The Truth

I saw this bumper sticker on a car yesterday:








"The truth will set you free": this, of course, comes from the Christian Bible, specifically the Gospel According to John, 8:32. It is a saying that has meant a lot to me over the years, from the time of my upbringing in a Congregationalist church. One thing it has said powerfully to me is that to embrace what is really going on brings freedom and life; hiding from and denying what is really going on brings pain and suffocation. No wonder Buddhism felt like home, once I found it.

But my idea of the "truth" in question has always been quite different from what the "truth" has traditionally been interpreted to be. The context of this verse is an argument between Jesus and the chief priests and Pharisees, and phrases from this chapter have been used to justify persecution of the Jews. John is my least favorite among the gospels, as it seems to be written as a polemic against all who reject this Jesus who proclaims himself Christ-as-Savior; to me, this telling of Jesus' life and teaching paints him as a raving narcissist. (He does go on and on about his wonderful self.) But I am sure that some of the potent sayings are indeed authentic; to give voice to them, the writers of the Gospel created a Jesus character who served their purposes. (As did the writers of each of the Gospels, and of all scripture, and the creators of any kind of literature or art).

But I digress. Seeing this bumper sticker got me thinking about what variety of truth the bumper sticker refers to, and what variety of anger. The car also featured a "Quakers!! Where? Quakerfinder.org" bumper sticker, so I assume that the car belongs to a Quaker. If this is a Quaker of the universalist, New York Meeting stripe, the sticker is probably pointing a bit ironically to the truth-of-Christ-as-savior concept. It points more wholeheartedly to the truth-of-God-as-justice notion, which springs from the powerful message of the Hebrew prophets. The prophets such as Jeremiah, Isaiah, Micah, and Amos.

They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. (Isaiah 2:4)

And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)

But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:24)

And so the truth that sets you free, but first makes you angry, is the truth of power, of seeing who has power and who doesn't, and who is using that power in self-service. Once you see how the game is really being played, you are free from delusion. One could say that it is the truth of suffering, of the First Noble Truth: Suffering exists. And perhaps seeing the causes of that suffering, the endemic injustice within human society, is an echo of the Second Noble Truth, that suffering has discernible causes.

And those aspects of truth are enough to make anyone angry. As angry as the prophets of old.

But what do you do with that anger? Because feeling angry is not enough. Just as suffering is not enough (as Thầy says), anger is not enough. The Dharma teaches us to see ill-being for what it is, and to transform that ill-being into freedom -- freedom from the delusion that traps us into reenacting the causes of ill-being. How are you going to use that energy of anger in a way that will not simply perpetuate these causes?

I know I'm asking a lot of a bumper sticker, but I wish it had said something about love. Because our society has a very distorted view of anger. We conflate the energy of anger with the expression of anger. Many interpret the Christian tradition as teaching that we should never feel angry, that we should turn the other cheek, forgive immediately, and to someone who takes our cloak, give our coat as well. On the other hand, we're taught how important it is to express your feelings, to vent rather than to hide your feelings. So we have a victim mentality mixed with self-righteousness mixed with entitlement. What's missing is an alternative to so much self-involvement. What's missing is the idea of expressing your angry feelings in a way that shines a light on the situation that triggered the anger, without exacerbating it. You do that through love, through compassion.

In his book Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames, Thầy writes:

You have the duty to tell [your beloved] when you suffer. When you are happy, share your happiness, with her, with him. When you suffer, tell your beloved one about your suffering. Even if you think your anger was created by him or her, you still have to keep your commitment [to support each other]. Tell him or her calmly. Use loving speech. This is the only condition. (p. 57)

We have the duty (elsewhere, he says we have the right) to communicate our anger. But we must do so calmly and lovingly. Here he speaks of anger between family members, but because of inter-being, this teaching must extend to anger between constituents and governments, and to anger between nations.

Martin Luther King, Jr., worked hard to channel the energy of anger into prophetic, powerful, loving action. So did Gandhi and Dorothy Day. And Thich Nhat Hanh.

I would like to see a bumper sticker that reads:

The truth will set you free.
So that's what that funny little half-smile is all about!

A bit more about the Society of Friends:

During the two years or so that I attended the Brooklyn Friends Meeting, I learned that many of my assumptions about Quakers were wrong, or incomplete. The Brooklyn Meeting is unprogrammed, meaning that there is no pastor and no liturgy -- the meeting sits in silence, listening for leadings. But there are other types of Quaker meeting, more common in the Midwest and West (apologies for over-generalizations). Roughly speaking, the Quakers stream into four branches: Liberal, Conservative, Pastoral, and Evangelical.

Click to read about Liberal, Conservative, Pastoral, and Evangelical Friends' beliefs and customs.

Friend on the Journey

I am now revising a picture book manuscript that has been in the works for several years. It will be a companion to an earlier book of mine, Polar Bear Night. In the first book, a little polar bear cub ventures out on her own and witnesses a star shower. In this book, the cub will meet another cub, and they become friends.

I haven't worked on it at all for almost a year. About six months ago, I met with my editor, David, over lunch, to catch up with each other and to go over the manuscript. In the end, we didn't talk much about the manuscript (except, importantly, that he told me that he was as committed to the book as ever). Mostly we talked quite deeply about our early lives. Within a few days he sent me some notes, which were among the most helpful notes I've ever received. Kind, insightful, offering direction without being intrusive. Where earlier I had felt weary of the manuscript, about to give up on it, I now felt inspired.

I was eager to work on the revision right away, but other projects with more urgent deadlines intervened, and I had to put this book to the side. Now those projects are taken care of (for the time being), and so after six months away, in the last few days I've read over the notes and felt again awash in my editor's good wishes and strong faith in me, as a writer and as a person.

Here is a section of the notes that I keep coming back to.

What I think this book is about is the journey to friendship. In the way that the first book was a celebration of taking an inward journey and perhaps connecting spiritually to nature, this book is about connecting with another. It's about developing trust, learning to share, the joy of finding a companion, the give and take of play. All things that are part of friendship. And that's a great thing to explore.

Yes, it's a great thing to explore. It's also a frightening thing to explore. That has been my experience, both with this manuscript and in life. I'm trying to write a story about a polar bear cub making friends with another polar bear cub, when in truth, I have no idea how one does "making friends." At least, that how it feels. To work on this manuscript is to touch that deep loneliness that has been an inner companion my whole life. No wonder it has taken years for me to get to an "almost, nearly ready" stage with this story. I haven't felt ready at all.

The last lines of the first book are

Snow and sky and sea and ice
and mother bear's soft, warm fur ....
home.

The last phrases of this book will be along the lines of

Snow, sea, and ice, and the broad blue sky ...
friends.

On the manuscript, David wrote,

I love this ending of "...friends." It feels right to me. This book is about the journey to friendship, which is a great theme. How do you recognize a friend? What do you go through to learn to trust each other? How do you know a true friend? Actions can speak louder than words: there can be grandeur in instinctual trust.

The first book was about "home." This book is about "friend." These are the two most important themes for anyone's life, or certainly for mine: to come to feel at home in the universe, and to trust oneself and others enough to connect without fear. They are undoubtedly one theme, one journey.

"Instinctual trust": that is what I must touch if I am going to complete this story. That is the way it will have to happen.

How is it that David's notes were so helpful? Because he allowed himself to be fully present to my words and to his response to them. And when he wrote his comments to me, he strove, bodhisatva-like, to be both truthful and kind. And so I feel encouraged to approach the manuscript this way myself: with full presence, honesty, and kindness. I feel encouraged to be a friend to myself.

Thanks, David.






























More about Polar Bear Night:

AIGA Design Archives. Includes views of spreads and notes about design approach

Reviews, courtesy of Amazon.com. [I encourage people, if possible, to purchase books from brick-and-mortar booksellers (i.e. not virtual booksellers), especially independent booksellers. But I admit I am a regular customer of Amazon.]

For those who subscribe to The New York Times on-line (it's free, for now), a review and an audio slide show featuring me reading the book. The Gray Lady loved this book: Best Illustrated, Notable, Best Book of the Year, Bestseller. Thank you, NYT.

My author website, LaurenThompson.net

The Mindful Mouthful

In Thich Nhat Hanh's tradition, we are invited to recite The Five Contemplations before every meal. There have been several versions over the years; here is the most recent:

The Five Contemplations

This food is a gift of the earth, the sky, numerous living beings and much hard and loving work.

May we eat with mindfulness and gratitude so as to be worthy to receive it.

May we recognize and transform our unwholesome mental formations, especially our greed, and learn to eat with moderation.

May we keep our compassion alive by eating in such a way that we reduce the suffering of living beings, preserve our planet and reverse the process of global warming.

We accept this food so that we may nurture our sisterhood and brotherhood, strengthen our sangha and nourish our ideal of serving all beings.

I confess I don't recite this, unless I am on retreat with others in this tradition. It has never engendered in me the kind of humble appreciation that I think I'm supposed to experience. It is based on a teaching that the Buddha gave, which is recorded, I learned, in the Sramanera Vinaya, or rules of conduct for novices. I wasn't able to track down a translation, but I found this summary by Ronald Epstein.

Five Contemplations While Eating

1. I think about where the food came from and the amount of work necessary to grow the food, transport it, prepare and cook it and bring it to the table.

2. I contemplate my own virtuous nature. Is it sufficient to merit receiving the food as offering?

3. I guard my mind against transgression, the principal ones being greed and so forth.

4. I realize that food is a wholesome medicine that heals the sufferings of the body.

5. I should receive the food offerings only for the sake of realizing the Way.

Every version and commentary I read referred to the importance of guarding against greed. Some emphasized that the food should be considered only as medicine for the body, and one should eat only enough to ward off physical weakness. Personally, perhaps because of a history of issues around eating, I find it not useful to dwell on whether or not I deserve to eat, or on whether greed is getting the better of me. I do find it helpful to think of food as medicine (but not only as medicine).

But what I find most useful of all is, instead, to recite (silently) the gatha for the First Four Mouthfuls. Here, Thay has fleshed out the idea of taking in food for the sake of the practice by inviting us to develop the Four Heavenly Abodes (the Brahmaviharas) as we eat. These four immeasurable virtues are Lovingkindness, Compassion, Joy (or Sympathetic Joy), and Equanimity.

The First Four Mouthfuls

With the first mouthful, I vow to practice loving kindness.
With the second, I vow to help relieve the suffering of others.
With the third, I vow to see others’ joy as my own.
With the fourth, I vow to learn the way of non-attachment and equanimity.

One evening, the night of a sangha tea ceremony, during which we eat and drink tea mindfully together, the facilitators came up with a new formulation. With the first mouthful, we were invited to nourish our capacity for lovingkindness. With each mouthful, we nourished an aspect of ourselves. This resonated so beautifully for me that that is how I now recite it.

Recently, at a small, mostly-sangha gathering, I offered to lead the group in taking the first four mouthfuls together. In order not to exclude anyone who might find the Four Immeasurable Terms rather foreign, I came up with yet another formulation, which went something like this:

With the first mouthful, we nourish our capacity for lovingkindness, a universal friendliness toward all beings.

With the second mouthful, we nourish our capacity for compassion, the desire and ability to ease suffering.

With the third mouthful, we nourish our capacity for sympathetic joy, the ability to find happiness in others' happiness.

With the fourth mouthful, we nourish our capacity for equanimity, the ability to accept life just as it is, this very moment.

May you be so nourished.

















P.S. This is a slice of sorghum bread I made; for once, a successful batch of gluten-free bread. I'm learning ...

Looking Up at the Stars

This week, for Poetry Friday, not a poem, exactly, but a poetic thought.












Mostly I wanted a reason to post this photo of my son from almost ten years ago. It is a collage which must have been a Valentines Day gift. He is two or three here, wearing his favorite train shirt. He was crazy about trains. I keep this little collage on my bookshelf, just above my meditation altar, which takes up another shelf. But I hadn't looked closely at it in a while. I suppose I am feeling sentimental about it as my son has been away for a few days, visiting my father and his wife.

But the foregoing is not the poetic thought I wish to offer. I remembered a passage from a short story by Garrison Keillor having to do with his baby son, and that is what I am offering today.

From "Laying on Our Backs Looking Up at the Stars," by Garrison Keillor:

In 1970, in search of freedom and dignity and cheap rent, I moved out to a farmhouse on the rolling prairie in central Minnesota, ... where I planted a garden and wrote stories to support my wife and year-old son. ... On the Fourth of July, 1971, we had twenty people come for a picnic in the yard, ... and that night we sat around the kitchen ... and talked about the dismal future.

America was trapped in Vietnam, a tragedy, and how could it end if not in holocaust? We were pessimists; we needed fear to make us feel truly alive. We talked about death ..., about racial hatred, pesticides, radiation, television, the stupidity of politicians, and whether Vietnam was the result of strategic mistakes or a reflection of evil in American culture. It was a conversation with cement shoes.

I snuck out to the screen porch with my son and sat and listened to crickets, and my friend Greg Bitz sat with us and two others came out, tired of politics and talk, and we walked along the driveway out of the yard light and through the dark trees and sat down in a strip of alfalfa. ... And then we lay down on our backs and looked up at the sky full of stars.


The sky was clear. Lying there, looking up at 180 degrees of billions of dazzling single brilliances, made us feel we had gone away and left the farm far behind.

As we usually see the sky, it is a backdrop, the sky over our house, the sky beyond the clotheslines, but lying down eliminates the horizon and rids us of that strange realistic perspective of the sky as a canopy centered over our heads, and we see the sky as what it is: everything known and unknown, the universe, the whole beach other than the grain of sand we live on. ...

Indoors, the news is second-hand, mostly bad, and even good people are drawn into a dreadful fascination with doom and demise; their faith in extinction gets stronger; they sit and tell stories that begin with The End. Outdoors, the news is usually miraculous. A fly flew in my mouth and went deep, forcing me to swallow, inducing a major life change for him, from fly to simple protein, and so shall we all be changed someday, but here under heaven our spirits are immense, we are so blessed. The stars in the sky, my friends in the grass, my son asleep on my chest, his hands clutching my shirt.

Indeed.

A Tiger for Tết

Today is the Lunar New Year, which in Vietnam is called Tết Nguyên Đán (or just Tết). The monastics, along with many of my sangha brothers and sisters, are celebrating at Blue Cliff Monastery this weekend.

I read that it is traditional in Vietnam to exchange gifts during Tết (more specifically, to give gifts to family and friends who visit your home on the holiday) and I decided I wanted to give the monastics a painting. It is also traditional to give a piece of artwork created in the village of Dong Ho, in their particular style, a woodblock print with black line and bright colors. I don't know how to make block prints, but I could create a painting with black outline. The new year is the Year of the Tiger, so a tiger it would be.

And here it is:








[click on image for an enlarged view]

Seeing it all complete like this, the process is hidden. Here is the process revealed.

I generally need a lot of art reference when I paint or draw. I used to feel guilty and embarrassed about this. But my self-judgment has loosened up a bit since I started studying Chinese brush painting. Traditionally, brush painting students have always copied. That is how they are expected to learn. One should look at mountains, but also look at great paintings of mountains. And copy them. That is the way to enter the spirit in which the artist partook, perhaps centuries ago. It is a way of borrowing the great artist's more enlightened eyes, and more expressive stroke.

So, for this tiger painting, I spent time finding just the right reference. First, some examples of Dong Ho paintings.















While searching for Dong Ho tigers, I found tiger images in another style by a Vietnamese artist, Duy Thai. I liked this one in particular:























I also needed an actual mountain to look at -- a tiger in all his actual stripes:







As well, I looked up the place of tigers in Buddhist lore, in case something interesting came up. What I found was the Zen story about the the sweet-tasting strawberry. (Retold here by Paul Reps, in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones.)

The Buddha told a parable in a sutra:

One day while walking across a field a man encountered a vicious tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him.

Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he picked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted.

Fortunately, I don't need reference for a strawberry vine, since one grew in my garden last summer.

Now I was ready to try to paint a tiger. I painted three; one of them became the Tiger for Tết.

Finally, I looked up how to write "tiger" in Chinese calligraphy, and practiced writing it over two evenings. And I practiced writing "meditation," or "zen," since my teacher had told me that "zen" was almost always an appropriate character to add to a Chinese brush painting. The complete inscription reads, "tiger meditation."

This was the process of painting the painting.

Then there was the process of mounting it on backing paper, with improvised potato starch glue; trimming the backed painting and mounting it with linen-tape "hinges" to the background sheet, a piece of corrugated paper that I'd held onto for more than a year which did not want to lie flat; finding strips of wood lathing to glue onto the back to make the thing rigid, since when it rolled up, the painting would pop off; and packing it up for mailing, flat. A lot of process for this Tiger for Tết.

But how could one expect otherwise? And where else would the joy reside?

Happy New Year!

Chúc mừng năm mới!

A Message for My Readers

Dear Readers,

First, thank you for reading this blog. I know very little about you beyond how many of you there are. But I am grateful. I would probably post even if no one ever read what I post, but it is wonderful to know that someone, somewhere, will at least glance at it.














Second, to those readers who subscribe: Thank you for subscribing! Whether you receive the posts via e-mail or an RSS feed reader, please consider clicking on the title of the post, to be sent to the blog itself. The post will look the way that I intended, and often, I make corrections or improvements to a post after it has been sent out as a feed. Recently I noticed, too late, how many typographical errors there were in the Heart Sutra which I included in the post. I hadn't typed it myself -- I copied and pasted from another website -- and didn't check it carefully. I promise to proofread more carefully in the future; nonetheless, you will always find a more polished, finished version of a post by going to the blog site.

Third, to those readers who don't subscribe: I know that many people have no idea what an RSS feed is or how to use it. Not long ago, I had no idea, either. But if you've ever wished that you could know when a new post on any blog goes out, without having to check the blog itself, then subscribing is the answer. To make it easy for the least technical among us, I installed a subscription tool which allows you to have new posts sent to you as an e-mail message (as well as to numerous feed readers). You can easily unsubscribe at any time, and I won't have any idea who you are. I generally post once or twice a week (less, lately, since I am busy with my wage-earning writing at the moment), so subscribing won't fill up your in-box.

Fourth, to everybody: please don't feel shy about leaving a comment, if you've ever thought about it. You can sent a comment meant only for me by mentioning that you want the comment to stay private. I preview all comments and I won't post any that are intended to be private. Or you can let me know that a comment is "public OK." Who knows, an interesting conversation among readers could ensue. E-sangha building -- I like that idea.

And if you just want to stop by the blog now and then, that's fine, too. More than fine.

Thanks again, everyone.

Bowing and smiling,

Lauren

Contending

In honor of the terrific snowstorm we had this week, I am featuring one of my favorite haiku, by Takai Kito, a disciple of Buson.

Contending –
temple bell
winter wind

I encourage you to read it through a few times. To assist you, here it is again:

Contending –
temple bell
winter wind

My understanding of this poem has changed over time. I once wrote a sermon (as a lay leader at the Unitarian Universalist church I used to attend) based on this haiku, essentially exploring key moments of my life in terms of contention between "temple bell" moments, in which transcendent reality broke through, and "winter wind" intervals of harsh existence. I imagined myself as a hermit, huddled in a hut while a winter storm raged, hearing both the howling wind and the bell of distant temple calling the monks (or nuns) to practice. A chilling picture of the world indeed. Thank heavens for those temple bell moments!

Then, at some point, I had one of those temple bell aha! moments about that word "contending." The poem is saying something much more interesting about life than that the sacred and profane (or mundane) are in contention with one another.

No. I now interpret the poem's imagery this way: the winter wind is the force that is allowing the bell to ring in the first place. Suffering is the very capacity which allows -- invites -- the bell to ring. We think of the peaceful bell and the harsh wind as if they are opposed to one another, but they are working together, in dialectical collaboration (to get all grad-student on you). The harder the wind blows, the louder the bell rings. The wind may gust, bluster, and fume; the bell will only clang and peal with equal urgency. Wake up! Wake up! The music is calling you!

I now also picture myself a practioner within the temple, or at least, as a hermit affiliated with the temple. Missing sangha because of the storm. ("Missing" in both senses of the word.)

Here is the scene out my back window, during the height of the storm.
























But I think that this image captures the scene more exactly:



















Because it was really blowing out there!


From Wikipedia: "Another way to understand dialectics is to view it as a method of thinking to overcome formal dualism and monistic reductionism. For example, formal dualism regards the opposites as mutually exclusive entities, whilst monism finds each to be an epiphenomenon of the other. Dialectical thinking rejects both views. The dialectical method requires focus on both at the same time. It looks for a transcendence of the opposites entailing a leap of the imagination to a higher level, which (1) provides justification for rejecting both alternatives as false and/or (2) helps elucidate a real but previously veiled integral relationship between apparent opposites that have been kept apart and regarded as distinct."

The Heart Sutra

In sangha, as part of the ceremony of the recitation of the Five Mindfulness Trainings (and of the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings), we chant the Prajna-Paramita, or the "Heart Sutra." Thay has a short book about the sutra, but I am now reading the book that Red Pine (aka Bill Porter) wrote, with his own translation and commentary.

It is interesting -- and useful -- to read the sutra rather than chant it. I find I can reflect on the phrases more deeply. Here is Red Pine's translation:

The noble Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva,
while practicing the deep practice of Prajnaparamita,
looked upon the Five Skandhas
and seeing they were empty of self-existence,
said,

"Here, Shariputra,
form is emptiness, emptiness is form;
emptiness is not separate from form,
form is not separate from emptiness;
whatever is form is emptiness,
whatever is emptiness is form.

The same holds for sensation and perception,
memory and consciousness.

Here, Shariputra, all dharmas are defined by emptiness
not birth or destruction, purity or defilement,
completeness or deficiency.
Therefore, Shariputra, in emptiness there is no form,
no sensation, no perception, no memory and no consciousness;
no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body and no mind;
no shape, no sound, no smell, no taste, no feeling, and no thought;
no element of perception, from eye to conceptual consciousness;
no causal link, from ignorance to old age and death,
and no end of causal link, from ignorance to old age and death;
no suffering, no source, no relief, no path;
no knowledge, no attainment and no non-attainment.

Therefore, Shariputra, without attainment,
bodhisttavas take refuge in Prajnaparamita
and live without walls of the mind.
Without walls of the mind and thus without fears,
they see through delusions and finally nirvana.

All buddhas past, present and future
also take refuge in Prajnaparmita
and realize unexcelled, perfect enlightenment.
You should therefore know the great mantra of Prajnaparamita,
the mantra of great magic,
the unexcelled mantra,
the mantra equal to the unequalled,
which heals all suffering and is true, not false,
the mantra in Prajnaparmita spoken thus:

'Gate gate, paragate, parasangate, bodhi svaha'."

[Stanza breaks are mine, for ease of reading.]

I haven't gotten far into the commentary yet. But two things caught my notice.

First, the artwork on the book cover. The painting is titled, "Zhao Mengfu Writing the Heart Sutra in Exchange for Tea." There's tea again! There is a legend here that I will need to look into.

Also, the acknowledgments note at the end of the introduction. "Thanks and an always ready pot of oolong tea to .... and to my wife for supplying me with the Chinese texts and tea." Well, he is a student of Zen, so it shouldn't be surprising, perhaps, that tea plays such a role in his practice and work.

He goes on, "Thanks, too, to all who have continued to support me and my family while I worked on this book, including the Department of Agriculture's Food Stamp program, the Port Townsend Food Bank, the Earned Income Tax credit program administered by the Internal Revenue Service, and the Olympic Community Action's Energy Assistance program."

Wow. I have never seen anyone admit to needing food stamps while working on a book, never mind thanking the government for them. Or a food bank, or the IRS, or an energy assistance program.

Would I be willing to persist with a project that was leaving me in such need for assistance -- public assistance? I don't think so.

Would I be supportive of my spouse persisting in such a project with such results? I don't think so.

More to reflect on.

Credit: The Heart Sutra: The Womb of the Buddhas, translation and commentary by Red Pine. Copyright (c) 2004 by Red Pine. Counterpoint Press, Berkeley, CA.

Jacket art from scroll by Qui Ying, Chinese, Ming Dynasty, 1492/5 - 1522. (c) Cleveland Museum of Art.

Red Pine photo (c) Damon Sauer 2004

Poetry Friday: Chuang Tzu And The Butterfly

A quick post today, as I am busy revising a manuscript.

Chuang Tzu And The Butterfly

Chuang Tzu in dream became a butterfly,
And the butterfly became Chuang Tzu at waking.
Which was the real — the butterfly or the man?
Who can tell the end of the endless changes of things?
The water that flows into the depth of the distant sea
Returns anon to the shallows of a transparent stream.
The man, raising melons outside the green gate of the city,
Was once the Prince of the East Hill.
So must rank and riches vanish.
You know it, still you toil and toil — what for?

— Li Po

"And still you toil and toil -- what for?"

I think that even if I were working on this manuscript only in a dream, I would toil and toil. Actually, it's not "toil": it is joyful effort striving toward clarity rather than rank and riches. Maybe that makes all the difference.

Li Po was a Chinese poet who lived from 701 to 762 CE, during the Tang dynasty. His many poems are heavily influenced by Taoism. He is considered one of the two greatest Chinese poets. (Yet another great poet to add to my reading list.)

The poem refers to a well-known passage from the work of Chuang Tzu (also written Zhuangzi), a fourth-century BCE Taoist philosopher whose work was important in the development of Chan Buddhism. (More for the reading list ...) The famous butterfly dream:

Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn't know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things. (2, tr. Burton Watson 1968:49)

A Mommiful Practice

When my son was younger, he would sometimes complain, "Why do you have to be so Mommy-ful?" Meaning, why did I ruin all the fun by being "The Mommy"? (Or later, The Mom.)

My answer: Because I am The Mom. Mommiful is what I do -- it is my practice.

Sorry, son. Or what I really mean is, Count your lucky stars, my son.

I like to keep up with Karen Maezen Miller's blog, Cheerio Road. Her most recent post was, How to Raise a Buddhist Child. I hope she doesn't mind if I paste in the whole post.

1.23.2010

How to raise a Buddhist child

1. Honestly, have no idea.
2. Diligently, make no effort.
3. Faithfully, accept what is.
4. Sincerely, pay attention.
5. Be kind.
6. Otherwise, apologize.
7. Raise a Buddhist parent instead.


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Posted by Karen Maezen Miller at 7:38 PM   ShareThis

Labels: Parenthood, Trouble With Buddhism

I think this is brilliant: pithy and wise. Like a good poem, it leaves much to read between the lines. Much that the reader must supply for herself. For me, accepting what is (a child who at times displays explosive anger) and paying attention (to what the underlying issue is, beneath all the static) leaves me with a conundrum about what being kind should look like. Last night I was presented with another opportunity to practice with this koan.

It was bedtime, and my son had planned to read before lights-out time, but he had gotten distracted by the ballgame on TV, so once lights-out time came, he hadn't read yet. But he really wanted to. I mean he REALLY wanted to. Dad had said he could, I had said he could, he didn't care about the clock or the fact that, as he has admitted, mornings are horrid when he's tired. It wasn't fair!

I could see that this was one of those times when he was again resisting the nature of the universe, in particular that clocks run in only one direction. And that actions (watching TV instead of reading) can't be undone. He was frustrated with himself, disappointed, tired, and angry, but he channeled all his feelings into that last one, anger, until it became rage.

This is when Mom (and Dad) call on all the bodhisatvas for guidance. One of the bodhisatvas who comes to my rescue is Mark Epstein, the psychologist and Buddhist practitioner who wrote Going On Being and several other insightful books. He refers a lot to the psychologist D. W. Winnicott. This passage from an article in Yoga Journal summarizes well Epstein's (and Winnicott's) teaching:

It is important to respect a child’s aggression. Without it, they will have no fire, no ability to differentiate themselves, and no drive for creative expression. It is also important not to indulge a child’s aggression; obviously they have a need for limits, boundaries, and discipline.

But it is essential, in the words of the famous British child psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott, not to retaliate and not to abandon in the face of a child’s anger. A parent’s duty is simply to survive. To accomplish this, we have to be able to deal with our own anger, not by pushing it away but not by indulging it either. Parents have to find a way to make their own anger skillful.

Mark Epstein, M.D. Yoga Journal, July-August 2001

A parent's duty is simply to survive. Exactly. To be more precise, though, what needs to survive is not one's ego, but one's ability to respond skillfully. With my son, when he is raging, the task is to set boundaries and limits to his actions without telling him not to be angry. The task is, largely, to help him contain the anger and to guide him back to those other emotions.

The task last night was more complex, though, because he started shoving. A lot. So part of staying skillful was staying safe. I had to make clear in that very moment that shoving, manhandling, force was NOT OKAY. That meant that I had to be very firm. Okay, I had to yell. But it was kind yelling -- no insults. And I corrected him, loudly and clearly, rather than retreat. I did not retaliate and I did not abandon. I used, I think, the skill of Fierce Compassion, a skill that I am hungry to learn about from teachers and books, but that I seem mostly to learn about through the engaged practice of parenting my son.

After closing himself in the bathroom for awhile, he finally calmed down. I insisted that he apologize. He didn't quite see why he had to. So I explained, firmly but more quietly (since he was now curled up on my lap) how crucial it is that he not use his bodily strength against people. He started to get it. The more he calmed down, the more he got it, the more he remembered that he already got this.

He wanted to end the evening on good terms -- he had looked forward to us both reading on his bed, all comfy -- and so I sat with him and we talked about other things for a little while. Then I left to get ready for bed myself.

It is tiring to have to go through things like this. It is tiring to think about how to teach him to notice his own rage when it is still just a seed, how to talk to his therapist about teaching him. It is tiring to think about having to carry out the consequence (no computer for two days). But I get much less upset about episodes like this than I used to. Partly, I am used to it, and partly, I am much more skilled than I used to be.

That is the Mommiful Practice.

The practice of raising a Buddhist parent.










P.S. In spite of everything, I smile to think that all of this fuss was about wanting to read. Down to the mat for a book! It could be worse.

Poetry Friday: Why

This poem pushed itself on me while I was meditating (or trying to meditate). It has the form of a children's book -- the questions children ask -- but the answers aren't the type we usually give to children. Maybe we should.

Why

Why is the sea so deep?

The dark to keep.

Why is the ocean wide?

To mend the divide.

Why does the river run?

No gain is long won.

Why do the leaves turn red?

To dress the dead.

Why do the earthworms writhe?

In labor blithe.

Why do the birds fly?

To mystify.

Why do the waves churn?

To cool the burn.

Why is the sky blue?

To buoy you.

Why do the clouds not fall?

Pretenders, all.

Why does the wind blow?

The more to show.

Why does the thunder roar?

To hasten the oar.

Why does the sun rise?

To lure our eyes.

Why does the sun set?

To nurse regret.

Why does the world go on?

This rhyme is done.

-- Lauren Thompson

I think of my dad, who is a scientist through and through. He would say that what we can't measure, we can't really know. He would probably say that we ask the wrong questions. We may ask, why is the sky blue, but we can only discover how the sky is blue. There may be no "why," no objective reason. I'm saying, "Yes, but we always create subjective reasons. Just because they are subjective doesn't make them less interesting." But then we leave the domain of science and enter that of poetry. Or, the dharma.

An Artist's Love for Haiti

Looking through old copies of Tricycle magazine that have piled up, I noticed beautiful paintings by artist Rami Efal. I found him on-line, and currently he is offering to send anyone an original ink painting in exchange for a receipt confirming a $50 (or more) donation toward the Haiti relief effort.

Here is an evocative example of his work.

[Click on image for an enlarged view.]

Credit: (c) Rami Efal

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aburami/
Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

May I be the doctor and the medicine
And may I be the nurse
For all sick beings in the world
Until everyone is healed.

May a rain of food and drink descend
To clear away the pain of thirst and hunger
And during the aeon of famine
May I myself change into food and drink.

May I become an inexhaustible treasure
For those who are poor and destitute;
May I turn into all things they could need
And may these be placed close beside them.

From The Way of the Bodhisattva, by Shantideva, Ch. III (trans. Stephen Batchelor)

A Dewdrop World

Feeling sadness today. I thought of this haiku by Issa:

This dewdrop world
Is but a dewdrop world
And yet—

According to David G. Lanoue, "this haiku was written on the one-year anniversary of the death of Issa's firstborn child, the boy Sentarô. It has a one-word prescript: 'Grieving.' According to Buddhist teaching, life is as fleeting as a dewdrop and so one should not grow attached to the things of this world. Issa's response: 'and yet...'"

It is an ephemeral, transient world, and this we must accept. Even so, we suffer, and we grieve. For this, we are given equanimity, on the one hand, and compassion, on the other.












When I think of a dewdrop in Japanese Buddhism, I think of Dogen and his Moon in a Dewdrop ("Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water... The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass...".) But if Issa's dewdrop is related to Dogen's, it seems to be so only in a complicated way. (Or perhaps Dogen's dewdrop is related to the dewdrop in Japanese Buddhist imagery in a complicated way, or a way I don't yet understand.)

I found this poem by another Japanese poet (and artist and Rinzei Zen monk), Sengai, which reflects Issa's dewdrop nicely.

To what shall I compare this life of ours?
Even before I can say
it is like a lightning flash or a dewdrop
it is no more.

- Sengai (1750 - 1837)

 
This spare and beautiful painting of the moon echoes the "enso" calligraphy he would have often created:



The poem inscribed in the painting can be roughly translated this way:

Looking at the shadow it casts

into the great Emptiness

I made a firm resolution

     Night of autumn moon.

Dedicating the merit: May the fruits of this post benefit all beings, including, particularly, the earthquake victims in Haiti.



P.S. In Japanese, Issa's dewdrop haiku looks like this:

.「露の世は露の世ながらさりながら」
Tsuyu no yo wa
Tsuyu no ya nagara
Sarinagara

I think it's interesting to see a phrase-for-phrase translation:

[Tsuyu-no-yo / wa / tsuyu-no-yo / nagara / sari / nagara]
[Dew-world / as-for / dew-world / while-it-is / so-be / while-it-is]

Worried Little Faces: Metta to You All

This being a Thursday, I went this morning to the nearby yoga studio for a brief sit with a few others. The leader, Linda, has us sit facing the wall, as she does in her tradition. It seems that in our own little sangha tradition, my spot has become the cushion next to Linda's. Which means that on Thursday mornings, I face this:

For as long as I can remember (or, as long as grounded outlets have been standard), I have read such outlets as faces. Worried little faces.

So if my meditation needs direction, I sometimes direct loving-kindness to these worried little faces. That is what I did this morning. I started by directing loving-kindness, or metta, to myself, as is traditional, and then directed it to others.

I first learned about metta meditation from Sharon Salzberg (from her wonderful book, Lovingkindness), and so the phrases I use in my own metta meditations are based on hers. I tend to silently recite:

May I be safe.
May I be healthy.
May I be happy.
May I live with ease.

I sometimes add,

May I be free from fear.


If I am on the subway, or on the street, and I see someone who seems to be in distress, I sometimes direct metta to them:

May you be safe.
May you be healthy.
May you be happy.
May you live with ease.

At the very least, this often helps me not to take on their suffering, not to allow their sadness or lost-ness to trigger such feelings in me. If I feel my heart going out to worried electrical outlets, imagine the boundary-lessness I experience with someone with tears flowing down her face.

I like to read the original sutta now and then, which I would like to memorize at some point. Here is part of it:

May all beings be happy.
May they live in safety and joy.

All living beings,
whether weak or strong,
tall, stout, average or short,
seen or unseen, near or distant,
born or to be born,
may they all be happy.

Let no one deceive another
or despise any being in any state,
let none by anger or hatred
wish harm to another.

As a mother watches over her child,
willing to risk her own life
to protect her only child,
so with a boundless heart
should one cherish all living beings,
suffusing the whole world
with unobstructed loving kindness.

Standing or walking,
sitting or lying down,
during all one's waking hours,
may one remain mindful of this heart
and this way of living
that is the best in the world.

(translation by Gil Fronsdal; line breaks are mine)

I know that some people feel aversion to this teaching, feeling that just wishing that everyone would be nice to everyone else is worse than useless in the task of ending the massive suffering of our world. I remember feeling that way, too. But now I believe that wishing happiness for myself and others is certainly not the worst thing a person can do. And if you do it sincerely, it won't be the only thing you do, for intention directs action, and cultivating lovingkindness for others surely cultivates kindlier intentions toward them. Then at least my own actions may be kindlier, and I won't be causing more suffering.

And then there is the brain research which shows that regular meditation on compassion seems to change the brain. In one study, monks who had spent at least 10,000 hours in meditation -- and even lay people with much fewer hours -- showed brain activity that is different from those who don't meditate in this way. Here is an excerpt from an article about one study, posted on the Dalai Lama's website:

Prof. Davidson [at U. Wisconsin/Madison] ... used fMRI imaging to detect which regions of the monks' and novices' brains became active during compassion meditation. The brains of all the subjects showed activity in regions that monitor one's emotions, plan movements, and generate positive feelings such as happiness. Regions that keep track of what is self and what is other became quieter, as if during compassion meditation the subjects opened their minds and hearts to others.

More interesting were the differences between the monks and the novices. The monks had much greater activation in brain regions called the right insula and caudate, a network that underlies empathy and maternal love. They also had stronger connections from the frontal regions to the emotion regions, which is the pathway by which higher thought can control emotions.

In each case, monks with the most hours of meditation showed the most dramatic brain changes. That was a strong hint that mental training makes it easier for the brain to turn on circuits that underlie compassion and empathy.

"This positive state is a skill that can be trained," Prof. Davidson says. "Our findings clearly indicate that meditation can change the function of the brain in an enduring way."

What this means to me is that the more we practice cultivating compassion and empathy, the more spontaneously we will be able to behave with compassion and empathy. We may be able not only to create less suffering, but to ease more suffering, through compassionate action. Our consciousness and even our physical brains seem to have the capacity to develop in this way.

Wonderful! (As Thay might say.)

P.S. I was interested in what kind of compassion meditation, exactly, the subjects engaged in. It may have been tonglen, but I'm not sure. However, I found a related study, from a different institute, which described the meditation in detail.

The compassion meditation program employed in this study was designed and taught by one of us (Lobsang Tenzin Negi).... Although secular in presentation, the compassion meditation program was derived from Tibetan Buddhist mind-training (Tibetan lojong) practices. These practices derive largely from writings ascribed to the Indian Buddhist masters Shantideva (8th Century) and Atisha (11th Century) (The Dalai Lama, 2001) .... Lojong-based compassion meditation has two primary elements: an initial phase in which various arguments are examined that challenge one’s common sense notion of other people as falling into the categories of ‘‘friend, enemy and stranger’’ and a second phase in which one practices developing spontaneous feelings of empathy and love for an ever expanding circle of people, beginning with the self and extending eventually to those with whom one has conflicts and/or dislikes.

["Effect of compassion meditation on neuroendocrine, innate immune and behavioral responses to psychosocial stress," Emory University School of Medicine; Psychoneuroendocrinology (2008)]

Poetry Friday: Why I Am Not a Painter

Something by Frank O'Hara, who grew up in the town in which my father now lives, Grafton, Massachusetts -- not far from where I grew up, in Holden.

Why I Am Not a Painter

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

(1971)

Both Frank O'Hara and I left Massachusetts for New York. But beyond that, the comparisons gets thin. I was never in the Navy, and I have never been to Fire Island. He died there in 1966 as the result of a bizarre accident, at the age of forty.

"Anchovies Too" by L Thompson


Visit the Smithsonian site to see "Sardines":















Poem credit: Frank O’Hara, “Why I Am Not a Painter” from The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Copyright © 1971 by Mauren Granville-Smith, Administratrix of the Estate of Frank O'Hara. Used by the permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc, www.randomhouse.com/category/poetry/.

Map, No Map

Just when I need clarity about my practice, this particular teaching arrives. Of course, it's been around for a long time. But this morning when I opened my door to the net-o-sphere, there it was, a neat little package with a tag that read, "Open Me Now." So I did.

Inside was a new translation, by Glenn Wallis, of the Parayana Sutta. It has been translated variously as "The Discourse on The Goal and the Path Thereto," "on the Way to the Beyond," and "on the Way to the Far Shore." Wallis calls it the "Destination" sutra.

Destination

I will teach the destination and the path leading to the destination. Listen to what I say.

What is the destination? The eradication of infatuation, the eradication of hostility, and the eradication of delusion is what is called the destination.

And what is the path leading to the destination? Present-moment awareness directed toward the body. This awareness is what is called the path leading to the destination.

In this way, I have taught to you the destination and the path leading to the destination. That which should be done out of compassion by a caring teacher who desires the welfare of his students, I have done for you.

There are secluded places. Meditate, do not be negligent! Don't have regrets later! This is my instruction to you.

It doesn't get much simpler than that. "And what is the path leading to the destination? Present-moment awareness directed toward the body."

And as the Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing goes on to teach, awareness of the body leads to, and is really the same as, awareness of consciousness and how it maps our way through reality.

Once we're aware of the map, we can, finally, look up from the map and experience simply what is there. That, I think, is the destination. More of a vantage point than a place on any near or far shore.

"There are secluded places." Go find one. Stop complaining, just go. The student is ready, the teacher has appeared, and the instruction has been given. Class dismissed -- go! Go practice.

I thank Barry Briggs and his blog, Ox Herding, for the gift of this teaching. As he notes, it appeared in Glenn Wallis's article in Buddhadharma: The Practioner's Quarterly, which I read, but I didn't take notice of it then.

On Yelling Less

[New Years' Retreat, Blue Cliff Monastery; photo by Melissa Setubal]


This transitional time between years, and decades, comes at a transitional moment for me -- or at what I want to be a transitional moment. It feels right to make resolutions, to set intentions.

One intention I set is to yell less.

I never wanted to be a mom who yells. There was a lot of yelling in my home growing up, between all of us. I hated it. And in raising my now-twelve-almost-thirteen year old son, I have worked hard not to yell, though of course there were plenty of times when yelling seemed to be the only way to get through to him. Instead, my intention has been to express my feelings and needs powerfully, if necessary, but not violently. I wanted to model for him how we can articulate our inner self to others without simply acting it out. And I think that I have done a pretty good job.

But sometimes a body gets tired. Sometimes a body just wants to yell, "Do what I tell you! NOW!"

I am writing this with awareness that my son may read it. That's okay. He and I have talked about how, at times, he is not the easiest child to raise. He is very smart, very active, deeply feeling, strong-willed, and at times explosive in his expression of frustration with the fact that things don't always go his way. He is also insightful and self-reflective, and can even smile at how he sometimes makes things hard for himself. He's come such a long way over the years. But he is still heavily invested in resistance. And that's what wears me down.

I never want to end up yelling. I never want to spend twenty minutes in growing frustration as he playfully, complainingly, distractedly, and angrily acts out his resistance to whatever needs to be done. I just want him to put on his shoes and go to school! NOW! I just want him to get washed up and GO TO BED! NOW!

Afterward, he is usually penitent, regretting that he pissed me off, sorry that he took things too far. Afterward, when he's insisted that I sit with him in bed so that we can cuddle, he wants to do better. He wants to be very sure of my love.

And I want him to be sure of my love. I love him dearly. And there are many moments during the day when we enjoy each others' company. There is plenty of the good stuff. I just get weary of the hard stuff.

I knew that I had been yelling more, losing my temper more, and I didn't like it. But it wasn't until I talked with a friend about it, and my husband interjected, "Yes, you are yelling more," that I really saw. I don't believe that yelling is effective as a disciplinary, that is, a teaching, tool. And I have evidence, fresh, direct evidence, that yelling doesn't change the unwanted behavior. It just sours the whole environment.

Now, there is a lot of history that I'm not going to go into here. We have wended our way through a wilderness of crises, conferences, specialists, therapists (so many therapists), diagnoses, techniques, strategies, books and articles and dvds ... it's been a long journey. And someday that tale must be told.

But for now, I resolve, before god and the buddha-nature of all that is, to yell less. No more yelling. (Or, very little.)

Even when he becomes a teenager, as of seven weeks from now.



An affirmation for my bathroom mirror:

I will not yell,
I will not whine,
I will not pester other kids,
I will not throw things,
I am the mom,
I am the mom!