(further to yesterday’s post) The premise of socially engaged Buddhism is the taking of dharma-inspired action off the cushion and into the world. In the Soto Zen tradition practice begins and returns to shikantaza (just sitting); from there it continues to expand and to contract. ”There is great value in spirituality that emphasizes and supports withdrawal from society,” writes Wayne Teasdale, ”but in our time, with its special needs, we require a spirituality of intense involvement and radical engagement.” 

With the late Br. Wayne (1945-2002) as a role model I decided against a monastic career and returned to the ‘market place’ to learn the craft of servant. That practice requires me to swim each day against the stream of complacency and conformity. 

Tibetan teacher Pema Chödrön writes that–

“compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live.”

source: Teasdale, W. (2002). A monk in the world: cultivating a spiritual life. Novato, CA: New World Library, p. xxiii. Chödrön, P. In the gap between right and wrong. (Although they are much quoted, I’ve been unable to find the specific source for these lines. Anyone?).

April at the shadowplay blog sent us greetings for a Happy Thanksgivings. Although the Canadian equivalent falls on a different date, her wishes are most welcome. Walking in the part of town where there’s much homelessness, I read the big display board at McDonalds® this morning: Free small coffee from 6 to 10 am. A thoughtful gesture for all who sleep under tarps and in cardboard boxes.

How about looking around your town and city and neighbourhood, and see how you can share loving kindness with a fellow sentient being? To (mis)quote Rumi: “There are a hundred ways to bow and kiss the ground.”

image: Ronald in Thailand: ”Namaste!”

The Dalai Lama reminds us that unhappiness (a.k.a. suffering) stems from viewing things that are transient as permanent. How many times have I (have you) heard this truism and nodded in agreement? How many times have I passed it on to others by way of sage advice? Deep down, as I sit still and reflect on my habitual thinking, I pretty much act as if I’d never heard of this. When things go well, I feel happy (albeit with suspicion hovering nearby, muttering that “this won’t last”). When things don’t go well—when they unfold contrary to my expectation—my small self (ego) feels somehow vindicated (“the world is a cruel place … X doesn’t like me … and I’ll never be happy … etc.”).

Always this or that, good or bad, happy or unhappy, up or down in the bloody rollercoaster of everyday living. Yet therein lies the wisdom: things do go up and down, from here to there, from desired to unexpected. They never (drum roll) stay the same. Nothing lasts. Everything changes. It’s a fundamental law of human experience and nature’s unfolding. Why is that so hard to comprehend?

I’m late in posting today: first four hours of orientation to become a spiritual care volunteer at a new hospital, then meditation at a psycho-geriatric care home, then calls back and forth with the executor for someone I’d agreed to accompany to the end. Her death came fast. Only two weeks ago I drove her for a medical appointment. Our conversations around dying had been cursory and her instructions regarding her memorial service in their infancy.

Now she’s gone. Her lawyer and I have set a tentative date for a gathering in her momory and I’ll have to connect with her friends and nursing colleagues to work out the details. I barely knew her and feel privileged to have been asked by her to arrange the gathering.

She was born and raised on a Prairie farm, down to earth, direct and caring, a gardener, worked as a nurse, good friend to many. I adapted this death poem in her name:

My six and sixty years are through.
I was not born, I am not dead.
Clouds floating the Prairie skies
The moon curves through its million-mile course.

source: The original poem is by Yakuo Tokuken (d. 1320). In: Hoffmann, Y. (1986) (ed.). Japanese death poems written by Zen monks and haiku poets on the verge of death. Boston/Tokyo: Tuttle, p. 127.

“I’m feeling light this morning” I reported to my café friend, ”but why, I couldn’t tell you. No lottery win, not in love, no conventional Good News I could cite to explain this state. In fact, I’m still reeling from the loss of the hospice job.”

How is it, we mused, that some (!) people tend to lean towards the dark and disastrous side of living? Why is feeling ok or happy or light met with such suspicion? Is that what the Buddha referred to as dukka (from Sanskrit, for suffering or unsatisfactoriness)? And that it’s the core of existence and that we can recognize and, through practice, see past it?

At core, everything is without, is empty, my friend proposed, before we are born, after we die, even in the next moment: there’s nothing there until we make it into something. 

Are you talking about the stories we devise to define ourselves, our so-called small self?

Yeah, the projects, disasters, dreams, losses, and what-have-you that push and pull us through life. There’s neither happiness nor unhappiness, there just IS. Well, that’s what I think right now.

Zen teachers sometimes call it thusness or buddha nature: the true, immutable, and eternal nature of all beings.

Sounds good to me. D‘you wanna split a cinnamon bun?

As I get ready for sunday morning meditation, sweeping the floor, straightening cushions, refreshing the flowers, and setting out tea cups, my focus is on Now. Personal worries naturally make room as I shift my intention to serving others. In a story, the student approaches his teacher, saying , “I feel so discouraged; what should I do?” The teacher pauses and then replies, ”go and encourage others.”

In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.

~ Henry David Thoreau Walden.

(Further to yesterday’s post) I smashed into grief’s cousin last night and its name is anger. It happened as a friend made an innocent comment about hospice work and we suddenly found ourselves in a nasty argument. I felt angry and defensive. Shortly afterwards, while  apologizing, I was able to locate a sense of woundedness near the core of grieving.

Much has been taken away: the easy intimacy with my coworkers, the frequent expressions of love between ourselves, the shared laughter and tears, the sense of belonging to a family … the extraordinary opportunity, day after day, week after week, of being able to ‘do some good’ by offering comfort to patients and their loved-ones. Our intentions, even if we didn’t use the quaint language of 7th Century India, were unequivocal:

For all those ailing in the world
Until their sickness has been healed,
May I myself become for them
The doctor, nurse, the medicine itself.

source: Shantideva. (1997). The way of the Bodhisattva. (Transl. from the Tibetan). Boston: Shambala, pp. 50-51. image: eatourbrains.com

In a letter of reference, a former teacher wrote that “at times he is too emotional.” Can’t be sure what was meant by that, nor what the anonymous reader will make of it. I do know that I react with emotion to everyday events. That’s why I do so well when listening to someone’s personal story, why I can empathise and listen from the heart. At other times, being ‘emotional’ can cloud my judgment and interfere with taking things in stride. In terms of Zen practice, I’m called to welcome ‘what is’ and see what it can teach me. But I resist such welcoming as if something else must come first …

It’s been three weeks since my hospice job ended and I continue to feel its absence. ”Loss is the absence of something we were once attached to,” writes Stephen Levine,”grief is the rope burns left behind, when that which is held is pulled beyond our grasp.” Days go by as if in a fog. My eating habits have gotten worse, my sleeping pattern erratic. I do a bit of this and some of that. I am adrift in a sea of not-knowing. What can I hold on to, laments the voice within. Throughout the spiritual literature, and certainly in Buddhism, we’re told that clinging leads to suffering, holding on generates pain, dis-ease, and unhappiness.

Before I can loosen my grip on what used to be and move to learning from the experience (and similar lofty aims) I need to extend compassion to my/self. In attending to our sorrow, Levine says, “we must first cultivate mercy for ourselves.”

source: Levine, S. (2005). Unattended sorrow: recovering from loss and reviving the heart. Rodale, p. 15.

Several times a year, for a decade now, I go somewhere to be silent with others. There is a magic of being alone in community, to retreat. Few words, no eye contact, no touching, no polite gestures; just being together, meditating, eating, working, chanting or praying. I’ve done this at Zen, Benedictine, Franciscan, and Thai monasteries, for as short as a weekend to as long as ten days. 

A few weeks ago a friend initiated a day retreat and advertised on local bulletin boards. A group of us met  from 9 to 5 in someone’s home and garden: we meditated, worked outdoors, and ate our bag lunches together. No teacher, no chanting, just silence. A rare time to turn inwards. And what is there, on the inside? Nothing much once you get past thoughts: click the How to Meditate tab at the top of the screen.

Have you ever done a silent retreat? Would you like to? Is there a place and a time you could go on one where you live? If you’re at all curious, you could start small (a good idea for most): an evening “sit” at a local Zen, Vipassana, Shambala centre, or a church that offers Centering Prayer. In the Quaker tradition people join in a “meeting for worship,” a time of communal silence, occasionally broken by words spoken spontaneously from the heart-mind-spirit. 

Or arrange to simply be alone (alone), or join with a friend and agree to be silent for a few hours together. No equipment needed, no Lululemon gear.

You do not need to leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Do not even listen, simply wait.
Do not even wait, be still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you
to be unmasked, it has no choice.
It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Franz Kafka (1883-1924), major fiction writer born into a German-speaking Jewish family in Prague. Most of his work was published posthumously.