Lineage Delusion Redux

I want to go back to the Lineage Delusions commentary I posted previously.

As you know if you've followed this blog for any length of time, I don't belong to a sangha. In fact, I don't belong to anything. I am not a joiner. I am an aloof, remote, arrogant motherfucker.

And in four sentences, author Erik Fraser Storlie explains why for me:

"This is a Mad Hatter’s tea party, where hierarchical robes and titles, sadomasochistic austerities, and subterranean libertinism mix together in incestuous 'spiritual communities' filled with distrust and rivalries – all this in a scramble for the summit of some distant 'spiritual' mountain. This would be comic if it weren’t tragic.

"And it is tragic.

"It is tragic because countless Americans hunger for genuine meaning – meaning unavailable in the toxic mimics offered by game shows, professional sports, 'reality' TV, ugly politics, 'free-market' competition, and unimaginably wasteful wealth accumulation at the top."

This explains why I have resisted joining everything from a zen sangha to the Society of Professional Journalists. These things always look pretty good at first glance, and then when you get a closer look, it's about 5% worthwhile stuff and about 95% horseshit and internal politics and drama. Granted, they don't wear hierarchical robes in SPJ, but that's probably because nobody's thought of it.

(I wrote a lengthy aside here about my own experience with SPJ, then decided it didn't have anything to do with the point I was trying to make, so I cut it. But it's a good story. Maybe I'll make it a post of its own someday.)

Everyone who has studied zen to any degree knows the story of Bodhidharma and Emperor Wu. It may be apocryphal, but it still sets the stage for the arrival of zen in China.

Here's a version lifted from the web site monkeytree.org:

"The emperor practiced the outward behaviors of Buddhism; he wore Buddhist robes, abstained from eating meat, built many temples and supported hundreds of monks and nuns. The emperor was proud of his knowledge of Buddhism and his support of Buddhism in his kingdom. He asked Bodhidharma, 'Since I came to the throne, I have built many temples, published numerous scriptures and supported countless monks and nuns. How great is the merit in all these?'

"'No merit to speak of,' was the shocking reply of Bodhidharma. The emperor had often heard renowned masters say, 'Do good, and you will receive good; do bad and you will receive bad. The Law of Cause and Effect is unchangeable, effects follow causes as shadows follow figures.' But now, this foreign sage declared that all his efforts had earned no merit at all.

"The emperor failed to understand that one is not practicing Buddhism if one does good with the desire to gain merit for oneself. It will be more like promoting one's own welfare or hoping for admiration by the public. The emperor asked his next question, 'What then, is the essence of Buddhism?'

"Bodhidharma's immediate reply was, 'Vast emptiness and no essence at all!' This stunned the emperor. Other masters had explained that the essence was contained in doctrines such as The Four Noble Truths and The Law of Cause and Effect, but this foreign sage of Buddhism had just declared there was 'no essence at all'."

Bodhidharma had presented the emperor with a version of Buddhism that was so stripped down, so bereft of the pomp and circumstance that had accreted since the Buddha's death, that the emperor couldn't even recognize it.

Later, it is said, Bodhidharma spent nine years 'at the wall,' which is to say, in meditation. History does not say whether he entered the room with his left foot, bowed to his cushion, bowed to the wall, bowed to his partner, allemande left and dosado. My hunch is that he didn't.

Nowadays, it seems like zen isn't much better than being in the Assembly of God. Well, they don't roll around on the floor and speak in tongues in zen, so there's that. On the other hand, in the Assembly of God, they don't smack you with a stick because your head is tilted at just slightly the wrong angle.

But this is what happens. This is what humans do. They start out with a good thing, and they cannot resist loading it up with horseshit and drama. The thing gets going, whether it's zen or Christianity or the Platypus Lodge, and then it gets boring. So what we can do to spice this thing up some, broaden the appeal, improve the demographic? Aha! Just add horseshit!

Everyone has seen the phenomenon where a teacher becomes popular, and suddenly the teacher is bigger than the teaching. I think this happens because in any religion or belief system, about 70% of the people can't 'get' the teaching at all. So they focus instead on the personality, whether it's a tulku or a televangelist. And this, in turn, leads to the popularity of sexy, charismatic teachers and preachers who can spin a compelling line of BS for the rubes. And with the sexy, charismatic teachers come the outsized egos and narcissism.

Or they focus on the process, which is why you hear people describe their beliefs in terms of how many retreats they've done, or how many revivals they've attended, or whether they saw Billy Graham in person.

Somewhere down below all the lasers and arena-sized sound systems and online stores and ultramegasuperchurches and ski resorts-turned-upscale-zen-monasteries, there is still some original truth, but who gives a shit about that? What do the focus groups show, that's what we need to know.

(John Lennon was on the mark when he said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ. A lot of people are more popular than Jesus Christ. He may be the only religious leader who is actually a minor figure in the religion named for him. At the moment, Sarah Palin is a bigger player in Christianity than Jesus is.)

As is often the case with my lengthy posts, this one just went on and on until it ran out of steam. No conclusion, folks. I'm done for now.

More Delusion

I may have to reconsider the post I wrote entitled "Secrets of the Ancient Horndog Zen Masters Revealed".

Just about a year ago, the website Buddhist Geeks published a review of the then newly-revealed archive of the writings of zen master Robert Aitken. The archive revealed that Aitken, a major and revered figure in American zen, concealed the allegedly abusive behavior of zen monk, and later abbott, Eido Shimano, for forty-odd years.

The Aitken-Shimano Letters

The same article was published at The Zen Site.

The events and behavior described in this article go well beyond mere animal magnetism and/or personal charisma. Shimano is described at one point, for example, as volunteering to work in a psychiatric ward in order to find more women upon whom to prey. This is genuinely creepy stuff.

I'm going to ponder this some more. I still don't understand how he was able to find so many willing victims over the years. (I expect to be criticized for using the expression 'willing victims', but I don't know another way to describe them. It appears no one was threatened or intimidated. They voluntarily had sex with him, at least sometimes hoping it would improve their chances of 'enlightenment', and afterward regretted it. I still don't understand how this happened so many times.)

Lineage Delusion

A fascinating article from the Sweeping Zen website. It questions the validity of the whole concept of ‘dharma transmission’.

Lineage Delusions: Eido Shimano Roshi, Dharma Transmission and American Zen

Almost every Buddhist teacher claims to have received his teaching in an unbroken person-to-person line that began with the Buddha himself. In zen, at least, this hits bumpy ground with the story of Hui Neng, the sixth leader of zen in China, through whom all subsequent zen dharma transmission passes. I won't go into all the details here, but the story of how he received transmission is considered by some scholars to be far-fetched, and possibly invented by his own students to conceal the reality that Hui Neng was a self-taught zen master who received dharma transmission from nobody.

Anyway, the article is a good read if you're interested in this stuff.

Secrets of the Ancient Horndog Zen Masters Revealed

I'm only half-joking when I say that every time I read about one of these zen masters getting in trouble for his sexual adventures, I find myself wondering where I sign up. I suspect a lot of other men think the same thing.

But here's the reality: donning the robes of a zen priest would not improve my love life one iota. All it would do is make me into a pretty dull and boring zen priest. I would still be me, just in a different set of clothes. Still negative, still cynical, still no aura of danger or bad boy cred. Still just as safe and dreary as a bowl of tepid oatmeal.

The thing that makes these sixty- and seventy-year-old zen geezers attractive to women is the same thing that makes them successful as teachers. It's not their accumulated wisdom or their enlightenment; it's intensity and personal magnetism. They'd be just as successful selling multi-level marketing schemes or running for political office. Having a title and a Japanese middle name have little or nothing to do with it.

Some of you know that due to a series of odd circumstances, I briefly acquired a frankly undeserved 'bad boy' reputation in my mid-forties, and the results were salutary. However, it was going against my basic nature, and it intellectually and emotionally drained me. I was always 'acting'. I eventually went back to being good ol' reliable boring mcarp.

At this stage in my life, it's sort of comforting to have a sense of my place in the scheme of things, even if it's not quite the place I would prefer to have. I'm too old and burnt out now to swim upstream against my basic nature.

But it would be nice to have that personal assistant.

More Human Contact

I got a ticket today for having an expired car tag. The tag expired in November, and I had put off getting the little sticker that keeps it current. This is another of those annual chores that seems like it happens every six weeks. A year just isn't what it used to be.

I don't mind the money, but I hate the paperwork. And the human contact. Unrealized buddhas one and all, but I don't want to sit in that dingy tag agency with them, waiting for my name to be called. But I dragged myself down there in the afternoon and got it done.

One of the great things about becoming a fully authentic zen master, other than apparently getting laid relentlessly, is that you often get some sort of humble monk assistant who takes care of all the shit work while you're neither being nor not being.

What I probably really need is a nanny.

More Winter

Snowpocalypse 2: Blizzard Boogaloo is forecast to arrive in town tomorrow around 6pm. This time, all the livestock will be inside.

Again

I see where another prominent US zen priest has decided to disrobe and resign from all his priestly duties because of an affair he had with one of his students.

Inside My Own Head

Buddhism teaches non-duality, i.e., not adhering to a view of the world as 'me' and 'other'. But as time goes by, I have more and more trouble adhering to this. My natural inclination is to view everything as, 'here I am safe and quiet inside my own head' vs. 'what the hell is the matter with you people?!'

It really is pretty cozy in here.

Not Watching

I can't tell you the last time I watched a Super Bowl. Early seventies, probably. And I'm not watching now.

The 28-Day Meditation Challenge: Blew It On Day One

Every year, Tricycle Magazine holds its ‘28-Day Meditation Challenge’. I thought my practice had become consistent enough that I could undertake the challenge this year. Of course, I didn’t actually read the challenge. If I had, I would have noticed it required twenty minutes weekday mornings, another twenty weekday evenings (almost twice my regular session), and ninety minutes every Saturday and Sunday. I noticed this for the first time on Jan. 30th, only two days before the challenge’s Feb. 1 start date.

So, I blew it on day one. I had been so mentally overloaded by the snowstorm and Gastón's disappearance that I didn’t sit that day at all. Yesterday, I kept putting it off, and by the time I decided to do it, I was too sleepy and went straight to bed.

But even though I am not living up to the challenge, I am generally satisfied with the way my practice is going. I look forward to it most days. Mentally, it’s no effort to get on the zafu, although sometimes there’s a physical challenge.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my current practice wouldn’t pass muster with purists. I don’t do gassho or bow to my cushion. I move a lot, generally to straighten up when I find myself starting to slump forward. Lately, there’s also been some coughing, sneezing and sniffling. Oddly enough, this is a problem only during meditation. I'll go all day without coughing or sneezing, and suddenly have an attack of it when I’m sitting. I’m sure the coughing is because of breathing very dry winter air, but I can't explain the sneezing.

Sometimes I will move my right leg if I feel it going numb or starting to cramp. I read different opinions about the numbness. Some say it’s harmless, and should be ‘worked through’ as part of the practice, while others say it should be avoided. None of these are medical opinions, and until I find a medical opinion online, I’m going to err on the side of caution and avoid letting my legs go numb. It’s always my right leg, btw, never my left.

My current session time is 25 minutes. I have a meditation timer installed on my iPad that rings a tibetan bowl sound every five minutes. I suppose that for ‘real’ meditators, the timer keeps them from accidentally sitting all day long, and getting nothing else done. For me, though, it’s more of a ‘come on, just two more chimes’ thing. Mentally, I think I want to do more, but my body isn’t ready yet.

I do sort of light meditation throughout the day. What I mean by that is that I try to remember to be aware of my own breath and be mindful of surroundings and my own thoughts all the time. I am a natural introvert, prone to shutting down in crowded places, and that actually makes this process easier. If you see me in the coffee shop and I seem to have ‘zoned out’, that's what is happening. Obviously, it doesn't look like meditation, and strictly speaking, it isn't. But it is a process of disengaging from the ten thousand things going on around me and getting back to my own quiet personal center.

I suspect zen and taoism always had a special appeal for introverts. For those of us who find the daily business of life overwhelming and intolerable, zen and taoism both offer a sort of intellectual shelter, as well as a justification for our unsociable ways.

Better weather

The sun is out today, and there's not a cloud in the sky. The official temp right now is 26°, but my car thermometer showed it as 34°. Snow is definitely melting. The hot water is running in the garage again. Looks like the faucet on the back of the garage might have burst. It has a relief valve, but the whole thing is coated with ice, and I can't tell if the valve worked or if it broke.

Best news, though: Gastón reappeared this morning, one week to the day after he disappeared. His feet were barely wet, and he was warm to the touch, as if he'd been lying in the sun somewhere. My guess is that he spent the whole storm in a neighbor's house and didn't come out until five minutes before I found him.

Solitude Day 3

Not so much solitude today. Went to Jimmy's Egg for breakfast, then to the Red Cup just to visit a little while. Later, I went to VZD's for dinner.

Streets are still snowy and difficult. I'm trying to decide whether to try to make a run to the grocery store for more housebound munchies. The forecast calls for more snow tomorrow, but I'm tried of getting in and out of my Sorels.

Still no sign of G or any other neighborhood cats.

Solitude Day 2

Made it to Wendy's this afternoon, but it was a major effort. Some of the main thoroughfares have been plowed and sanded, but others appear to have been untouched. I'm getting tweets and Facebook messages from city employees alternately telling me to stay off the streets and exhorting me to go to the NBA game downtown tonight. I will choose to stay off the streets. I have no interest in the NBA even when the weather's nice.

I tried to plow the minivan through a three-foot deep by four- or five-foot wide snow drift in the driveway. I almost accomplished it. I eventually gave up out of fear I would sideswipe my neighbor's car. (We share a double driveway.) The van hasn't been driven in perhaps six weeks; it almost wouldn't start. I let it idle while I drove to Wendy's in the beetle so the battery would recharge.

The cold water in the garage is running, but the hot water is not. I don't understand that. The lines are basically side by side. I know the thing about hot water freezing faster than cold water, but this an on-demand system, and the water in both pipes should have been the same temperature. The heat was off in the garage, unbeknownst to me. I turned it on, and I hope I'll have fully functioning water and no breaks once it warms up a little.

Still no sign of Gastón, nor any other neighborhood cat.

Cabin Fever

Like millions of other Americans, I am snowed in. I don't know how much snow we received here, but there are drifts two to three feet deep around my house, and I've seen reports here in town of drifts up to five feet deep.

This is a good opportunity to practice that solitude about which I speak so frequently, but after just one day, I'm getting cabin fever.

I tried getting out yesterday. I went to a breakfast place just about a mile from the house. It was closed – the first time I've ever seen it closed by winter weather.

I got stuck in the parking lot. Two guys were kind enough to help push me out. We have a large enclave of Moroccan immigrants here, and they appeared to be part of that group.

The VW beetle, I learned, is not very good in snow. It sits much closer to the ground than the minivan. I might not have gotten stuck if I had taken the van out instead of the beetle.

Coming home from the restaurant, I decided not to take the snow-packed street I had come on. Instead, I went out of my way north to take a main thoroughfare that I thought would be plowed and clear. It wasn't. The city used to plow what it calls 'designated snow routes,' but it appears they have stopped that practice and now just close the city when it snows.

So, I got stuck twice more. Once I had to stop when a person just walked off a curb in front of me. The second time, a police car made a U-turn from the oncoming lane and pulled diagonally across the street with lights flashing. As soon as I came to a full stop – and was bogged down – the officer drove off again.

I came close to abandoning the car at that point, but fortunately, someone in a big pickup came along and pushed me out of the snow.

So, I will stay in today. The dog refuses to go out at all, but is getting tired of being cooped up. She's barking in her crate right now, in fact. Rollo the cat is in. But Gastón wandered off Saturday and I haven't seen him since. He is much less prone to wandering off than Rollo is, which is why I didn't worry too much when he didn't come in Saturday night. My next door neighbor told me she saw him Sunday afternoon. I have to say I doubt he will survive this, unless someone has let him in a house. The temperature as I write this is 7 degrees, and it has been in the single digits for almost 24 hours. We don't have above-freezing temps in the forecast until Friday, and then for only a short while.

I've seen one trail of dog tracks in the snow since the storm hit. All the other strays and neighborhood pets appear to be hiding out. I wonder how many will survive this.

On the plus side, the house is warm, I have food and the electricity has stayed on. I still have Internet connectivity. I haven't been out to the garage to check the pipes, but the water in the house is flowing freely.

I had decided to do Tricycle Magazine's 28-Day Meditation Challenge, which began yesterday. But I was so frayed by the experience of getting back home I didn't sit. I guess I should have looked at that as an opportunity to meditate on the experience, but I didn't. I also have a touch of head cold, and meditation doesn't go too well when you're sniffling and coughing the whole time.

But I imagine I'll sit today. I've nothing else to do.

And the Horse It Rode In On

I was snowed in Tuesday, and I ended up spending time reminiscing about TV news with former coworkers on Facebook. This is something I try to avoid doing, but one of them had tagged me in a story he was telling about a live shot I had done, and I allowed myself to be drawn into the conversation.

It didn't take long for a lot of fifteen- to twenty-year-old anger and resentment to resurface. God damn, I hated that business.

I suppose when I achieve enlightenment, I'll look back on all that with compassion and equanimity. In the meantime, fuck TV news and the horse it rode in on.

Test Results!

The website similarminds.com has an online personality disorder test. Here are my results:

Personality Disorder Test Results Paranoid |||||||||||| 46% Schizoid |||||||||||||||||| 78% Schizotypal |||||||||||||||||| 78% Antisocial |||||||||| 34% Borderline |||||||||||||| 58% Histrionic |||| 18% Narcissistic |||||| 30% Avoidant |||||||||||||| 54% Dependent |||||||||||||||| 62% Obsessive-Compulsive |||||| 22%

Take Free Personality Disorder Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

This doesn't show how I compare to the rest of those taking the test. But I was more schizoid, more schizotypal, more borderline, more avoidant and more dependent. I was less than the rest on everything else.

Of course, I'm not going to stake my mental health on the results of one internet survey. I'll see if I can find another one for a second opinion.

21st Century Schizoid Man

I learned something new this week, thanks to one of my Facebook friends.

I had always thought 'schizoid' was just a slang term used to describe someone who appeared mentally ill, or even just very eccentric. But now I know it has a clinical definition, as summarized by Wikipedia:

"Schizoid personality disorder (SPD) is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of interest in social relationships, a tendency towards a solitary lifestyle, secretiveness, and emotional coldness. SPD is not the same as schizophrenia, although they share some similar characteristics such as detachment or blunted affect and there is increased prevalence of the disorder in families with schizophrenia."

The article goes on to describe signs and symptoms:

"People with SPD are seen as aloof, cold and indifferent, which causes some social problems. Most individuals diagnosed with SPD have difficulty establishing personal relationships or expressing their feelings in a meaningful way, and may remain passive in the face of unfavourable situations. Their communication with other people at times may be indifferent and concise. Because of their lack of communication with other people, those who are diagnosed with SPD are not able to have a reflection of themselves and how well they get along with others. The reflection is important so they can be more aware of themselves and their own actions in social surroundings. R. D. Laing suggests that without being enriched by injections of interpersonal reality there occurs an impoverishment in which one's self-image becomes more and more empty and volatilized, leading the individual himself to feel unreal.

"According to Gunderson, "people with SPD 'feel lost' without the people they are normally around because they need a sense of security and stability. However, when the patient’s personal space is violated, they feel suffocated and feel the need to free themselves and be independent. Those people who have SPD are happiest when they are in a relationship in which the partner places few emotional or intimate demands on them, as it is not people as such that they want to avoid, but both negative and positive emotions, emotional intimacy, and self disclosure.

"This means that it is possible for schizoid individuals to form relationships with others based on intellectual, physical, familial, occupational, or recreational activities as long as these modes of relating do not require or force the need for emotional intimacy, which the individual will reject."

And there's more. The whole article is here.

It caught my attention because it seems to describe a more extreme version of myself.

"The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fourth edition, a widely used manual for diagnosing mental disorders, defines schizoid personality disorder (in Axis II Cluster A) as:

A. A pervasive pattern of detachment from social relationships and a restricted range of expression of emotions in interpersonal settings, beginning by early adulthood (age eighteen or older) and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by four (or more) of the following:

1. neither desires nor enjoys close relationships, including being part of a family
2. almost always chooses solitary activities
3. has little, if any, interest in having sexual experiences with another person
4. takes pleasure in few, if any, activities
5. lacks close friends or confidants other than first-degree relatives
6. appears indifferent to the praise or criticism of others
7. shows emotional coldness, detachment, or flattened affect

B. Does not occur exclusively during the course of schizophrenia, a mood disorder with psychotic features, another psychotic disorder, or a pervasive developmental disorder and is not due to the direct physiological effects of a general medical condition.

"It is a requirement of DSM-IV that a diagnosis of any specific personality disorder also satisfies a set of general personality disorder criteria.

"In the draft of the DSM-V it is proposed that schizoid personality disorder should be represented and diagnosed by a combination of core impairment in personality functioning and specific pathological personality traits, rather than as a specific type.

Fewer than 1 out of 100 Americans meet the standard for Schizoid Personality Disorder.

Here's some more from the Mayo Clinic.

By the Way...

If anyone wants to send me a willowy, ethereal young zen student, who's also impressionable, gullible and profoundly codependent, and who maybe looks kinda sorta like Stevie Nicks, that would be so special.

Buy a Porn Star an iPad

There is a story on The Daily Beast today about how porn stars are using Twitter. Apparently they have some special Twitter porn service that doesn't do anything but manage porn star Twitter accounts, which in itself is an interesting exercise in entrepreneurship.

But the part that caught my attention, 'way down in the story, was how porn actresses use their Twitter accounts to solicit, and receive, gifts from fans:

“On the place on Twitter where you can put your website I put my Amazon wish list,” says DeArmond. She also likes to tweet out her wish list. She says three packages—jewelry, shoes—a day is normal in her mail.

...

Not to be outdone, Kristina Rose says: “I got an iPad yesterday. The fan had it engraved on the back to say ‘Slutwoman A.K.A. Kristina Rose.’ I love Twitter.”

As I've written frequently, infatuation literally means 'made foolish.' And I've been made foolish a lot. A whole lot. But holy shit, I've never been made this foolish. Let's skip the part about being porn actresses. They could be rock stars or anesthesiologists – it wouldn't matter. Buying someone you don't even know, have never met and will never meet gifts off her Amazon 'wish list' – knowing full well she's just trolling for them? That's crazy.

I guess I'm seeing this as sort of the flip side of the coin for the gnarly old zen master pressuring young female students to fuck their way to enlightenment with him.

Recovered Memories

When I was three or four years old, I had a set of those wooden blocks that kids always had back then.

I don't remember flushing them down the toilet, but I do remember my dad pulling the toilet off the floor mount to fish them out. I remember being fascinated by the big hole in the floor, and wondering where the water went. (Even now, I don't know. Where does the water go when you pull a toilet off the floor?)

He was pissed off, of course, but I don't remember him being outrageously angry. He didn't yell at me or spank me or anything.

And tonight, for some reason, I had a flash of something. Fifty-five years later, I sort of remember knowing as I flushed those blocks down the toilet that they would be gone forever, that I would not get them back, and that, for some reason, they had to be gone, and that I had to deprive myself of them for some reason.

I wonder why I thought that. It sort of makes me sad to recall it.

New Stuff

I broke down and bought a new computer last week. My old day-to-day computer, a dual G5 PowerMac, was almost eight years old. It wouldn't run the current version of the Mac operating system, and therefore cannot run a lot of current Mac software.

I hope the new Mac keeps me set for the rest of my life.

Meditation update

I continue with the meditation practice. Not hitting it seven nights a week, but four or five. I'm still trying to just be comfortable. Lotus and half-lotus are beyond me, as I've mentioned, and I probably won't live long enough to ever be that flexible again.

Hell, I'm doing it all wrong, anyway. Here's Brad Warner's instructions on how to do zazen correctly.

Here's some more instructions from the Albuquerque Zen Center.

Nothing is ever easy, is it?

I started out thinking I would just sit, focus on the breath, observe thoughts, etc. I didn't know there was all this put-your-left-foot-in turn-all-about do-the-hokey-pokey stuff involved, too.

I like the way Liza Rose gracefully rises from the zafu. I could probably do that, too, thirty or forty years ago. Here's how I do it now: at the end of twenty minutes, I fall over on my left side. Then I just lie there for about ten seconds. After that, I slowly stretch my legs back out. That takes six or seven seconds. My legs don't go numb, or even hurt that much, anymore; they just don't want to move. I could no more stand straight up after twenty minutes of meditation than I could flap my arms and fly.

Of course, the whole purported purpose of the lotus position is to keep you from falling over. If I couldn't fall over, I would have sat there trapped for days after the first session and eventually died of dehydration. I would probably have been considered a great master for doing that.

Last night, I tried doing the seiza position taught in martial arts schools. This is what my friend Ms. W&E does. It was even worse. Both my feet went numb after about fifteen minutes. Plus, when I sit in seiza, I'm up so high I don't have a lap. So there's no place to rest my hands in a mudra.

If you look at the woman on the first zazen link and the woman sitting seiza in the third link, you will notice that they are both rather willowy. Probably ethereal, too, but without the floaty clothes, it's hard to tell.

I think you probably just have to be willowy to do this stuff. Me doing it is like performing brain surgery with a butter knife out of the kitchen drawer.

Keith Olbermann

I am a big fan of Keith Olbermann. There was a time when he was almost the only progressive voice in the ‘mainstream media.’ Moreover, he was one of the few people on television willing to swim upstream against ‘the narrative’, that sort of conventional wisdom embraced by the punditocracy.

But Olbermann made himself a target. He promoted the impression he was bigger than his employer, and all but untouchable because of it. I suspect executives at NBC and GE, and perhaps Comcast as well, had the impression he was ‘out of control’, and encouraging a sense among other MSNBC staffers that he, and not management, was the ultimate authority in day-to-day operations.

So, in spite of the fact he rescued the network from obscurity, and remained its most popular personality with viewers, they fired him.

There are people at FOX News, of course, who make Olbermann seem like the very model of a sober, reasoned newscaster. But although Glenn Beck may suggest that various political figures need to be “shot in the head”, you will never hear him imply that he is bigger than FOX News itself.

I hope Olbermann turns up somewhere else doing what he did at MSNBC.

Maybe It's Just Me

I'm still trying to understand this story about the 70-something Zen master in New York who has been accused of sexually exploiting students for fifty years.

I was talking about this with a friend whose Buddhist beliefs are a mix of Tibetan and Theravada. I gave her a synopsis of what I'd read, and she said, "Oh, yeah. That happens all the time."

I know it happens frequently, I told her, but I didn't understand why women would agree to this.

"Well, if he's a teacher, that's a powerful attraction." She didn't say she'd done it herself, but I sort of had the sense that was hanging over her comment.

I still don't get it.

If your Zen teacher suggests to you that the two of you hook up, and maybe opens his robe to give you a look at the goods (as this guy apparently did), why would you not just say, "Well, thanks for the offer, but there are about fifty Zen masters in New York City, and I'm sure that at least some of them are not old perverts, so I'll just see you around."

Maybe I just have a weird attitude about sex. I'm not a Victorian. I don't think I'm a prude. But I wouldn't think, "Gee, maybe I oughta fuck this gal, so she won't be mad at me or not let me come to meetings." I would just go somewhere else.

Cold

18 degrees outside right now. Grateful again to be inside and warm.

Meditation update and other notes

The meditation practice seems to be improving. When I last posted about this, I mentioned that it seemed to be getting harder rather than easier. But I may have just hit some bump I needed to get over. I'm doing better now, and I enjoy it enough that I don't have to force myself to sit.

My meditation space is in the back bedroom, all the way back in the far southeast corner of the house, away from the street. It feels very quiet and secure back there. I have to remind myself that the sense of security is false. It's all really very fragile, and inevitably headed toward its end someday.

A house around the corner from me burned the other night. It had been vacant and boarded up the whole ten years I have lived here. I had seen indigents climbing out a window one morning several years back; I assume they had slept there overnight.

Recently the owners began rehabilitating the house for eventual sale or occupancy. But the fire left the place a charred shell. What's left will fall down soon if it isn't demolished. That's the fourth house fire in ths neighborhood over the past decade, and by far the worst.

Snow is in the forecast for tonight and tomorrow.

Here's How I Roll

For as long as I've been able to drive, I've preferred major city streets to interstates, and neighborhood streets to major city streets. So, when I go somewhere, I frequently take a meandering route rather than the fastest, most direct one.

This makes some of my regular passengers crazy, although most eventually get used to it.

I'm sometimes absent-minded when I drive, and moreso when I have a passenger. Ms. HRP, Diane, Nurse Kathryn and even my ex have all been accustomed to having to remind me when to turn, or to point out that I'm actually getting farther away from my intended destination instead of closer to it.

When I was younger, I used to drive like a bat out of hell down residential streets. As I've gotten older, and become a homeowner myself, I've learned to have more regard for safety and quiet in neighborhoods. Plus, I'm rarely in a hurry to get anywhere. Even if I'm not in my own neighborhood, I try to drive like I live there.

Taking residential streets keeps me out of the traffic. I'm not as distracted by billboards and other signs. I like looking at homes, and checking out paint schemes and landscaping. Sometimes I'll make an unplanned turn just to see what's to be found down an interesting-looking street.

I guess it's obvious I live in an older neighborhood with grid streets. I've never liked cul-de-sacs, and I wouldn't live in a neighborhood that has them.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Y'know, it seems like about two-thirds of the things I post here are just rehashes of things I've already posted.

It's felt that way for a couple of years now.

Going Downhill

People told me when I retired that I would start mentally 'going downhill' within a matter of months. It has taken longer than that, but there's no question in my mind that it's happened.

I have always been sort of a fuzzy, scattered thinker. I guess having a job forced to me to focus my thoughts for at least part of the day. Now, there's nothing to do that, and it shows in the general slippage in my overall presence of mind. It's been very gradual, but I certainly have the sense that I'm less organized, less motivated, less everything than I was four years ago.

This has had some benefits. I don't have as much stress as I once had, for one thing. It has also helped me embrace eastern philosophy. I think the study of zen and tao is not especially compatible with the disciplined 'gung ho' mental approach working Americans are expected to have. Especially with taoism, I think you have to be prepared to reject a lot of American 'values' that are cherished in the workplace.

But there is a down side. I really have no concept of the passage of time anymore. My doctor told me last week I needed to come in for a checkup, as I hadn't come in at all in 2010. I could have sworn I was there last spring, but in fact, it was fall of 2009. It actually seems like it was only about five months ago.

I also need to pay my property taxes. I live close enough to downtown that I just drive to the courthouse rather than mailing a check. I do this once a year, but it seems like I do it every 90 days.

I hate doing this stuff. It's not the money; I just can't stand the repetitive task, even if it's once a year. And yet, my life is the same from day to day, and the repetitiveness of daily living seems to calm and comfort me. I usually eat breakfast in one of two places. I may go for a walk around the same park. I seldom travel more than two miles from my house, and never more than 20 miles.

I do not feel at peace with the world. My view is very dualistic. It's me right here, and a lot of crazy shit out there.

I've finally worked out my human contact quota. I can currently stand 120 minutes of human contact every 72 hours. Waiters, store clerks and the like don't count toward the total. If I go more than 120 minutes with my friends, I start to get overwhelmed and have to withdraw.

I have this sense of an overall decline in my sense of being present in the world. But, I was never all that wild about the world anyway.

I Don't Want To Think

I just do not want to think. About anything. Nothing interests me. Nothing enthuses me. What a ridiculous situation we humans are in.

If I could detach my intellect from my physical body and fly amongst the stars and galaxies, that would interest me. For awhile, anyway.

But all this pointless blather here on earth does nothing for me.

Deja Vu All Over Again

For about the past two years, it's felt like about two-thirds of the things I post here are just rehashes of things I posted previously.

I'm not sure that's true, but it feels that way.

Nothing You Could Call a 'Relationship'

Years ago, a friend gave me a tape of a lecture on relationships by a self-help guru. I think the lecture was intended for recovering alcoholics and ACAs, but I'm not sure of that.

Anyway, among the bits of advice he gave was this: “Don't try to make connections with people you're attracted to.”

That seems sort of nonsensical. What are we supposed to do — hook up with people we're not attracted to? In a word, according to this guy, yes.

His reasoning was that those of us who grow up in alcoholic families can't make intelligent choices about relationship partners. We're drawn, at some subconscious level, to recreating the atmosphere that existed in our childhood homes.

I've had discussions on this subject with friends, and most agree with the premise. Where we disagree is on the subject of whether a person can reprogram himself or herself to be attracted to a different kind of person. My position is that we can't. I believe we can be educated to recognize when we are attracted to an incompatible person, but I don't think we can change the attraction.

This brings me around to my response to blogblah!'s comment to a previous post:

If by "successful" you mean only a relationship that's filled with laughter and dancing, great sex and lasts forever, we're all failures.
On the other hand, if by "successful" you mean any relationship in which you had some good times, a few laughs and a bit of snogging, you've had some.
The only relationship I know of that you've had that's been a bit of a "failure" is the one you have with yourself because you spend so much time with him even though you don't care for his company, which is a shame because you're really a pretty fun, smart guy and rather pleasant to hang out with.

First of all, thanks for the compliment.

But actually, I wasn't talking about relationships at all. None of these ever reached the relationship stage.

I think I've mentioned this before, in conversation if not here, but my tendency has always been to suddenly fall for someone after I've known them awhile — like a couple of years or more.

This rarely works out. In fact, it so rarely works out that I saw a cartoon about it on the web back in November. The guy makes his impassioned confession of adoration to his long-time platonic friend, and she responds with a sweeping condemnation of the guy's whole life — based entirely on his inability to provide conflict and drama — that I swear is an almost word-for-word recitation of what I had been told, and told more than once.

Part of the cartoon guy's problem - and mine — was that the guy's friend was a drama queen. She didn't want a 'relationship,' as I understand the word. She wanted some guy who would keep her life in constant upheaval so she could dish to her girlfriends about how dramatic it all was.

This, unfortunately, is the kind of woman I always fall for. Sometimes it's evident right from the start, and thanks to therapy and accumulated life experience, I can keep myself out of harm's way. But once in awhile, the signs are so subtle that I don't see them consciously until after I've already formed some emotional attachment.

So, here's what I know: if I find myself strongly attracted to a woman I've known for awhile, I've made a bad choice and I need to walk away. Once in awhile, I decide, ‘to hell with it, let’s see what happens.’ And the results are always the same — nothing you could call a 'relationship'.

I am too old for this stuff now.

Speaking of Bad Relationship Experiences

Teenager Passes Out Marrying Cow He Had Sex With

“In his defence, Alit admitted to the act of bestiality but claimed the cow, which he believed was a young and beautiful woman, had wooed him with flattering compliments.”

What kind of beer do they sell in Bali, anyway?

The Meditation Thing

I have been trying to sit for 20 minutes every evening. Instead of getting easier with each passing day, it gets harder. What started as minor discomfort in my right leg, right at the hip, has grown into distracting pain. At the end of the 20 minutes, it hurts to stretch my legs back out.

Some discomfort is to be expected, but I suspect this goes beyond what is normal. I also wonder why it is in one leg but not the other.

Tonight it was so uncomfortable that I stopped after 15 minutes.

So, dzaster...

...how is it out there?

A Quiet Mind

There is a famous story about a man who approached Bodhidharma with intent of becoming his student. "My mind is not pacified," he told the monk. "Master, pacify my mind."

"If you bring me that mind, I will pacify it for you," Bodhidharma replied.

"When I search my mind I cannot hold it," the student said.

"There," Bodhidharma answered. "I've pacified it for you already."

The house is turning into a mess again. I did a little house cleaning today, but only a little. When I try to clean, my mind sort of freezes up. I'll look at the stuff, ponder what to do with it, and perhaps throw a few things away. Then I get simultaneously bored and overwhelmed and just walk away from it.

When Kat comes over here to clean, she just wades into it and does it. There's no existential crisis attached. Even my ex-wife has come over and cleaned for me, and does a faster and better job than me.

My mind is not pacified. If it were, I would settle in to these tasks and do them.

I do not understand how Bodhidharma's answer to the student applies to my situation, but I think it must in some way.

I spent an hour or so this evening indulging in some self-pity about my failures in relationships. I think I have written about this before, but here it is again, anyway. I've always screwed up with the women I was really interested in. Always. This has inevitably been followed by weeks or months of soul-searching and agonizing about my flaws and shortcomings.

I finally learned from zen that I needed to stop analyzing and re-analyzing. I learned to see that the thing didn't work out, note in my mind that I was having some reaction to it, then move on.

Once in awhile, though, I lapse back into analysis and self-pity, as I did this evening. I saw it for what it was, which was good, but I continued to indulge it, which was not good.

Ten or twelve years ago, when I was much more active on the Well than I am now, I wrote page after page after page of self-criticism and analysis of my failed love life. At one point, I was the single largest user of disk space on the Well's conferencing system. There were users who posted more frequently, and users who had been there three to five times longer, but I outpaced them all in sheer tonnage of text. And it was all about my inept love life.

I mention this because I had the temptation this evening to revert back to that form right here. I was going to post a careful outline of all my inadequacies. But I caught myself in time. No inadequacies. No analysis.

Only don't know.

Even what I've written is too much. 'As soon as you open your mouth to speak,' the zen proverb says, 'already you've made a mistake.'

Master, quiet my mind.

Missing a Night's Sleep

I didn't go to bed Thursday night. I had slept until about 11 that morning. When 10 pm rolled around, I didn't feel tired or sleepy, so I just didn't go to bed. And I just kept on going until about 8 pm Friday. I was sitting at my computer reading blogs and Facebook, and realized that I hadn't eaten anything all day.

I decide to go to the Taco Bueno near my house and get tacos. I almost fell over when I stood up, and almost fell again going down the front steps. But I made it to the car, made it to Taco Bueno and home again.

My hands began shaking — so badly that I actually shook the first taco to pieces. But I got it and three more down, did some more Facebook, and finally went to bed about 9:30 pm Friday when I could no longer get my eyes to focus.

I woke up Saturday morning with a sore throat, and have been experiencing cold-like symptoms all day. I was a little groggy this morning, but other than that I seem to have suffered no ill effects from missing a night's sleep.

It just doesn't get any better than this.

gizmodo.com: Cockroach Found In Woman's Colonoscopy

How Does This Happen?

There's another story circulating in the Buddhasphere about a teacher sexually exploiting some of his female students. This one is a little different in that the exploiting has been going on for about fifty years.

Fifty years.

The teacher is now in his seventies, and is still apparently able to seduce, threaten and/or coerce female students into having sex with him.

I'll be damned if I know how.

I'm trying to not be glib about this. It's serious business. But I can't imagine what power a gnarly 70-year-old zen geezer with a shaved head could have over women that would lead them to have sex with him, especially since they seem to regret it almost immediately afterward. Am I just naive?

This is obviously not just a Buddhist thing. David Koresh. Jim Bakker. Cedric Miller, who was doing threesomes at Bible study. Earl Paulk, whose nephew and successor was later revealed to be his son from an affair he had with his sister-in-law. Some of these guys were charismatic, in the secular sense of the word, but others were just oily little snerts from the get-go.

And yet, somehow...

I simply don't get it.

Then again, there are apparently women who have fucked Newt Gingrich. So I guess anything's possible.

Well, shit. Gerry Rafferty's dead.

In the early eighties, I worked in another city. I had not gone there entirely by choice. I had been fired from my job (again), and I took refuge there because someone was willing to hire me.

I worked in an office with several people who had come there from other cities and towns. Of all the people with my job title, only one was local. The rest of us hoped to be just passing through, on our way to greener pastures in a couple of years.

It was, in fact, a basically journeyman profession. Across the country, hundreds of young men and women like us were doing their two years here, three years there, in hopes of eventually striking the big time in a city like Los Angeles or New York. In the meantime, we toiled away in medium and small cities and towns, paying our dues.

And on many evenings – most evenings, in fact – my coworkers and I would head to a local watering hole, have entirely too much to drink, get maudlin and depressed, and ask the bartender to put on our anthem, Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street:

Winding your way down on Baker Street
Light in your head and dead on your feet
Well another crazy day, you'll drink the night away
And forget about everything.

This city desert makes you feel so cold
It's got so many people but it's got no soul
And it's taken you so long to find out you were wrong
When you thought it held everything.

You used to think that it was so easy,
You used to say that it was so easy
But you're tryin', you're tryin' now.
Another year and then you'd be happy
Just one more year and then you'd be happy
But you're cryin', you're cryin' now.

Way down the street there's a light in his place
He opens the door, he's got that look on his face
And he asks you where you've been, you tell him who you've seen
And you talk about anything.

He's got this dream about buyin' some land
He's gonna give up the booze and the one night stands
And then he'll settle down, it's a quiet little town
And forget about everything.

But you know he'll always keep movin'
You know he's never gonna stop movin'
Cause he's rollin', he's the rollin' stone.
And when you wake up it's a new morning
The sun is shining, it's a new morning
But you're going, you're going home.

Gerry Rafferty died this morning in England, after a long illness and years of alcoholism. He was 63.

Also...

Following up my previous post, I think what I got from those experiences is how fragile we are. We break easily. And inevitably, we do end. The end is sometimes violent, and even when it is violent, it is also often perfunctory. The first two corpses I ever saw had essentially been thrown out of a car like litter.

I was a cynical and negative guy before I saw any of this, but the experience probably helped reinforce my thinking.

I Saw Dead People

Recalling the story of the homeless man who died sleeping in the dumpster led me to remember the first time I saw dead bodies. It was probably in 1974.

The victims were a man and a woman who had been shot, then dumped down an embankment alongside a county road. They were there for two or three days before being discovered.

I eventually got so used to seeing dead people I didn't think much of it anymore. Two other instances stick in my memory now. One was a young woman who died while trapped in a wrecked car. She died as the camera was rolling, zoomed in on her face. In watching the film later, we realized she had died only because she had stopped blinking her eyes.

The other instance was another accident in which four young men were killed when their car was involved in a wreck and burned. They were probably dead before the fire spread, but there was no way of knowing at the scene.

There were many others, more than I can remember. People who were shot. People who died of drug overdoses. One man who was crushed by a vehicle that fell off a jack. A child who was hit by a van from which she'd just gotten out.

And, finally, I was at my father's bedside when he died of pancreatic cancer.

What I saw, of course, was nothing compared to what firefighters and police officers see. Nurses who performed triage at the scene of Murrah Building bombing saw more dead and dying in one morning than I saw in 25 years of my career.

When Prince Siddartha began to explore outside the shelter of his palace, he saw a corpse and had his first realization of the impermanence of life.

I can't tell you how seeing so much death affected me, but I assume it did in some way. I wonder how I would look at the world today if I had been more distanced from death and tragedy all those years.

Fifteen Degrees Farenheit

The temperature outside is 15.

Many years ago, like around 1976 or ‘77, I watched police pull the body of a homeless man from a dumpster downtown. He had climbed in the dumpster to escape the cold wind on a night like this and had covered himself with newspapers and flattened cardboard boxes. Hypothermia killed him while he slept. His eyes were closed, his hands folded across his chest. His face was calm and peaceful.

I don’t think of that often, but I remember it clearly.

At the time, those of us gathered around the dumpster pretty much shrugged it off: another ‘bumsicle’ found on skid row. Looking back on it with the benefit of thirty additional years of life experience, I view myself as being closer on the socio-economic ladder to that guy than to the millionaires who live in the exclusive neighborhoods. I’m grateful to have a warm place to live. I don’t think it’s all that far a fall from my state of grace to where he ended up.

Where Did That Come From?

I'm lying here in bed, trying to go to sleep. I was sort of drifting off, when suddenly a mental picture flashed in my mind.

I was on a landing at the top of a flight of stairs at the back of a house. I was inside, on the second floor, but the stairs extended outside. They were wooden, and painted a light green. They had no hand rail. A tall tree stood just beyond the stairs. It was tall enough that the top of it as at my eye level.

The sense of vertigo I got looking down the stairs was so strong that it completely reawakened me.

I have no idea where this mental image came from. It doesn't resemble anything I recall ever seeing.

Slept Through It

...but not well. I tossed and turned a lot. Heard the fireworks going off downtown, but I stayed in bed.

The high today is only supposed to be 35, so the creatures will be staying indoors today, whether they like it or not.

So, New Year's Eve

When I was younger, I promised myself I would not end up some eccentric old man living alone in a house full of animals. But I made that promise because even as far back as the seventies, I could see the direction I was headed.

The die, I now realize, was already cast then. The opportunity for a 'normal' life presented itself a few times in the intervening years, and I always passed.

And what if I hadn't? I try to visualize myself with a soccer mom wife and two kids, in church on Sunday, going to college football and NBA games, eating at Applebee's or TGIFriday's, still wearing a coat and tie to the cubicle. I'd be in the suburbs with a house whose mortgage I could barely afford, a pickup truck and small SUV in the driveway. We'd have cable TV, and it would be on all the time. Plus a Wii and an Xbox and Blu-ray and god knows what else.

That would be, in a word, hell.

I'm very fond of my cats, somewhat less fond of my crazy dog, and happy to come and go as I please. No TV, no video games, no SUV. I can't tell you the last time I ate in a chain restaurant or even a trendy local place. No coat and tie. No football, no basketball. I like sleeping on the porch.

I'm an eccentric old man living alone in a house full of animals. And that has mostly turned out OK.

But Seriously, Folks

Getting back to the meditation thing:

There are days when I literally do nothing except eat, sleep and web surf. I have a huge amount of free time. There's no reason I can't make 20 minutes available for meditation. I think 20 minutes is a good place to start.

Meditation Supplies

Loori Roshi makes it sound so easy in that YouTube video that I'm going to take another shot at establishing a meditation practice. I'm going to start by buying some cool Buddhist meditation stuff from this website: Still Sitting Meditation Cushions and Meditation Supplies.

I still have the space age Tibetan meditation cushion I bought back in '06. But it seems so... so unenlightened now.

Old Zen Proverb

“When you can do nothing, what can you do?”

Tuesday night

Mu.

A Cloud of Nothingness/Not Nothingness

At the very center — the core, the foundation, whatever you want to call it — there's nothing. Even that's not quite right, because there's not even nothingness. Sometimes I can actually get that in focus for a few minutes. At one point I held it in focus for most of every day over a period of about two months.

When that's in focus, everything else vanishes. It's as if none of it ever existed. All the random crap I write about is gone, never was. No broken bed. No farting dog. No willowy, no ethereal. No mind. Nothing moving.

Eventually, I have to 'zoom the lens' back out, and things, sensations, concepts and other stuff reappear. From where do they come? From what are they made? At the baseline, there is nothing from which they can be formed, so how do they get here? You could say I just imagine them, but then where do I come from? Do I just imagine myself?

From a certain perspective, yes, I do. It's the Buddhist 'thoughts without a thinker' concept. But if the thoughts I perceive are not mine, from where do they come? How do they spring from the nothingness/absence of nothingness which can make no thing?

Once you've gotten a glimpse of that nothingness/not nothingness, it's hard to attach importance to much of anything. It's all a blank, except that even a blank is something, representing an absence of something else.

I was getting ready to go out for the morning, and I stopped to browse the web. When I sat down, the cat jumped in my lap and went to sleep. I realized that's what I wanted to do myself. So now I'm back in bed. Or rather, the cloud of nothingness/not nothingness perceived as 'me' is back on the cloud of nothingness/not nothingness perceived as 'the bed.'

Not Even That

Isan kicked over the pitcher.
For me, not even that.

So, Zazen.

The late John Daido Loori Roshi was the abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery in New York.

Here is his very clear explanation of zazen, the zen meditation practice which I rarely do because I'm lazy and stiff and fat and I don't like discomfort.



The word 'zen', as he points out, literally means 'meditation.' So, if you say you're doing zen but you don't have a meditation practice, it's like saying you're a swimmer but you don't get in the water.

I don't have a meditation practice, so I don't know what I am. Not zen, certainly.

I'm not sure what I would get from a meditation practice. I don't feel like I'm lacking much in that regard. Zen has an answer for this, which goes along the line of, "You don't do it to 'get something from it', you do it because you do it."

Well, that doesn't help me much. Sorry. I could say the same thing about biting my nails or scratching my ass.

My Hands

Happy day after Christmas.

I have kind of a weird thing going on with my hands. It doesn't happen every day, but when it does happen, it seems to be in the evening, just as I'm going to bed. Or maybe I don't notice it until then.

What happens is that the joints in my fingers kind of stiffen up, most noticeably the second joints down from the fingertips. It makes it difficult for me to close my hands into a fist. It feels almost as if there were an invisible pencil lying across my fingers, preventing me from closing them.

The first time I noticed it, I just squeezed really hard until I closed my fingers. That worked for my right hand, but it made my left hand hurt like hell all night and into the next morning. I finally took some acetaminophen (a word I am only now learning how to spell – on my first try, I got every vowel wrong except the first 'a'), and that cleared up the pain.

So what is it? Arthritis? Some kind of repetitive stress injury? Carpal tunnel?

Well, now the heat's on.

It's 11:15 am here, but the temperature is still dropping. Now 29 degrees. Decided I need to turn the heat on, set at 60 degrees, which is pretty comfortable for me.

Plus, the air's gotten extremely dry. My heater has a built-in humidifier, but the air has to be warmer to hold the moisture.

The Enlightened Master

Read another story today about a Zen priest whose life has sort of devolved into a wreck. I always wonder what's up when these enlightened masters have lives that are 'way more fucked up than mine.

Sometimes I wonder if what we call 'enlightenment' these days isn't just some sort of racket, like televangelists, motivational seminars or multi-level marketing.

The Heat Is Still Off

I've had the heat on in the house only two days this fall and winter and then I did it mostly for the dog and cat. It's cold in here right now, and I'm in the coldest room in the house, but I'm under two acrylic fleece blankets and I'm quite comfortable.

When we had the big ice storm in 2002, I lived here for 11 days with no electricity, no heat and overnight lows in the teens and twenties. I slept under a couple of blankets and I was fine.

It seems foolish to try to heat the whole house with gas when all I need to heat is the actual space I occupy, and I can do that by just retaining my own body heat. I've got a furnace that runs at 98.6 degrees 24 hours a day. It's not very efficient, but it's free.

It's 30 outside right now and the wind chill is 18. All my critters are inside safe and warm, but I worry about all the other strays who have no place to stay warm.

Pee-noh Nwah

I have been drinking a little more than I usually do. I'm not getting falling-down slobbery maudlin drunk or anything even near that. But I have been getting a little more relaxed, a little more self-disclosing, a little more chatty than usual.

I don't keep many secrets on this blog, but I try not to barrage people face-to-face with all my baggage. But the wine (A to Z Pinot Noir, which currently seems nearly ubiquitous in local restaurants) loosens my tongue. In vino veritas, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily interesting or entertaining veritas.

It's interesting to me, of course — I used to say, in all sincerity, that I was the most interesting person I knew — but I know not everyone is riveted by my compelling first-person accounts.

And the sage says next to nothing, anyway. As Robert Thurman says, if you're not enlightened, at least try to act like you are. For me, that means, among other things, saying less and listening more.

Christmas Day, 2010

Everybody have a Christmas-y Day, or whatever.

Disappearing Blog

The author of the Clear Mind Zen blog has closed it to all but invited readers. I'll delete it from the permanent links when I get around to it.

Austerity

This is a little bleak for Christmas Eve, but I thought it was important to share anyway: The Three-Phase Austerity Plan for America

And, found via Digby, a related interview with journalist William Greider.

I take some issue with Greider's contention that journalists are over-educated or not doing enough to report what 'ordinary people' are thinking. This is how crazy tea party 'wisdom' finds its way into mainstream news narrative. Just because the 'common folk' are saying it doesn't mean it's right.

At the same time, it's obvious that the reporters and pundits whom Digby first named 'The Villagers' (after the isolated characters in M. Night Shyamalan's movie) report a set of locally-held assumptions as fact, and have become part of the political establishment, rather than watchdogs of it.

I personally don't see how this austerity program can survive without the government disenfranchising about a fourth of the electorate. I wonder how they plan to do it.

Cynicism and Negativity — Right Here

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you may have detected a certain underlying stratum of negativity and cynicism.

I am, in fact, a fundamentally negative and cynical person. I suppose that is the result of my upbringing. I remember being criticized for my negativity as far back as high school, and I think there were instances of it before that whose specifics I've forgotten.

I have always been on the outside looking in, and mostly a loner. I have seldom been completely friendless, though. There are enough of us out here on the fringe because of our looks, religions, clothes, accents, values or family backgrounds that we can easily find each other.

I live in a city eager to pattern itself after the regional capital of shameless superficiality, Dallas. Even so, I have found an enclave of people who are on the fringe as I am, and I have a broad support group.

But I try to avoid being around people who share my negativity and cynicism. You'd think I would seek those people out, and for a long time I did, but now I find my own dreary personality is enough. When others are as negative as I am, it weighs me down. I need some cautiously optimistic people around me to keep me from sinking into utter black despair.

I have a certain admiration for people who can remain cheerful and motivated in the face of the bleak, utter pointlessness of the whole of human activity and existence.

But my reliance on these people to boost my own mood makes me, as I mentioned to Blogblah! on the phone the other night, an enthusiasm vampire. I draw enthusiasm out of other people because I have none of my own. And sometimes they back away from me because they sense the life force being drained from them.

Cynicism and negativity are the way my mind moves. My samsara. I am not seeking to be more cheerful — that would be just as errant as my current state — but I am trying to be more attitude-free.

Nothing I can say...

...a total eclipse of the moon.

A Christmas Message From Bill Maher

No way to embed this Facebook video. I hope you'll watch it, anyway.

A Christmas Message From Bill Maher

Profile Pic

This is what I look like now.

Sleep

Due to the untimely collapse of my bed (as described in a previous post), I am now back to sleeping on my old futon. This was in the living room or dining room for about eight years, and for four or five years, I slept on it regularly, because my 'real' bed was always covered in laundry and other detritus. (There was also a time it was literally covered wih cat shit, but that's a story for another time.)

During Ms. HRP's abortive remodel of the house, we cleared out the junk-filled back room, and I moved the futon back there. I actually considered ridding myself of it entirely, and now I'm glad I didn't.

While I'm waiting for a new bed frame to arrive, I've been sleeping on the futon here in the back bedroom. There is no stereo back here, and no 24/7 music of Tibetan bowls, sitar music, Japanese flute, etc. I also never allow the pets in here, so there's no cat or dog hair, and no covertly dropped turds behind the furniture.

I notice I am sleeping better. I have had a couple of actually pleasant dreams, as opposed to my usual overnight fare of tornados bearing down on me or TV newsrooms exploding in my face. I am guessing that the quiet, animal-free environment is helping with this.

In addition, I've been drinking two or more cups of rooibos tea in the evening before I retire, and I think that's helping as well.

It Is Your Mind That (Still) Moves

Two monks were arguing about the temple flag waving in the wind. "The flag moves," said one. The other said, "The wind moves." Hui-neng, the Sixth Ancestor, said, "Gentlemen! It is not the flag that moves, nor the wind that moves. It is your mind that moves."

It is your mind that moves.

"Oh, My. It's As Superficial As I Feared"

That's what my friend said when I showed her the pictures of what a relationship should be like. This is the same friend with whom I was discussing relationshiponal phenomena a couple of days ago.

"Well," I explained, "I'm not saying I literally want to date a twenty-something Stevie Nicks. I'm just saying she's sort of an archetype."

"Oh," my friend said. "I bet Joseph Campbell would love to hear that. Even if you did date someone like that, where would she wave all that stuff around? There's no room in your house for it."

"In the back yard, maybe. I don't know. We can work that out when the time comes."

Look, I know this is just fantasy. The time is never going to come. But I don't want or need a relationship that's just plodding along, going to the mall, unclogging the dishwasher, wandering around Lowe's, whatever. I can do that by myself. I would rather be alone.

Also:

Laraine Newman!

Just an archetype, of course.

Bailey

One thing I've learned about basset hounds after having had one for a year is that they are not particularly good indoor dogs. Still, I've grown very attached to Bailey. It seems like she's been here forever.

See?

This is what a relationship is supposed to be like.

Relationshiponal Phenomena

I had this germ of an idea for a post earlier in the week about relationship concepts. I decided against writing it, mainly because I've already said far more than I needed to say on the subject. Then, out of the clear blue, a friend brought up the very thing I decided not to write about.

I was talking about the whole willowy and ethereal thing, and she said, "Well, if you had a relationship with someone like you describe, what would it be like?"

"I guess I would stretch out on the wicker sofa on the porch, and she would just kind of float around me," I replied. "She'd be wearing long, floaty, gauzy stuff — you know, like Stevie Nicks used to wear — and the wind would be gently blowing her hair, like a shampoo commercial. And she'd be chanting mantras or something. 'Om mani padme hum,' or something like that."

"And then what?" my friend asked, laughing.

"I don't know," I said. "I haven't thought through all the details."

I understand that in real life, relationships don't work like that. In real life, you argue about money and whose turn it is to take out the trash. And some people want that, or they've been convinced by peer pressure that they're supposed to want it.

I still think about relationship stuff occasionally, but not as often as I used to. Not nearly as often. I can take out my own trash.

Las Cruces, NM

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with a half-formed, and occasionally half-assed, idea. A couple of nights ago I decided that I could throw a few things in a bag and go to Las Cruces, NM to study Zen with a priest I've read about there. I would stay perhaps three or four months. I'd rent an efficiency apartment, sleep on the floor (which I did as a matter of practice for about ten years) and spend my days learning from this priest.

After all, I've got the time. There's no place else I need to be.

But, on the other hand, I'm not all that into Zen as an 'official' daily practice. I appreciate the concepts, but I don't care much for the process. Days of sitting, staring at the wall, don't appeal to me. (As I think about it, I don't care much for any process. Process bores the shit out of me.)

I asked some Facebook friends if they'd ever been to Las Cruces. It turned out several of them had. Opinions of the place were mixed. One said it was more 'authentic' than Santa Fe, but another — a Santa Fe resident — thought I would enjoy Santa Fe more. Of course, I wasn't looking for a tourist or recreation experience; I was hoping to get a better idea of what it's like to belong to a Zen community and have a flesh-and-blood Zen teacher.

Now that I've had a couple of days to think about it, I am probably not going to go to Las Cruces. I won't be cutting off my arm, like Bodhidharma's student Hui-Ko, to get the attention of a teacher.

But maybe I will go to Santa Fe. I have never met my Facebook friend, Joan, who lives there, and I would like to.

Google Friend Connect

I've added Google Friend Connect because — well, I don't know why. Just because I like gadgets, I guess.

This is not something you want to try with the limited web navigation features of an iPad. I'll clean it up later, when I'm at a real computer.

Proof, by the way, that the iPad is not a substitute for a laptop.

No passion, no story

A friend asked me this evening what my passion was as a child. I told her. (I'm not going to detail it here. It's not weird or especially unusual. I don't want to go off on that tangent, though.)

"Well," she asked, "what is your passion now?"

"I don't have one," I said.

She smiled. "You have to have a passion." She said it as if I were breaking some sort of rule by not having one.

"No, no passion."

"If you don't have a passion, what will be your story from this point on?"

"No story. No passion, no story."

I have learned not to talk much about my empty, passionless life. It tends to upset people.

In fact, I wonder why I keep getting asked about it. My impression is that most people rarely discuss this, if at all.

But: no passion, no story. Unless you count this blog.

Eek the cat bugs out

That was quick. She went back to the house down the street. What a strange cat.

The cat leaving is zen. Me deciding she's strange is samsara.

Eek Comes Home

Eek the cat has come home — if this house can be said to be her home. The last time she was here was in March or April, I think. She had been living at a house about four doors east of here.

I had the doors open Wednesday afternoon, and I assume she crept in then.

I can't tell by looking at her, but I'd guess Eek is pregnant again.

Collapsing Bed Update

The splintered side rail isn't fixable. I looked at some new bed frames online and at Dillard's and saw nothing that really appealed to me. I ended up buying a simple metal frame from Amazon. I may be able to attach the existing headboard and foot board to it.

Collapsing Bed

My wooden bed frame collapsed tonight. I bought this bed about 25 years ago. About three years later, the plank on one side split and the head end of the box spring and mattress fell to the floor. I was able to fix it, but the same plank has just split again, and I'm not sure it's fixable this time. I'll give it a shot with Gorilla Glue and see what happens.

I'm attached to this bed. It's the first piece of furniture I ever bought. As I recall, it cost a lot of money, although I don't remember what I spent. Beyond the sentimental attachment, I'm also averse to buying a new frame. I don't want to buy any more big stuff.

The Zen of the Farting Dog

When the dog farts, that is zen. When I form an opinion of the odor, that is not zen.

Diary of a Daoist Hermit

I have found a blog that I need to put in my permanent links list. (But not right now, OK?)

It's called "Diary of a Daoist Hermit." The author calls himself the Cloudwalking Owl. He writes from the Canadian city of Guelph.

A segment from a recent post:

Being frugal is a constant theme in Daoism. In a sense, Daoists were the first proponents of what we now call "voluntary simplicity". Their stories are full of anecdotes about fellows who were once wealthy and powerful who chucked it all away so they could move to the countryside to live in the equivalent of tar paper shacks and subsist on food from their garden and what they could gather from the forest.

The point wasn't the same as that of St. Francis of Assissi, who saw poverty as being intriniscally groovy and something you "offer up" to God. Instead, it was simply an attempt to cut out all the stuff that makes life annoying in order to hold onto the stuff that makes life worth living. So a Daoist wouldn't take any pleasure in being cold, dirty or hungry---like some Christian saints. But he would be happy to wear straw shoes he wove himself because the hassle involved in doing what you have to do in order to afford expensive leather boots wasn't worth the effort.

'You're a very strange man'

A few weeks ago I was trying to explain something to a friend about freeing oneself from concepts, and experiencing directly without labels, thoughts or opinions. Or maybe I was complaining about the cat shitting behind the furniture — I don't remember. She looked at me and said, "You know, you're a very strange man."

Well, I did know, but it's good to have some independent confirmation.

Melancholy music

I am prone to being depressed by certain pieces of music. This is different from the depression I usually experience. In fact, it may be wrong to call it depression. It comes very quickly, is often much more severe, but lifts quickly — usually in an hour or two.

I recently bought an album by a popular singer of mantras. One of the songs induces this sudden melancholy I'm talking about. That song came up in the iTunes rotation this afternoon, and it hit me this time like a freight train. The lyrics are in Sanskrit or Pali; I have no idea what they mean. It is the melody alone that evokes the reaction. I could have slashed my wrists right then and there, and that's only a mild exaggeration.

I decided to go for a walk to shake off the feeling. It was cloudy, chilly and windy. The walk didn't help much.

Later, I called a friend who sat with me for ninety minutes or so until I recovered.

I have taken the song off my iTunes playlist. I won't listen to it again.

Stuff I quit reading

Stuff I quit reading:

Americablog
Regretsy
Lamebook
People of Wal-Mart
Damn Interesting
Look at this Fucking Hipster
Gizmodo
Engadget

Stuff I'm reading less of:

Firedoglake
Crooks and Liars
BoingBoing

I've just gotten to where I can't take any more.

I'm still reading io9, Slashfilm and Talking Points Memo. I look briefly at HuffPo, picking out news items from amidst all the gossip about 'celebrities' I've never heard of. And, though I'm ashamed to admit it, I read Gawker pretty regularly now.

I am listening to a lot more dharma talk podcasts from iTunes. There are hundreds available. They don't boost my cynicism or my blood pressure. And I feel like I'm getting something with some substance to it, instead of the daily outrage.

How Will It Happen?

I wonder from time to time how I will die. Car wreck? Stroke? Slow, wasting disease? With my history of high blood pressure, stroke is a likely candidate.

Being alive isn't a bad thing. But, as I've written before, it's an exercise in pointlessness. We pop into this world, stir up some shit that doesn't last, maybe do some good that doesn't last, and if we're really important, leave behind a monument that perhaps becomes a tourist attraction, but ultimately doesn't last. The whole history of mankind is nothing but the blink of an eye.

Enjoy it while you can, I guess, but it's no big deal. As I've said before, I feel like I'm stuck in an airline terminal, wandering around between flights. Yawn.

Depression cycle

I think the depression cycle is kicking in again. I'm not sleeping well and am sleeping later in the day. I'm also going to bed earlier. I've stopped walking every day. I'm engaging in behavior I normally avoid (see previous posts). Oh, well... so it goes.

DharmaMatch.com

I decided to explore dharmamatch.com. Although the name implies a Buddhist slant, in my Bible Belt city it seems to be full of wiccans and pagans. One had written her profile in what I suppose she imagined to be Middle English, with lots of random double consonants and superfluous trailing 'e's on words, to make herself sound more wiccan-y: "Alle haille and metes unto thee. I am ane Ordained Highe Priestess of Wicca, authorised to somethinge or othere somethinge or othere unto somethinge or othere. Aye, ande so be it."

Well, fine. I hope that works out for ya, Chaucer.

I'm just going to stay home with Ye Olde Fartinge Dogge.

Things are exactly as they are

I did something a little unusual for me a while back. I invited a female acquaintance to have dinner with me at a future date. It's the first time I've 'asked someone out' in about three years — maybe four. She agreed, and I told her I would email her to arrange a date/time.

A couple of hours later, though, I was asking myself, 'Why did I do that?' And I still don't have an answer. I decided I would just follow through as promised. All I had committed to was dinner, and that would be pleasant and completely harmless.

So, 48 hours later, I emailed her. She never replied. I was simultaneously annoyed and relieved.

There was a time being ignored like that would have completely freaked me out, even though in my dating experience, the 'now I'm interested, now I'm not' thing happened more often than not. I would have spent weeks analyzing it. I still don't understand it, but I barely care anymore. I recognize that it's a part of human nature. And in this case, not all that different from my own ambivalence.

If you understand, the Zen proverb says, things are exactly as they are. And if you don't understand, things are exactly as they are.

My Farting Dog

Sometime in the wee hours of Thanksgiving morning, my dog farted the most noxious, eye-watering fart that has ever been farted by man or beast. I mean, you could taste this thing hovering in the air of the bedroom. If the lights had been on, I might have been able to see it, too.

I thought I was going to have to get up and move to the back bedroom. Nothing like this has ever existed before, I'm sure, and probably never will again. I don't know how she did it.

Art Show

I think I tripped over an installation piece at a gallery the other night. Or it may have just been some loose packing stuff on the floor. Hard to tell.

Air Travel

I have been following — as strictly an observer, thankfully — the controversy over airport body scanners and body searches. I don't know why anyone flies at all. The fear level has been gradually inched upward since the first hijackings of the sixties. It's astonishing to me what passengers put up with. I was especially amused/repelled by the reports of hand searching for weapons in rolls of body fat — the perfect storm of fear and fast food.

Do people not see that this whole process has become insane?

Now we're all supposed to be terrified of 'crotch bombers'. As soon as we get used to that, we'll be subjected to a wave of fear over 'ass bombers', and the airport security industry will be lobbying TSA to buy and use anal probes on everyone.

I haven't been on a commercial airline since about 2000. God willing, I'll never be on another one.

The citizens of an enlightened state, a Taoist master wrote, never leave the borders of their homeland. All of their needs are met right there.

This presumes, of course, that their needs are actually their needs, and not a lot of horseshit cranked up by the advertising and marketing people.

I live in a medium-sized city. Like most medium-sized cities, it's desperate to grow itself into a huge city, so it can get even more marketing-driven horseshit. Personally, I would prefer to live in an even smaller city. I don't care if there is no Anthropologie, Urban Outfitters or whatever. As long as it had plenty of trees and a couple of good coffee shops and restaurants, I could live in BF, Egypt.

And if it didn't have an airport, that would be fine, too.

Happy Birthday

Today is the fifth anniversary of this blog.

Saturday night

"A Buddha is a person who has no more business to do and isn't looking for anything. In doing nothing, in simply stopping, we can live freely and true to ourselves and our liberation will contribute to the liberation of all beings."

— Thich Nhat Hanh

Dog Toys

I occasionally let a friend leave her dog here when she travels. During a visit a couple of months ago, she left a squeaking dog toy here, and my dog Bailey fell in love with it. I mean, it's not the deep level of profound love you'd experience at a meditation retreat, but she's still pretty fond of it. I bought her a toy of her own — a squeaking hedgehog — and she likes it, too.

I have never before had a dog that cared anything about toys.

It Is Your Mind That Moves

There's a famous old zen story about two monks watching a flag blowing in the wind.

"It's the flag that moves," one monk said.

"It's the wind that moves," the other argued.

The abbott came walking by. "It's your mind that moves," he told them.

When I obsess about some woman from years past, it's my mind that moves. When I work myself into a rage over the state of the nation, it's my mind that moves. When I fret about my lack of productivity, it's my mind that moves.

More on Being Productive

what counts as "productive"? do you count all the work you've done improving your house and back yard and garage as unproductive? is blogging unproductive? is cleaning out all the crap from your house unproductive? is reading and improving your understanding of the world around you unproductive? is having friendships you nurture unproductive? I have a problem with the premise, obviously.

Blogblah! raises some valid points in his comment to my 'Boredom' post. I don't consider the work I've done on the house unproductive, but I was thinking in terms of things I've done myself, as opposed to things I've paid to have done.

House cleaning and decluttering is productive, but I think of that as more in the realm of regular maintenance.

But John is correct, I think, in suggesting that my philosophical pursuits have been productive, and that my friendships have been productive. I think I've been a better friend in the past few years than I've been during most of my life.

I have many friends who produce tangible, creative things. Sculptures. Paintings. Textiles. Songs. I was basically lamenting in my previous post that although I also have the ability to produce tangible, creative things, I have no motivation to do it. Over the past few years, my motivation has gone from 'low' to 'zero'.

Boredom

It occurred to me Tuesday that I have not done a single productive thing, other than routine maintenance, in about two-and-a-half years. I guess you could classify last year's Tennessee trip as a productive thing, in the sense that it wasn't just another day of me eating and sleeping around the house, but that's the only thing.

I don't feel guilty about it at all, but I do have this sudden feeling of unease, or something like it.

I don't want to die, but living is boring. I feel like I'm stuck at the airport for a layover, twiddling my thumbs until the next leg of my journey — which probably is death. I know that finding stuff to do, whether it's a hobby or public service or something else, isn't going to change that. One of the frequent themes of this blog has been that most of us find life meaningless and boring, and we anesthetize ourselves to that with an extraordinary array of distractions, from TV and movies to video games to porn to extreme sports. I have seen through that, though, and entertainment generally holds no attraction for me. Obviously some people get all the fulfillment they need from Dancing With the Stars or whatever, but that doesn't get it done for me.

I have a couple of friends who have been trying to persuade me or pressure me to create art again. It's not working.

The deficit

I try to avoid writing about politics, as you know if you've been following this blog awhile.

But I have to ask, does anyone really think we're going to reduce the deficit? I don't. I think that what will happen, if anything, is that we will temporarily reduce the deficit by cutting services to citizens (what are often called 'entitlements'), then find some reason to run it up again in a way that will principally benefit the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street and elsewhere. We'll invade Iran, or Venezuela, or some other place.

I personally believe the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have dragged on so long because so much money is being made off them by defense contractors.

Taoism is rather anti-political. The ancient masters lived in an era when China was divided into constantly warring kingdoms, and the price of failure at court was often death. The Taoists stayed in small towns and rural areas, and let the Confucianists go to the big cities and get beheaded for their trouble.

To amplify my previous post...

I'm just trying to observe what is happening within these thoughts. Sometimes – not all the time, but just sometimes – I wish I were not alone.

There is no practical, real-world solution to this. It would require some sort of genie who popped out of the bottle when I was feeling lonely, which happens once or twice a week, and then only during certain times of the year, and left me alone the rest of the time.

One of the hangups in my last relationship, several years ago, was that she wanted a lot more of my time than I wanted to give. She wanted me there every day, in fact, and I just couldn't do it.

So I don't see my relationship status changing.

Again, trying to observe the thoughts, regarding them with the same detachment I would have for the sound of a car going by outside.

I do find my thoughts drifting toward Ms. Willowy and Ethereal often. Too often, a couple of my friends have hinted. But this is not the same thing as the loneliness, and I can see that whatever is driving this interest has more to do with ego or some other unresolved personal issue than actual romantic intent. I don't think about either of my two former post-marriage relationships nearly as much as I do Ms. W&E.

An interesting contrast there: in one case, I haven't seen the woman in ten years, and will be perfectly content to never see her again. In the other case, we remained friends after we broke up. I was even a guest at her wedding. Then she abruptly sort of cut me off, for no apparent reason, and I was content to let that happen. So why do I stay so focused on Ms. W&E?

She's kind of like whack-a-mole. She pops up suddenly, stays in contact for a week or ten days, then suddenly disappears again, ignoring emails and phone messages. Then, a month or a year later, she pops up again for a few days, then drops out again. Our mutual friends tell me this has been her behavior for years.

In some respects, I am the same way. I'll report for duty every morning at the coffee shop for a few months. Then I'll suddenly hit my saturation point, and I'll stay away for a few weeks or longer.

Fall

"I think fall is the worst time of year to be alone."

There are at least a couple of man-made concepts there to which one can be attached, if one chooses.

Or if one is unsuccessful in releasing them.

Which I am.