do not resuscitate

June 30th, 2024 - 8 Comments

My husband and I have been trying to muster the wherewithal to update our will and advance healthcare directives. Twenty-odd years ago, we sat down with an attorney friend and in one evening had the whole thing knocked out. That’s probably because we felt like we were still in the middle of life, where time seems suspended. That can happen with a young marriage, a new home, and a small child. The future was far off, and events that would happen there were just a fuzzy abstraction.

Not so now, for obvious reasons. Not so now at all.

Sometime in the last year my Zen teacher, who is a good twenty years older and infinitely wiser than I am, gave me new instructions for my meditation practice. “Keep your gaze focused on the horizon.” For me, this involved lifting my sights higher off the ground than I’d been used to. And at once, my view expanded and the horizon came closer. I likened the change to watching a sunset on the beach: we can’t take our eyes off of it. It’s instantly relaxing, absorbing, and quieting. Don’t we savor a sunset? The delicious array of color as the light scatters. A subtle cooling in the air. The slow encompassing of darkness. The indescribable beauty, the inexplicable magic, the doneness of it all.

That’s how I see my horizon now. As it shortens, it beckons as a raft to ride beyond the rising swell. I am less afraid of what lies over the edge of time. Trust me, I’m not hasty to leave. There is so much to do right now. I can’t hope to change the tragic and horrible course of ignoble human events, today in this country, in this world, borne of the deepest evil, hatred, greed, and insatiable corruption. But I will try. I will show up. I will support. I will give comfort and care. I will hold fast to goodness, kindness, gentleness, charity and love, as we must, bravely. My time is short, or shorter than it was — a comfort of sorts — but there is not a day to waste. There is not a day that doesn’t matter.

Photo by Jorge Fernández Salas on Unsplash

the memory of a chair

February 19th, 2024 - 4 Comments

When I was 16, I got a chair for my birthday.

It was a little wicker chair from Pier 1. Nothing about it seems unusual to me now except that I asked for it. Who asks for a chair for their birthday? Perhaps I was trying to piece together a different kind of life than the one I had. My room was already too small for the furniture in it. You had to walk sideways to squeeze between the bed and bureau. Maybe I used that chair to hold clothes or homework. I can’t remember much about it, except that it was mine, and that mattered to me then.

I took the chair with me into all the places I lived over the next 20 years. As those places got bigger, I’d tuck it into a corner, a closet or a spare room. The kind of room you never walked into. Over time, the little chair became not so much a chair as a sentiment, a feeling about the past. I never sat in it at all.

At some point along the way, I needed to move out of a big place and into a smaller one, a really smaller one, not much bigger than my bedroom was when I was 16. It was time to let go of everything—furniture, dishes, clothes, yard tools, rugs, books, the assemblage of a lifetime—and I did, ending with a garage sale one Saturday morning when I put the little wicker chair out on the lawn. No one seemed to notice.

Almost everything was gone by the time a fellow rode up on a bike. He bought the chair, marked down from $10 to $5 to $3. Then he rode off one-handed on his bicycle, carrying the chair over his back.

I was so happy. I was happy for the man, who didn’t have much. But mostly, I was happy for the chair, because I knew someone would soon be sitting in it. It would be a chair again, and not just the memory of a chair.

Photo by Asya Vee on Unsplash

it was night and it was raining

February 5th, 2024 - 3 Comments

I don’t know what might have caused my sister and me to be riding in the back of our ’57 Chevrolet, the light green sedan that my dad would drive for many more years. I don’t know how or where we found ourselves motoring slowly through a flooded street, water lapping in waves, into the dark ahead. I was afraid, that much I remember.

We pulled into a gas station. Was it so my dad could call my mom on the pay phone? We would be late. She would be worried. Was it to buy cigarettes or a beer? To ask for directions? Were we lost? Were we stuck? Would we make it? We didn’t say any of these things out loud. Inside the car, we didn’t move. Maybe we were told to sleep, and maybe we pretended we were.

When the rain is heavy the wipers don’t clear the windshield for long. You have to drive through the blindness until the blur is wiped away again. Seeing, not seeing, knowing, not knowing. You can learn this from the backseat on a rainy night, even if you’re only four or five.

Was this the first time I was truly afraid? Is that why I remember it? It would not be the last. There are so many ways to be afraid, and afraid even after. I am still afraid riding in a car. A curve taken too fast. The brake coming too slow. A foot on the pedal, faster, faster. Where are we going and why are we going like this?

I don’t say anything out loud.

My father got us home that night. That night he was a hero, a giant to little me. I should remember that. I should remember being safe, being carried home.

There are so many ways to be afraid, and only one way not to be afraid. By trusting what you can’t see. Going where you don’t know. Still and quiet in your seat, as the waves come and go.

Photo by C. G. on Unsplash

telling women’s stories

January 25th, 2024 - 2 Comments

Women’s stories are hard to believe. And they are hard to tell. They don’t fit the narrative, someone will tell you. They are called exaggerated, overemotional, irrational, and unbelievable. Women’s stories are often horror stories. They terrify us because we realize how vulnerable and powerless women are.

The other day I watched the documentary American Nightmare on TV. It was a story you couldn’t turn away from, although many had.

A man and woman are attacked in their bed in the middle of the night by a masked intruder. The man is knocked out while the woman is drugged and kidnapped. She spends hours tied up and blindfolded in the trunk of a car, then days being assaulted in a blacked-out room.

The police never go looking for her because they don’t believe the story the man tells about what happened. It doesn’t fit the narrative.

When her captor releases her, the police don’t believe her either. They don’t even listen. They’ve already decided it’s a hoax, and that makes her the criminal. Is the nightmare what happened to her that fateful night or what happened to her after?

When my daughter was in college she made friends who were student filmmakers, among them, women filmmakers. Some made films with crews comprised entirely of women: actors, writers, directors, producers, camera operators, editors. These women came together to tell women’s stories, the stories that most often don’t get told. Now she and her friends are trying to tell one such story in a short film entitled There’s Someone at the Door. It’s about how two women respond to the possibility that danger is lurking in the dark. This is a fear that can be present everywhere, everyday, especially in the lives of women.

The artists involved are raising money for the film. They have a far-off goal, but they will make the film anyway, somehow. Perhaps you can help these women tell the story, even in a small way. (At Indiegogo, click the red button that reads “See Options.) What matters most is that someone believes in them.

Thank you.

are you ok

January 4th, 2024 - 6 Comments

The other week I went to my bank’s ATM to make a withdrawal and it wasn’t working. I turned around and left to try again the next day. When I came back, the ATM still wasn’t working. It felt kind of weird, but I went inside the bank.

I mean, who goes inside a bank anymore? For that matter, who needs cash? Just the people who do things like me, I suppose.

There was only one person inside, a teller. There were empty desks and chairs where you might have sat if you’d been opening an account, applying for a loan, or purchasing a CD in the old days, but this one fellow was it. He was the whole bank.

The ATM isn’t working, I said. I felt like I should explain my presence.

I’ve heard that, he said.

He counted out the bills and I left. He was alone again.

I’ve thought about this since. I think about all the ways our world is different now, lonelier now, disconnected and isolated, and what the future will hold for the kids who don’t know any other kind of life. By that I mean a life with people that you meet and talk to, that you rely on, and that you trust in an everyday kind of way, even if you’re strangers.

A long time ago, in the ‘70s and ‘80s, there was quite a bit of controversy over something called a “neutron bomb.” It was considered especially efficient by the military-industrial types because it would kill people but leave (most) buildings intact. Reagan initiated production of the bomb but anti-nuclear protests put an end to it. The bombs were never used and the ones they made were dismantled.

But it feels like the aftermath of a neutron bomb anyway. Like the people are gone and an empty world remains.

Are you OK? Does anyone ever ask you that question for real, in person, in front of you?

As for me, I don’t encounter many people anymore. Oh, there are people most places but I don’t really encounter them. There’s a woman who works in the self-checkout area at the supermarket and I see her most days when I’m there. We recognize each other, smile and chit-chat. That counts as a pretty big deal.

Before the pandemic, I used to drive to a yoga class every other day and see the same people on a certain corner. If the light turned red and I was stopped, I would roll down my window and hand whoever was there a $1 bill. In those days, I always had at least a few $1 bills. They’d say thanks or bless you or have a great day and I’d smile. Sometimes, we’d even exchange names. That was what you called an encounter.

One day it was pouring rain and the corner was empty. I drove on through several more intersections until a light turned red. There was someone with a sign, someone I’d never seen before, but I had a $1 bill ready and I rolled down the window and gave it to him. He stooped down to see me through the open window, me with my head nearly as bald as a sick person’s, and he stepped closer, squinting.

Are you OK? he said. He was soaking wet without even an umbrella, let alone a home, and he was worried about me?

I had a clutch in my throat then, and I do now. I don’t think I changed his life, but he changed mine.

Are you OK? Are you OK? Are you OK?

###

Photo by Frames For Your Heart on Unsplash

isn’t this everything

September 24th, 2023 - 4 Comments

The other day I drove down the hill and into a fog bank. A fog bank, yes, out of the blue. The weather is so odd around here — cloudy, gray, foggy— strange for September, which has always been our hottest month of the year. But that was then.

Just about all weather is strange these days, but ours is a stranger-than-ever world. It’s hard most days to lift one’s sights above the gloomy prospects.

It makes me think of this photo. It was taken at a children’s playground where underground misters emit a continuous flow of fog. It’s an ingenious form of play, and the kids can’t get enough of it. Without seeing farther ahead than their feet, they run and jump and get wet, but amazingly, they don’t get hurt.

I’m guessing she was about six years old here, because I don’t think she could have struck this pose after that. After this, she would have known a lot more. She would’ve known, for instance, what she couldn’t do, or shouldn’t do, what she was good or not good at, what other people liked or didn’t like about her, who said what, what things meant, and all of that, all of that. To her then, this pose wasn’t a pose. In this moment, emerging from the mist, confident, happy, and free. Pointing at me as if to say, even now, can you do this? Forget where you’ve been. Don’t think should or could. Without knowing what lies ahead, isn’t this everything right here?

a tiny weightless thing

September 10th, 2023 - 8 Comments

Many years ago, when my life seemed to take a radical and inexplicable turn, people would sometimes ask how I decided to make that happen. The truth is, I didn’t make anything happen except in the smallest ways. I didn’t decide to downsize, for instance, although it looked that way. I didn’t become a minimalist, although my needs diminished. I didn’t decide to pursue a spiritual path, I just put one foot in front of the other. I didn’t resist, reject, or refuse anything, I simply made different choices. They are the kind of choices we are presented with all the time.

Instead of more I chose less. Instead of that I chose this. Instead of later I chose now. And instead of me, well, I didn’t choose me.

If we are lucky, we are given a great deal of time on this earth, time enough to get a good look around. And eventually, after enough upheavals, disasters, and disappointments, we might realize the point of it all.

It’s not just to be kind, although that’s part of it. It’s not just to be tolerant or generous, although both of those will become easier. It’s not really about gratitude either, although you will be grateful for all the opportunities given to you.

We are here, together, now to serve one another. Let’s not make that complicated. It’s really simple, and a lot simpler than serving yourself. Serving yourself is an endless, exhausting, and futile endeavor. It perpetuates dissatisfaction. It multiplies desires. But serving others, helping others, and caring for others is a tiny, weightless thing. It’s instantly satisfying and gratifying. In other words, it’s good.

This is the secret to happiness. Let’s not keep it a secret.

Become the least grain of sand at the beach.

Photo by jim gade on Unsplash

instructions to the gardener

June 7th, 2023 - 3 Comments

You should entreat trees and rocks to preach the Dharma, and you should ask rice fields and gardens for the truth. Ask pillars for the Dharma, and learn from hedges and walls. In earth, stones, sand, and pebbles, there is to be found the extremely inconceivable mind which moves the sincere heart. — Dogen

More than 800 years ago, Dogen Zenji, the founder of the Soto school of Zen, was struggling to establish an authentic monastic practice in Japan. He had attracted his first students to a small temple where they lived communally, sharing responsibilities. When he was a young monk, he thought that the mundane aspects of life distracted from serious practice, but he soon realized his error. As an abbot, he wrote meticulous instructions for carrying out daily tasks, from cooking and cleaning to brushing one’s teeth. He didn’t want students to squander a single moment of the day. Mindfulness was not to be confined to a meditation hall. In this spirit, we can apply his practical instructions beyond the monastery confines and into the garden, where doubts sprout, weeds abound, and the mind blooms beyond all barriers.

In performing your duties, maintain joyful mind, kind mind, and great mind.

Everything you do, everywhere you are, is a reflection of your own mind. So how does a tiresome chore become instead the activity of a buddha?

When I moved into a home with an old and overgrown garden, I could not have answered that question. My mind swirled with a combination of giddy naiveté and petrifying doubt. I didn’t know anything about plants. I had no training, tools, guide, or supervision. Convinced that there was a right way to use a spade and a special time to plant or prune, I was pretty sure that I’d do it all wrong. It was far safer to gaze at the place through my kitchen window or read one of the many gardening books I was busy collecting.

And yet, I could hardly wait to begin. Here was life, real life right in front of me, not merely a clever scheme or distant dream. The only question was when I would get out of my head and into the dirt. That’s the question for all would-be gardeners, as it is for practitioners of the Way, and the answer is the same. We just start.

Use your own hands, your own eyes, and your own sincerity. Working with your sleeves rolled up is the activity of a way-seeking mind.

Right in front of me was a place teeming with life and rampant with possibilities. For a gardener, what place or time isn’t full of possibilities? Despite my lack of qualifications, I trusted that my hands knew what to do and that luck would see me through. I started pulling weeds and graduated to raking leaves. From that point on, every day in the garden delivered a good day’s work . . .

Read the rest of this article in Lion’s Roar magazine.

trees preach the dharma

March 20th, 2023 - 1 Comment

June 22-25, 2023
The Pines Retreat
A weekend of Zen meditation on a 60-acre wooded estate located one hour southeast of Toledo. Experience the healing presence of sitting in silence or walking in meditation, chanting, Dharma talks and private encounters with a teacher.

Our Lady of the Pines Retreat Center
Fremont, OH
Registration open
All are welcome

the empty boat

February 8th, 2023 - 3 Comments

Midnight on the lake
No wind, no waves
the empty boat
is flooded with moonlight.
—Dogen Zenji

It has been quiet over here for a long time. There is great comfort in deep silence amid the cries of our suffering world.

Silence doesn’t have a meaning but we often project a meaning onto it. We might think, for instance, that silence implies anger, offense, or indifference, but that is not always true. What is true is that silence and stillness abide eternally in our very being, when the winds of emotion have calmed and the waves of thought have ceased. Then we might have something useful to say. Or not. Sometimes silence says it all.

The other night I gave a talk on forgiveness. It came to mind because of things in my own life and most certainly because of the cruelty, injustice, and inhumanity in our world. We need forgiveness, and we need the humility to give it, because forgiveness is the best remedy for anger and resentment. It allows a new beginning.

But forgiveness is a rather sticky business. Anger is an intoxicant, and intoxicants are addictive. If we look at ourselves closely, we may see that we hold onto our anger, grievance, and blame. They give us—what, really? A sense of self, perhaps. Purpose. Certainly a sense of self-righteousness. Letting go takes the strength and discipline to get over yourself. You have to really want to get rid of the pain.

Years ago someone asked me a particularly good question. They asked how this practice changed the way I dealt with conflict. All high-mindedness aside, how does it make a day-to-day difference? I didn’t give a long answer, I just said that I’d learned to pause in the face of conflict so that I didn’t immediately react to anger with anger. I could still respond, but it was more often with silence. Or an apology. It’s a lot of trouble to win an argument but there’s always a way to end it.

The talk was given on a night when our sangha observed the ceremony of atonement, called Fusatsu, which conveys complete acceptance of one another and total responsibility for the harm we cause. No excuses, no blame, no wind, no waves, no self. It returns us to the silence of a night sky, the stillness of calm water, and the radiant light that shines in us, when we empty ourselves out.

You can listen to the talk right here. Or here. Or not listen, and just enter the silence.

Karen Maezen Miller · The Empty Boat

where in the world

October 12th, 2022 - 6 Comments

If you don’t see the Way, you don’t see it even as you walk on it.

The other day I had a letter from a longtime friend. “I keep in touch with you through your blog,” she wrote. I felt guilty, because if my writing is a way to keep in touch with friends, I’m not a very good friend. I don’t write much anymore, least of all here. Not sure why, except fewer topics occupy my mind. Still, that’s no reason to keep my distance. Hello, Leslie!

Someone asked me a while back if I was now “bicoastal.” That’s because I seem to be taking a lot of trips back east to visit my daughter in New York. The question sounded ridiculous. Of course I’m not bicoastal. I have only one address, one home. But then I thought, “Why not?” When you live as far west as I do, the place you’re most likely to travel is east. And from time to time, my daughter asks me to come. Any parent knows they would move mountains for a child, so why not move yourself? It suddenly seems extremely feasible and important to go, and so I do.

Once you make it to the airport, through security, and on board a plane, you can sit in one place and get anywhere. Land and exit the plane and you find that the same earth is underfoot, same sky overhead, and maybe just a little more rain. It’s not far, whatever time or trouble you think it takes.

When you walk the Way, it is not near, it is not far. If you are deluded you are mountains and rivers away from it.

This last trip was a purposeful one. A few months ago my daughter moved into a new apartment and started a full-time job. You might remember the shock after you start your first full-time job: you suddenly have no time for anything else. No time to cook, no time to eat, no time to make a home to come home to. A friend asked me what I was going to do on this trip, and I answered sheepishly, “Just cook and clean.” And he said, “You’re a really good mom.”

He proceeded to tell me about his twenty-third birthday, which was more than twenty years ago. He was just starting out, trying to make his way in the world. He didn’t tell any of his friends it was his birthday because he didn’t have the money to go out. He was still in school and also working, and he got back to his apartment late. When he walked in, he knew his mom had been there. She had cleaned, done his laundry, and filled the fridge. He sat down and cried then, and teared up even as he told me this story. He said it was the best day of his life.

Any day that you realize you are loved is the best day of your life. And, of course, any day you give your love is as good as it gets.

I talked recently with my good friends, podcasters Lori and Stephen Saux about love, patience, and trusting wherever you are. Maybe this is a good place and time to join us.
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Photo by Matt Le on Unsplash

where feet don’t reach

August 31st, 2022 - 10 Comments

If you wish to see the truth, only cease cherishing your opinions.— Sengstan

This is a line from an ancient Zen poem that stops me every time I run across it. Can it be that the only thing that keeps us from seeing the truth of our lives is what we might think about it? Whether we like it or not? Agree or disagree? Or in today’s parlance, “how it aligns with our personal values?”

I recently saw a smug somebody define the two US political parties not as Democrat and Republican, not as liberal or conservative, not as right or left, but as my friends and my enemies. In other words, if you think like me you’re safe, and if you don’t you’re dead. Just imagine how much truth has been left out of that assassin’s opinion. Pretty much all of it. But that’s where we always are: far, far from the truth under our feet.

I suppose if we didn’t each have a steady stock of opinions there would be nothing to discuss. Discussion used to be something you had at work, after church, or at your book club, but now it seems to be strictly limited to Facebook or, even less, Twitter. In other words, there is not a discussion at all, just a continuous stream of opinions, rationalizations and condemnations veering miles away from truth.

That reminds me of a long time ago at book club when the topic turned to the death penalty, of all things. I was asked if I was for or against it. Now think about it, when you are sitting in your own living room sipping a bottomless glass of Pinot Grigio and dipping carrots into a bowl of spinach dip, how far from reality is your opinion of the death penalty? I said I was against it. In my memory at least, there arose a clamor of what you might call “personal values.” How could I be against the death penalty if my sister, let’s say, was murdered? Or if my parents were shot dead in their beds? Or if my child was abducted and buried alive? Let me assure you that not then, nor at any time in my life thus far has any of those heinous acts occurred.

I said I was against it because I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t flip the switch. I couldn’t plunge the needle. It seemed to me that the only way I could formulate a view one way or the other I’d have to put myself in the shoes of the executioner. Opinions, you see, tend to float in the weightless ether where your feet don’t reach.

And lately, folks seem to have some pretty firm opinions about what should be done with student loans, and by that I mean other people’s student loans. Should they be forgiven? Mostly? Slightly? Not at all? And all of these opinions seem to be based on principles, an intellectual bit of flavoring that sounds, well, “principled.” All of my friends have principles, and none of my enemies do.

I am not a college student today, nor have I been at any time in the last 44 years, having matriculated when higher education was so cheap that no loans were required for me to attend, therefore I am not qualified to have an opinion on this matter. I consider myself abundantly fortunate to recuse myself from this debate, as it involves an entirely abstract and irrelevant judgment of others.

I actually wrote that in response to a discussion. On Facebook. Don’t judge.

Photo by Allan Nygren on Unsplash

how do you come to Zen?

July 27th, 2022 - No Comments

For practicing Zen, a quiet room is suitable. Put aside all involvements and suspend all affairs. Do not think “good” or “bad.” Do not judge true or false. Give up the operations of mind, intellect, and consciousness; stop measuring with thoughts, ideas, and views. Have no designs on becoming a buddha.

At your sitting place, spread out a thick mat and put a cushion on it. Sit upright, leaning neither left nor right, neither forward nor backward. Align your ears with your shoulders and your nose with your navel. Rest the tip of your tongue against the front of the roof of your mouth, with teeth together and lips shut. Always keep your eyes open, and breathe softly through your nose.

Once you have adjusted your posture, take a breath and exhale fully, rock your body right and left, and settle into steady, immovable sitting. Think of not thinking, “Not thinking—what kind of thinking is that?” Nonthinking. This is the essential art of zazen.

Having begun, begin again.

Chapin Mill Retreat
Batavia NY
October 6-9, 2022
Registration Open

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karen maezen miller

paradise in plain sight