Gray Sunday morning in our living room:
I’m excited reading The Second Book of the Tao,
Bobbie, laughing, is excited by Eye Magic
(HOLD THE IMAGE CLOSE TO YOUR NOSE.
SLOWLY MOVE IT AWAY…
AND SUDdENLY A HIDDEN 3D ILLUSION
WILL MAGICALLY APPEAR ! )
I put down the book and pick up the magic,
proud that I can let my eyes see the illusion.
I laugh. She tells me she has to study.
She hopes to pass a quiz.
Encouraging thoughts fill me
As she walks away.
I start to speak but hear myself say,
“It doesn’t matter what I say.” She stops…
Wiggles her ass at me!
Smiles over her shoulder
and continues toward her books.
Hey! That’s why I married her!
Happy Autumn to All!
The first one says, “Nobody could help me outta this shit except another addict. Them college boys they got runnin’ treatment nowadays and them books–you know what I mean–they don’t know shit about what dis shit is about.”
The other one, he says, “Yer up yer ass! Another fuckin’ addict don’t know shit. He just another fuck-up a little more down dis same dumbass road we on. He gonna tell you how to run your life and he don’t know shit. He ain’t nothin’ but a relapse waitin’ to happen.”
“Besides,” the first one says. “The kinda food they got in them treatment places.”
“Yeah,” the other guy says. “And now they don’t even let you smoke cigarettes in them places. Can you believe that shit?”
“And you gotta clean the toilets–”
“And cook the food and shit.”
“And the fuckin’ people they got in there! You know what I mean? Like I’m gonna talk to them about my shit”
“Yeah,” the other guy says.
“Exactly!” Silence. They look around.
“Tomorrow,” the other one says.
“Yeah,” the first one says.
They look around again and walk off in different directions…
(O.K., so here’s the question: Where are they talking about meeting tomorrow? Is it the same place to do drugs again or is at a treatment center? Write your response by clicking on “Leave a comment” below, then following the prompts.)
WARNING: This is going to be one of those posts in which I’ll begin by being a little cute and ramble around until I eventually focus on something. Since I keep dealing with the same things and since there’s really no reason to expect I’m about to try something new or different now, you might find yourself wondering why you’re bothering to read this in the first place. You already know that somehow it will eventually come back to a moment of discovery, me gaining a new and brilliant understanding which, when all is said and done, was obvious to anyone who was paying attention from the beginning. And God forbid I should let it all end without some final cutitude.
Don’t say you haven’t been warned.
* * *
It’s been about a month since I’ve added anything to this space. Not that there hasn’t been subject matter:
1. The lingering impact of a bike crash way back on Labor Day weekend.
2. Our block association’s annual White Elephant Sale.
3. A colonoscopy and an endoscopy (not done simultaneously.)
4. Joyfully reconnecting with folks from my past through Facebook.
5. My participation in a 5 day Western Zen Retreat up north (some of my readers will respond more to that geographic reference than will others).
6. A one day tour of wineries and farm stands on Long Island’s North Fork.
7. My computer which now takes a full 15 minutes to contact the internet.
8. Right now, when I’d ordinarily be sitting in meditation at Still Mind Zendo, but left after only a few minutes this morning when the pain in my knee (see #1 above) set off a round of suffering which made continued sitting impossible for me.
OK, forget the warning! Let me just get right to it, the same “it” which runs through all 8 possibilities–especially when I realize that #1 and #8 are the same.
Anyhow, here come the revelations, beginning with #2:
THE WHITE ELEPHANT SALE
Imagine me and Bobbie sitting out behind a table and in front of a schoolyard fence both covered with things we once loved or needed or–more likely–wanted on a beautiful Sunday morning and eventually afternoon. Me thinking: I hate this. This is the last place on earth–with the exception of active combat zones–that I want to be. I want to be on my bicycle. I’m only doing this out of marital obligation. If I were single or if I loved Bobbie any less–but I’m neither of those, and I do love helping her–actually this helps us–and it’s kind of fun being out here in the sun, meeting people and getting into conversations with folks I’ve never met before, even reminiscing behind some of the life artifacts up for sale.
Hey! When I focus on what I’m actually doing and not what I’m thinking, I’m not suffering.
Hey hey!! Here I am out in the sunshine having a great time and noticing that I choose to suffer or not by my perspective. It all comes from how I see things, not from what I see.
Hey hey hey !!! (with apologies to Krusty the Klown) This is good stuff.
Rereading what I’ve put down so far, it now occurs to me that my point’s been made. No need to write about the retreat or leaving the zendo early or discovering that the 15 minutes it takes to get onto the internet makes for a built-in 15 minute meditation period. Definitely no need to write about tubes being stuck into my digestive and ingestive systems.
‘Nuff said, I say! although I really want to include this from the first email opened after the 15 minute wait:
…it is the perspective of the sufferer that determines whether a given experience perpetuates suffering or is a vehicle for awakening.
–Mark Epstein
Don’t get me wrong. I was born a Jew and I’ll not only die one but it’s a sure thing–Buddhist meditation, love of Jesus, devotion to Krishna, the Tao Te Ching and the wisdom of the Koran notwithstanding–I’ll still spend all the time between those two events being a Jew. This isn’t about that. It’s about making use of Rosh Hashonah, the Jewish new year, and it’s companion, Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. This is the time of year when we traditionally take account of the past year to identify and atone for our sins. Another way to see this is that this is the time when we clear away the trash of the past, the ego-based guilts and sadnesses of the past twelve months, to clear space for God’s grace in the coming year.
Those of you who’ve been following this blog pretty much know of my bigger blunders, those conflicts ultimately based on my (at the time) sincere belief that I was right and someone else was wrong. I’ve tried to write about them in ways that indicate that, at least in hindsight, I was no longer being taken in by my own sense of superiority, righteous indignation, hope or fear. I hope that came through.
There’s been another attempt to escape from egocentricity. Simply put: a reaching out to make this blog a bit more about us and not about just me. Frequently I’ve included in my email announcements the hope that you’d contribute comments. There was a request that you write about your work or submit a six word autobiography or supply a caption for a photo. Recently I posted Goldie Silverman’s Rosh Hashonah poem, Tashlik 2000.
I found an unexpected ally in in this pursuit, Facebook, using it to reconnect with several of the folks I knew and in some cases undoubtedly offended (or at least irritated) as an angry, moody, drug-propelled film editor or an equally arrogant student or club bike rider or even family member. I identified presenting myself as open to take the shit accumulated in the past as a form of atonement: to be ready for and willing to accept that a significant part of the world wasn’t waiting for me with bouquets of fresh picked chrysanthemums and gracious welcoming smiles. Each time I sent out one of those Friend requests my mouse finger trembled. Blissfully, several responded warmly to my befriending requests. In a few cases there have been actual reunions with the expressed intention of maintaining contact in the future. In other cases there have been no responses.
All that said, in the Facebook words of Fredric D. Rosenberg, who’s said it so well and will probably not hurt me for quoting him without permission,
This is going to sound strange, but if I hurt you in any way in the last year and have not apologized and made amends before now, I am sorry. I will try to do better in the future. Let the fast begin.
Lew & April & Jason & Cori
Summer Sky, NYC
From the High Line
On the High Line
Indoors
Late summer sun
On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 4:39 PM, Goldie Silverman wrote:
Hi, Richard,
I wrote this poem years ago. Happy New Year.
TASHLIK, 2000
(tash-leek, the custom of emptying crumbs from the pockets and throwing them into moving waters on the afternoon of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, symbolic of tossing away one’s sins.)
“We might return,” they said, “but not to that,
A swollen mass of unfamiliar faces.”
Bet Am, house of the people, a place grown strange to children long departed.
No rows of folding chairs for them,
No unknown pulpit faces, unknown tunes.
Conditions met.
We chose instead to separate ourselves,
To look for God,
If God exists,
Upon a mountain, by a lake, under an open sky.
So came we together from our scattered homes
To welcome year fifty-seven sixty-one.
And even though the rain soaked through our clothes,
And heaven’s gray obscured the mountain top,
We spread the plastic over holy words,
Read psalms and searched the recesses in our hearts.
The stream we found ran foamy brown like laundry after playing in the mud.
We tossed our crumbs and threw away our greed,
Our stubbornness, our arrogance and pride.
Three generations, like Sinai, standing in the rain.
I looked at these, my immortality.
“Let the sun not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.”
We lifted up our eyes and knew the source.
Pic by Zoe for NB newsletter
There is also a line in Pirke Avot: “Do not separate yourself from the congregation,…”
We compromised that year by attending the evening service, but in the morning we drove up into the mountains for Tashlik, and it poured! My daughter brought a service that we put into plastic bags, and we read it and Psalm 121, my favorite, because I have a view of the Cascades and Mt. Rainier from my house.
Goldie and I met in Morocco in December of 2007.
The title, of course, is a reference to two posts ago, a little story about cracking out of my little world of “shoulds” into the much bigger universe of “is.” This time, if I have it right, it’s about leaving the world of “coincidence” in favor of the cosmos of “OmyGod!”
The picture below is of a fully inflated bicycle tube hanging in a closet. 
And here’s the chain of events which led to my spending time and effort to create the basically mundane image now at the left. It all began Monday morning. The time was about 8:45, the temperature was already in the upper 80’s with nowhere to go but up, and I, filled with rationalizations and good intentions was about to mount my bike and ride four laps (25 miles) in Central Park before riding the 8 miles to work. Remember, boyhood has long passed me by–or I it–and my heart has a history of attacking me.
Just as I am about to pass through the apartment door on my rush to ego gratification, I notice my back tire’s flat. On closer inspection I also note that several sections of the tire have worn so thin that the kevlar belt under the rubber’s surface has actually replaced the rubber. Clearly it is time for a patch and a new tire.
I set to work. Patching tubes is something I’ve had a great deal of experience with lately. One block from visiting friends Annie and Mahanta at the beach at Rockaway Park I flatted on my commuter bike. It was the first time in maybe four years that such a thing has happened to my city bike tires, those warriors of urban trash and treachery, those conquerors of both The Bronx and Brooklyn. Then there was the ultimately polite delight ride with newly met friend Marilyn on the Hudson River Greenway and the flat she somehow brought with her from home. Our only spare tube (mine) was two inches less in diameter than her tire and wheel. Still, with patience and perseverance it was done.
This time, in the comfort of my own home, a most curious phenomenon: I was unable to spot the leak in the tube. I inflated it and moved my hand slowly along it’s surface…nothing. I ran it along my ever-so-tender cheek, past my keen hearing ear. No blow. No hiss. I filled the sink with water and immersed the tube. No telltale bubbles. Especially close attention to the valve and the one patch from a previous flat yielded the same nothingness. Out of curiosity and, I suspect, some disbelief, I hung the inflated tube as you see it depicted, fully expecting to find it flat upon returning from work late that evening.
Focusing back on the bike: I just happened to have in that selfsame closet both a new tube and a new tire, perhaps the stiffest tire ever made. With great and prolonged effort I managed first to wrangle the tube into the tire and then the pair of them almost onto the bike’s back wheel. “Almost,” here, is the operative word. For what felt like the better part of a decade I struggled to mount them to the wheel without success. Then I remembered: back in my day we’d first put the tire half on the wheel, then insert the tube, then bring the other side of the tire into place. I tried it and, yes, old fashioned worked.
OK and I’m ready to ride. A quick look at the clock and it becomes immediately and incontrovertibly clear that there is no way either here or in hell that I’ll have time to ride my four go-rounds in the park, come home, shower, dress and ride to work. O well, perhaps changing the tire and tube were exercise enough. Out of my nifty bike rider suit and into my commuter stuff and off I go. A quick stop at the library to return four CD’s (Brubeck’s Take Five, the Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo, The Million Dollar Quartet’s Million Dollar Quartet and Clifton Chenier Live Somewhere in 1981) and then onto the bike path along the Hudson to head for The Bronx and the job.
By now the temperature’s pretty close to ninety and probably the humidity as well. Despite the 10 or so miles per hour breeze created by my riding I find myself utterly wet with sweat. The air is just short of being a beverage rather than a gas. Struggling along on perfectly flat pavement, I hear it:
“OmyGod!,” that interior voice much smarter than my own blurts out. “If you’d gone to the park to ride laps, you’d probably be dead by now.”
“OmyGod,” I agree. “I agree!”
Slowing down to the speed of a respectable senior fastwalker and drinking much water, stopping periodically to rest, I make my way uphill from sea level along the Hudson over the spine of Washington Heights to the Highbridge section of The Bronx and the job. Now, I’ve already got some interpretive ideas regarding what I’ve been describing here, the kind of fuzzy spiritual things you’ve come to expect of me, but I just leave those out when telling co-worker Martha about the morning’s events. She knows of my heart history and doesn’t mince words.
“Hmmfff,” she sort of snorts. “Divine intervention,” and walks away.
Divine intervention…nice idea…but no. The tire was flat. It is flat, I think to myself. When I get home tonight it will be limp as an old man’s (sigh) step.
All day long, through client interviews (I work with men and women in treatment for addictions to drugs, alcohol, street life, pain and money) and group facilitations, I can’t stop thinking about that damned tube. At 8:45 pm, 12 hours exactly after all this began, I phoned home and asked Bobbie, now my wife of 11 years, to walk the phone to the closet and describe the tube to me.
Yes, it was still firm with air! No it hadn’t again flattened.
When I got home an hour later it was still firm. I took it down, forced the air out and rolled it up. The next day (today) I decided to write up this bit of mystery and re-inflated the tube to photograph, then deflated and rerolled it, realized the picture wouldn’t orient properly, unrolled the tube and rephotographed it. Each time it held air with no leakage. Each time I heard Martha’s observation.
I think she’s onto something…I don’t know…Do you?
Wake up in the arms of my beloved
Breakfast of summer fruits and banana bread. Coffee.
Wash the dishes–new Fiestaware, deep colors beneath white suds.
On the bike: 4 turns around Central Park past happy chattering knots of visiting Frenchmen and Italians and from-sure-enough-Spain Spaniards, noting the backs of all those cyclists who pass me.
A hot shower
A cold iced tea
A man on tv tells me how to care for my mind.
Bike to the library: return the New Orleans Klezmer Allstars, pick up King Sunny Ade.
*********************************************
And now, right now
Sitting in the shade, the late afternoon breeze
Between the Hudson River and the West Side Highway (a candy bar in my pocket!)
Writing to you…
How am I doing?
‘Couldn’t be better!
A few Saturdays ago I bicycled from home on Manhattan’s well-publicised Upper West Side across the 59th Street Bridge (the one people in Queens call the Queensboro Bridge,) along the southern edge of Long Island City, through Woodside and up 37th Avenue into Jackson Heights’ dynamic Indian/Bangladeshi community. Carnegie Hall sponsors a series of Neighborhood Concerts, free musical events held throughout the boroughs, featuring extraordinary musicians from essentially everywhere. Samita Sinha, a multilingual (Hindi, Urdu, Chinese, English…) singer, accompanied by congas, tablas and keyboard was to perform at the Jackson Heights branch of the Queens Public Library. Never having heard or heard of her, I was ready.
The library’s meeting room was filled to capacity. At 3:15, a polite 15 minutes after the posted starting time the City Council member responsible for funding the event spoke briefly as did representatives of both the library and the concert series. Ms. Sinha lives 3 blocks from the library, she told us when she took the stage. She was at home and wanted us to feel the same way. Hmm…Queens quaint, I thought.
Others, however, took her words more seriously. Two women, appearing to be in their 80’s, sat behind me. Their pre-program conversation had been no more to me than undistinguished sounds in the general and appropriate din. Things became different, however, when the music started and they showed no inclination to stop. Both were hard of hearing and eager to let everyone know that. One flipped loudly through the newspaper insert for a local market. The other developed a catch phrase, “I don’t like this music!” and repeated it with metronome-like regularity. Thus provoked and eager to establish silence, I turned to them and glared wordlessly for a beat before returning my attention to the stage. As I turned back and before I could congratulate myself on silencing them, I heard one say to the other, “What’s he looking at?” to which the other responded, “I don’t like this music!”
Their page-flipping and conversation continued as did my anger. Being a good Manhattanite and respecter of performers and, Hey, dammit! I’m a registered senior citizen and don’t appreciate anyone in my age demographic misrepresenting the rest of us! I fell to grimacing and twitching, silently selecting and rehearsing the devastating comments I’d make to them when the current tune ended. Pissed was hardly the word for it.
Now here’s where it gets interesting. The man sitting next to me, a man in his perhaps 40’s, looking like he might be from the Subcontinent, turned in my direction and smiled. Clearly he was hearing all I was hearing, clearly he was aware of my feelings–yeah, like I’m trying to disguise them– yet he smiled. And get this, it was a real smile. No irony, no sympathy, no meaning. Just a smile. He smiled and, just so, my hostility vanished! As if that weren’t enough, I was then somehow propelled through an instant of embarrassment–me demanding that two old friends at a neighborhood event in their neighborhood in their library act as I wanted them to act–puleeze!–and just as quickly back to the wonder of the music with all of the foregoing forgotten.
Midway through the music the women stood and grumbled their way out of the room. Another smile from the man to my left. I smiled back–just a smile, no more than that.
Life lessons, I suspect, abound in Jackson Heights.
It started a little more than a week ago with this, Bobbie reading AARP Magazine. Quickly it progressed to this:
—– Original Message —–
From: “Richard Goldberg” <richsgold@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 9:58:33 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Something differentThis is not to notify you of a blog posting. Rather it is an invitation to you to participate in writing a blog entry.
Here’s the challenge: Write your autobiography in 6 words–no more or less.
Send them to me by reply email. I’ll collect them and publish them in the blog–without comment. If you want to be posted anonymously, say so and I will do so. Otherwise I’ll identify you as you choose to be known.
This is not a contest. It’s just something to think about for a minute and then do. You’ve got a week to reply. Deadline is June 30th.
Here are two that have already been submitted:
“Kim, Dave, Mike
Tom, Richard, Nurse.”
–and–
“Last chapter yet to be written.”I look forward to reading yours.
Goldberg
Here are your replies roughly in the order received. Thank you.
**********************************************************
Don’t move
That’s it
Got it!
–anonymous
“emerged, awake, soon asleep, no matter”
(just) mark
born,died,reborn,live,die,reborn
–anon please
Alix always wanted to be beautiful.
–Alix Lorance
a happy being being happy being
–Christy Wang
Family, children, grandchildren, relatives, students, friends.
–Dorothy Quirk
I arrived, I saw, I parented!
–George Kaplan
Blessed with family, children, loves. grateful
–anonymous
“Life lessons for irreversible mistakes? Fair.” –Jack Beaton
My life story line is introspective.
–Karen Kaminski
Married (twice), skiing musically with kids.
–Jim Kimenker
pretty good thus far: still breathing.
–David Mintz
Fifty years, nothing more than this.
–Anonymously please
friend, father, teacher, musician, recovering addict.
–Terry McGovern
Watching for glimpses of the sun.
–Nadia Huntley
“without: sight, scent, sound, touch, -hollow.”
–You may sign my moniker to the above—DW
I came, I putzed, I left.
–Fred Rosenberg
“Will the fortune teller be right”
–Mary Smith
“never say you are too old.”
–David Straite
“I am always at the beginning…”
–Sheldon Blitstein: Quoting the Buddha on his 80th birthday
work hard & keep going
–Norm Cagin
wife, mother, sister, daughter, student, love
–Connie Kaminski
amazing, underachieving, grateful, adventurous, and everchanging!!
–Luis Rosa
Born, educated, drugged, friend, jailed, recovery.
–Juan Dones
Born. Grew. Aged. Not dead. Yet.
–Bill Kinloch
Miracles continue to happen to me.
–Evelyn Tirado
i don’t know where i will be in the future?
–Eman Evans
Six word autobiography: too arbitrary, short.
–John Craig
Woman, Wife, Musician, Cyclist, Humanist, Friend.
–Joan Harper
Married. Happy father. To be continued.
–Ezra Beaton
bill’s smile seen on dead raccoon!
–Bill Miller
Kim, David, Mike, Tom, Richard, Nurse.
–Bobbie Goldberg
Wow! It really isn’t about me.
–RSG
Mostly learning experience at times enlightening.
–Olga Stebeleva
creative chaos broadcasts green heart’s smile
–mjf
Me, Mom, Dad, Deb, David, Bill
—And —-
I am, I am, I am
–Denise Connors
person, soldier, engineer, husband, father, grandfather
–Ron Kaminski
Always learning, sometimes growing, rarely satisfied. –Wayne Wright
Sometime confused and wet, but happy! — Dan Monahan
Always learning, sometimes growing, rarely satisfied. Kim Calcasola
Still loosing hair and gaining weight. –Jim McAslan
I came, I saw, I conquered. –Lew Brown
Let me make this a bit scholarly by quoting someone who actually knows what he’s talking about before devolving into my homey self-example. The writer here is Koun Yamada. He is writing in the Author’s Preface to the First Edition of the Gateless Gate: the classic book of Zen Koans. The man says:
The entrance into Zen [right away an interruption from me: Forget about the first four words. This is no more or less than getting to know yourself, a point I'll undoubtedly make more times than necessary] is the grasping of one’s essential nature. It is absolutely impossible, however, to come to a clear understanding of our essential nature by any intellectual or philosophical method. It is accomplished only by the experience of self-realization through zazen. [Another interruption from me: Zazen is sitting meditation, and I don't buy it as the only way to knowing who or what you really are, but it comes with the quotation. Let the man continue:] And the koans [Me again: Koans are short--often very short--stories designed to confound our usual processes of understanding] used in Zen can be seen through only when looked at from the essential point of view. Therefore to the person whose enlightened eye has not been opened, Zen koans seem impractical, illogical, and against common sense. Once this eye has opened, however, all koans express natural matters and relate the most obvious of realities.
OK, so koans are apparently absurd little stories which, when we try to figure them out, exhaust our practical, logical, commonsensical faculties, thus bringing into play our impractical, illogical and–here I’m being cute, but maybe not–nonsensical connections with life. Most remarkably we never solve them so much as transmute them into openings for entering into that deeper understanding of ourselves and all of reality. You might call them an entrance into (OMYGOD!) Zen!
Let the scene shift…
The last week in May was spent at the Dharma Drum Retreat Center in Pine Bush, New York. The event was a seven day Koan Retreat, the third I’ve attended along with five Western Zen Retreats of five days each and one other done mostly in Chinese with English translations. DDRC has become an grounding place and a launching pad for me. Without any formal acknowledgment or contract, the retreat leaders, John Crook and Simon Child, dharma heirs of The Venerable Master Sheng Yen (1930-2009), have become my teachers. Without conspiring they regularly double-team me, good-cop/bad-cop me into new levels of growth. What’s particularly remarkable is that there is never forewarning of who will be which cop!
This retreat like the others was a great success: learning to deal better with both physical and spiritual pain, opening more to reality and being a bit less vulnerable to the persuasions of ego. The method was koan based, using these ancient conundrums as a portal to self understanding beyond cognition, to lead us into worlds of sensation and perception without the brain’s compulsion to organize and interpret and value-judge.
After a day to settle in and leave the rest of the world behind we were given a handout with 7 full koans and perhaps 7 hua-tous, the punchlines to other koans. Our task was to select the one we’d prefer to work on for the remaining days. The belief: we are drawn to our choice by the karma we bring to it. A social worker might substitute the word “unconscious” for karma, but this particular social worker no longer sees a difference between the two.
I chose “How can you step off the top of a 100 foot pole?” I chose it for several reasons:
The retreat actually went as the one a year ago had also gone. The day of settling in. Then one day of befuddlement followed by a day of thinking I had the thing licked. An interview with our teacher and this year’s bad-cop, John Crook, who allowed me to rage successful for a few minutes then, by posing a simple follow-up question to my self-satisfied ravings, propelled me into “Great Doubt.” Great Doubt is another traditional Zen concept. It describes a period of utter agony which I expressed as thoughts of Why am I here? Who am I fooling? What’s the point of all this self-torture anyway? Notice that here the focus has shifted from the literal content of the koan to it’s impact on all of my life certainties. The portal was open. Did I dare walk through it?
My immediate and thoroughly logical conclusion: go back to the dorm; pack; hitch hike back to town; catch the train back to NYC!
One view from the center of the circle of Great Doubt
But something else said stay. A few hours later, during a period of solitary walk-in-the-woods meditation I found myself in an unknown part of the retreat grounds in a light rain, not so much distracting myself from the interior gloom by focusing on the exterior beauty but simply melting into it. That’s when it hit, my revelation of the moment, one which would carry me through the ups and downs of the week’s remaining rollercoaster ride and (hooray) life since then:
All the guide books we consulted before arriving in Bhutan stated that we wouldn’t be able to see the snow-capped Himalayas during our time there.
Day 3 in Bhutan: …lunch with our tour guide, Sonam, and our 6 fellow tourists. A solo walk around Paro, home of the country’s only airport
…and then the hour long drive to the country’s capital, Thimpu. The rest of the day and all of the next merge into a haze of temples, crafts schools and creators and
magnificent views in every direction.
People are more than friendly. Food is adequate considering we are in a country devoid of slaughterhouses, a country where nothing is deliberately killed. Today we drove over a pass celebrated with 108 chortens (a.k.a. stupas, usually small structures containing the relics of saints).
Day 4: The scariest road I’ve ever ridden (including that time in Utah when the elk ran in front of my downhill careening bike): less than two full lanes wide, often with a shoulder measured in inches, looking straight down for hundreds of meters.
Already changes are happening inside me. Last night we re-met an American couple who’d sat in front of us on the plane. They complained of their driver’s slowness. What was his hurry in this land where every inch is a tourist attraction and rushing on such roads bespeaks insanity at best?
The roads are scantily but diversely populated: unattended grazing cows and, at higher elevations, yaks; trees occasionally filled with monkeys; both adults and children walking alone or in small groups always ready to wave or wave back.
Bhutan is different. The impact of topography dominates all else. Buddhism leads all to harmony. The world here is vertical, severely so. This determines the size and shape of farms and villages, the layout of the roads, and the pace at which life proceeds.
Isolation has saved Bhutan from both physical and cultural invasion. The last invaders, the Tibetans, came and went in 1612. The current wireless invasion, tv & the internet, may ultimately pose a greater threat to the country’s integrity. The king, only a few years back, forced the people to abandon absolute monarchy in favor of constitutional monarchy and stepped down in favor of his more contemporarily minded son. He also replaced the concept of gross national product with that of gross national happiness as the measuring stick of the country’s success or failure. His goals were to allow for modernism in tune with nature and to strengthen traditional values over the invading western values.
No one in this country looks particularly rich or poor. No one seems afraid of work or disrespectful of it. Today our group climbed about 400 steps from the Trongsa Dzong (home of both the government and the Buddhists) to the Tower Museum. Coming back down we met a traditionally dressed woman sweeping those stairs. Sweetly she broke her concentration on the task at hand to pose for a photograph.
Yesterday, driving the mountain highway between Puhakha and Wangdue we passed an older woman sitting on the shoulder and using a small sledge-hammer to pound rocks into gravel for the road’s repair. Somehow it was easy, looking at her focus and diligence, to see the universe as made up of just this: all fitting together, fulfilling our roles in the totality. And just this is the overwhelming feeling of Bhutan. Just this–what truly is in all it’s glory.
Maybe day 6: Back to me for a moment: a noticeably deeper feeling of freedom. I can drink Sanka without feeling cheated, meditate on the toilet seat (dressed, of course, with the cover down) and feel comfortable in my body–even the feet–and age. Right now my work life in The Bronx feels no less or more encapsulated than this trip–and all feels graceful and manageable and still ultimately interdependent. Even my increasingly rare moments of being irritating and irritated fit into this.
Outside the bus window an old man, barefoot, walks by. At one time (and perhaps at some time again in the future) I’d think, “Poor guy.” Today I think, “Wow!”
Day 7: Back from the Tiger’s Nest, a 1000 meter climb, climaxing in a flight of 700 steps, to the temple built into the cliff. Paro Taktsang (it’s official name) is one of the most famous monasteries in Bhutan. It was built around the Taktsang Senge Samdup cave where Guru Padmasambhava is said to have meditated in the 8th Century. Padmasambhava (I have been gently reminded) was the person often called the Buddha in person by Tibetans and Bhutanese alike. He was invited to Tibet to bring the Buddhist teachings there. On the way to Tibet, he traveled (according to legend) flying on the back of a pregnant tigress, and stopped at the meditation cave Taktsang (“Tiger’s Nest”) in Bhutan for a meditation retreat.
I made the first half of the trip up on the back of an old pony the color of whose mane remarkably matched that of my beard. Where did I end and the pony begin?
Little did I suspect when we started off that I would find myself, deep in Bhutan, approaching the holiest monastery in a country filled with monasteries, squarely in the middle of an old Jewish joke. Junior, as I came to call the pony, was quite fond of resting. This meant that his handler spent much of the trip pulling him forward via the lead rope. To paraphrase the joke: I was there because I was going to Tiger’s Nest. She was there because she was taking me. But why Junior?! How much easier had she simply attached the rope to me and left him behind to rest and graze.
Nonetheless it was a delightful–if occasionally scary ride. Junior, like all pack ponies, was determined to stay along the out side of the trail and, whenever possible, lean over the precipitous edge to graze. It became my job to remember that, when he did that, his head and neck were well over the edge of the cliff.
* * *
Maybe it was in Jakar or Wangdue, but it was defintely in one of the towns on the way back to Paro. Me, walking alone in a marketplace surrounding a large parking area just above the local dzong. Focused on all around me. At one point I photographed a young girl, perhaps 4 years old, climbing a ladder just inside a doorway. She wore pink.
A block later, looking off across the parking lot ringed by low retail buildings, I feel a hand take mine. The grip is warm and remarkably firm. It’s her!
The 4 year old in pink. She leads me down the street and left at the corner. She walks deliberately. She seems to know where she (we) is going. My first reactions are panicky. O my God!
67 year old male tourist and
4 year old local girl!!!
screams the headline from back home.
“But Officer, Officer…”
Ahead I see a group of boys, ages 10-12 or so. I am somehow able to explain to them that I don’t know the girl child, that she may be lost. They then take her to various shopkeepers in a vain effort to reunite her with family. Eventually we approach two policemen and explain just what I’ve explained to you.
“I don’t know who she is or why she took my hand or why she took me where she took me…” I tell the older officer. He smiles.
With warmth and without irony he says, “Perhaps she was your daughter in another lifetime.”
* * *
In our ten days in Bhutan we never heard a child cry. We never heard voices raised in anger or horns honk for any reason other than safety. We saw the one traffic cop in this country of no traffic lights. He was smiling.
Bhutan also looks and feels like this:
To see all 415 Bhutan photos click:
Museum of Art in New York City. I’m with a friend, Judith, and we’ve both got cameras and our expressed purpose is to take snaps in the museum (in accordance with their rules) to be entered in the museum’s photo contest.
The museum’s goal is to get a whole bunch of free photos to use to promote the museum. Mine is to…well…I guess it’s to satisfy my ego that I can make photos good enough to–if not actually win the contest–to at least let me believe that the judges who didn’t pick me are all either corrupt or tasteless, and any fool can see that my snaps are better than the one(s) they chose. Judith’s goal, as I am to ascertain from her comportment and subsequent conversation, is to spend a pleasant few hours in the museum in my company taking photos along the way.
Those among you out there who have accumulated some expertise in the area of friendships and perhaps even unspoken crossed purposes may already be smiling in anticipation of what to you seems inevitable. Those of you who have seen me possessed by an ego-driven mission may be chuckling aloud while congratulating yourselves on knowing what will take place in a paragraph or two. And, finally, those of you who have failed to notice all the stuff squeezed in between the lines, those of you thinking, “O how lovely! Two friends spending an afternoon in one of the world’s leading museums together and taking some pictures–ah, if only it could have been like that.
But no matter. See, this isn’t about you. This is my blog and my ego and it’s about me. Remember that!
[Here we leave the digression and return to the narrative.]
It’s all about me, and I’m very proud of my ability with a camera. I don’t wander around great museums without getting in touch with my own greatness. I’m not here to chat about work and classes and that restaurant in Soho where everything is green or even oooww! the pain in my foot (and you can bet I have got a lot to say about that particular issue–just not now) or anything else. I’m here to demonstrate my greatness–maybe greatness is too strong a word…but then again…
It doesn’t take long for me to start walking at my own pace and going off in my own direction. After all we are off to the area of the museum she’d requested. It’s not like I’m being bossy or demanding. I’m just following along in my own way. I mean, hell, I am entitled to that, aren’t I?
It’s remarkable, isn’t it, ego’s ability to find things to feed on. The simple truth is that I expect great photo ops to be available everywhere in the museum. Hence, it matters not at all to me which way we go. Her suggestion is a fine one and it would have been most appropriate to simply acknowledge that and smile. Ego, however, seeks not the opportunity to express gratitude. It demands nourishment. Heading for her preferred destination allows me to feel simultaneously self-sacrificing and considerate and noble. Any of you all ever do that? It might play out like:
“Let’s go up to Connecticut this weekend and see the grandbabies and the kids and Lil and Bob and Lew and April and Ron and Connie and Barbara and Bill.”
“Yeah, sure…whatever.” when you’re actually dying to see the grandbabies and the kids and Lil and Bob and Lew and April and Ron and Connie and Barbara and Bill.
–or–
“Would you mind terribly if we watched the Simpsons tonight?”
“(sigh) OK, anything you say.”
Maybe twenty minutes into this adventure (I don’t remember exactly where we were) my fixation on being left alone in this moment of creation clashed sufficiently with her need for socialization to become the topic of–in my mind– her ceaseless conversation. Judith, Judith tells me, feels neglected and hurt and, truth be told, I have hurt her. No matter that it is unintentional. No matter that I can (and at first do) justify my behavior brilliantly. Not only do I justify it, I undoubtedly exalt it while simultaneously attacking hers. Judith, however, is a strong sort, not about to be blown away by my noise. Realizing this I go into my soft, precise mode, explaining in a calm and condescending way my purpose for coming to the museum. She, with equal calm, explains to me that I had failed to inform her of the rules beforehand. Ego provokes ego, offense provokes defense. We are off and running!
…All the way to heaven is heaven…
All the way to heaven is heaven…
All the way to heaven is heaven!
I work in a holy place, a place of healing, and I’m lucky enough to know it. My dad worked in a holy place. He was a clerk in a pre-supermarket food store. He tended the produce. He made sure that his customers had fruits and vegetables no less than he would bring home to his own family. In fact, when my mother shopped at The Hartford Market, the place where he worked from the 1930’s through the ’40’s into the ’50’s when it was sold to the chain that destroyed it, she would never buy from him. His co-workers, she was well aware, would “take better care of her” when it came to watermelon and corn and fresh spinach and red onions and peaches and, yes, even iceberg lettuce. 
My dad didn’t want me to work in a grocery store. One day in maybe my freshman year at Hartford Public High School I stopped by to hang out with him. Even then–before our run-in at the Wooster, Hartford’s great and ancient poolroom–it was cool to hang out with my dad. He was down in the room off the big refrigerator. The shelves weren’t cooled back then, so his day would begin with carrying his stock up from the basement refrigerator and end with bringing whatever leftovers back to their cooling place. Today he was making up fancy baskets of fruits for hospital shut-ins and folks leaving on fancy ocean cruises. Each basket received equal attention.
Most unusually Dad worked without words. My every attempt at conversation–we both talked eagerly of sports and politics–met with silence. I sensed nonetheless he was telling me something, but I didn’t know what. After perhaps an hour I said some dumb thing about how hard he worked. He put down his cutting tool and looked over at me. There was no expression on his face.
“I work hard so you won’t have to.”
He went back to silent work.
There were so many messages in what he did and said, but the ones I carried away and continue to carry may well not have been what he had in mind: first, the importance and beauty of what he did. For all I know my love of art and willingness to even make some of it may well have begun by seeing how he placed fruit together on a display rack or in a basket. My love of work may have originated in watching this man who meant so much to me at his work. He never spoke of the importance of what he did. Perhaps he didn’t see it that way. I however did. Just as now I see the importance of what I do. Secondly, I felt–perhaps for the only time in our life together–his love for me. Third, the sheer nobility of work done fullheartedly.
So here are my questions to you: What’s your work? After salaries and health benefits and vacation time and job titles are put aside, once you get past those labels of “special” and “good” and “prestigious” and “important” and, yes, “meaningful” what is your work really about for you? Who benefits from your efforts? Do you build buildings? Do you make them clean and safe? Do you teach others or provide them with their clothing or tools? Do you contribute to the wealth of information which increasingly dominates our world? Do you contribute to justice being done or hours otherwise spent in boredom being made entertaining?
Write something! If you have a website showing what you do, send a link. Whatever, put it in the Comments box.
Let me start with Friday, January 2nd. Based on this:
Peter Doobinin
dear friend,
there will be a downtown meditation community “new year’s day sitting” on january 1, 2009. we hope you can join us as we greet the new year.the sitting will end at 8:30pm, followed by time for fellowship. refreshments will be served, but if you would like to bring something, food (vegetarian), or beverage (non-alcoholic), please do.
Peter was my first meditation teacher. I studied with him for two years, taking his introduction to meditation course, the intermediate offering and then taking the introduction again. After that I did a series of “sandwich retreats,” meetings held in his apartment on a Sundays, Tuesdays and then Thursdays, thus sandwiching meditation and dharma talks (“sermons” to you Christians and Jews out there) with life in the usual world. Peter is knowledgeable, compassionate and focused to the point of seeming almost abrupt at times. His job is to transmit the word, not to debate it. He follows the Insight tradition, not the Zen with which I currently study.
Having had a quiet New Year’s celebration and not having seen Peter in maybe four years, I decide to accept the invitation. Being a good Jew underneath it all, I of course have to bring a little something either vegetarian or non-alcoholic. Opting for the former, I stop at the Subway on 14th Street about three doors down from the rented room where we are to meet. I order the Vegetarian Footlong and request it be cut into ten pieces. The counterman looks at me for a long instant, smiles and says, “Sure.” Sure he was, doing a magnificent job without the aid of a calculator, ruler or calipers. I thank him, tip him, exchange best wishes for a great new year, then set off to the meeting.
Ok, soI’m in the elevator with a coupla other folks heading up to five, when we stop at four and someone known to the others gets on. Some dialog now:
“How come you’re on four?”
“The men’s room on five isn’t working, so I hadda come down here.”
“Hmm,” thinks I, your writer. “This is a message I can read.”
So I exit the elevator, find the back-up men’s room, make use of it and arrive upstairs just in time to remove my jacket, sweater, shoes and cap, locate a mat and space on the floor for it, open my seiza bench (my nifty, padded, folding–Christmas-a-few-years-ago gift from stepson David) meditation seat and assume the position. As Peter begins his presentation, it occurs to me that something is missing from all this. Yes! The ten piece, toasted vegetarian footlong is missing. I don’t recall putting it on the table with the cheeses and crackers and hummus and raw vegetables and bowl of fruit. I don’t remember leaving it on the table next to the free literature (Peter always has good free literature) where I’d put my outerwear. It’s definitely not with me here on the seiza bench.
Peter’s words are lost as my mind hurtles backward in pursuit of the toasted vegetarian footlong. Is it in the back-up men’s room on the floor below? Back at the Subway? Meanwhile the chanting is starting. Wherever it is, I figure. It’s safe. So, along with the forty or so other celebrants in the room, I chant. Then I meditate, then listen to the dharma talk (Insight folks call it the Dhamma Talk,) the questions and comments period, and only then, as we stand and pick up our mats do my thoughts return to the errant sandwich.
Quickly I run down to the back-up men’s room only to find nothing. Ok, either someone who needed (or wanted) it found and took it, or it’s still back at the restaurant. Whatever, I return upstairs, speak happily with Peter, have some wonderful cake and leave.
When I arrived at the Subway looking more joyful than sheepish, I am greeted by the counterman, looking more sheepish than joyful. Arms out and palms up I begin:
“Duh…”
“When I saw you left it behind, I ran outside to look for you, but you were gone.”
“Yeah, I just was about 3 doors down. You still got it?”
“Naw. I threw it out.”
“How far out?”
“I really threw it out! It’s ok. I’ll make ya another one. Vegetarian, right? See, I remember. What kinda cheese?”
“Swiss.”
“All outta Swiss. American?”
“Ok, but just cut it in half. I’m not going back to the party.”
So, laden with seiza bench and footlong vegetarian hero and no hunger whatsoever–I had a BIG piece of cake and, besides, Bobbie fed me well before leaving home–I travel uptown by small “s” subway to my stop at 72nd Street.
Now here’s the part that let’s you know that (ta da) Life Falls Together and not just in Bhutan, but right here in New York City.
It was cold enough when I exited the station that only one man was sitting out on the stone seats in front of the entrance, his bundles in front of and next to him.
“Howya doin’ tonight,” I begin.
“Na mobly tow towa bummle,” it sounded like. Not much interest in conversation.
“Would you like a sandwich,” I continue. His eyes brighten, making contact with mine.
“That’s your sandwich!”
“I thought you’d like it.”
“What’ll you eat?”
“I got stuff at home.”
“You sure?
“Yeah.” I hand it to him. He takes it, hefts it.
“You sure?” I nod.
“Thanks,” he says.
“Happy New Year,” I wish for him out loud. No response. My moment in his life is over. Me, I smile. I’m still smiling.
♥
Could it be that your immense empathy for your clients has become part of who you are? Do they not go through a period of self-hate? I’m not talking about transference here, I’m talking about connections with these people that you have helped. You are one being…made up of infinite connections with other beings, any one of which can vastly change either being involved…
–Ez
A bunch of things are coming together at this moment, brought into focus by the words of Cousin Ezra printed above. It might not have been conscious, but it wasn’t coincidental that the last posting was introduced by my plea for feedback. The material presented in the post was both painful and puzzling, leaving me to a great extent hosting feelings alien to my experience. It felt like I’d been strapped to the back rack of my bicycle while someone else pedaled and steered. (Is “bicyclejacked” a term?)
I needed help.
So many of you supplied that help either through comments that others might read (click on “comments” or “See Comments” below) or in private correspondence. Some focused on the meditation experience, some on the interaction with my teacher, some on my relationship with my clients. All provided me with fresh vantage points from which to gain additional understanding of what all had transpired and, ultimately, how to make the most of it.
Again, thanks!
At this moment this has nothing to do with Christmas, Channukah, Kwaanza or any other holiday. It has to do with a painful event followed by another painful event which continues to cause pain. It’s not at all appropriate to the season, and, given the usually light or musing nature of this blog, not even appropriate to what I’ve been writing. Let me stop explaining and just start writing.
* * *
Back on the 31st of October I began a period of intensified Zen meditation, study and practice lasting through the 6th of December. During that period I participated in a group study of the writings of a 8th century Chinese Zen master, Ma-tsu (which I didn’t understand) and understanding of the Ten Essential Precepts (which I didn’t do well with either), extended my daily meditation period from 35 to 40 minutes (which did nothing to increase the depth of my meditation), focused on maintaining two of those Ten Essential Precepts (#7: not elevating oneself or blaming others–to own one’s limitations, and #9, not being angry–to see things as they are and not as they should be (which may prove to be the saving grace in all this.) On December 6th this formal period, called Ango, ended with a meditation beginning at 8 in the morning and lasting until after 9 in the evening.
It was during this extended meditation period that the first painful event occurred. It happened at about 3:30 in the afternoon. I was sitting in meditation when suddenly, with nothing I can recall to provoke it, my mind and body were taken over by feelings I’d never before experienced. Intense helplessness, pain, isolation, terror, bewilderment, betrayal, despondency–I was experiencing feelings often described to me over the last 15 years by clients I’ve treated for addictions: the feelings that accompany being sexually abused as children by a trusted family member. For all the years my clients did their best to describe their feelings, this was the first time their reports had moved from my cautious and distancing brain right into the center of my living. I was sweating. My belly was flipping. Tears tried to come out, but I was too terrified to let that happen. It was as if all that I had held certain and dear in life was simply no more. I felt utterly alone and defenseless in this universe. Utterly at the mercy of any and all evil. Without losing consciousness everything went black.
Blessedly, when the gong sounded ending the meditation period I was scheduled to meet with one our teachers, our senseis, to discuss my progress and receive counseling. I all but ran to the daisan area, the private space where we were to meet, my muscles tight to aching and my nausea just under control. I rushed the polite introductories and spilled out as best I could the feelings which still ran through me. I knew that compassion, one of Buddhism’s fundamentals was involved, but that empathy, a similar but much more visceral response, was overwhelming all else. Sensei would bring me back to balance.
Sensei looked at me calmly, and said that his job was to help me with Dharma, the Buddhist term which can mean either reality or the Buddha’s teachings, which are also reality. When I continued my blurting, he noted that he had many more students to see and could not spend a lot of time with me. When I continued–undoubtedly repeating what I’d already said, he asked me if I wanted to study koans, Japanese/zen mind-releasing puzzles, in January. I responded that I was too tied up in this moment to think a month ahead.
At this point there was a pause, then I heard Sensei say, “Where there is self-hatred there can be no progress.”
What??? I was certainly jolted out of my terror and nausea. What the fuck did that mean? Who was self-hating? I’d very carefully explained that I was feeling feelings my clients had described, that I’d never been molested nor had I molested anyone, that my life, ups, downs and the rest, had left me feeling blessed. I had no idea of what he meant by his sentence. I knew that Zen could be cryptic, but this was beyond my ability to understand, beyond my ability to even see the suggestion of a path to explore. Still I was too upset to even ask what was meant, too chaotic to do anything but fall back on my habitual insecurities and assume that sooner or later I’d understand what my teacher was telling me. Not all that deep down I felt that somehow it was being implied that I was an abuser.
Bowing meekly I left the room and returned to my mat. For the next 5 hours I was useless. There was no meditation. Motionless and silent, the agony of my clients had been joined by my own. I, too, felt abandoned.
That was on Saturday. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday I remained preoccupied, embedded in turmoil. Tuesday night I returned to the zendo for regularly scheduled meditation. Before even taking off my jacket I signed up for daisan with Sensei. I had to know what had been meant by, “Where there is self-hatred there can be no progress.” Walking to the interview area I alternated between rehearsing my words and urging myself not to turn and run. Arriving in the daisan space, my voice at the edge of tears, I explained how I did not understand his comment, that I remained upset and without direction, that I had to know the meaning of his comment.
He replied directly and without hesitation, “I never said such a thing,” and asked for the context of this alleged remark. I repeated all that I described above to you, all of which he acknowledged, all but the devastating sentence, “Where there is self-hatred there can be no progress.” Again I flashed back to the stories from my clients. Now, however, I wasn’t just hearing them. I had become one of them. Like them my perception, my reality was being denied. The one whom I saw as my help, my rescuer, was denying what I knew to be true.
“You must understand,” Sensei continued, his voice firm and words precise. “You must understand: I have no memory of ever having said those words.” I looked into my lap, my shoulders dropping, my belly heaving, eyes wet. A second, a minute, an eternity passed, then I heard a weak, infantile version of my own voice: “I understand that you have no memory of ever having said those words.” I rose and returned to the meditation room.
* * *
Zen and Ma-tsu talk of an all-containing universe, a universe so grand that it knows no contradictions because it holds all. Truth and not-truth, full and not-full, raped and not raped. Leaving my meeting with Sensei I focused on the universe holding memory-of-this and n0-memory of-this. My truth and Sensei’s truth. A universe big enough for both.
Intellectually I see no problem in this–now. Sensei remembers one thing. I remember another. Reporting on our memories, we are both accurate. Be clear, other than what we remember there is no trace of what transpired in that daisan on December 6, 2008 at around 3:45 in the afternoon. The events of that moment are no longer part of here and now reality. They are only of the past.
Reality, that which exists right now, is another story. Right now Sensei may well believe that my memory is broken and, indeed, it has its problems. I believe that Sensei’s memory–if only in this instance–is simply not as good as my own. I’d like to leave all this in the past, but there is the matter of pain, pain which is now and is real.
That pain which I feel now is not that of my clients. Nor is it that of not being comforted in those moments coming off the meditation mat. It is not even the pain in the accusation I inferred from the words, “Where there is self-hatred there can be no progress.” No, it comes from my inability to leave the past behind, and as such it becomes my teacher, pointing up unmistakably my now-and-then tendency to become stuck in products of my mind.
Here I become grateful.
The work with my clients is to help them dislodge from the suffering brought on by clinging to the horrors and beliefs arising from their pasts. Having it thus handed to me that such is not the clean and easy task I’ve always envisioned bolsters my compassion and my patience. It makes me better at what I do.
Full moon 4 a.m.
Waiting for sleep
Eyes wide open.
* * *
That’s my caption. Submit yours. Click on “comments.”
“You didn’t tell me about her,” Bobbie said with mimimal intonation, when I described the photo to the left as my subway fantasy. Of course I didn’t tell her. I didn’t tell anyone else either. Hell, I hardly told me. Talking about fantasies was never pushed during my growing up period, that time of life when lifelong habits are formed. Keep in mind I’m talking about growing up lower middle class in New England (Hartford, Connecticut) during the 1940’s and ’50’s. Sure, I once found a book of naughty cartoons entitled Over Sexteen under a stack of blankets in the little nameless room just off the living room. I still remember it’s definition of a Sweater Girl, a concept that’s long passed from popular culture. That definition: a woman who pulls your eyes over the wool. If there was any other sex-oriented material in the apartment, it must have been in the eyes and the sweat of my parents. Lord knows I looked–how do you think I found Over Sexteen?–thoroughly and without success. The lesson: fantasies are a private affair, and that’s undoubtedly what made them so delicious.
Today fantasies have been replaced with acting out. Men with the outlines of their erections showing grace the billboards above Times Square. Prostitution services advertise both on television and in the Yellow Pages. Two of New York’s three daily newspapers keep us abreast of the comings (yes, puns intended) and goings of the actors and politicians who live out their fantasy lives for our amusement and envy. Sex toys, tools and videos are even offered in those catalogs which specialize in raised toilet seats for seniors and the otherwise infirm.
Now before this post is mistaken for a rant against the present and nostalgic longing for the good old days, let me assure you that it is neither. It’s actually no more than me noting one more instance in which I’ve caught myself carrying Then into my interaction with Now. When I do this unawares, it creates confusions and frustrations. When I become aware of it, the opportunity for learning and even growth appears. I write about it because, being just one of the crowd, this is a habit I share with a great many people. Maybe even with you, dear reader.
So here’s my question to you: What are you holding onto? What beliefs, opinions, verities, prejudices re yourself, others and the world still color the glasses through which you look at it all? Hit the reddish “comments” word at the end of this and tell me all about it.
Friday night. 16 retreatants and two trainees kneeling on meditation mats, comprising three sides of a square in the center of Chan Meditation Hall, Dharma Drum Retreat Center, Pine Bush, New York, autumn. At the 4th side a just larger than life statue of the Buddha and, in front of it, Simon, our teacher. He asks,
“Why are you here? What are your expectations?”
Everyone, it seems, expects the others–or at least an other–to answer first. This is my 4th Western Zen Retreat. I’ve been through this before…know what to expect. At home on my desk in a rubberbanded collection of randomness, there is a note from a previous such retreat,
“A chaotic retreat–emotional roller coaster, feet, legs, upper arm, toes, squeaky sides.”
The longer I wait for an other to answer, the later I’ll get to bed. So the first voice is mine:
“I’m here because these things have become part of my life. I have no expectations.”
Yeah. Right.
* * * * *
Saturday morning. Everything usual. Up at 5 am. Out of the dorm and on the 5 minute walk to Chan Hall for exercises by 5:10. Meditation begun at 5:30. Morning ritual…more meditation…first private interview with Simon, a trainee sitting in. The purpose of the interview is for me to receive a huatou, a question, not necessarily answerable, to be used as an exit from my logical thinking and an entry way into whatever is beyond it. Pleasantries…a pause…the pause continues, then without warning or permission a voice comes from my mouth, a voice that surely is my own, but one not connected to my thoughts or even my mind–a voice coming from somewhere deeper, much deeper:
“There’s something going on. I don’t know…People I love, care about, they tell me I’m being hostile, nasty to them. My words, my presentation…they’re really hurt…I’m really hurting them. I’m not like that. That’s not me. I don’t know…
Simon just looks at me. He’s really good at that.
“I’ve been meditating for 7 years now and I can’t hold focus for more than 4 seconds at a time and I’ve had this pain in my foot since the end of winter, beginning of last spring…neuroma…shots didn’t work. Neither does this dumb-ass overpriced over-the-counter insole that doesn’t even fit in my shoes when my foot’s in there…Probably need surgery. I love walking. I live in a city made for it, and I can’t do it without real pain. Now my Achilles tendon is messed up and my hip on the other side and sometimes my back because of the way I walk to try to minimize the damned pain. And other stuff: shoulder and my forearm and my memory–ever since the crash and the concussion a year ago May and nothing’s coming back and when my parents were my age they’d both been dead for 6 years each…”
O my God!
Simon is still silent.
“O…my…God, it’s death, isn’t it? I’m afraid of dying (or at least the pain of it) and I haven’t even been able to tell myself. I’m scared shitless and my fucking fear is covered over by anger. My fucking anger at mortality is coming out as anger toward others…o my God…”
Simon speaks. My huatou:, What is impermanence? For an undetermined length of time I am to use the tools of silent meditation and monolog presentation when paired with other retreatants to pursue this wherever it might lead. I fold my hands in prayer-like gassho and bow. Simon and the trainee respond similarly, and I leave the interview room.
By noon my depression, my sadness is so intense that I seriously consider skipping lunch, going straight to the dorm to pack, hitch hike to the closest railroad station and return to the city. Yes, I remembered previous retreats. Yes, I remembered thinking on the way up that there’d be periods of misery like this. But this was like nothing I’d anticipated. This was hell! I followed the group into the dining hall, went through the motions of the before-meal prayer, ate, rinsed my plate and bowl and went into the kitchen.
My work meditation assignment was to wash the pots, pans, serving plates and whatever else might find its way to the three sinks after each meal. Here I was, obsessed with, grappling with an aching body and a mind full of death, and I had to wash the pots. Here, too, was that something larger and mightier and vastly truer than my ego-dominated mind. This manifested at first from my sense of community. I couldn’t very well skip town leaving sinks full of lunch pots for another.
(Sigh) So I started washing. At home, at Still Mind Zendo, each Saturday morning meditation concludes with a period of samu, work meditation. The focus is on the work and only the work, making it a transition from the formality of zazen, sitting meditation to the world at large. Here to…here too. As the warm, soapy water embraced my hands, all my attention went to the task. No awareness of the neuroma, the arthritis, the pulled muscle. No awareness of missing my mother and father, of the fear of pain and death. Nothing but the awareness of cleaning pots.
With the work of the moment completed, I went out onto the porch to put on my shoes. Shoes on retreat, you see, are just a means of transportation like cars and bicycles in other places. They are used to get from one location to another and are not worn inside. The air was crisp, cool, midday sunny and upstate crystal clear. As I wriggled into my boots and back into my sadness, I became aware of the temporary magic or miracle or just Zen-stuff back at the sink. I remembered that wonderful half hour without suffering. Then I looked up!
The tree
directly in front of me
looking just like this
was this! 
…and it was surrounded by full, glorious autumn! And, yes, I was aware of what I had been so overwhelmed by and it was now, again, no more than a set of thoughts and feelings, no more than neurons bouncing around in my brain. There are innumerable koans, brief stories of Zen monks and masters in which the monk, in the midst some perfectly mundane activity, suddenly realizes enlightenment. Now I’m not claiming that for myself. No, I simply rediscovered that there’s nothing like focusing on the real world to get me out of the constructions in my head. I’ve known this for quite a while now. I even teach it to my clients, men and women in recovery from suffering, delusion and drugs, directing them to “Get out of your minds and into the world!”
This is simply being mindful. And, of course, many teachers have pointed out that being simply mindful is not at all difficult. Remembering to be mindful, however, is another story.
* * * * *
At the next interview Simon brought me to the next step. My second huatou, “What is an other?”, was designed to examine my relationship to others–particularly, perhaps, those I’ve hurt with my anger. And then a third interview, this one completing the circle, the one in which I was again asked, “Why am I here?”
My response, of course, I am here to learn–again–that reality is just fine with me!
(Deep breath followed by long exhale.) OK, here it goes…what goes, however, beats me. I’ve been back from Egypt for about a month now, and still I haven’t been informed or inspired or motivated to write about the experience. Yes to all the usual questions:
Yes, it was a fantastic trip.
Yes what we saw and did was exciting.
Yes the guide was knowledgeable, communicative and responsive to our individual needs. 
Yes, the other folks, all 14 of them, were fun to be with–each in his/her (there has to be a more graceful if politically correct way to say members of both genders) way.
Yes, the trip truly took me far outside of myself, that self being pretty much lost for two weeks while the overwhelming presence of Egypt dominated my thinking, feeling, understanding and being.
Yes, this caused me great and delightful confusion, watching some of my more fundamental truths crushed under the weight of 5,000 year old antiquities. Somehow my entire world before Egypt has been moved from the categories of “a while ago,” “back in the day(s),” “a long time ago” and “way back when” into a new folder labeled “Current Events.”
Sense of humor has been moved from the “Nice thing” folder into the “Survival Skill” area, as in “We-were-ruled-by-others-for-a- millennium-and-if-we-don’t-find-a-way-to-find-it-funny-we’re-all -going-to commit-suicide” category. This manifests in the 21st century as everyone being able to laugh and provoke laughter. Little kids, in the middle of trying to sell me souvenir papyrus bookmarks, would flick my nose. Waiters would insist that they’d deliberately brought the wrong order–not that which I’d mistakenly not ordered but that they wanted me to eat.
Yes, the Egyptians, both the downstream folks and the upstream Nubians are remark-
ably cool. Cairo has 21 million people, and at times it seems that everyone has either a car, a truck, a donkey or a camel and wants to ride it at the same time as all the others. Cairo has maybe 3 traffic lights and they are regarded as suggestions–not commands. The lane lines painted on the road, we were told, were there strictly for decoration. Consequently Cairo drivers are remarkably skilled and courteous. After decades of incessant horn-honking this practice has largely been abandoned in favor of simply slowing down to allow another to move ahead. Even in traffic conditions of no movement whatsoever a remarkable hornicular silence prevails.
As for the antiquities (not ruins, and you’ll do well to remember that) without sufficient background and concern, I did find almost all of them blending into one great package of statues, columns, wall carvings and hieroglyphics.
Sure the Great Pyramids, The Sphinx
and Abu Simbel stand out because of the pre-visit hype they’ve received,
but all the other temples
as beautiful and exciting and dramatic as each is–and each is–tend to merge in my memory-reduced brain into one big collection of–as I mentioned–one great package of statues, columns, wall carvings and hieroglyphics.
Yes, there were special moments on the trip. For me they were riding a camel across the sand to a Christian antiquity, St. Simeon Monastery…
…and visiting 2 new museums, the Nubian Museum in Aswan and the Luxor Museum, which both treat each exhibited item as a featured work of historical art. I’d never before seen antiquities so beautifully and thoughtfully displayed.
The truth is high points were everywhere:
Luxor by night by caliche
Ibn Tulun Mosque
Breakfast at sunrise
Shopping–yes, shopping…
… and Mother Nile!
But the highest high point of all came on the last day of our two week stint, when for 3 hours I went off on my own into Khan el-Khalili, the Cairo souk, to wander aimlessly through it’s narrow streets, into those areas which do not sell goods aimed at tourists, those sections where cattle, sheep and chickens walked the streets, where food and foundries were to be found in abundance, and I was gently noticed but not pounced upon (not that I minded that, but it is another story.) Just walking among the folks and the animals and the rough narrow streets of the Khan-el-Khalili.
So, here’re my questions: walking through khan el-Khalili,what year is it? What century? What millenium? and, finally, what does it matter.
Wanna see more pix? Click here: http://picasaweb.google.com/richsgold/egypt#
Sometimes I know why I write what I write. Sometimes not. Sometimes the prime influences of the moment are evident. Right now, for instance:
All morning images have rushed through my mind in a carnival of confusion, color and lunacy (Was there really a plastic shopping bag tied around my ankle or did I dream it? Imagine it? Plastic bag? What plastic bag? Is there more coffee?) Still I know that these influences only influence and do not explain anything, the mind being what it is. Is being what it is.
Why I write at all is another matter, particularly why blog. All this started back in November of 2006. At first it just seemed like fun and, more than that, a chance to see how much courage lay beneath my surface. Putting out my words (a mild way of saying thoughts) for others to see, braving whatever comments/criticisms might come back–that was the real challenge. It was only last night, however, that I finally understood why I write at all.
My writing and, as it turns out, like my meditation and my work and my cycling and traveling and friendships and acquaintances and just about everything else I now fill my self with are all a reaching out, a seeking connection with others. Like other human beings I am a social animal. The blog, particularly with it’s opportunity for reader comments, seems an ideal pathway for the mutual exchange of concerns and perceptions. I particularly want to know what you think and what you think about–not just feedback about what my postings introduce, but where your thoughts go from there.
The better I understand myself, the better I see me as part of an ever-expanding community, a community of not just people, but of all–even emptiness. Maybe the word totality is better than community, but somehow it lacks the warmth and responsiveness of community. Undoubtedly the word love comes in here, the love that holds all the rest: the laughter, the suffering, the celebration, the isolation, the ego and the soul.
I’m getting carried away here, but maybe not. Maybe that’s why the picture at the top: to undercut the whole thing with humor; a safeguard against taking myself too seriously and against you taking this too seriously.
What do you think?
This has nothing to do with raccoons. I just found it while looking for something else among the few and scattered remains of what was lost from this computer last crash. It was written back in May, undoubtedly for posting, but that somehow never happened. Could be that my May bike crash in Central Park and subsequent in-head memory crash had something to do with this being side-tracked? Actually no, that was a year ago May–the one they had in 2007. At any rate…
Just about twenty-four hours ago, maybe it was forty-eight, I wrote an entry for this space using a method I learned from Natalie Goldberg’s book, Writing down the bones.
Simply, one begins by placing the pen or pencil in the upper left hand corner of a blank page and writes and writes and does nothing but write. No reading what has been written. No correcting spelling or grammatical or punctuation or any other possible errors. No crossing out. Just keep writing until the pre-determined time period has ended or the hand hurts too much or you run out of paper or ink. Being bored or running out of things to write are not legitimate reasons to quit. Rather they become topics of the writing. Something like…
…and so in conclusion let me just restate that never before in the history of human kind have such wonderous thoughts beens s et to paper. (Damnit, what do I write about now? I can’t believe that there’s nothing left to say. Not hing coming to mind at all. There’s bot to be something to write about. I promised myself I’d keep this up for at least 20 minutes and I[ve got at least 3 or 4 to go…
Anyhow I had written about working with koans at a seven day Ch’an retreat at the Dharma Drum Retreat Center about 6 weeks ago, about how I’d struggled to the end of my logical abilities to make sense of this Zen puzzle and still came to no answer. Then, as it is supposed to happen if one is sufficiently open, the investigation jumped outside the realm of the logical.
One afternoon, standing along side a creek rushing with snow melt, all sorts of ego and emotion made their unbidden appearances, and suddenly I was overwhelmed by feelings of nausea and loneliness–the likes of which I’d not felt since my first marriage ended in 1974. Only this time it was quite clear that these feelings were not being thrust upon me. I was creating them myself–or better–the ego was doing it.
At this point the writing exercise began to imitate the koan work. I’d reached the end of the koan stuff (I’d thought) but was committed to writing more. Without planning I found myself describing the interior monolog I produce whenever, on my bike, I approach the top of East Clinton Avenue. East Clinton is a mammoth stepped hill which descends the New Jersey Palisades a few miles north of the George Washington Bridge. I can easily reach 45 mph on this descent. As I near the top, the initial “o boy !” feelings are chased out of my skull by the “what-if” messages of Logic:
What if somebody backs out of a driveway?
Or crosses an intersection?
Or there are pebbles on the road?
Or oil slick appears?
Or some oncoming fool decides on an unsignaled left turn right in front of my zippy ass?
Images of Goldberg as roadkill, of ambulances, of weeping family members as far away as Taiwan compete for space in my cinema brain.
As the descent begins the brain shuts down. The emotions kick in: anticipation, anxiety, fear. As I begin the drop feelings progress through outright fear to omygod fear to mind-changing fear to too-late fear to resignation-fear and then…the wondrous white-noise of no feelings as it becomes evident that feelings are as irrelevant as logic. With feelings gone comes pure response to the ride, comes “WHEEEE!!!” Not out of control. Not in control. Control is simply no longer a factor.
Now the connector between the koan work and the hill are most neatly stated in another koan:
The priest Shih-shuang said, “How do you step from the top of a hundred-foot pole?”
How, when you’ve reached the limit of your secure, verifiable, testable and provable logical process, do you take that additional step into the insecure, unverifiable…ultimately spiritual realm? Birds have to be nudged out of the nest. My long-time-not-seen friend, The Mole, insisted that the only thing to get him to leave the security of his parents’ apartment was them closing the place down and moving out of state. For many of us this is that fabled “leap of faith:” the belief, not that all will work out as we might wish it to, but that this is what is called for at this moment. And that, whatever happens, we will be able to handle it.
When an addict decides to go sober this selfsame leap of faith is involved. So too, I think, for the immigrant who moves to a new land without the promise of anything. It is a remarkable instant in which faith in the universe and faith in self become indistinguishable from each other. Each then may create his own suffering of fears and hopes (two sides of the same egoistic coin) or, by simply doing what must be done, avoid the suffering, stay better focused on the reality and thereby succeed without having pre-defined success.
At any rate, 24 or 48 hours or so ago when I was at about this point in the exercise, just after I’d launched into a bit about how, when we take these leaps, we leave behind who we were and become whoever comes next, I hit the “save and continue editing” button and the entire essay disappeared. Disappeared. Vanished from my hand, screen and memories. Gone. Poof ! The life-follows-art conspiracy strikes again.
Another koan:
It is said that throughout his career as a rail-splitter, Abraham Lincoln always had the same ax. During that time it went through 3 handles and 2 heads.
I’ve really nothing to say right now, but I couldn’t just send you these snaps without some kind of comment. This afternoon, walking thru the Ramble in New York’s Central Park, I ran into these fellers:
Raccoons!
In Central Park!!
in NEW YORK CITY!!!
Quiet, calm, curious, friendly–but mostly curious– raccoons right here in New York City, where people come from everywhere else so they can make more noise and craziness than they could at home while at the same time being more afraid of strangers than they’d ever been before. But not them.
So you can surely imagine my surprize when these little fellers, soft as their fur, just moseyed out of the trees onto the sidewalk and right up to me. Not brave but simply with no fear and no reason to develop any.
Look at this one! There he is up on his hind legs and there I am on my ugly twisted feet looking down into his beautiful eyes and there we are, the two of us, just being there in the Ramble in Central Park in New York City.
* * *
Now that I’m back home and I’ve started thinking again (while I was out there I was too busy being there to do any thinking), I wonder how they got there and where was mama when I was taking pictures and how come in 43 years of walking thru the Ramble I’d never seen raccoons in there before and some more generic questions like what do they eat and how do they spend their time and do they have rabies. That last one gives rise to a personal question:
Was my toe in danger?
The only one I can truly answer is the last one: no.
Last time I told you about a wonderful writing, thinking, being exercise I learned from Natalie Goldberg and invited you all to try it and let me know how it went. So far no one’s accepted the invitation, so I did–but I didn’t throw it out. Here it is:
Sunday, July 20th: Once again here I am. Yes! Right here. In my head I’d begun working on a lament: O, poor me! All alone on this hot and appropriately humid New York July Sunday. Bobbie’s up in Connecticut with the grandbabies. My two best bike buddies are elsewhere, as my third best bike buddy, and I got up too late after having been out too late last night to ride to the beach with a group of strangers. My best art buddy and I are buddies no longer. O lonesome me (in the words of mostly forgotten song.)
Be all that as it may, I’m here: siting by the Hudson river at about 62nd Street in a little bit of shade, listening via mp3 to Charcoal Gypsies by Musicians of the Nile. One can listen to only so much Umm Kalthum! Out of the corner of my eye a site-specific dance event is being rehearsed. It will start in about an hour and a half. I’ve brought a bottle of water, a camera and extra batteries.
Next to me on the bench is National Geographic Traveler’s Egypt and the list of sights out trip (in less than 3 weeks!) will cover. My plan for this afternoon: to read up on what we’ll see in weather hotter and drier than what’s upon me now.
Meanwhile leaves, willow style, blow gently across my head, cheek, neck and shoulder. What a tickle!
Frankly, what a life!
Clearly “Poor Me” is not cutting it. “Lucky Me” and “Blessed Me” and “Grateful Me” are kicking Poor Me’s ass.
Poor “Poor Me.”
Who knows about Natalie Goldberg? Natalie Goldberg is no relation of mine, no former wife or unmarried sister of my father’s or mine. She’s not someone who used to be married to someone else named Goldberg who then went on to date me on and off over a period of eight or so years who is now my friend. She was never married to a poker buddy of mine from high school nor did she marry Bill Kinloch. Natalie Goldberg is a writer, a Buddhist, the author of a remarkable little book called Writing down the bones: freeing the writer within.
Writing down the bones, published by Shambala Pocket , is one of their 3 inch by 4.5 inch by about maybe an inch fit-in-your-pocket books, 284 pages plus some notes and a bunch of blank pages at the end. Each chapter is a complete essay, thus relieving the reader of the need to maintain order or even finish the entire book. All the chapters are interesting and useful, interweaving Buddhist practice and thought with the art and craft of putting words down on paper or out into the ethernet.
The most useful chapter for me was the one in which she set forth this exercise: gather up a stack of paper, a pen and a timing device (a clock, a watch, an egg timer, a burning candle, whatever…) Set the timer for the amount of time you have to write. Place the point of the pen–actually a pencil will do–in the upper left hand corner of the top sheet of paper. Start the timer and start writing. Continue writing. Do not read what you’ve written. Do not make corrections. Do not pause to think. Just write! Should you not be able to think of what to write, write about not being able to write. When the timing device indicates that time has ended, stop. Here’s the hard part: don’t read what you’ve written. Don’t correct what you’ve written. Throw it away! That’s right, throw it away.
You see, Natalie is writing not just about writing. As she says early on, “This is a book about writing. It is also about using writing as your practice, as a way to help you penetrate your life and become sane.” As someone who’s lost two 80 poem volumes, all his writing on addictions, his resume and the outlines for not a few projects to the the computer’s ability to destroy, imagine how I reacted to the idea of writing my ass off then destroying it without even glancing at it.
OOO-WEEE BABY! Get out of jail free! It’s all right! Breathe again! I have been released!
Disaster was no longer disaster! Writing was suddenly no more than words on paper. No more than that! No longer was it me or my reputation or my raison d’etre. Whatever fell out of my mind and through my hand, whoever was behind it, it didn’t matter. It was just a moment in a lot of time.
What mattered was that I had detached from the concerns of the ego and centered in another place.
Talk about freedom! Freedom from pride, from the need to produce, from judgment–freedom from labeling myself a writer, even freedom from the compulsion to escape from the pain of having lost my work. As I said earlier, OOO WEEE BABY! Freedom from a whole pack of satanas–el dios de este mundo.
So here’s my suggestion: try it! Follow the directions as if your life depended on it. (It may.) Leave your ego in the other room and sit down to a minute or 5 or 10 or–if there’s nothing particular on tv and nothing is burning–an hour of covering paper with words. You may even want to try it on the computer. If so, your delete button should work. Then send me a comment–you remember: click on the word “comments” at the end of this posting. Let me know what it was like for you.
Above is a snap I really like. Below is one which needs help. Here’s the deal: Please supply that help in the form of a caption. First, click on the word “comments.” Then enter it into the section below marked “Leave a Comment.” Then hit “Submit comment.”
Simple?
Simple.
