Change and Emptiness
The day was full and busy. I enjoyed my ride in. I found myself going down Flint behind a bicycle class from MLC. It was fun to see all the kids learning how to safely navigate through the downtown traffic to get to school. I was reminded of CK trailing me around on many rides while I got comfortable. It left me smiling, especially after I made all the lights on Broadway and flew up onto the bridge. I may have actually enjoyed going over the bridge!
Work included lots of running down issues for a good part of the morning. I worked on my database a little. AM came downtown and had lunch with me, dropping off my zafu & wagessa in case we didn't meet up at the Dharma Center later. Afterwards I worked with the newest teammate and coached her on database connectivity and Business Objects Enterprise. In between I tried to figure out the metadata when I suddenly realized it was time to go!
I was reading through the Heart of Great Perfect Wisdom Sutra on MAX after work, hearing the sound of it in my head. Listening to the way the words move together, percussive, like the mokugyo only deeper, more resonant. I kept coming back to reflect on the words, Form itself is emptiness, emptiness itself form.
A few weeks ago I'd exchanged a message with someone about his comment of questioning anyone that said they knew what the truth was. I asked what if you knew that the truth is change. It is the true constant of the universe.
When I was looking at the words in the sutra, hearing them in my head and feeling them I came back to this constancy of change. Change underlies the whole of the sutra; it is because of the constancy of change that form is empty. Everything is in constant change, each moment, at some level. With this being the case that which we think of as form is empty.
So that's where my mind has landed with my practice tonight. Change and emptiness.
Actually, there's a whole lot more in there and my day was more full than that, but it is late, I'm tired and really feel the need for rest!
Chanting is not singing
Something that has settled into my mind the past few weeks around my Ino duties at the Zen center is that chanting is not singing. It surfaced a couple of days after HB told me I was doing better, still slow down, and to put spaces into the words, savor them.
I loved to sing along to the radio as a kid, to myself even if there was no radio. I was constantly told to be quiet, no one wanted to hear me, and I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. Therefore there was never any support for me wanting to be in a choir or anything like that. At college I finally broke free of this and joined the college choir, the community masterworks choir, and took voice lessons in the music department.
And I learned how to sing, how to carry the sound as a constant through the words, flowing. Ways to end words that end with Ms, Ts, and Ds. How to sing in Latin, German, Italian, and Spanish as well as English. Despite prompting by my vocal teacher I never became comfortable with solos, only performing them when forced to by the requirements of the voice lessons. I did love singing in the choir and have particularly lovely memories of performing Beethoven's 9th Symphony.
command line metta
The impending rain was the last straw in my deciding not to bicycle to the office today. I'd woken up sometime before 4AM with a start (AM had crashed into the nightstand), then needed to go to the bathroom, then Phoebe waking me up to pet her. I dozed fitfully after that until the alarm sounded at 6:30. The thing that needed to give was my desire to bicycle in today.
I phoned CK to let her know, feeling a bit bad for doing so. The route to use had seemed a contentious topic, so calling to say I wasn't up for it regardless felt a bit silly. She was understanding, of course, agreeing that I am not equipped at all to deal with rain (either on my person or my stuff).
Work was filled with the usual work stuff, including an inability to access the documents I keep on Google. Some new measurements of the corporate IT and/or security folks. One more reason to give thought to looking to be somewhere smaller. Made some progress on some things, little on others. My head ached by the end of the day.
Quick snack at home, AM had made samosas and I had one with a little sambar. Then off to teach yoga. Tonight I rushed off to the dharma center afterward because they needed someone to chant and do bells. I volunteered because no one else had and somehow my mind things this is somehow a "make up" for bailing out on them last Thursday.
Tuesdays are seated meditation (zazen) followed by walking meditation (kinhin) then discussion, a bit more zazen, and ending with chanting service. I like the idea of this a lot, but since I finish teaching a little past 7PM each Tuesday it means to go I must wolf something down in the car on the way over to sitting at 7:30PM. Now having done it I can confirm that it really makes for a long day, even if I hadn't started out short on sleep.
We discussed the wrap up, well for me first discussion about the Bhramaviharas ("Divine Abodes") and I mentioned how difficult it is for me to apply these to myself. That I find it far easier to cultivate these things when I deal with others. Yes, things are still challenging when I interact with people closely, but it is far less effort to practice these states of being with others.
I especially mentioned how doing metta practice for myself is such a challenge, that is the time when I am most distracted. So distracted I don't even notice I'm no longer attending my meditation; I don't consciously distract myself so much as mentally shift to other activities. HB has suggested practicing in a mirror, but that really is difficult and even upsetting at times. GR offered the idea of doing it a different way, perhaps writing it out.
When we had our second sitting period I tried this. Not literally, no pen and paper. I envisioned the feel of my fingers on a keyboard, typing out the words. My mind saw the letters appearing on my monitor, in a terminal window. This variation helped, my mind stayed more focused on the metta practice and aware of the potential to wander off. After chanting service I made sure to share that the "writing" suggestion was very helpful.
And I'm finally in bed again. My right side especially hurts. From the side of the tail bone down the entire leg, lighting up the hip and knee particularly. I felt so drained from work today, not energized by it at all. I am trying to not lose track of how tired I am and how the down shift in the weather to mist, drizzle and rain leaves me feeling chilled and slow. These things and the rush of anxiety last week have left me feeling thin again. Some of the irritation at work is truly magnified by these things and not just work itself.
Absolute Beginner
I feel really resistant to the practice of writing tonight. I really don't want to write and am relying upon the "practice" part of this to get me going. I'm tired physically and mentally. My emotions still feel right up at the surface, unsettled. Maybe not as bad as last July, so some progress, but like my going up hills on bicycle, it feels slow.
AM and I, as well as CK and I, have been talking about going to the NVC (non-violent communication) class being offered by our Zen community next month. Learning how to more compassionately express our needs and emotions to one another. I am looking forward to this chance to learn really useful skills together although it is tough since right now my emotional stuff feels so present and big.
I'm listening to Absolute Beginners right now and there's a sweet irony to it. My feeling so inadequate these past few days, all the emotions and challenges that my family relationships bring up, fits with the idea of a beginner in one view. I don't feel very comfortable being a beginner for the most part. In most everything I do there's some level of anticipatory-anxiety, dread.
There's the other side of being a beginner, the state in Zen described as Shoshin. Shunryu Suzuki was known for saying that in the beginners mind there are many possibilities, in the experts mind there are few. My mind in the state of beginner sees endless possibilities for humiliation, retribution, anger, shame, and utter failure. My inner critic summons up wild waves of fear and blinds me to any other outcomes. The work in retraining my mind is to see the possibilities for joy, for success & accomplishment, pride, happiness, and peace. Not to try and eradicate the thoughts based in fear, just to achieve parity in vision so I perceive the thoughts based in peace equally.
Irritation
I am so tired, exhausted really. My head aches from the effort of attention, sinus pain, and just an ache from having a headache all day. My eyes are tired from processing data on screens large and small. Today I have awoken at 6:15, had a shower, got dressed, bicycled to CK's, discovered a sweaty back from bicycle & a cotton shirt don't mix, changed to a t-shirt of CK's, had toast, bicycled to OSCON, sat in on a very good workshop on PHP, had nearly the exact same lunch as yesterday (not worth elaborating upon... salads), went to what I feel was a terrible workshop on PHP, left early, got gvim working on my Mac, ate some soup, changed clothes, bicycled to Dishman, taught a yoga class, rode back to CK's flat, changed yet again, bicycled back to OSCON, and listened to various presentations & awards (geeky, inspiring, mind-boggling, funny...) until 10PM, and finally CK & I rode back to her flat! I promptly put on my pyjamas and sat down with a thump on the bed.
CK heated up more soup for us, which helps as has the water. Seeing the day up there in a list gives me perspective on why I'm so tired and hurt so much. It is a day that really presses on my resources rather hard. Although there are evening events at OSCON for two more nights, tomorrow won't be so long as CK & I already plan to leave a bit earlier, rest a little, then go to a yoga class. Thursday will be zazen and by then the sheer crush of so many people, so much talk, countless slides projected on screens will make settling into silence such a blessed gift.
The workshop we went to in the afternoon was very disappointing to me. Not only did I find it to not be very professional, even accounting for cultural differences (presenter is from France), but on a level where I felt that economically it wasn't worth the time spent, especially for someone like her who doesn't have a big company footing the bill to attend (which should be her choice to be irritated about, I didn't need to take it on to be annoyed on her behalf). CK finally propelled us towards going home early to rest a bit before I had to teach, plus I'd have time to eat a little. I hadn't wanted to go, wanting to stay and salvage the 90 minutes that weren't useful. She finally noted that I was having a hard time letting it go. And I was. The ride home helped burn off some of it as did fixing something on my Mac that was making it hard for me to work on code projects.
The irritation feels pretty far away now. I can look at the afternoon and spot it, but it lacks the immediacy that was making it hard to let go of. With that time shift I wonder how one irritation in the day might rile up other feelings of irritation that lurk below the surface. It is a slippery slope to follow irritation down into anger.
I used to have the mistaken impression that in Buddhism anger isn't allowed, better yet we somehow transcend it. I asked Hogen about it and he made sure to reinforce to me that it isn't that we never feel anger, that's unreasonable because we will feel anger. It is that we don't give rise to the anger. We don't let it manifest into unkind words spoken out of that heat that is just a few degrees hotter than irritation.
So CK became my important Sanga of one today. A fellow traveller upon the Way who merely noted that I wasn't letting go. Had she not brought me back, giving me perspective, I may have easily let the irritation rise into anger.
Revisting the Genjo Koan by Bicycle
Oh I slept so poorly last night even having taken some melatonin. I tossed and turned from some combination of pain and travel dreams. That busyness of rushing to a destination, unsettled. I could not help but whimper a little when my alarm went off at 6AM. I hauled myself out of bed and got myself together, onto the bicycle and off to CK's.
I made it a little more quickly to her flat this time and had some breakfast while she finished getting ready. It took us only 10 more minutes to bicycle over to the Convention Center for OSCON. We locked up and watched all the guys walking by with badges on. We laughed at how relieved we were to be there together. She's not been to an event like this before as an attendee and I've not been since 2000.
We got through registration, through the Starbuck's line, and onto our respective sessions. I had all Perl workshops today while she did one on PHP and another on A/B testing. We were fed salads topped with grilled veg and tofu, which was pretty good. Tomorrow she and I both will be in PHP workshops together. I'm looking forward to it a lot.
The ride home was hard since the wind was blowing right down N Williams making the hill climb up to Alberta challenging. Other bicyclists passed me in a parade of faster rides powered by legs more trained than mine currently are. I just kept pressing my feet into the peddles and trying to breathe through my nose, control my breath.
CK asked me later if a year ago I would have thought I'd be commuting on a bicycle. I'm so thrilled that I can do this, very surprised too. I didn't really think it would be possible to find something that I felt both comfortable and safe on. It is intimidating to be out in traffic again, I found the big trucks loud and close as they rushed past me on Russell. As tough as I find the hill up to Alberta, I'm still so grateful to be huffing & puffing my way up it.
In answering her I found myself stumbling over one of Chozen's Dharma talks from last winter. The sangha had been studying Genjo Koan for several weeks. One evening Chozen focused on the image of a boat that reappears in Dogen's lines. She talked about how we feel when on that boat, with nothing but ocean in four directions. How would we see the ocean at that point, how is the boat viewed.
In that kind of situation we tend to cling to the boat, the idea that the ocean is enemy at that point. If we loose the boat, we are consumed by the ocean. We don't see the limitless, boundless, teeming depths of the ocean as our element, we cannot sink into the idea of merging with it, abandoning our little boat and our wish to see land soon.
Chozen taught that our mind is that boat floating upon the boundless ocean of the BuddhaDharma, but our tendency as we age is to close our mind which shrinks that boat. We start telling ourselves that we're too old to learn something, no longer willing to try new things, and believing we're not capable of something. Chozen found herself, at 60 learning how to play piano for the first time.
And I find myself riding a bicycle. My shoulders, mid-back, side ribs and chest ache. We realized that it is most likely because I'm gripping the handlebars with such tension as I learn this skill all over again. Still, I'm making my way through trucks and the whoosh of cars.
Why Practice Yoga
I began a Hatha yoga practice before my Zen practice and feel it is an invaluable contribution; the two work together perfectly. In many ways Buddhism is a yoga practice, one of my yoga books notes that the best know yoga practitioner the world over is the historical Buddha. Siddhartha was practicing yoga on his path on the Way.
One of my Zen teachers asked me one day what was the benefit of my yoga practice and here's what I came up with: Yoga teaches me to be patient and present in discomfort, staying with my breath. It teaches me to stay with the moment and in my body even when I'd rather just curl up under a blanket and hide.
Many yoga poses are not comfortable and my practice has one hold in poses, sometimes for many breaths, minutes. Holding and staying in an intense pose puts the mind no where else but the present moment. Oh it might take a moment to think about how it doesn't want to be there, that it wants to be elsewhere, however the sensations in the body will help keep the mind present. It is a part of the purpose of doing it, to empty the mind and be present. The poses teach us to do that while challenging ourselves. From that, we learn to quiet the mind when just sitting. We learn to do it in everyday moments too.
The sage Patanjali who is credited with writing the Yoga Sutras wrote in the second sutra that "The purpose of yoga is to calm the fluctuations of the mind" .
I remind my yoga students of this a lot. That the purpose is not to have a buff body or touch your toes, it is to settle the mind into silence. The poses do improve health over all and you learn deep practice with the breath, but they are also a very powerful tool in teaching one how to be quiet and present mentally. If as a side benefit you end up with a great backside, can touch your toes, or stand on your head, then be grateful your practice is so physically beneficial!
The Path of Confrontation
Today was a bit rough. I woke up feeling tired, cold and aching in my back and legs. I'd planned to get up at 6AM to catch the 6:46 bus downtown but I turned off the alarm and slept until then. AM drove me downtown and assured me that I should consider working from home part of the day.
Normally I work from home Mondays. October through May I read for SMART on most Mondays nearby my house so it makes sense to catch up on email, read, then come home and work the rest of the day. I'll bring my work laptop home with me on Fridays so I am able to access the network via the VPN and can access all files, run Crystal Reports, etc. Most tasks I'm able to do via the Java client I can get to via a secure website, the reports are the big thing. Today just had many things that needed me to take care of in person, so in I went.
Some of it felt like the post-weekend blues on top of hurting a lot. Going to bed thinking about Mom meant for what seemed to be somewhat restless sleep. I forgot to take a melatonin so my mind jumped around in dreams that would be barely recalled when I did wake up. The temperature dropped quite a bit and sometime around 4AM I felt chilled, woke up, turned off the ceiling fan, and tried to get comfortable again.
By 12:30 the vague nausea was not going away and every time I leaned back in my chair to stretch my left hip spasmed. I phoned AM and he came down to get me. I feel bad being driven around. I hope the balance evens out that my vegan diet offsets some of the rides AM & CK give me. More than anything it just gets old hurting to a point that I want those rides. Mostly I just try to be grateful that neither of them seems to mind running me around.
I was thinking I don't know what to do with all the Mom stuff. At times I just feel fed up and angry. I've felt so tied to her all my life, a message she's spent countless hours reinforcing. How I'm her "miracle" and how she's done everything for me. That's how she sees everything, through the lens of her sacrifices. She retells things she's worried she may have done wrong as mistakes made while doing the best she could.
There's times I just want to start yelling at her and not stop. I know it is futile. Even if she were to stay an listen she'd rewrite everything I said before she committed it to memory. More than that when I weigh that action against Zen precepts I really find it lacking. It isn't that I shouldn't expect to never get angry, I should not give rise to spewing forth that anger. I should just stay with the anger to see where it comes from. Much of the time the anger at my Mom arises and I just accept that it is reasonable for me to be angry.
Anger is stressed by some as a path to healing, the backbone of recovery. Anger frightens me and I am physically ill when I feel the searing heat of it, seemingly to me that my hair shoots straight up from the temperature and energy of it. So it is easy to not give rise to that, just for that reason alone I'd rather not follow the path of anger to heal.
More than that it feels wrong to ruin whatever delusions of happiness, perhaps even moments of real happiness (I sincerely hope) my Mom has left. I believe that's why she rewrites everything to cast herself in a good light -- the overburdened, poor, single-mom who has a heart of gold even if she makes the occasional mistake. I know too well the reality of the overburdened, poor, and divided attention & absence of a single-mother in the early 1970s. I just also know that her choices weren't always mistakes and were certainly not founded in compassion much of the time. But to cope with her choices she rewrites it all so somehow she sees herself as a heroine in one of her romance novels.
I suppose I see too clearly the obvious sadness in her doing that. Seeing that I know releasing my anger with her choices at her would be so harmful. I know it wouldn't change history or really leave me feeling any better. Nor would it further any kind of progress or growth. It would merely be giving rise to anger and, although I've not made that vow formally before my community, I'm trying to practice it.
Chanting, O My
Tonight I sat in the front of the zendo and chanted service. I didn't look at anything but the chant leader materials, I just tried to think about projecting my voice, and I didn't pass out. I was very nervous when I found out via the Dharma talk that the chant we're doing had changed last week while I was in Canada and was NOT the one I'd been practicing!
Afterwards several people told me how well I did. CK commented on this as well and asked if I was able to take note of the compliments. I noted that right now I'm still feeling the anxiety of being in front of everyone, not only that but using my voice in front of everyone, and the general relief of being done! She noted that afterwards I seemed a bit like a balloon that had been let go of, all the air rushing out of it, and deflated. I agreed I felt pretty drained.
There's the part of me that is just so uncomfortable with using my voice in a public way. All through the first sitting period I'd periodically hear my Mother, Aunt Jean, or Grandmother's voice telling me that I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket -- a refrain I heard through out my childhood an adolescence. Even after voice lessons, singing in the college choir, the masterworks community choir, and having to do a couple of solo recitals it never felt easy. Those two solo recitals caused me nervousness to the point of illness, just the same as when I read my personal writing or poetry aloud. Thankfully I was able to mostly get rid of those voices during the second zazen period.
Then there's the general disconnect I feel in a group. I have a group of friends I feel comfortable with after over 10 years. Even in that group there are things people didn't know about me, especially about my struggle with PTSD, until just the past year! Trying to look at that with CK on the drive home from the Dharma center I noted that the one group I did have constant, my family, I was invalidated, unwelcome, and often maligned. I have never felt the feeling of belonging in my family that most people describe. We moved so often when I grew up that I also felt like I never got the hang of being with a group -- every time I'd get close to feeling comfortable I'd move away.
To get out in front of a community that feels like I belong, even if that belief seems a little shaky and uncertain, felt enormous. When I started to chant I could hear nothing for a moment but my ears ringing. Then I heard my voice, settled into a sutra I do know even if I didn't practice it. I may be deflated, but I didn't explode into a poof of anxiety.
And now, having resolved the 99% full /home on my production web server (Monday I must look into why my backup prune script stopped working) I'm going to go to bed and try NOT to dream about being in front of people or my family!
The Fifth Grave Precept
Proceed clearly. Do not cloud the mind.
At first, when I saw the fifth precept written as, “don’t drink or take drugs”, I felt some surprise at seeing a precept expressed in a way that sounded to me like a commandment from the Judeo-Christian faith I had grown up with. After I saw the fifth precept written as advice to “Not cloud the mind”, the meaning for it gained greater clarity. It isn’t just an admonishment to avoid substances that might cause one to break other precepts, but advice to avoid anything that encourages us to be "clouded"; distracted and not present in each moment.
There is the obvious pain and suffering caused by by the misuse of alcohol and drugs. I grew up watching my step-father's functional alcoholism, hearing terrible stories of my father's alcoholic rages, and feeling deep anxiety when family gatherings encouraged drunken comments. All my life my father and step-dad chose to cling to their addictions to alcohol, cigarettes, and prescription drugs. That clinging hastened their early deaths by weakening their bodies beyond the ability to be repaired. For as many times as they each may have said they loved me in real life each of their deaths left me with the pain of knowing that the addictions were more important.
A clear as the danger of the misuse of intoxicants is to me, when this precept expanded beyond a simple directive around using alcohol or drugs I was able to clearly see the other ways my family preferred clouded, distracted minds. Eating to avoid the pain, dissatisfaction, and rage that simmered just below the surface of every family gathering. The gathering itself providing the excuse, as well as the means, to cloud the mind with food. Shopping, acquiring more things and more debt in a game of gratification, competition, and distraction. Gossiping, which itself is a separate precept, was also a way of clouding the mind along with television, romance novels, and endless, jealous scheming.
In my family food was an especially acceptable means of distracting the mind from the pain and dissatisfaction of the present. I watched the women, and often the men, in my family transition to obesity as adults regardless of how thin they had been as children. Regardless of any of the constant urging to be "skinny", to diet constantly, and to have stylish clothing that showed off a good figure everyone was encouraged to eat excessively at any gathering. Even if there wasn't encouragement, no one would think it unusual to want to have "just one more" piece of homemade candy even if you were already full beyond words. It was always just fine to want to go out for a sundae, indulge in "consumer therapy" (shopping), or indulge in a whole day of shopping and eating treats because the day had been stressful, upsetting. It was perfectly fine to complain about why the day had been stressful but there was never any direction on how to cope with it beyond eating, shopping, or other forms of immediate pleasure. Without any skills to truly cope with distressing emotions and situations I grew up to suffer greatly from depression, anxiety, and obesity by the time I was in my mid-20s.
After several years of cultivating mindfulness in my approach to food I've overcome the obesity and the health risks that have plagued the women in my family. By rejecting the food culture I was raised with I have created the space within which I can learn how to truly address the depression and anxiety caused by nearly 30 years of untreated PTSD. In smaller ways too I can continue to practice mindfulness; like buying fairly traded, organic chocolate and finding the cost of those luxuries causes me to reflect more deeply as to how I might turn to them as a means of distraction. Am I merely craving the sweetness of chocolate because I’m irritated, frustrated or bored? Am I seeking the clouding of my mind, choosing a momentary pleasure rather than stay with emotions that make me uncomfortable? The fifth precept invites me to reflect more deeply and try to bring light & understanding to places in my life where I am mindlessly seeking distraction.