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99 buddhas on the wall

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I woke up (I wish!) with a silly refrain in my head: 99 Buddhas on the wall, 99 more to go.  Take one down, pass it around… 98 more to go…

So far, my commitment to creating 108 Buddha calligraphies is bringing up interesting issues about practice.  This is Buddha9 which means my brain was doing some strange arithmetic as I was sleeping.  There really are 99 more to do.  Or maybe that’s the pointy-end of practice for me.  There are no more to do except that I think there are.  But that’s important too.  The practice of Zen is about not doing which, in the Ourobouros of Zen, is about noticing what the doing is.  What I notice when I get the brush and ink ready is all the arising hope that this one line will define the direction of who I can be, will shape the container of my joys and pain.  That’s a lot ask from masticated fibers, a patch of horse hair bound in a wooden handle and a concoction of pigment and glue.  Honestly, what am I thinking!

And therein lies the problem.  The Thinking Brain comes online and the next thing I know there is this mound of crumpled “not-good-enough’s” on the floor.  Practice with these Buddhas has become watching that Thinking Brain and with gentleness, escorting it to the mental couch where it can rest.  What research there is on burn out and trauma shows that recovery is in allowing different parts of the brain to come out and play.  But there’s no wisdom in waiting until burn out happens.  I like to see each Buddha that pours out of the brush as a buffer or a deposit in the bank of resilience. Allowing each one to be just what it is without judgement of the line, balance, composition or anything contrived is tough – and the pokey part of practice.

Dealing with loss and grief is not much different.  I’ve never lost a child, but in walking with parents who have, the depth of that pain seems insurmountable.  And yet, and yet, they go on.  What I’ve learned from these amazing teachers is that in my pain what I want most is for it to be different – and by that I usually mean: it would be nice if it was over.  So, I ask myself: what might happen if I let go of wanting this experience to end?

The answers are a fascinating revelation of the need for self-compassion.

Thanks to Jay at DigitalZendo for this link to Thay’s talk on Suffering & Compassion:

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

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the binding cord

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It is a commonplace of life that the greatest pleasure issues ultimately in the greatest grief.  Yet why – why is it that this child of mine, who has not tasted half the pleasures that the world has to offer, who ought, by rights, to be as fresh and green as the vigorous young needles of the everlasting pine – why must she lie here on her deathbed, swollen with blisters, caught in the loathsome clutches of the vile god of smallpox.  Being, as I am, her father, I can scarcely bear to watch her withering away – a little more each day – like some pure, untainted blossom that is ravished by the sudden onslaught of mud and rain.

…(F)inally, on the twenty-first of June, as the morning glories were just closing their flowers, she closed her eyes forever.  Her mother embraced the cold body, and cried bitterly.  For myself, I knew well it was no use to cry, that water once flown past the bridge does not return, and blossoms that are scattered are gone beyond recall.  Yet try as I would, I could not, simply could not, cut the binding cord of human love.

The world of dew
is the world of dew.
And yet, and yet –

from A Year of My Life

Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827) is perhaps one of my favourite poets.  His poems are flip, fierce, and take a perspective of the other – what James Austin calls an allocentric view.  There’s a darkness in some of his poetry and prose which comes from the many losses and conflicts in his life.    Rejected by his step-mother, estranged from family, caught in estate battles over his father’s will, his life seemed a never-ending flow of struggles.  Maybe all this was the cauldron for his creativity.  At the age of 51, he married a 27-year old woman and had three children.  The first two died before their first birthday; the third, Sato, lived barely a year.  He produced his major prose A Year of My Life after her death.  Misfortune dogged him, however, until he died in 1827, leaving his third wife and unborn child.  Yata, his daughter, inherited his home and lived there until the 1950’s.

Loss and grief are such demanding co-teachers.  They assign long hours of practice and work with no promise that I will graduate with honours. And there is no guarantee that the “binding cord of human love” will be severed.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju