It seems like the wisdom is all around at this wonderful moment.  Here are five gifts I’ve received to share with you all.  Enjoy!

*   *   *

Mary is about to turn 97.  She is frail and hearing can be difficult for her.  She can be forgetful.  One morning a few weeks ago, in the middle of a conversation about something else, she suddenly says, “I’ve lived too long.  I’m bored.  All I want now is my deep rest.”  Then, just as quickly as she’d left the earlier conversation, she returned to it.  This week I found the courage to continue that minute of openness and asked her what she thought death might hold.  Were hopes or fears involved.  She looked at me somewhat quizzically.  “No!”  A slight pause, then: “No one knows what happens after we die.  If I don’t know what’s next, how can I worry about it?  Have you seen my reading glasses?  I can’t find them anywhere.”

*   *   *

And this from Charles Upton in last Spring’s issue of Parabola,

If we see no purpose in suffering, how can we maintain our courage in the face of the hardships of life?  Nothing is left for us then but to make a religion, as well as an industry, out of our need to deny reality.  But if we are able, by the Grace of God, to come to a true sense of the ultimate goal of human life–self-transcendence, and the God-given duty to stand as a sign and mirror of the Deity in this world–then our suffering will be transformed from a misfortune into a teacher, from a degradation into an ennoblement, from an incitement to hatred and self-hatred and despair into a great power in the service of love (p.79)

*   *   *

Just for today, I will not worry.  (I will trust in the Divine Plan of the Universe)

Just for today, I will not be angry.  (If I do, I will take responsibility for being angry and not project it on others)

Just for today, I will give thanks for my many blessings.  (I will be grateful for what I have and for who I am)

Just for today, I will do my work honestly.  (I will be with whatever I do and make it the most important thing in this moment)

Just for today, I will honor parents and ancestors.  (I will hold the lineage of my ancestors in my heart so that it may heal)

*   *   *

Bill Miller

Relaxing into a bodily felt sense of and as this moment, beyond the busyness of our minds is meditation, whether we are sitting, talking or dancing and while we may never fully grok it with our minds; we can feel the truth of it, in and as our bones.Who and what we are right now is all we need and nothing is missing. The objective to meditate in order to change ourselves, get beyond our suffering, our body or our world in order to understand or be at peace, at some point in future because our mind story says we need to, is a wrong view and wrong practice. We probably will do this a lot (most do) before just relaxing into and as the simplicity of bodily-based being in this moment, beyond our compulsive attachment to the mind story.

*   *   *

And, using the newest set of tools from Picasa, a snap:

As I said up top, ENJOY!

Back at the beginning of the month Bobbie and I, not at all in the style or tradition of Jack Kerouac or anyone else who’s made a name for him/herself on the road, went on a road trip.  The script was simple and, for us, remarkably undramatic:

• New Jersey Transit through a both beautiful and remarkably early snow storm from Penn Station to Trenton to transfer to SEPTA (which is probably South East Pennsylvania Transit Authority) to
• Philadelphia where we rented a car right in the 30th Street Station, to drive to
• Wilmington, Delaware (As of the census of 2010, there were 70,852 people) including (step) son David who put us up in a grand hotel of an older tradition.  Then avoiding the Pennsylvania Turnpike in favor of local route 30 to
• Chambersburg PA (Total Population 20,386) and my cousins Graeme and Emily and Ezra and Ez’s girlfriend and his 2 kids and her 3 kids all under the age of maybe 8 and maybe 6 horses.  Then we passed through
• West Virginia in a minute or so down into
• Virginia, stopping for lunch at

• Continuing to Fairfield, Virginia (Total population: 1,719: Male: 849: Female: 870: Median age (years) 40.3: Total households: 692), we spent time with Bill and MaryJean and 2 horses and played Trivial Pursuit (Brag moment: Bill and I won!)
• The next day we drove through two mountain passes into the Appalachians, first stopping at our only roadside attraction
• The remarkable Natural Bridge (shown here on a remarkable souvenir mug) before arriving at

• Newport Virginia (Population 2000: 1,896 [2000 Zip Code Based Est.], Population 1990: 170,045 [1990 Census], Population Growth 1990 to 2000: -98.89%) to hang with Judy (www.judyschwab.com) whom we met in Bhutan a few years ago and her husband, Wally, who owns the biggest motorcycle either of us has ever seen and makes beautiful things from wood.  Here we got to spend some time in  the heart of Bluegrass country and particularly in

home of the Floyd Country Store where I bought two (2!) cd’s featuring Scotty Stoneman, a wonderful fiddler whom I first heard on New Year’s Eve, 1966–but that’s another story.  Next

• Front Royal Virginia (Population in July 2009: 14,573) where we had a great meal at this place

served by a sharp and delightful waitress named Rhonda (“Hi, I’m Rhonda and I hate the Beach Boys!”,)  then watched a superb documentary on Bluegrass Music on PBS in our adequate and quiet motel room.  The very next day, continued to

• Oxford, Pennsylvania (Population in July 2009: 4,712. Population change since 2000:+9.2%) to spend an evening in relaxed conversation with Bobbie’s cousin, Pat Robertson (not the one you might be thinking of), then back to
• Philadelphia (Population in July 2009: 1,547,297) to return the car and, after just missing a train and hanging for about an hour of delightful calm (Bobbie bought a sandwich, I listened to music and pretended to meditate) at the 30th Street Station

• We caught the SEPTA train to Trenton where we caught the

• NJT train to Penn Station where we caught the #3 train (which used to be known as the IRT or Interborough Rapid Transit ) to Broadway and West 72nd Street, exiting at
• West 73rd Street and walking
• Home.

But all that’s just by way of introduction.  The story I want to tell you begins and is confined to a point about 6 days into this 9 day adventure on the morning of our departure from Newport.  After breakfast and good-byes with Judy and Wally, we wound through local roads to the intersection of 42 and 460 where we stopped for gas.  It was hot enough to take off my jacket, so, taking my camera out of my jacket pocket and placing it on the roof of the car–You smile, maybe even chuckle and it occurs to me that there is no point in continuing with the details of this tale.  Suffice it to say that, 35 minutes later, when we returned to the spot where we heard a thunk on the road behind us and blew it off as our suitcase readjusting in the trunk so that I could walk for 10 minutes along the now truck laden highway until I found the first pieces of the now shattered camera with which I had so lovingly and thoroughly documented our trip…

Now here’s the remarkably cool part of all this: neither Bobbie nor I was particularly upset at losing the camera and our photos.  Sad, certainly, but with no loss of calm and no anger.  Nothing to keep us from enjoying the rest of our trip.  About thirteen camera chunks in I found the one still holding the memory card.  Of course we immediately tried it in her camera and, of course, it read out “inaccessible.”  Since returning we’ve tried it in 5 other devices and at one “professional” photo shop.  It’s now at yet another–”advanced”–tech shop where it resides still.  Whatever.  The good times with family, friends and each other are still ours, photographs or not. Realizing that has been the great and unexpected–if ultimately obvious–lesson of our road trip in Autumn.

Some background: the retreat is structured around continually investigating a question given to you by one of the leaders.  This means wrestling or dancing with it or simply staring at it while sitting, walking alone in the woods, working, eating, showering, exercising, dancing and shaking or even sleeping.  Most powerfully this means talking to a silent and non-responding partner about it during communication exercises.  Finally this means relating your findings to a teacher periodically so as to receive further guidance or, perhaps, to receive a new question.  Questions like:

Who am I?       What is love?       What is relaxation?       What is this?

My first question was “What is fear?”  My second, coming midway through the third day, was “What is death?” and while this second did not arise from the first question, it might well have.

Back to the changes: In the past this had always meant that at around the second afternoon–always in broad daylight–I’d panic.  Convinced that I was in way over my head, I’d make plans to run back to the dorm, pack, hitchhike into Middletown, NY and grab the next train back to NYC and the world I thought I could handle.  I’d look like this:

Then, as I’d begin clumping through the woods, the sound of the dry leaves or snapping twigs under my feet or some bird or maybe the wind would stop me cold.  “Great Doubt,” the phase I had been going through, would end!  All the muscles would relax; I’d sigh, smile and murmur “Thank You” just loud enough for God and me to hear.

That was then.  This time the changes weren’t sparked by lack of faith in my intellectual abilities or even by my inability to meditate for any appreciable length of time before my mind decided it had other–but never better–things to do.  This time it came from the body.  There proved to be no activity waking or sleeping that was without significant pain for me.  Sitting, it was the knees or the back.  Standing it was the balls of the feet.  Walking it was the hips.  Eating it was this thing called a  diverticulum and a new denture introducing itself to my gums, and sleeping it was the bladder.  I began making bets with myself as to how long I’d last in beautiful Pine Bush, NY.  Recent flooding had cut off train service home, so the means of escape were not immediately apparent.  I wasn’t about to let that stop me.  Even more devastating at this point, my body had found an ally in it’s attack.  That supremely sadistic traitor, my mind, added copious amounts of suffering to my pain, broadcasting its conclusion that I must cut short my retreat, never pass this way again, never attempt any other–even shorter–give up my half-assed attempts at meditation altogether, lose what little influence I had left on my overbearing thought processes and spend the rest of my few remaining days on the planet eagerly awaiting the horrors of death.

Here a pause to thank God for mind’s susceptibility to distraction and what the Buddhists call impermanence.  Again–and not at all anticipated–Great Doubt revealed itself, and reality replaced my thoughts about it.  Later my sister, Barbara, would write to me:

“Choose the reality that benefits you most.”

Clearly she was referring to the one which exists outside my head and not inside it.  Sister Barbara–not unlike wife Barbara–is no dummy!

*     *     *

From this point on the retreat was filled with bliss.  Each communication exercise with ever-changing partners brought new depths of clarity, of humility, empathy and actual love.  Knowingly or not we became each others’ partner in healing.  My transition from thinking about and interpreting and filtering reality into being in reality solidified when a partner of the moment, Licette, mentioned how in walking up the stone path to the Chan Meditation Hall, she could feel each stone beneath her feet.

There it was!  Follow the body rather than the mind.  Be here!  Be now!  Ideas we’ve all seen; ideas many of us have liked and attempted at various times to adopt with varying degrees of success.  Now is my time to try it again and again and again.  And each time I find myself lost up there between my ears to remember the answer is to simply step out of my mind and back into the world.  In the same email quoted above the same Sister Barbara also wrote:

Keep those good feelings you’ve come back (from retreat) with.

The understanding here is that the feelings ultimately come from my participation in reality.  And so I’m back in the continual circus of my neighborhood:

and the intensity of The Bronx…

…and the vision of artists like Emilio Sanchez…

…and the utterly deceptive appearance of solidity and tranquility at my workplace.

My real work, of course, is to always feel the stones beneath my feet.

” My God!  I forgot the opera tickets!”

 ”OMG–I’ve been invited to a Tea Party, and I don’t even drink tea…”

“About how many pancakes do I have to get to get the BIG pitcher of syrup?”

Two words seem to say it all…

“We all dress this way because we want to show you how unique we are…”

The door to opportunity flies open.

“What’re ya doin’ today?”  “Just hangin’…”

“See you after the show…”

Thanks to Jack and Nameless for their submissions.

It looked like this:

and this:

It tasted like this:

But ah, my friends, and o, my foes, underneath it all and bursting forth from it not unlike a power samba band from the very heart of existence, the reality was this!

And here I would have you listen to Generique, the first cut on Jobim’s Black Orpheus soundtrack album.  Play it at the volume it deserves–loud!  Click:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ7F0Fkydhk

A felicidade means happiness, happiness in this case containing peace and joy and satisfaction, the wholeness of being that comes from knowing who you are.  Energia means–no surprise here–energy manifesting as excitement and movement, the very sound of life.  These, incidentally,  combine as the theme of all Brazil’s exports (like honey, samba, feijoada, beautiful and tightly underdressed  women and often shirtless men–surely dancing samba–coffee, soccer champions, cachaca, churrascaria, more samba and bolinios de bacalhau...) offer to the world.  Brazilian Day 2011 was just that perfect mixture of happiness and energy. Thousands of folks draped in Brazilian flags or wearing the yellow and green of Brazil’s national soccer team–most emblazoned with Ronaldo’s #10, faces, hair and even tongues painted in celebratory colors, the strong smells of charcoal and pig meat everywhere, and everywhere the beat of power samba drumming.

Hmm, those of you who have some familiarity with my thinking may be wondering, what does all this have to do with a Zen and Taoist understanding of existence? 

For those of you without that familiarity, it’s like this: no matter what I seem to be writing about, eventually it will come back to an Eastern mindset that over the years has so blended in with my New England/Judeo/Christian/New York thinking as to make it it’s own.  The irony is that I never plan for this to happen.  It just does.  Well…maybe not never.  Maybe sometimes I do begin with the Zen stuff and look for some clever way of slipping into it.  The truth be told, this is one of those times.  This all actually began the day before Brazilian Day 2011 with me riding the A train out to the Atlantic Ocean (yes, you can get there by subway!) while listening to Nawang Khechog’s Sounds of Peace and reading Robert Aitken’s book, The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics.  His chapter entitled Dharma Assets led me to put together this (I thought at the time) free-association list:

energy

richness

abundance

fullness

emptiness

potential

dialectical understanding

blurred snapshots

hustling right here on the A train

music

reading

knitting

phoning

cross aisle conversations

musical acrobats

football team funding

pan-handling as an alternative to crime and desperation

Add to this the vague memory of some comments about qi I read back in the 1960′s  in an introduction to the Tao Te Ching.  Elizabeth Reninger, writing currently for About.com (http://taoism.about.com/od/qi/a/Qi.htm) says about qi:

Central to Taoist world-view and practice is qi (chi). Qi is life-force — that which animates the forms of the world. It is the vibratory nature of phenomena — the flow and tremoring that is happening continuously at molecular, atomic and sub-atomic levels. In Japan it is called “ki,” and in India, “prana” or “shakti.” The ancient Egyptians referred to it as “ka,” and the ancient Greeks as “pneuma.” For Native Americans it is the “Great Spirit” and for Christians, the “Holy Spirit.” In Africa it’s known as “ashe” and in Hawaii as “ha” or “mana.”

Reninger doesn’t mention it, but my guess is that the Kabbalists would call it God.  My friends Annie and Mahanta would call it music.

Back in the ’60′s the writer whose name I can’t recall (maybe R.B. Blakeney) described everything–EVERYTHING–as qi and those things we could see or otherwise identify as being temporary concentrations of qi.  Back then I thought I understood that.  What I was understanding on the A train, however, wasn’t really understanding.  It was the most remarkable if unverbalizable feeling.  Let’s take another look at the list:

energy

richness

abundance

fullness

emptiness

potential

Up to this point I was clearly in my left brained intellectual head and caught up in ideas coming from Atkins’ text.  Then along came

dialectical understanding

This one crept in on the wings of a Dialectical Behavioral Therapy training I attended a few weeks back.  A most delicious idea and one extraordinarily relevant to my work and rest-of-life, this, one best publicized by Hegel and Karl Marx, is the idea that two opposites may be synthesized to give rise to a third entity.  “Thesis and antithesis yield synthesis” is the traditional phrasing.  Somehow my mind then shifted to

blurred snapshots

You see, a lot of my favorite snaps of late have been just that: blurred.  Here’s one from Egypt: The Luxor market at night:

Snaps like these speak of energy, motion and color more than of simple shapes in space.   I’ve been making such images for quite a while, but recently I’ve grown particularly fond of them.  Back to the moment.  The list continues with the contents of the ride:

hustling right here on the A train

music

reading

knitting

phoning

cross aisle conversations

musical acrobats

football team funding

pan handling as an alternative to crime and desperation

With the train now above ground and the world rushing by on both sides, the interior of the train became awash with energy.  Sounds, colors, activities, interactions, preoccupations all blended into a sea of qi.  Things once distinct merged into each other on the train just as they would on 6th Avenue and West 46th Street: the smell of roasting pork  merging with the aroma of sweating drummers, the music of a reggae CD stand clashing and yet blending with that accompanying tango dancers on a stage half a block away.  Not harmony.  Yes, harmony!  Not separate.  Yes, separate!  Not to be understood but to be felt!

Back to my favorite word of late: WOW!

WOW!

Dark Bars are a phenomenon known to very few.  I know this, because every Dark Bar I’ve ever entered and spent time in has been almost empty of customers.  Maybe one guy splitting his time between watching the TV and checking the ponies in the Daily News, all the while ignoring his beer, that last being no more than the receipt for his rental of the stool.  There’s the barmaid, of course.  Dark Bar barmaids are always beautiful, full-figured and dressed in such a way as to tell you it’s all really there and none of it’s for you.  Downtown and midtown they’re aspiring actresses and spend all their time on the phone to someone they claim is their agent.   If they don’t have the body, they do the New York Times crossword and in that way let you know that none of whatever they do have is for you.   Uptown they are tough and beautiful and full-figured, with eyebrows that could cut out your heart.  They’re usually back in the corner on the phone to their  girlfriends or babysitters (who are usually their mothers or girlfriends) to find out about who’s been doing it with whom and what’s up for the weekend and shit.  In the Spanish Language Dark Bars their only allowed English is ” Un otro?”

Bartenders don’t work the day shift in Dark Bars unless the owner or manager have better places to be during the day.  If they are there, there’s no need of additional muscle.  The owner is usually in the back, usually surrounded by paperwork.  He’ll come out periodically to look around, greet a newcomer and to make sure nobody’s drinking for free.  Owners and managers have both diplomacy and the ability to command the fear that keeps all ultimately peaceful.  They go to school for it.  If push comes to shove, they will be backed up by the porter, a small, youngish Mexican man eager to please his boss, a young man who knows what must be done and is always ready to do so.

Dark Bars, by the way, aren’t really all that dark.  When a sanitation truck pulls up, there’s always enough light to shoot a coupla games of pool for beers or even to do the crossword in the Post.   It’s just that it takes a while for your eyes to get used to the difference between the blinding light on the street and the gentle neon of the interior.  Dark Bars always feel friendly, if only because they’re quiet as well as dark.  The voice of the TV is nothing compared to the horns on the street or the voices of the women with cleavage who know what each others’ boyfriends were doing when they were supposed to be somewhere or whatever and the loud crowd in the evening between the time when everyone’s just chilling and when they’re getting really pissed off.  In Dark Bars, if you’re lucky, the TV’ll be in a language you don’t speak.  If the owner is up front, he’ll welcome you and tell the barmaid–in hushed tones that sound endearing–to get the fuck off the phone and get you a drink.

It’s only as your eyes adjust to the dark that you’ll start to see signs that peace is not the only possibility.  While it’s good to be reassured that

The drinks are bigger in my nest

it is less comforting to know that you are in a place where it must be posted that 

If you are not consuming, stay away from this business

and do you really need to be informed in writing that

The men’s room is for one person at a time

and is kept locked?

*   *   *

I went for a walk today, a hot day that left me with my armpits sliding down my sides and a thirst that wouldn’t answer to water.  I was in a part of the city I knew not, so all options looked equal.  Not really.  It’d been decades since my last entry into a Dark Bar, and there one was–visible a block away.  The sign above it simply said “Tavern.”  That was enough.  Down the block, through the newish glass door into the old brick building, out of the heat into the cool that came without the need of air conditioning and smelled like beer.  So dark I couldn’t see the bar stools, but had to find them by touch.

The friendly welcome from the owner, the creak of the chair at the dark end of the bar where the moment before I’d seen only the glow of a cellphone and the almost unheard steps of the barmaid along the catwalk to a position in front of me.

Order a beer, sit back and watch the battle between my senses adjusting to the dark and the flood of memories: the ghosts of  bars called The Annex on Avenue B between 10th and 11th in the year 1965, the Tap-a-Keg on Amsterdam Avenue between 75th and 76th in 1974, Stanley’s, Old Stanley’s, The Old Reliable, The P & G, The All State…  Images of men both dead and alive, of events that did and didn’t happen, of dreams no more than dreams pushing against the one bottle of Coors Light down the bar from me, the red glow of the Budweiser sign and the silhouettes of two men–better dressed than expected–sitting up front and not drinking.  Beyond them the light of midday August in New York City.

Not a bad place to be.

For that matter they don’t all look like this:

or even this:

Sadly, more of them do not look like this:

or cook like this:

or have the warmth and worldview of these:

And they all don’t look like this:

All Israeli history does not look like this:

or this:

All tourists don’t act like this:

or this:

wearing tee shirts showing this:

And, quiet as it’s kept, remarkably few folks in this land surrounded by enemies live in constant fear of this:

…and that’s what I learned in two weeks in Israel!

Judy: Are you riding these days?  Interested in joining me tomorrow?

Goldberg: I won’t be available until 2.  Does that work for you? 

Judy: Probably not but I will let you know if that changes.

*   *   *   *   *

Now that I’m finally getting older, I’m beginning to actually realize it when life lessons get handed to me on an unmistakable platter.  In the past few months I’ve been simultaneously blessed and challenged and delighted and rocked with unmistakable insights into what’s real. This is another part of that story.

And this was how this started: a simple exchange of emails between me and a bike-riding partner since maybe 1986.  The unusuality of it:  I didn’t respond with my usual and unequivocal

“Yes, yes, o yes.  We can ride.  I must ride.  Whatever…whenever…oh yes, just say when and I don’t care where and I’ll be there because (ta dum!) I am The Bicyclist!

Already something was going on.  Only I didn’t know it.  I just figured,

Hey!  I’ve got something to do around noon.  Either she waits or she doesn’t.  Either way–with her or alone–I’ll  still ride, ’cause I am The Bicyclist.

OK, so wearing my non-bike-riding civvies, I get on my beaten, blue Ross commuter bike and spin slowly up Amsterdam Avenue to 96th Street and my meditation group.  I’d not been there for three weeks now because of a trip to Israel (more about that, you can be sure, later), the land where life got handed to me several times, and I   was truly looking forward to reuniting with some remarkable folks engaged in a remarkable practice.  Still, the back of mind was filled with images of me in my bicyclist suit, sitting astride my bright red Klein road bike (bright red) riding perhaps across the George Washington Bridge, onto the road we cyclists call (incorrectly) River Road and north.  Remember, I am The Bicyclist.

 I’m not going to give you all the  intermediary details.  I hate it when people do that to me–I’m a ‘Punch Line’ kinda guy–and even if you’re one of those folks who thrives on details, I ‘m willing to risk your wrath here.  The meditation starts.  It’s the Shaking Meditation in the tradition of Ratu Bagus

http://www.ratubagus.com/English/Bio+Energy+Meditation

that I’ve mentioned in previous posts.  Loud, rhythmic music, quiet individual mantra-chanting to bring the mind back to focus whenever it drifts off to things like being The Bicyclist, some groaning and laughter and, above all, rapid full-body shaking all dedicated to whatever I can conceive of that has vastly more power than I do.  In my case that’s God.

OK, so here I am shaking and mantrasizing and suddenly–out of absolute and proverbial Nowhere–the thought leaps into my head:

I am NOT “The Bicyclist!”

Huh?

     I’m not?

          I’m not!

               What?

                                     I’m really not.  I’m just a guy who, along with doing countless other things on a regular basis,  rides a bike.  It’s not who I am.  It’s–at most–just one thing I do.  It’s not my identity, and I am certainly not somehow more worthy and successful when I ride a bike and less worthy and a failure if I don’t.  I’m just someone who sometimes rides and sometimes doesn’t.  In fact, I’ve just put a halt to receiving far too frequent emails labeling me a “Legend of the New York Cycle Club” in an effort to get me to attend a club reunion for which I’d already bought my ticket a month ago.  I’m not  him.  I’m just me.

O, flippin’ wow!

This truth realized causes the root question to arise:

What identities do I subscribe to?  How much of  how I see myself is based on trying to live up to certain stereotypes or, for the psychoscholars among us, archetypes that have been planted in my head over the years?  How much joy, misery, frustration and self-congratulation arise from my living up to or failing to live up to these sets?

And, of course, me being me, I suspect I’m not alone in this, so I turn it to you:

What identities do you subscribe to?  Who do you tell yourself you are?  What does it cost/profit you to believe it?

*     *     *     *     *

Eleanor studied philosophy.  She studied philosophy deeply enough to write a paper on Immanuel Kant.  The only thing I can remember about Kant is having read, perhaps in his Philosophy of Pure Reason, a single sentence which ran for 4 pages followed by an asterisk.  The footnote noted: “The verb ‘cannot’ in this sentence has  also been translated as  ’can.’”  Hmm… Eleanor and slouches have nothing in common.   She is courageous in ways that only the truly fearless and fearlessly true can be.  Eleanor seeks the answer to “Why?”,  pursues ultimate Truth and is not afraid to say so out loud.   I, on quite the other hand, confine my interest to how whatever I might learn may be applied on the most practical and ultimately mundane levels.   She wants to know why Shaking Meditation works.  I want to know what I can use it for?  Will it help me to sleep or ease the arthritis in my right knee or relax the tension in my addicted clients?  Will it help me to accept the aging of my body and the gradual disappearance of my memory or to master the smart phone should I ever get one?

We talk about our varying concerns, Eleanor and I, until it is time for us to join the other meditators.  In the group discussion before meditation begins, she talks of her frustration in locating a concrete spot in the body on which to center her self and her meditation.  ”Everything feels like it’s floating,” she says.  ”There is no center…no me.”  My jaw drops.  This is the mindset I have been striving for ever since learning of meditation and the Buddhist concept of no-self.  I strive and fail to get rid of my self.  She complains of having succeeded!

“Yes,” she continues.  I learned to do this when I studied Kant.  He talks of being the observer of the self rather than being that self.”  Kant said that?!  Why the hell couldn’t he have said it in a way I could have understood it.  I mean, I read his crap all the way back in 1960! Why couldn’t he have said it then?!

“But this is now,” the better part of my brain whispers.  ” Be that observer of the self rather than the participating, involved, engrossed self.”

“Yeah, right,” the usually engrossed part of my brain responds reflexively, but then, most unexpectedly follows with,   “”Maybe I can do that…maybe I can.”  So during the 45 minutes of Shaking Meditation (It really is no more than that, by the way.  You stand and shake while chanting a mantra and offering it all up to whatever you understand as greater than yourself.)  I step back from the ache-infested body, the voice chanting “Thank you” and the interaction with all things irrelevant.  I simply watch it happen.  And here there’s a bonus: occasionally I notice me praising myself for my meditational efforts or criticizing myself for getting caught up in some usually lustful distraction and–in either case–break out  into genuinely gleeful laughter.  At first it’s laughter at, then, and I have no idea of how this happens, it becomes laughter with that me I’m watching.  More often than not this leads other meditators to join in the hahas and hohos and even the heehees, and that’s just fine.    In Shaking Meditation laughter is part of it.  In fact today when we finish we are led in an introduction to Laughter Yoga (http://www.laughteryoga.org/) by Jonathan who wears tee shirts advertising Laughter Yoga.

When it’s all over Eleanor and I resume our conversation briefly. Worlds apart we are.  Each of us following our own path with no concern to convert the other.  Just mutual respect and the belief, at least on my part, that there is much to be learned from the other.   Lunch together is out because she is attending a discussion of  Theories of Meaning and Motivation being held at The Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination. This being said, she notices that once the ideas in a conversation become resolved and settled, the energy of that discussion fades.

“It becomes–” she begins.

“Dead,” I interject.

“Yes,” she responds both surprised and saddened.  ”I never thought of it in that word before, but yes.”

Back on the ground from the Shaking Meditation on the 31st floor of the very proper building on the corner of Broadway and West 96th Street, back on my bicycle in the traffic of Saturday at one p.m.  Focused utterly on the streams of traffic moving to and from the West Side Highway, I head toward the bike path along the Hudson River.  No Shaking Meditation, no laughter, no Eleanor.   No center.  No me at this moment come to think of it.  Just eyes and ears and legs.  Just open spaces and closed spaces.  Just motion through the warm afternoon.

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