Wednesday, April 27, 2011

All My Walking, by Santōka Taneda

I want to plug a book. I read a lot of books, but rarely does one affect me enough that I want to recommend it.

The book is called For All My Walking. It's a collection of poetry by Santōka Taneda, translated from Japanese by Burton Watson.

Taneka was a college dropout, failed businessman, divorced husband, mediocre Zen monk and alcoholic who finally decided to walk the roads of Japan, going from town to town begging for alms and recording his thoughts in his diary and as haiku poetry. He lived from 1882 to 1940. He died at age 57.

He became one of Japan's most celebrated haiku poets.

You can find out more about Taneda in this biographical sketch by Nonin Chowaney of the Nebraska Zen Center. It covers a lot of the reasons Taneda's poetry has so much appeal for me.

It's just product.

I have a hard time grokking the whole local pro basketball thing. Here's what I see:

A group of businessmen get together and buy this team – a thing, a product – from some other businessmen, and bring it home with them. It's like you buying a sofa at a garage sale, only no tax dollars are spent building a home for your sofa.

Then, much money is spent on advertising. SOFA UP, EVERYONE!

And, for reasons I don't understand, thousands of people dig deep into their psyches, uncover some primitive sense of tribal bonding, and apply it to this product. They even pay money for the privilege.

I get tweets and Facebook messages exhorting me to THUNDER UP! What do these people expect me to do? If I give a damn about pro basketball, I've already Thundered Up. But if a bazillion dollars in advertising, car pennants, multi-story tall posters and a guy dressed up as a buffalo can't get me to THUNDER UP!, what difference is a tweet or a Facebook message going to make?

A few years ago, a female friend and I were discussing some project or event. I don't remember what the event was; I don't even remember who I was talking to.

But I remember that finally, frustrated by my lack of enthusiasm, she said, "C'mon, mcarp! GET EXCITED!" And then she just stared at me, with a wild, wide-eyed grin frozen on her face. She looked like Cesar Romero playing the Joker.

That's sort of how I view these 'THUNDER UP!' people.

It's just a game, folks. It's just product.

Friday, April 22, 2011

By The Way...

I was excused from jury duty about 11 am Tuesday, without setting foot in a courtroom.

A Good Servant, But A Bad Master

‎"A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So, he loses touch with reality, and lives in a world of illusions.

"By thoughts, I mean specifically, chatter in the skull. Perpetual and compulsive repetition of words, of reckoning, and calculating.

"I'm not saying that thinking is bad. Like everything else, it's useful in moderation: a good servant, but a bad master."

— Alan Watts

Sunday, April 17, 2011

List of Ingredients

I was trying to describe this blog to someone, and I told him it was one third Zen, one third Taoism, and one third self-pity.

I think I may have exaggerated the amount of Zen and Taoism.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Random Notes: Meditation, Manic Episodes and Me

I did meditation last night for the first time in a month.

I went through a period where I was depressed and physically uncomfortable and just didn't want to do it. That was followed by a brief period of unusually high spirits, and I still didn't want to do it. Eventually my brain chemistry settled back into its normal state, and I began feeling a new desire for meditation about four days ago.

I want to say something about the unusually high spirits. My normal state is one that most of my friends consider mildly or perhaps seriously depressed. They think my life is boring, and can't imagine anyone would want to live this way, but it's the lifestyle with which I am most comfortable. I don't have as much excitement in my life as they have in theirs, but neither do I have all the drama and intrigue.

The period of high spirits began at roughly the time I was flirting with the thirtysomething woman about whom I wrote previously. I knew as I was doing it that it was very out of character for me, and I suspected at the time I was having what, for me, constitutes a 'manic episode'. I am pleased to say the thing played itself out without me getting my feelings hurt or my heart broken, and without leaving other people with the impression that I'm some sort of creepy stalker. Previous infatuations have usually ended with much bumpier landings.

In other news, Zen is starting to bore me. I think I've gotten from it all I'm going to get from it. I understand that I don't see things exactly as they are, and that my view will always be clouded by perceptions, desires, biases and prejudices. I will always work to overcome them, but my understanding will never be perfectly clear.

But I'm not going to move to another city so I can join a zen center. The whole thing about the robes and the chanting and the Japanese middle name doesn't have much appeal for me. I suspect a lot of people get into that stuff because the process gives them a sense of accomplishment, of making progress in some way.

I don't need to feel like I'm making progress. I realize I have a mind best suited to napping on the front porch, watching clouds, listening to birds sing and saying hello to stray dogs and cats, and I'm going to stick to what I do best.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Jury Duty

It's not tomorrow, it's a week from tomorrow.

Don't worry — I've already updated Facebook.

Facebook III

Sometimes I update my status a half dozen times in a single day. If I'm not otherwise occupied, I check it for notifications every ten minutes or so. How am I going to be a Zen hermit if I can't even stay away from Facebook for half a day?

Saturday, April 09, 2011

Facebook II

I was criticized tonight for posting a link to this Roger Ebert blog item about the nation's apathy toward its new class of robber barons.

I should focus, I was told, on "more positive thoughts and feelings."

All I can say is that nobody is stopping anyone from posting YouTube videos about new age medicine and/or baby ducks. Knock yourselves out.

Facebook

I post a lot on Facebook... more than I post here. And I have a larger audience. In spite of that, or perhaps because of it, I am more guarded about what I say there.

I post a lot of Zen and Taoist quotes. I post a lot of links to political items, although lately, there are fewer of those as my interest in political blogs has waned. I 'check in' with reports of my whereabouts and activities (feeling reasonably confident that none of my friends will burglarize my house if they see I'm away).

But I don't think I've ever used the words 'willowy' or 'ethereal' on Facebook. I've never written the words 'infatuation' or 'made foolish'.

I've come to think that there are few things on the Internet drearier than guys whining about their love lives, although I do it myself. Facebook is just not the place for that.

Years ago, during the morning chatter around the table at the coffee shop, a friend revealed he had been diagnosed with cancer. The whole conversation stopped. Everyone looked at him, then at each other. The discomfort, including mine, was palpable. His honesty, and, frankly, his vulnerability at that moment had violated the understood code of superficial jocularity that guided coffee shop conversation.

Facebook is a lot like that. Keep it happy, keep it superficial. If your grandma is sick, it's OK to mention that, but your own pain, doubt, suffering, dukkha, whatever is too much of a downer.

Oh, look. It's a baby animal video from YouTube!

Friday, April 08, 2011

Not All the Time

Sometimes it sucks to be alone. But it doesn't suck to be alone all the time, which is part of the reason I don't try harder to change that.

Tuesday, April 05, 2011

Jury Duty

I have jury duty next week. This is already starting to be flashback-y for me, and I'm kind of freaking out about it. The last time I was in a courtroom was as a reporter covering the McVeigh trial in Denver. It makes me queasy even thinking about that. I do not, do not, do not want to find myself in a courtroom again. This is going to be like psychological torture.

God damn I hate being reminded of any of that.

Obama Announces Re-election Campaign. BFD.

Well, the President has announced he'll seek re-election. And, of course, I'll vote for him. What other choice is there? (And don't say "Ron Paul", dammit.)

At least Obama will ease us into medieval feudalism gently, instead of strapping us to a time-traveling rocket sled and firing us back to the Middle Ages at the speed of sound.

Sunday, April 03, 2011

Love, Depression and Neediness

The times I feel loneliest seem to be generally the times I am also the most depressed. When my mood is good, I seem to be pretty comfortable with being alone. But when my mood is down, I feel like I want that archetypal willowy, ethereal hippie chick around to comfort me.

But that's 'neediness', and it runs counter to conventional wisdom in our culture. Relationships, like everything else, are supposed to be about winning, achieving, manic consuming, moving up, status, etc. — all the things for which you'd need an electron microscope to see how much of a shit I give.

Plus, relationships are also supposed to be about passion, drama, intrigue, excitement, anguish, recriminations, etc., barf, blrrrf, gorpf, snort, while all I want to do is sit with the archetypal willowy, ethereal hippie chick and watch birds.

So, my relationship prospects remain dim. I refuse to conform.

Drama Free

My life has been drama-free for years now. There have been a couple of little dustups during that time, but I don't count those. When it comes to long, byzantine dramas that are the result of other people's plotting, scheming and love of intrigue, I haven't had to suffer through one in about four years.

I've now reached the point I've started to take drama-free living for granted. But I should pause once in awhile to consider how lucky I've been to have this opportunity.

Saturday, April 02, 2011

'You Just Buy The Refrigerators'

Everyone around you is telling you what you are and who you are by expecting certain behavior from you. Which, if you are a reasonable and socially-inclined person, you perform. Because that's what's expected of you.
— Alan Watts

When I was a kid, especially from age seven on, I was given the message a lot of children get when their parents are alcoholic: 'You are not as important as the alcohol. You are not as important as the bars and the parties. In fact, you're just in the way. Your role is to be as close as possible to invisible. Don't distract us or bother us.'

That's how I learned to be an enabler. It's how I learned that my role in life was to be the selfless giver, playing the role of supporter and friend while expecting nothing for myself. All my life I transmitted the 'enabler' message, and there were always people who recognized the message and exploited it. They included bosses, friends and women.

I finally started learning about this in therapy, when I was in my mid-forties. The short-term results were disastrous. My friends and my employer of 17 years, who had been telling me what I was and who I was by expecting certain behavior from me, abandoned me. Fortunately, I had the support of a men's group I had recently joined as well as a large circle of online friends on The Well. Even though my Well friends had never met me (or perhaps because of it), they were far more supportive than my 'real' friends.

I kept pushing on, and today I'm much less of an enabler than I once was. But I'm still far from completely liberated.

In the Rinzai school of Zen, they teach that enlightenment is sudden, but that it must be followed by years of rigorous training to cast off habitual behavior and thought processes. The same is true of post-therapy life. I still have to be mindful of my own thoughts and behavior, and must frequently ask myself, 'Are these the thoughts and behavior of my post-therapy 'enlightened' self, or is this my parents still talking to me?'

A few years ago I was with a female friend at Lowe's, walking through the hardware aisles. She suddenly turned to me, smiled and said, "Would you buy me a refrigerator?"

There was a time I might have done it. Maybe I would have done it right then, if she'd phrased the request as a command and attached some guilt strings to it. But I turned her down. More importantly, I saw at that moment that our 'friendship' was based upon her being a user of other people who had picked up on my weak but still flashing 'enabler' beacon.

About five years ago, the woman to whom I refer as Ms. Willowy and Ethereal had to choose between me and her current boyfriend, and she chose the current boyfriend. I was crushed — I loved her and still love her now — but I never spoke of it to her again. I wrote about it endlessly here, but I didn't say anything to her. I felt it was my job as 'the friend' to just shut up and be supportive.

I got differing advice from friends about how to deal with this. Some said I should have kept trying, while others said I should let it go. Among those who said 'let it go,' I frequently picked up a 'vibe' that seemed to say, 'Let it go because you're just the friend. You're not supposed to get what you want. You just buy the refrigerators.'

I think what I'm saying here is that some of my friends are real friends, and some — especially women — have just latched on to me because they've seen the still-flickering 'enabler beacon'. They actually find me weak and mildly contemptible, but they don't mind humoring me so I'll keep doing them favors. And I still have trouble telling which are the friends and which have just latched on.

When women flirt with me or seem to be attracted to me, I've learned, nine out of ten times it's the 'enabler' beacon that's drawn their attention. I can't trust them, and I don't.

Friday, April 01, 2011

Harmony With the Tao vs. Just Plain Crazy

I try to live in harmony with the Tao these days. But I can actually live in harmony only with my perception of the Tao, which is far from perfect. For the big picture, I can rely on old and ancient Chinese masters. But when it comes to the smaller, immediate picture, I don't have much to go on.

My New Age-y friends feel that they're achieving harmony with the Tao by advocating practices and procedures that I think are mostly utter bullshit. Which of us is right? Is it possible we both are? Could the Tao be carrying our lives in opposite directions?

Some of my friends tell me I don't rely enough on my emotions. I feel like my lack of emotion is in harmony with the Tao. My emotionalism, when I let it show, makes me seem weak and needy, and frankly disgusts and sometimes scares people. But maybe emotionalism is the right path for some other people.

Are the tea partiers in sync with the Tao? Hard for me to see how that could be, but maybe they are.

Well, the wisdom I've got is the wisdom I've got.