Author Archives: Genju

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day for day

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Jimmy Santiago Baca wrote A Place to Stand in 2001.  It is a recounting of his childhood and young adulthood arcing from familial to prison violence, evoking intense images of survival.   Baca lived in one form of imprisonment or another from the age of 5 years finally being sentence to serve five years “day for day.”  He explains that “day for day” meant there was no chance for parole or shortening the sentence through good deeds.  The tone of the book is a bit righteous and Baca seems firmly fixed in the victim role.  One of the participants in the Zen Brain retreat had written an article that suggests our self-righteousness is directly proportional to our need to protect our innocence.  Given Baca’s history, I can certainly let the tone slide and meeting him in person, it’s clear that the marks of abandonment and its attendant need for self-protection are vibrant in his body.

The concept of serving “day for day” however was compelling.  I thought about the “day for day” I’ve been serving through my self-sentencing, judgements laid down for my repeated offenses.  Then Fleet Maull in his retreat teachings opened with the question: What are the three life sentences you have given yourself?

Did your brain just come to a screeching halt, there?

What are the three life sentences I have given myself?

Be invisible

That was the first one I wrote down and I thought it related to that now-wearying song about being an immigrant, a minority, a woman in a male-dominated profession, being anti-feminist in a female-dominated profession, ad hominem infinitum.  As the week wore on (and at times that was literal), I began to see how I make myself invisible under certain conditions: when the presented and visible self was not acknowledged, I tended to disappear.  It was something that arose out of a dynamic and not a prescription for being.

So I changed the sentence:

Becoming invisible

And here I stand, serving this life sentence day for day…

How about you?

Thank you for practising,

Genju

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dharma & drama

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It’s a travel day again… going home from the Chaplaincy Intensive.  I feel as wobbly as the enso and think maybe there are slithers of dharma dribbling out my ears.  There are slivers of drama embedded in my system too.   

I have yet to process all of it and may never.  Zen Brain was a challenge to digest.  Scrambling from Jim Austin’s tour de force of ego- versus allo-centric processing to Susan Bauer-Wu’s immensely compassionate and wide-hearted program which takes on the once-iconclastic MBSR, I cheekily suggested the retreat should be renamed: Zen-Fried Brain: yummy morsels served with dollops of compassion.

Jimmy Santiago Baca and Fleet Maull surprised me.  Not so cheekily, I quipped that the “Dharma of Ex-cons” was going to leave me having to explain to my employers – yet again – why I was hanging out with the Dark Side.  But apparently, that’s where the Dharma is at its most transformative.  I’ll have very much to say about the two amazing teachers in the following weeks.

Fleet continued his teachings with “Dharma on the Edge” and suffice to say that we aren’t talking about just a double-edge of the Wisdom Sword.  And, I learned that there are many things that can fade and pass on if I’m willing to bear witness to the process rather than engage in old stories about victimhood.  Fleet said at some point that our work is about burning away our hooks that grab onto others or that allow others to grab onto us.  There was much smoke from these burnings – which likely explained the watery eyes.

Somewhere in this timeline, Aitken Roshi passed on to continue his work with us through another realm. Gate, gate, parasamgate.

I quit the program a three times in the 10 days.  Once when I felt my powerful victim-self, once when I stepped into my powerful aggressor-self, and once when I felt my powerful rescuer-self.  It was good to meet them – again and this time with a fully embodied presence.  If you recognise Karpman’s Drama Triangle in this, you win a chance to fix me.  There will definitely be much more of the conjunction of the Drama Triangle and the Dharma Tetrad in posts to come.

Finally, a heartfelt “Thank You” to my blogger sangha!  When I had a chance to read them, your posts reassured me that the world outside this cauldron was still there, going on, and there was a place for me to land when I got out of the boiling.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju