the problem of his lectures. 

Fortunately I was asked to transcribe several of the lectures.  Finally there was the opportunity I wanted to slow down his incoherent ramblings, to listen as he spoke on a topic, and to understand that he actually addressed the topic at multiple levels.  What seemed like aimless ramblings became a series of spiritual explorations probing one aspect of the topic after the other.  I had but to set aside my expectations of what he should say in order to listen to what he did say.

At one of Ludwig’s castles I heard a lady explaining to friends that Ludwig was a spiritually anointed person.  He had, she claimed, selected each of the locations because the castle would be at the vortex of spiritual forces.  Anyone who visited one of his castles and who was spiritually attuned would experience those forces for themselves.  I did not feel it.  Perhaps I was simply so caught up in the lavishness of the palace’s rooms and grounds that I was insensitive to the amplified spirituality of the site.

Yet that’s not important.  I hope that the lady who seemed quite prepared for the spiritual beneficence she would experience actually did get the experience she wanted.  Belief that something is so goes a long way toward making it real in the believer’s mind and consequently in their experiences.

My own belief that I had a heart-level connection with Gururaj made it a fact in my life.  That the man was, at the same time, too spontaneous and unpredictable for me to feel comfortable around him did not diminish my sense of connection with him.

Another aspect of the Ludwig legend.  What did Bavaria do with the castles?  In 1918 when Bavaria ceased to be a kingdom, the government inherited one completed Ludwig castle, Schloss Linderhof, and two incomplete castles, Schloss Neuschwanstein and Schloss Herrenchiemsee.  The Bavarian government made lemonade of Ludwig’s lemons.  It carefully nurtured the great mystery story, built a highly effective marketing campaign around Ludwig and the castles, and turned the castles into a tourism goldmine. 

Me?  With Gururaj’s lessons?  I continue to mine them for wisdom.

Sunlight soft between her thighs.

Three moles like Orion’s Belt there.

How far distant then as now?

Snow flakes and I float down hill.

There was this lady in the airplane sitting in the window seat.  She had her knee up against the wall just when I looked out the window as the plane descended into the Munich airport.  But that’s not what I’m writing about today.  I’m writing about the Tao.

One of the most famous Tao masters is Zhuge Liang, 181-223 AD.  This was the time period in Chinese history of the Three Kingdoms, a time when one dynasty ended and wars were being fought as three contenders tried to establish the next dynasty.  One contender was Liu Bei whose chief political and military strategist was Zhuge Liang.  Zhuge Liang was supposed to be so adept in the ways of the Tao that he could read the stars, the winds, and the water and could understand their portent for the future.  Added to that was the fact that he was a brilliant tactician.  Little wonder that the conflicts in this time period became the stuff of story tellers in market places all over China.  Almost a thousand years later the stories were gathered together in the novel, the Three Kingdoms, and became a Chinese classic.  From the novel one might think that the Tao is more about fortune telling than anything else.

However, the Tao that I want to write about today is the Tao as harmonious flow in life.  You can picture me, a flat-lander from Illinois, slowly walking up the side of a mountain in the Alps.  I am trying to become one with the harmonious flow of breath into my lungs and the physical exertion of climbing.  One of our party, a nurse named Monika, has suggested to me that I should focus on the exhalation.  If I exhale fully, then that will rid my system of the toxins the exertions are building up.  Our guide, Friederich, sets a steady pace for these climbs.  Short steps in an unhurried meter.  But he is like a metronome and only stops when he discovers that virtually everyone else is lagging way behind.  So catching the Tao, catching the harmonious flow for me today is catching the rhythm of breathing and climbing up the incline behind our guide.  I am focused on the Tao.  Gradually I discover that although Friederich’s pace is steady, mine is not the same steady drum beat.  As the ground becomes steeper, my pace changes and the breathing shifts.  Thoughts arise.  I discover the intense desire to pause, to be done with incessant climb.  A blog entry begins to form – a distraction my mind seeks as my body rebels to the uphill walk.

Here’s a good distraction.  Zhuge Liang was so feared as a general that he scared an entire army away.  The story goes that Zhuge Liang was in a walled city but had few troops with him.  An enemy general arrived with his army and laid siege to the city.  The general had marshalled his troops to attack the main gate of the city.  Quickly Zhuge Liang ordered that his carriage be moved to that gate.  He got into the carriage and ordered the gates to be opened.  The enemy general saw the gates open, saw few defenders, but recognized the famous carriage and Zhuge Liang sitting quietly in his carriage.  The general was so convinced that it was a trick designed to pull him into a trap that he immediately ordered his troops to withdraw.  It makes for a great story, but one notices that for some reason, Zhuge Liang had missed reading the stars or the winds or the waters sufficiently well to know that he would be under attack.

My mind returns to the Tao of walking uphill.  Let the breath find itself. Let my foot steps adjust to the terrain – steeper or gentler rise, rocks in the mud to make the footing tricky, wind and snow in my face, road changing direction.  Let the body seek distracting thoughts about Zhuge Liang, the flow of the Tao, and being in harmony with the flow.  It is the natural cycle of a meditation: focus on the walk and breathing, become distracted, refocus, become distracted, refocus.

China, just like Europe, makes saints of its honoured historical figures.  Zhuge Liang has a temple dedicated to him in Chengdu.  Chengdu was the capitol city of Liu Bei’s kingdom.  So in the Wuhou Gardens there is a nested set of temples to Liu Bei, his brothers in arms, and at the back of the compound in a place of great honor, the temple to Zhuge Liang.  I have paid my respects there.  And do so again today.

The Tao that can be described is not the real Tao.  The observations recorded mentally while walking uphill are not the walking uphill itself. 

Dazzling silver in sunlight

Chicago’s Cloud Gate blazes.

Between me and my reflection

handprints ring reality.

The devil is in the details – the ones that I habitually filter out when coming to grips with a situation.

Most mornings I spend a lot of time reading the washingtonpost.com online.  I read the political news and the op-ed pieces by the more liberal (er, I guess the current buzz word is “progressive”) writers.  But, I read the conservative writers as well – even though their viewpoint is seldom one I share.

I also click on the Read All Comments link to read what the non-pundits have to say.  That is one of the really interesting parts of the online newspaper for me.  A neocon columnist, William Kristol, recently had a piece touting the belief that President Bush’s administration will be seen by future historians as a successful presidency.  There were more than 240 screens of responses from online readers, mostly expressing disbelief and outrage.  I added one myself.  At between five and eight reader comments per screen, that is a large volume of comments.  Taken together the news article or op-ed piece and reader comments the piece generates make for a great barometer of overall opinion regarding the story or viewpoint being discussed.  Taken together, the Bush administration does not fare well.  

I am often struck by the degree of corrupt use of power, greed, and secrecy displayed by so many people at various levels of Bush’s administration.  It is an ethically corrupt administration in my book.

Which brings me to a book that I am reading, Professor Philip Zimbardo’s The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil.  I find it a frightening book.  Here is a short description from the book’s fly leaf: “…Dr. Zimbardo enables us to better understand a variety of harrowing phenomena, from corporate malfeasance to organized genocide to how once upstanding American soldiers came to abuse and torture Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib.  He replaces the long-held notion of the ‘bad apple’ with that of the ‘bad barrel’ – the idea that the social setting and the system contaminate the individual, rather than the other way around.”

In my undergraduate college years I had a Philosophy of Religion course.  The term paper I wrote was in answer to a question about good and evil in human nature.  I recall thinking through what I had learned about human nature in my previous twenty years.  I couldn’t really think of and had never read anything scientifically convincing to indicate that human beings were in-built to do more good than bad.  I do remember searching long and hard to support the notion that humans are basically good.  I suppose in those days I fell on the “nurture” side of the nature vs. nurture debate.  But, I hedged my bet by means of the good old “Deus ex machine” dodge, made in the image of God.  The professor gave the paper a decent grade.  I kept it for years, ran across it every so often, and have continued to ponder the question.

Currently my view of the ego is not so much the conception that there is a mini-me directing the walking, talking robot me.  Rather I see the ego more as a really great butler.  That is, in my subconscious and conscious mind there are a lot of habitual response patterns, patterns which filter through the input of the event of the moment, filter out the seemingly irrelevant details, and pick out the best guess response.  So in a way that “ego” is like the butler who looks at the day’s agenda and lays out the best attire for the occasion.

Professor Zimbardo talks about the steps of a mental process he calls “moral disengagement” to describe how normal persons manage to put on the mental clothing of a bully or an executioner.  “First, we can redefine our harmful behavior as honorable.  Creating moral justification for the action, by adopting moral imperatives that sanctify violence, does this.” (page 310)  “Second, we can minimize our sense of a direct link between our actions and its harmful outcomes by diffusing or displacing personal responsibility.  We spare ourselves self-condemnation if we do not perceive ourselves as the agents of crimes against humanity.”  “Third, we can change the way we think about the actual harm done by our actions.  We can ignore, distort, minimize, or disbelieve any negative consequences of our conduct.”  Finally, we can reconstruct our perception of victims as deserving their punishment, by blaming them for the consequences, and of fcourse, by dehumanizing them, perceiving them to be beneath the righteous concerns we reserve for fellow human beings.” (page 311)

In essence, Professor Zimbardo is saying that we can find ways to rationalize our behaviors so that we can commit horrendous acts against other people but still go home to our families and sleep well at night.

The devil is in the details – the ones that one habitually filters out when coming to grips with a situation.

Yet one of the great lessons in meditation – whether it is mindfulness meditation or absorptive meditation – is the moment that one becomes aware.  As often happens, the mind can become caught up in, oh, let’s admit it, can become hijacked by a train of thought.  But, at some moment one becomes aware of that hijacking.  One becomes aware that the subconscious and conscious mind are working together to create a good story.  “Did you hear the one about…?”

Did you hear the one about Al Qaeda in Iraq being the same thing as Al Qaeda?  Did you hear the one about the new military/CIA interrogation manual that excludes torture – in most cases?  Did you hear the one about Alberto Gonzales doing a good job as Attorney General?

At some point one becomes aware that actions and words do not match.  Could be on the larger scale of national politics.  Could be on the scale of one’s personal actions.  At that point of awareness comes the choice to reassess, to look at all the details, and to change one’s response.  Or the choice to continue playing one’s part in the good story.

I think Professor Zimbardo would have questioned my old college term paper and its use of God.  He would have told me to go back, take a harder look at things, and get real.

Draw card.  Check it.  No help here.

Ones I can use; not queens.

Possible new runs?  Nada.

“OK,” I say.  “Any ones?”   

When I was a kid, even an adolescent, I really believed it when the minister said he talked with God every day.  I knew I didn’t hear any words when I talked to It, but ministers were somehow specially spiritual beings in my book of knowledge.  So if the minister said he talked to God, I figured he wouldn’t lie to the whole congregation, surely not on Sunday. 

As a young adult I had decided that two-way conversations with God were something that one could pull off if one became a truly seasoned mystic.  So often when I went into my darkened bedroom to meditate, I was actually putting out a question to God.  Then following the dictum, “Be Still, and know that I am God”, I would listen patiently for It’s voice.   Nothing.  Silence.  Oh, occasionally some half formed thought would float up into my conscious mind.  But, on close examination those thoughts seemed very familiar – mostly variations of values I wanted to believe were true.  So they sounded reassuringly good when they floated up from the vast unknown.  But they also sounded a lot like something I would tell myself anyway.

I was pretty excited when I ran across Neale Donald Walsh’s Conversations with God.  I was envious as well.  God was having Walsh write down really great stuff.  And God dictated a lot of stuff to Walsh.  Enough for three books of the dialogs, one especially for teens – an idea my minister could have profited from – and a few dialog guidebooks.  So it must be true that God helps those who help themselves.  For what it is worth, I really liked Walsh’s God a lot.  I thought He was a pretty reasonable old guy.  He came across to me as someone who had been around a long time, seen just about ever human trick there was to see, and had successfully managed not to become jaded nor cynical about human life.  I think you can see his portrait on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  Walsh was a lucky guy.

Not so me.  Over the years I have discovered God does not whisper in my ear.  It will sometimes provide an interesting passage when I randomly open a book with a dilemma in mind.  Of course, finding the connection between the interesting passage and some path forward through my dilemma is pretty much my responsibility.  But I am genuinely grateful when It does enliven and enrich the opportunities presented within my dilemma.

Sometimes I imagine that God and I are playing a two-handed game of high card draw.  It’s an interesting deck of cards – events in synchronous relationship to each other.  What?!!  Well, it’s not the regular deck of cards with an ace of hearts.  This is more like a deck of holographic events.  You look at a card from one angle and you see the event.  You look at it from a different angle and you can feel the emotions, the subconscious values and attitudes.  For example, you take the car into the shop and worry about some rattling noise and how much that is going to cost.  But when you go back to get the car, it was just a loose bolt, easily tightened, and the bill is just for the oil change.

OK, here’s my most recent example.  In January I discovered that almost by chance I had become “mostly retired”.  Now the card that I drew and showed to God was my desire to stay active in life, to make some continuing contribution.  Viewed from one angle it looked kind of noble.  “Share whatever skills and experience I have gained to make a contribution to the community in some capacity.”  Viewed from a different angle the card showed a bit of anxiety and confusion.  “Don’t stay home and become a vegetable.” 

Now, I have been flashing that card in front of God’s eyes for a few months.  Finally God got around to drawing It’s card and showing it to me.  “Go back to China and teach for a semester.”  So I would have to say that God won that round.

Maybe the next time I win the game, I’ll suggest we play Hearts instead.

She selects the puce sheet; writes --

“He didn’t see me.  So close

talking into Tallie’s ear.” --

lights the page.  Smoke curls away.

I often wonder why I write blog entries.  True writing them is interesting to me.  But I am not a writer by profession.  So why a blog?  Not because I haven’t written a blog before.  Not because I haven’t written for a small meditation newsletter.  But I knew the audience in both cases.

In a way it is like journaling.  But why post the entries on a blog?  Who is the audience?

Some years ago I edited a monthly newsletter for the American Meditation Society.  That was a bit like journaling.  Some experience in my life would raise a question, and I found that I learned a lot by exploring the society’s files of lectures by Gururaj Ananda Yogi.  They always yielded a worthwhile insight into the event, the question.  Building a newsletter issue around such a question and insight was helpful to me in learning and understanding my own life experiences. 

And of course, I knew most of the recipients of the newsletter personally.  I knew the audience and could trust that the question of the month would speak to some other of my friends as well as myself.

I still use that technique in writing this blog.  An event in my life leading to a question leading to some research and an insight into some dimensions of the event.  Words to capture the ephemeral ideas and concepts and force it all into a coherent exposition.

Two years ago when Babs and I knew for certain that we would be traveling to China to teach for a year, a lot of my friends and colleagues were interested in following the adventure.  The solution was to set up a blog.  Those truly interested could read it at their pleasure.  It was great fun.  Different from writing and editing a meditation society newsletter.  The China blog was still a form of journaling.  Find an interesting experience, attempt to describe Chinese culture from an American perspective, and post it.  I was fairly certain I knew the readership -- mostly friends and former work colleagues.  However, when I found a trackback to a hair salon in Singapore attached to one blog entry, I realized the blog entries were going out to an audience well beyond the expected audience.  How interesting and fun!

Writing for that blog added another aspect.  I started those entries with a four line, Chinese style poem.  The form is called Jue Ju.  Four lines of five or seven syllables; that is, the poem is either twenty syllables or twenty-eight syllables in length.

“…another important emphasis in Chinese poetic art which may be said to be just the antithesis of word painting. That is the technique of suggesting a mood with delicate touches.  It is to create a mood, not to tell a story. The jue ju or curtailed verse is the most adequate means to that end.”  “According to Chinese standards a jue ju has to carry the mood with grace, not by storm and stress. It sweeps on in a gentle curve that envelops the reader with joy or sorrow. It may come to a sudden stop, there being only so many syllables, but one must then be left with the feeling of something beyond. One is not just overcome with a gust of emotion.” Example: “The monks from the mountain temple sit playing go. // On the board the bamboo shadows stand in bold relief, // While the reflecting leaves prevent others from seeing. // Occasionally is heard the sound of a stone being played.”

This was the first Jue Ju poem from the first China blog entry, one about the trip to Chongqing.  “Unpack yet another pound. // Check windows; click all locks closed. // Fly ahead to tomorrow. // Mantra chants in my stomach.”  Here is the last China poem: “Finger opens my email -- // empty today too of you // save your smile in memory -- // and hovers above delete.” 

Still this begs the question.  Why would you be interested in the structure of jue-ju poems?  Why would you find it interesting to start these blog entries with a poem?  Why would you bother to read the rest of my meditation?  Who are you?

How interesting and fun.

OK.  Time to put a cork on this one and toss it into the cyberocean.

Pen to ink.  Strokes to paper.

Conditions to incantations.

Ritual to canon law.

Flower to seed to flower.

Carl, the Chan Buddhist monk showing us the temple in Chicago’s China Town, asks our tour group, “Are you familiar with Buddhism?  What do you know about it?”  One woman raises her hand and answers, “It’s about when you cut down a tree in the forest, then you pray for the spirit of the tree.  Something like that.”

“Or not.”  Says Carl.

On a related mind trip, I watched the movie Eregon yesterday.  It was somehow refreshing to know in advance what the plot would be.  I hadn’t seen it before, but Joseph Campbell had laid out the plot years ago in his series of lectures and books about mythic heroes.   George Lukas and Peter Jackson have done great jobs converting “hero’s journey” theory to visual imagery.

So here’s the recipe.  You take one naïve boy or girl with unsuspected mental and physical powers.  Add a magic object.  Mix in an overabundance of evil, especially in the form of an all-powerful, beastly creature which could at one time have been human.   Heat the mixture into a threatening situation.  Add in an old wise man/woman – preferably with skills both in swordsmanship and sorcery.   (The wise guy is critical as he/she crystallizes the hero’s or heroine’s powers and adds zest and depth to the recipe!)  Bring to a rolling boil.  Continue boiling until boy or girl congeals into a powerful, accomplished, and shiny hero or heroine.  Pour the mixture through a sieve of climactic struggle – preferably with lots and lots of flying objects and bright colored explosions.  Serving tip: New heroes or heroines look best when served with a mixture of pride and appropriate humility in a loud and triumphal soundtrack.  The evil concoction can be returned to the stewpot, simmered until reduced in toxicity, and served as a zesty sauce during the finale and film credits.  Alternatively, pour the leftover evil concoction into a container and freeze full strength for future sequels.

I know the lady who answered Carl’s question about the nature of Buddhism.  She used to come to my monthly meditation evenings.  Most of the people who came to those evenings had no experience with meditation and consequently had lots of how-to questions.  The lady was always glad to give her expertise.  Meditation gave you powers to direct your mind to its higher level.  Meditation gave you powers to make other people happy and healthy.  Then she would give us all a those-in-the-know,-know-this smile and ask, “Isn’t that so?”

I was never as good at responding to her as Carl was.

Many of the people in our tour group to China Town are devout Christians who know of Buddhism but who know very little about it.  And they asked Carl a lot of really good questions and sometimes tried to put him on the spot with hypothetical questions.  “Can a religion without a god have ethics?”  “If there is no god, why do you have all these statues and flowers and offerings in the temple?”  “You don’t have heaven or hell, so what about reincarnation?”  “What would you say to a sixteen year old girl who was starting to have sex with boys?”

Carl did an incredible job of making simple, direct answers.  No long winded essays like some meditation blog writers I know.  He explained the Chan Buddhist basics: living in this moment, making choices not based on an external authority (God), interacting with others with compassion and selflessness.  The simplicity of mindfulness meditation.

So yesterday as I was watching Eregon and thinking about my neighbor lady who is convinced of spiritual knowledge, I saw a lot of similarity.  And I saw a lot of myself in there as well.  It is seductively soothing to believe that there are spiritual powers that can make us safe or that can at least give us a magic weapon in the day to day battle of life.

Now one of the things I found most convincing about my own guru, Gururaj Ananda Yogi, was that he downplayed things like “spiritual” or psychic powers.  This is what he said during a radio interview.  ANNE KEEFE:  “When you get, Gururaj, beyond the subconscious‑‑the conscious and the subconscious‑‑are there psychic possibilities in that realm?”  GURURAJ:  “There are psychic possibilities, but I discourage them. Any true master -- any true, spiritual master -- would discourage the development of psychic abilities because they inevitably prove to be a block within...to the path to Divinity.  Because you would get so wrapped up.  For example, if you leave your home, your front door to go to the gate in the front to get into your car and you have a lovely garden with flowers and rockeries and lawns. Now, you're not going to get stuck at the flowers and the rockeries and the lawns.  You admire them, but you pass by.  Your goal is to reach the gate.  So, I do not encourage the development of psychic powers.  But what I do encourage very much is how to find yourself.  People make it so difficult for themselves.  And yet there is such a simple formula.  It is so simple to be happy, but so difficult to be simple.” (KMOX/CBS Radio Interview.  "At Your Service with Anne Keefe”. July 13, 1982.)

Carl and Gururaj would differ over the concept of Divinity.  But, I think, they did agree that looking for magic weapons was a waste of time and a fool’s quest.

White knight astride white charger,

Bush saves Iraq from itself.

Gently thumbs knead out my knots.

Shoulders soften. Eyes close. Smile.

Here’s a true story of idiot compassion. 

Several years ago I was a high school counselor.  My school district had a new superintendent.  He was hired to “raise student expectations”.  Raising expectations was hot education jargon in those years; sounded worthwhile and noble; had no clear definition to judge achievement.  In short, the perfect, political slogan.  A year later my building had a new principal.  The following year, the guidance department had a new assistant principal, my boss.  It turned out that raising student expectation meant that virtually all our students should be in the college preparatory track of courses.

I had a senior student that year whose stated post-high school goal was attending college.  He was also in a career program in which he left school early each day to work in a job related to his career interests.  My new boss called me into her office and told me that no college-bound senior should be wasting valuable school time going to work.  I was to call the boy in and have him change his schedule.  I disagreed with her, having had other students in past years who had pursued the same program and who had gone on to college successfully.  My boss informed me that I should never have allowed the student the choice in the first place.  She sent for the student herself and attempted to talk him into a different set of courses.  He refused.  She called his mother and convinced the mother to override her son’s preferred set of courses.  The boy got a new set of courses.  Two months later, the boy’s mother called my boss again and demanded that the boy go back to his original set of courses, including the job program.  I was assigned to contact teachers and re-write his class schedule.  The boy went back to his original schedule.  He applied for college, was accepted, and after graduation went on to college.

I remember that incident because my new boss had a social worker degree.  Yet far from working with empathy and compassion with the student, my boss approached the student with idiot compassion.  That is, her philosophy of working with students was “Here, I’ll fix your life for you.”

I first read the term “idiot compassion” in a book by Chogyam Trungpa.  Here’s his description: “Without intelligence and skillfulness, compassion can degenerate into a bungling sort of charity.  For instance, if we give food to someone who is extremely hungry, he will temporarily recover from his hunger.  But he gets hungry every day.  And if we keep giving food to that person, eventually he will learn that whenever he is hungry he can get food from us.  … Such an approach is, in fact, uncompassionate compassion, or compassion without skillful means.  It is known as idiot compassion.”  Trungpa, Chogyam.  The Heart of the Buddha.  Shambhala Press.  1991.  Page 17.

Here is what Trungpa says about real compassion: “Unlike idiot compassion, real compassion is not based on a simple-minded avoidance of pain.  Real compassion is uncompromising in its allegiance to basic sanity.” (Page 126)  “The state of being awake has two main qualities: the first … is softness, gentleness, which we call ‘compassion’; the other … is called ‘skillful means’.  The compassion aspect is connected with oneself, and the skillful means aspect is connected with how to deal with others.  Compassion and skillful means put together is what is known as egolessness.” (Page 211)

A really good friend told me of an experience she had had.  She was at a conference and had gone to the washroom.  She heard the washroom door open, someone come in, and then the sound of soft crying.  My friend came out of her stall.  With no particular thought in mind, she simply opened her arms and gave the young woman a hug.  My friend told me she just knew it was what she could do.  Words wouldn’t have helped.   There was a sense of being the right person at the right place at the right time. 

I have always treasured that story as a wonderful example of real compassion.

OK.  At this point I have to confess that I have added a new twist to the definition of idiot compassion.  Below you will see a photo of our granddaughter, whom I refer to as the Princess of Mellow Drama.  I am a passionate fool for that girl.

Who wouldn’t be?

One stone thrown in rills

Ripples widen and shake hills

Hiroshima blooms

I will have missed it.  Starlight.  I have no idea how many photon wave/particle fronts have been expanding outward for thousands of years before I was born.  Wave fronts that won’t intersect Earth until long after my death.  I will miss that starlight.

Watching starlight has been one of those practices that has brought me a lot of solace over the years.  

I very distinctly remember a time in the summer after I had graduated from college.  I was working at a feed mill.  The job I had found paid well enough to put food on the table for the family and to save for graduate school.  But I had barely survived the first week.  I worked on the dock grabbing 50 pound feed bags off the conveyor belt and thumping them into place in semi-truck trailers bound for various feed stores.  I had the 4PM to midnight shift, and at the end of the shift on Friday night that first week, the foreman had sent me to take some cardboard boxes out and burn them.  I remember standing, watching the boxes burning, watching sparks rising up into the night, and above all of that, seeing millions of stars.  The stars put my exhaustion and the sudden change from academic scholar to night laborer into stark relief.  I and the new job were ephemeral.  Sure stars are as well.  But not at the same blindingly fast pace as human life is.  It was a gut emotional experience of the old refrigerator saying, “This too shall pass.”

Forty-five years later, I still enjoy seeing the stars.  Of course to me it’s like someone flips on the switch in the bedroom every night, and the same set of pinpoints light up.  I seldom consider how long the photons have taken to get to my retina.  And the starlight still lights up my emotional life with the experience of solace.

The poem above came from that period in my life.  Early twenties.  Reading Alan Watts and having just learned the haiku form.  Living in the ‘50’s in the midst of the cold war and the threat of mutually assured self destruction in a nuclear war.  (I remember the grade school drill for a nuclear attack.  Get under your desk, and cover your eyes so that the blinding light and the flying glass didn’t kill you.)  Being a German major in college, so I knew that Albert Einstein’s last name could be made as a language pun to say one stone.  

Life as a college graduate was complex, intricate, and could be won if one played the game astutely.  Kinda like a good game of bridge.

Breakfast.  Cereal?  Egg, toast?

Lunch. Yesterday’s leftovers?

Dinner?  Too distant to plan.

And God rested from his work.

I was out walking this morning.  I observed that I was timing my steps so as to step over cracks in the asphalt walk.  It’s something that goes back to my childhood.  Maybe you played the game as well.  “Step on a crack, you break your mother’s back.”  As a kid I stepped over the cracks and saved Mom’s back.  Even sixty years later, I hold to the habit.  I know I don’t have to play that game anymore, but I still do.

Now this story has something to do with the three Republican presidential candidates I mentioned in the last blog entry, the ones who raised there hand to indicate that they did not believe in evolution.  I wondered how they passed over the tons of bones mounted in museums around the world and the libraries of scientific research on the growth, development, and adaptation of living systems in favor of some alternate explanation of life on planet Earth.  I was so intrigued by that viewpoint that I wanted to find out what they did believe in.   All three had given the Washington Post more background for their non-evolution stance.  Here are the Washington Post quotes:

“Brownback later told The Washington Post that ‘it's obvious from observation there's a microevolution within species, but I do think there's a role for the divine in the incredible nature of the mind and the complexity of the cell.’

“Huckabee told The Post: ‘I believe that there is a God and that he put the creative process in motion. I don't know how he did it. He may have used some sort of evolutionary process. I tend to believe that he did it as Scripture says, but I know that a lot of people believe differently, and of course I respect their beliefs.’”  "I said, in general -- and I would say this tonight to any of us -- when a person says, 'My faith doesn't affect my decision- making,' I would say that the person is saying their faith is not significant to impact their decision process. I tell people up front, 'My faith does affect my decision process.' It explains me. No apology for that."

“Tancredo later issued a statement saying that ‘evolution explains changes in life. Creationism explains its origin.’"

(Well, thank heavens I’m not the only one relying on old habit patterns and adjusting my progress to skim over the cracks in reality.)

I refer to this kind of thinking as the Turtles-All-the-Way-Down hypothesis of origin (hereafter referred to as the TAWD hypothesis).  You may know that story too.  Here’s a version from U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, in a footnote to Rapanos v. United States:  “In our favored version, an Eastern guru affirms that the earth is supported on the back of a tiger. When asked what supports the tiger, he says it stands upon an elephant; and when asked what supports the elephant he says it is a giant turtle. When asked, finally, what supports the giant turtle, he is briefly taken aback, but quickly replies ‘Ah, after that it is turtles all the way down.’"

In other words, when one is confronted by a crack in reality (a situation too complex to have an immediately apparent response), one simply reverts to the tried and true, to what is “just plain, good old-fashioned common sense.”  One might be forgiven for using common sense, old habit patterns, tried and true mental sets to handle the vagaries of life, but then one runs the risk of narrow-minded obstinacy in the face of reality.  Witness President Bush and his entry into and on-going conduct of the war with Iraq. 

More to the story.  As I continued my walk this morning, I came to the concrete sidewalk segment of the walk.  Unfortunately, I was using too long a stride length to step over every crack in the sidewalk.  What a dilemma!  Slow down, or risk breaking Mom’s back.  I opted for the more aggressive workout.

Last Sunday, the Dalai Lama gave an address in Chicago.  Here is a quote that speaks to the interconnection of all things.  “We can say the theory of interdependence is an understanding of reality. We understand that our future depends on global well-being. Having this viewpoint reduces narrow-mindedness. With narrow mind, one is more likely to develop attachment, hatred. I think this is the best thing about the theory of interdependence--it is an explanation of the law of nature. It affects profoundly, for example, the environment.” --from The Wisdom of Forgiveness: Intimate Conversations and Journeys.  Dalai Lama.  May 7, 2007. Snow Lion Publications

His comment reminds me such interdependence requires that one not rely on over simplification and habitual responses.  It requires that one confront each new situation with fresh analysis and a clear regard for probable outcomes.  That is a healthy counterbalance to good old, TAWD common sense.

On the other hand, I’m glad to have more information on the Brownback, Huckabee, and Tancredo positions.  It didn’t change my vote.  I would still prefer someone who can take a look at the sidewalk ahead and make a fresh decision whether to step over the cracks or step on the cracks.

Well, that was fun.  Not a blog entry full of tranquility and bliss, the “real topics” for meditation blogs.  Still what does tranquility and bliss look like in the midst of political discussion?  No apology for that.

Fingers slide from bead to bead.

Voice chants as thought drifts to thought.

Fingers slide from bead to bead.

This bead is big; the next not.

What are some people thinking?!!!

This isn’t really a rant.  I’ve been getting emails from some of my Chinese students and looking back with great fondness at the photographs I have of them.  That got me looking back – with great fondness as well – at family photographs from different times in the last six months.  I have uploaded a few into the photo album currently running on this blog.  Like the photos of the Chinese students, these are memories of individuals, each person as unique as blossoms in a garden.

This isn’t the rant either.  I had occasion to revisit the low ground of decision making this past week.  OK, let me get the confession out of the way right off the bat.  I decided how to present a sticky issue regarding a summer trip with family via email.  Well, I referred to it in my mind as presenting some considerations before hard and fast decisions got made.  Sounded good to me at the time.  Except that when Babs read the email she was convinced that it was wrong, had not presented what we had talked about, and had sent the wrong message.  I was instantly caught up in the emotional state of defensiveness.

This is also not the rant.  The Universalist -Unitarian Sunday Morning Book Discussion Group finished reading and discussing Father Anthony De Mello’s book Awareness last Sunday.  UU’s are great at intellectual discussions.  More than once in my life I have been grateful to UU discussion groups for intellectually challenging all the comfortable “spiritual” thinking I tend to fall into.

This is the rant.  First, let me admit I’m not a Republican voter, and, I did not watch the ten current Republican candidates for the presidency debate last week.  (To be fair, I didn’t watch the Democratic contenders debate the week before, but that was just pure negligence on my part.)  So I did not see three of the Republican candidates raise their hands when asked who did not believe in evolution.  From what I read, there were no follow-up questions that might have allowed them to make that conviction understandable.  But, still!!!  What a thoroughly anti-science view those three raised hands seem to indicate.  It evinces a view of reality so widely different to mine that I fail to understand it at all.

I had to step back several paces from emotional reaction to the newspaper account of those three raised hands.  I had to get to a more philosophical standpoint, one of acceptance that “it takes all kinds of people to make a world.”  For good measure I added in a generous three-fingers of “God don’t make no junk” on the rocks.  After chilling out the emotional reaction, I turned my attention to something more positive and pleasant.  It was actually one of the reasons that I was looking at family and student photos.  Just to remind myself that we all have our individual realities.  Nothing in life requires that people share the same set of views.  It’s just that sometimes an event reminds me forcefully of that intellectual principle.

Of course, when Babs told me that my email was a total disaster and was just confusing the issue, I wondered what planet she was living on as well.  Then to add to my misery, the other family members – at least from their emails—appeared to be as confused as Babs had predicted.  It took a couple of days and a healing, medicinal contemplation to get a handle on my thoroughly unpleasant defensive reactions.  The short lesson here for me is that it is one thing to have insight and another thing to live by it.  It is one thing to think of decision making as neither right nor wrong.  It is another thing for me to deal with the emotional response when one of my decisions is seen as right or wrong.  What a thoroughly irrational response I demonstrated.

In his book, Awareness, De Mello describes becoming truly “aware” as an act that frees one from response based on knowledge.  De Mello uses alcoholics as an example, recounting stories of people who knew they were alcoholics and what the long-term effects of alcoholism were but remained mired in the habit anyway.  Mired in the habit until– in at least one example – the first true experience of the alcoholic that his body was dying due to his drinking.  At which point the alcoholic lost all desire for alcohol. 

As the UU group parsed its way through De Mello’s description, I was reminded that such “Ah ha” moments really have two possible outcomes.  That is, the alcoholic recognizing that his body was indeed suffering could use that experience to shift to a different life style, could give up all the psychological habituation for alcohol in that moment of recognition.  But, the alcoholic could just as well be pulled by his habituation right back into the on-going lifestyle of alcoholism.  De Mello makes the case that reaching an aware state of mind supersedes habituation.

That is the promise that spiritual masters have made since long before Buddha or Christ.

How fortunate it is that in every generation there are those who do become aware and do provide themselves as tour guides along the path leading to awareness.

So I was looking at photographs of students and family and thinking that any of them could become aware in the course of their lives.  In any case, each one is unique and beautiful.  What a thoroughly joyful picture.

Still I wonder how those three Republicans could have decided that evolution is unbelievable. 

Eyes on her mirrored image,

hand gropes for the diamond,

pulls on the ruby perplexed.

Oh to be a five-claw dragon.

There is a happy ending.  That’s encouraging.

I pretty much stopped meditating.  Lasted about six months.

In China I had perfected a perverse habit of doing lots of contemplation interspersed with a little bit of mantra meditation.  It kept me sane.  Here I was an educated American totally illiterate in China.  Couldn’t read, write, nor speak the language.  What few phrases I had memorized before going were useless because the sidewalk vendors, bus conductors, and taxi drivers only spoke the local Chongqing dialect.  And, try as they might those locals simply could not decipher the “Mandarin” I spoke with such a heavy American accent.  It was gibberish to them.  I did eventually learn to tag along with someone who spoke English and Chongqing-hua.  Likewise, as a Spoken English teacher, I had complete autonomy (read: no direction whatsoever) to develop the curriculum I taught in class.  So my contemplation/meditations were often filled with should-have-said Chinese monologues, and working out next week’s lesson plan.  I remember one meditation in which I regained awareness only to discover that I had been lost for who knew how long trying to figure out how to take a stock Chinese phrase and vary it in order to tell taxi drivers how to get up to our apartment building.  Practical and useful at least, I thought.  The next taxi driver I tried the phrase on was as baffled as his predecessors.

My guru (still) was a guy (deceased in 1988) named Gururaj Ananda Yogi.  Here he is talking about motivations:

“For I always say, ‘If you are a Christian, become a better Christian; if a Buddhist, a better Buddhist; a Hindu, a better Hindu.  But above that all, become a better human being.’  How are we going to do that, to become a better human being?  It is not by the actions that you do that you are a better human being.

“We have many do‑gooders in this world...  They are doing something.  Fine.  Good.  But, what is the motivation?  Is the motivation ego inflation?  Or, is it a surrender … to a greater, higher self within themselves and expressing this in action by serving others?  So, motivation.  What controls motivation?  The patternings of your mind.  We come back to square one.”  (Gururaj Ananda Yogi. US 82044: “Reconciling Karma and Sin.”  Pp 8-9.)

Coming back from China, I found that I just could not bring myself to sit down and meditate.  But it wasn’t until February of this year that I really began to recognize that what I was avoiding was the old, perverse habit of meditation as medication; that is, sitting in contemplation in order to let go of the pressures of the day or the week.  That habit I did not want to return to.  That was my “square one,” as Gururaj put it.

Recently in a Joliet Buddhist Sangha session, we watched a tape on Buddhist concepts.  One topic caught my attention.  It was the idea that this is the perfect Buddha universe (Buddha-verse) for humans to reach awakening.  Of course it is.  One has all one’s fallacies, one’s false assumptions and expectations, one’s unwarranted assumptions mirrored back almost immediately.  If you hit your thumb instead of the nail with a hammer, you know it immediately.  If you try to travel around Chongqing with no language skills, you know it immediately.  If I try to meditate with too much anxiety and emotional investment, I find myself contemplating.

So it is only in the last couple of months that I have found it easier to sit in meditation.  That’s encouraging.  It’s a happy ending to that phase of travel in anxiety, illiteracy, and mental medication.

To everything there is a season, and
a time to every purpose under heaven: …

a time to get, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away…