It can be a powerful draping backwards into a river.

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It can be a resolute stance of acceptance, a realization of being constructed by so many disparate experiences.

It can be as simple as noticing that something has turned a corner.  It can be as complex as convincing oneself that any consequence which follows an action can be borne with equanimity.

Letting go is an adventure in fear, trust, and inclusiveness.

You may not have noticed my practice of letting go last week.  Likely you might have noticed a gap in the posts.  Perhaps you thought, Oh she’s deep into the thesis!  Or, she’s probably off saving the world from Heffalumps.  Or you might even have thought, she’s won the Lotto 649 and abandoned the life of ne’er-read-well author/artiste.  I’m not to sure about the saving the world part and my bank account is pretty firm about the Lotto 649 part.  As for the depth of the thesis, I’m happy to report that the mind-numbing psychologese part is written and now I get to play with the “What Would Buddha Do” part.

But letting go.  That was pretty dominant in the two weeks past if only as a realization that I can be releasing my death grip on all manner of fixations, metaphors of Self, and craven desires and what is apparent to the eye or ear could be as simple as a “yes” or “no.”

I practiced this noticing on our (now) annual trip to NYC where we met up with friends, one of whom was running the NYC Marathon.  In the days before the race, we toured around the city and as Chaplains we felt it was important to head down to Occupy Wall Street to bear witness to the beginnings of this very powerful shift in societal awareness – as confusing as the process may seem at times.  Personally, I still don’t quite know what I feel about it all but I was intent on bringing myself to that place of discomfort and watch the “yes” and “no” surface over and over again.  Since the beginning of the Occupy movement, I’ve felt a huge level of discomfort, edging on the hyper-vigilance you might feel if you think you’re being blamed for enjoying unearned assets.  I’m beginning to hate those websites that tell you’re part of the 1% or the 99%.  (I’m neither unless you consider a global or restricted range as a measure of income.)  I dislike now feeling the need to justify what I have, what I bought, what I pictures I upload to Facebook, what trips I take, and what  my groceries cost.

I would like a sign I can hoist over my new car (the old one dates back to 1999 and has 290, 000 km on it):

Refugee kid made good
because she married a hard-working Southerner
who would sooner die from fatigue
than take a vacation.

So standing there on the edge of OWS taking pictures, I felt like a sleazy tourist and probably took on a 100% defensive posture.  I tried to strike up a conversation with two men who had a terrific sign but my request for permission to photograph the sign earned me a dismissive grunt – sleazy tourist.  For a moment, I thought of walking away, going around the corner where the unemployed grandmother sat knitting mitts and scarves for the residents of OWS, where the gas-masked, person-pillar draped in black performed eschatological street art, down towards the drumming that called out to all the hearts that beat.  But I didn’t.  I took the picture and thanked them.

In case you can’t read it, it says:

This is not a protest;
this is an AFFIRMATION
of the vitality and idealism
erupting underneath the present
American nightmare.

I told them I wanted to post this for all the Occupy sites because it captures the essence of this shift, this letting go of how we have lived our lives and how we want to continue to live our lives.  To do this, I have to climb out of the minds of those two people.  I have to let go, release what I think they thought of me and my digital camera.  I have to add myself to the % who don’t give a damn about being judged, appraised, counted in or counted out.

Letting go is an affirmation that we can occupy this moment, this self, this being completely, without hesitation or reservation.

The tricky thing about a blind spot is that we’re blind to it.  Tautology perhaps but true nevertheless.  In fact, there’s no way to actually see our own blind spot.  And – sometimes dangerously so – we need to rely on other people who have the privilege of a different vantage to point them out to us.  It occurred to me the other day that this raises all kind of questions about trust.  Not just trust in myself to believe there is a blind spot but also trust in the person I’m asking to point out my blind spot.  Goodness knows, we all have our agenda and that includes my Blind Spot Spotter.

The other thing that occurred to me is that we often ask for a sketch of the blind spot when in fact we really want confirmation that we don’t have a blind spot.

That’s what I mean about trust.  In myself and in my BSS.  No BS has to be the rule and that takes work.  It takes what William Blake calls a firm persuasion that can remove mountains.

I’ve been diving into a book by David Whyte.  If Rilke gets ladies to take off their bras, Whyte can well have us pole dancing.  But I digress.  The book, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a pilgrimage of identity, was recommended as a source of inspiration for those of us who never relent in our seeking to bring that firm persuasion into our work – life, spiritual, career.  Whyte writes:

There is no hiding from work in one form or another.  Under the great sky of our endeavors we live our lives, growing we hope, through its seasons toward some kind of greater perspective.  Any perspective is dearly won.  Maturity and energy in our work is not granted freely to human beings but must be adventured and discovered, cultivated and earned.  It is … a never-ending courageous conversation with ourselves, those with whom we work, and those whom we serve….  It is achieved through a lifelong pilgrimage.

Further on:

It is very hard to say no to work.  We may courageously resign, take a sabbatical, or retire to a simpler, more rustic existence, but then we are engaged in inner work, or working on ourselves, or just chopping wood.  Work means application, explication, expectation.  There is almost no life a human being can construct for themselves where they are not wrestling with something difficult, something that takes a modicum of work.  The only possibility seems to be the ability of human beings to choose good work.

And finally,

To view work as pilgrimage is to put our hearts’ desire to hazard, because by merely setting out, we have told ourselves that there is something bigger and better, or even smaller and better – above all, something more life giving – that awaits us in our work, and we are going to seek it.

So, we set out on that pilgrimage with firm persuasion that we have all we need and that, even if lacking in courage, our feet know exactly how to navigate the journey.  And our practice is that little dustless mirror in the corner showing us the blind spots.

The oak tree in the north field came down in a windstorm.  It stands inverted in the ripening soya beans, the shredded base blaring a trumpet solo into the sky as the branches hold it up.  Systems break down.  It’s inevitable.  And yet we find ourselves surprised when our favourite selected systems shatter. We’re offended because that system, that process, that particular set of interconnections which was meant to service us, let us down.  Even in a farming community, which by definition embodies the never-ending process of births and deaths, neighbours expressed shock and dismay that the oak toppled.  Perhaps, it’s only oaks in other communities that are supposed to fall.  But NIMBY!

I’ve been starting to feel that way about many things around me.  Things that seem to keep toppling over.  Saving all beings, transforming inexhaustible delusions, penetrating innumerable dharma doors, embodying the Great Way.  Don’t even get me started on the Great Matter and dharma teachers of varied ilk.  

Yet, I say, “Oh, this is good – for things to topple over.”  A knee jerk response.  A good Zen Response.  A good Buddhist Response.  It parades my familiarity with buzz-word-dharma: impermanence, equanimity, emptiness, not knowing.  It even impresses some teachers – who immediately topple over from the weight of my willful ignorance, my refusal to see what’s really in front of me.

The man who cuts down trees looked at the oak and said, “Center’s punky.”

It was an impressive executive summary of the Four Noble Toppling Truths.

It works like this: though we experience Reality directly, we ignore it. Instead, we try to explain it or take hold of it through ideas, models, beliefs, and stories. But precisely because these things aren’t Reality, our explanations naturally never match actual experience. In the disjoint between Reality and our explanations of it, paradox and confusion naturally arise.

If it’s Truth we’re after, we’ll find that we cannot start with any assumptions or concepts whatsoever. Instead, we must approach the world with bare, naked attention, seeing it without any mental bias—without concepts, beliefs, preconceptions, presumptions, or expectations. 

Hagen, Steve (2009). Buddhism Is Not What You Think (pp. 4-5).
Harper Collins e-books. Kindle Edition. 

Let me pick up on a hint of a theme from yesterday’s book review of Thich Nhat Hanh’s new novel, The Novice. Towards the end of the post, I commented that Thấy’s teachings offer an easy entry to Buddhism.  Perhaps it’s more accurate to say he, like many teachers who are skillful, offers an apparently simple beginning to practice.  There is wisdom in this.  The teachings can be encouraging and lay a solid groundwork for deeper understanding as we continue on the path.  However, there is also a danger that we can fall into a flowery, vapid, and naive approach that gentle teachings can evoke.

It has always concerned me that “simple” is absorbed as “simplistic” and the evidence is rampant in the millions of catchy sayings that attempt to transport us from the truth of suffering into a facsimile realm of the Pure Land.  Tragically, this creates a blindness to the deeper teachings offered by teachers such as Thấy which are – under the child-like renditions – a complex integration of scripture and aids to practice.  Over the years, I have come to appreciate that his words, audio and written, are killing-sword koans whose edge we can skip over or on which we can impale our delusions.

I once said to a dharma teacher in Thấy’s tradition that Thấy offers an easy in but it’s a tough stay.  Practice, as Thấy teaches, demands an unrelenting devotion to being honest with oneself in every moment.  Try it for five if you question how hard this is.  And yet, the preponderance of his teachings seem to end up as sound bytes turning the nectar of compassion into a mind-numbing salve against the reality that the practice of Buddhism is not about salvation in this moment or any other.  It’s a true koan of our times.  How do such accessible teachings result in such a diversion from the intent of practice?

About the time of my struggle with this conundrum an email arrived pointing me to a delicious post by Glenn Wallis on “Flinching.”  As frightened as I am by the depth of Wallis’ erudition, I was compelled by his argument that there is a turning away from the truth of suffering, that we have developed a predictive, fallacious equation whose outcome variable is set as “deep joy.”  He refers to this perspective as “a eudaimonistic subterfuge” to which Buddhism is becoming heir.  If I grasp Wallis’ exegesis and in my simplistic terms, we Buddhists have taken a wrong turn in our understanding of the Dharma by making practice instrumental rather than intentional.  Not only have we let our fears about the true nature of reality get the better of us, we have become deeply desirous of a belief that a virtuous practice will reap a future of deep joy.  This utilitarian stance to practice is subtly subversive and the ground quickly becomes unstable because it is driven by avoidance of pain.  This is further emphasized by a recent retreat on the Tricycle page in which Rita Gross spoke out on “feel-good Buddhism.”

In psychotherapy, we call this a flight into health.  The patient, overwhelmed by what is required to make sincere and long-lasting change, suddenly gets better – a one-hit-one-session-wonder.  The therapist, anxious about the depth of intervention and the demands of sitting with the pain of the Other, flinches at the prospect and welcomes or even offers this endpoint of deep joy.  It is a collusion that creates a dynamic of mutual blindness.  Winding this thread back to Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings, I wish had a peanut for every time I heard someone say, “If you just practice for three days, your depression will go away.”  Or, “If I could just sit in the presence of my partner’s anger and understand Interbeing, it will be ok.”  Well, if I had a peanut for each of these times, I’d be a happy elephant.

Here’s the unfiltered truth:  There are no promises.  Hope was a demon in Pandora’s Box.  Practice simply because there is no choice.  Don’t flinch from this.

The stories we tell and hold about our experiences are a map of our life, a way of tracing comings and goings.  They form the grey roads that wind through the topography of all our journeys.  Spiritual forays up to the mountain tops, psychological treks into inner wilderness are recorded in these maps that give us a sense of the territory of our heart/mind.  Our stories are also evidence of our engagement with our environment and our relational capacity; they are the results of the experiments we run over and over again to assess the effectiveness of our interventions with ourselves.  For this, and I’m sure many other reasons, our stories are to be honored and held sacred.

There are people who are natural story tellers.  They have the ability to draw together the experience of their journey with that of their audience so that the map is of a larger human journey.  There are people whose story telling generates a map that draws us away from the heart of our journey.  They spin words and craft detours so that we become disoriented and disconnected from the source of our spirit, our breath.

Sunday night, Frank and I waited for a taxi outside a restaurant in Santa Fe.  Rain had been pouring down in torrents and we feared that the road up to Upaya would be impassable.  The taxi driver, however, was unconcerned.  His descriptions of wild drives in every continent he had visited flowed as rapidly as the run off down the slopes into the arroyos, carrying the boulders and pebbles of his challenges.  There was no staunching the rain or his agitated tale that was punctuated with hints of a post-graduate degree in Geology – which I think was supposed to reassure us as he tried to cross an intersection that was now a swift-flowing stream.

Thwarted by the soft ground and rapid water, we opted to go around and try to get to Upaya via the upper portion of the road.  It was getting dark and the rain was letting up.  I managed to relax my trigger finger poised on the seat belt buckle as we got closer to the Zen center until we hit a sharp curve in the road.  My heart clenched and the unrelenting narrative from the front seat diverted my ability to make sense of the landscape.  From what I could see, a deluge of water, rocks, and mud was tumbling down the hillside and over a cliff to the left.  The road seemed to slope up steeply on the other side of the tumble of geological ball bearings crashing over the edge.  My finger found the release on the seat belt again as the taxi driver chattered on about the effect of this combination of soft mud and pebbles and whether we should risk taking a run at through the slide.

My mind locked down as he kept asking if we should go ahead.  There wasn’t enough information and I couldn’t formulate an action plan through the unending story-telling that ricocheted through the cab.  His words tried to take me away from the reality that this was a scary situation and the man at the controls was disconnected from his own sense of healthy, respectful fear.  When my own words finally cut through my own anxiety and confusion, I said no, we weren’t going to do this.  As ready as I am to die in any moment, I also am not a slave to the concept.

The truck behind us moved forward as the cab backed up the road to return to town.  As I watched it negotiate the mud and rocks, anticipating it would accelerate up the road, it turned left into what I had perceived to be the cliff edge and proceeded slowly downhill.

A trick of the landscape, my faulty memory of a hair-pin bend, and the dull roar of distracting stories had created a visual challenge for me where was none.  I retracted my call to return to town and we proceeded down the hill.  The cab driver reassured me that he was less risk-averse than most; I assured him I was more risk-averse than most.  We both agreed we had won and lost equal numbers of opportunities for it.

There were a hundred thousand stories spun in that ride and on the edge of that hair-pin bend. Stories that drew us in.  Stories that took us away.

Sitting in the cauldron that is spiritual training gives rise to a panorama of experiences.  Some are accompanied by awe and a belief that learning is happening.  Some are accompanied by heart-crushing despair that anything could grow on such hard ground.  But the depth of penetration of Dharma rain is imperceptible to the ordinary eye.  At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

In an ironic twist, what would become the recurring theme of this training began on my drive home from out-of-town work last Thursday, the day before I was to leave for Upaya and the Chaplaincy Program.  I was racing to get home in time to unpack so I could pack again; a comforting ritual before every trip I take.  I drafted in behind a tanker hauling flammable material and tried to keep a good distance as we wound along the two lane highway.  The back of the tanker was a round, silver mirror and my car was reflected dead center of the steel plate.   Stretching out on either side of the reflected car were the dividing line of the highway and the  white line along the shoulder of the road, making the scene a parallax  in a mirror enso.

Viewed from the car I was driving, I realized I was seeing where I had been at the same time as where I was going.  Past in present; present in future.  This theme of convergence played out over and over the following days in training as my biography and biology converged to give different perspectives of each moment, each relationship.  What I believed was my self-story, or biography, often diverted events along lines of loss and lack.  Listening to my body and quietly calming the ramping up of anger, fear or confusion corrected the story arc (there’s always a story arc).  Be careful when it’s appropriate to be careful.  Speak up when likely to be heard.  Offer but don’t take offense at the response and yet notice the heart turning away.

Over the week, ancient themes of connection and loss, protection and wounding, were compiled and re-organized in this anthology I call The Story of Me.  It’s not done.  It will never be done because every moment is an occasion for a different perspective on what is unfolding.  We can’t erase events that make up our history; we can’t reconfigure the past.  But we can take the opportunity to view them from a different angle and in that way know how to understand and adjust our position in the present.

Dharma teacher Cheri Maples (Tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh) led a retreat on ways in which we are lead by our unconscious biases.  She talked about unearned assets; those behaviours and benefits we accrue simply because we belong to a class, race, or other form of an in-group.  I don’t want to say much but offer this to you as an exercise.

What are some of the benefits that come to you simply by virtue of your membership in a socioeconomic class, a race or ethnicity that is the dominant group in your culture, a gender or sexual group, a position in an organization, and/or a religious community of practice?

What are you assumptions about what has accrued to persons in other groups?   This is a tough one so an example would be the assumption I often run into that being Asian means I’m good at Math or am diminutively cooperative.  While the former is true, it’s less about being Asian and more about not being diminutive in any way at all.

These are the unconscious biases from which we make decisions about ourselves and others.

Can you uncover at least one that had fostered a belief in yourself as entitled or unworthy?

Chaplaincy Core Training is over but I’m still here at Upaya finishing the second part of training in Trauma Resilience. It’s been ten days of generous teachings that began with a taste of the Five Buddha Families, Unconscious Bias, and a whole lot of inner dharma woven through. On the second day, my body reacted to an accumulation of dust, pollen, travel, and having spent the previous week housed above a helicopter hangar dodging leaking fumes of diesel oil. My throat closed, my chest contracted, and breath came in wheezy gasps.

It’s what happens when we are challenged to take on certain things; things that signify a threat to our system. The body in its wisdom shuts down the doors to vital organs like the lungs and does its best to expel whatever intruders flew in under the radar. An initial encounter with deep dharma can be like that. I contract, protecting treasured views and assumptions. My fear-based reactions are to render myself cold and still; distant and impenetrable.

If the Five Buddha Families are a typology of my form and shadow, apparently I play in the Vajra dimension where things reflect clear, sharp, and precise. The shadow is the manifestation of a character that is opinionated, authoritarian, and demanding of perfection. Thankfully, the aspects of other parts of the mandala soften the edges. But perhaps I could work a bit more on skillfully being opinionated, authoritarian and demanding of perfection.

As part of one exercise we were asked to find our “neurotic” side on the mandala. In other words, how do our everyday anxiety-based reactivities manifest? Initially, I thought it was the Padma family which represents a passionate need to magnetize others into connection. Being a foodie, fit with Padma because it’s such a soothing process when I’m distressed. And certainly, my somewhat incessant need to make sure everyone has a link to community that can embrace them could be called a neurotic need to prevent harm from befalling the lone traveller.

As I looked deeply and contemplated on the motives and intentions of the behaviours which – when unfulfilled – cause me suffering, it was a surprise to see that the need to link people together is just a subset of a need to be sure everyone has what they ask for. It’s a form of generosity gone manic, a contraction, an allergic reaction against the truth of suffering. No wonder when people ask me for a little support and I hose them down with care, they step away – some as far away as the next continent! It’s interesting to tease this out, because another aspect of this neurotic need is to hold onto resources just in case someone needs them. Good thing, before I left, I cleared out my family room and bookshelves of thirty-years worth of accretions, including all the recipe clippings I have never and will never use. This is the shadow side of the Ratna Family.

So, questions for you:

What are you giving away relentlessly in the deluded hope it will be helpful?

What are you holding onto in the deluded hopes it will be useful only because it was once?

I was responding to ZenDotStudio in a comment stream on Tuesday’s post and explained that this week’s enso series arose from an unfortunate incident with the lid of my ink pot.  The effect (which is on Monday’s post) was quite lovely and being a creature of ever-expanding cravings, I tried to re-produce it using different colours.  The results have been rather nice, I think, despite the contrived nature of the work.

It does remind me that there is a huge difference between a “contrived” nature and a “constructed” one.  After politely trashing a Buddhist book in a review by calling the author’s personna “contrived,” the author attempted a slight-of-hand defense by claiming all personalities are “constructed.”  Ah.  No.  Not really.  More and more, I’m reading books and other writings that say more about the author’s pretense to authority-via-bluster than about Dharma.  When someone uses that big-tough-throw-it-in-your-face style, it sets off a big flashing red light for me.  And the neon sign screams, “Contrived illusion of competence ahead.  Proceed at risk of wasting your time.”

But what about a constructed illusion of competence?  I think that’s called a learning curve.  Black ink ring stain on canvas leads to curiousity about how this might become something useful.  Inadvertently cutting and pasting a data series in a long column results in … results!  Wondering what would happen if I open the computer registry and change a few values results in… well.. let’s not go there.  My IT guy just got a few free therapy sessions from me after that one.

Some people call it the “fake-it-until-you-make-it” approach to life.  I’m proposing there’s no faking it.  Really.  Take a good close look the next time you set up a constructed competence.  Who was the fake who designed, manifested, and realized it?  

We are what we practice.  And practicing competence can be what we become.

I have to go and bow to my little ink pot.

Unfortunately, this weekend started with my office computer waging a battle to the death.  Friday is not good time for these things to happen.  By the time I got it vaguely functional, it was time to set off on other chores, not the least of which was learning from Frank that the taxi cab who had run into the truck on Sunday had racked up $4,000 worth of damages.  I admire a man who can quietly say things like, “I’m afraid not, sir.  My truck was parked.  You ran into it.  We’re not going to negotiate a 50-50 settlement.”  So, as we drove home, between truck and computer woes, I was overcome by a need to do something wild and crazy.  I got on my iPad and booked two tickets to see the Lion King that same night. 

Before you judge me harshly, let me say it was one of the most difficult things I’ve done.  Not only because it’s been years of refusing to treat ourselves, but because the damn truck was bouncing so much I accidentally tapped on Box Seats.  It was worth the price.  Especially when we came home to another power failure and relished dessert at midnight by candlelight.  (Dessert was fig cashew cream with a dribble of condensed milk.)  The rest of the weekend was spent (is still being spent as you read this) lunching al fresco in the gazebo, weeding the rose garden, and tasting the hot chili peppers that are fighting back a tomafoot of tomatoes.  

 It’s easy to go round and round in same rut believing we’re doing good for ourselves – or even for the world of suffering out there.  And while we may be, it’s important not to buy so totally into that delusion that we forget we too are one of the suffering hordes.  Often, it’s really our shadow side that’s pushing the wheel around, digging the tracks deeper, and convincing us that we’re oh-so-indispensable or oh-so-wise.  It takes practice and time to take off that layer of ego and allow a direct knowing of ourselves.   True, it starts with acknowledging our suffering, being honest about it, being willing to stay with it.  And then we have a choice: we can masochistically stay there and choke in our own skin or leave behind what is keeping us too small for our life.  We can refuse to re-trace the line of old patterns and risk that vulnerability of being human.  And if we think, that’s all there is, we can notice how many times that skin has to be sloughed off as we grow our egos, over and over.