Sometimes.
Just so you know.
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Yield the floor, take the sky
August 13th, 2009 - 14 Comments
August feels like a lost month. Slow boiled, a pot left on the burner and forgotten until a quicksilver memory sends you back to find it pitch darkened and empty.
And so my daughter, my sweet little, is 10. It is different at 10, you know. That extra digit on one side. The roundedness of zero. The empty whole of it.
“I don’t want to grow up,” she sighs on every day but her birthday today, when she didn’t say it. She doesn’t need to say it. It is the lyric we all live our lives by, and now she does too. The going is always gone.
Once I would have called it bittersweet. But I don’t taste too much the bitter any more. It benefits us both that her mother is ancient, so long and well-lived. I’ve lived forever! A hundred years or more, and the last hundred years were the best 10 years of my life.
I don’t want to grow up either. I don’t want to expend a minute of energy nursing myself: my make believe dreams and unrealized aspirations, the tug, the rift, the tides. I don’t want to become anyone else, or even more of myself. I’ve yielded that floor, scuffed and rutted.
Instead, I’ll take the sky. That sky!
Happy birthday baby girl. The world is yours.
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Robbed of meaning
August 12th, 2009 - No Comments
I seem to recall that Maezumi Roshi said something like, “People misunderstand Zen because it is so plain.” Maybe he didn’t say it. My memory doesn’t always serve me because memory doesn’t keep things plain and simple. Perhaps I remember it this way because it serves my purposes right now. That’s what memory usually does: whatever I want it to do.
Even if he didn’t say it quite like that, we can see right away that it is true. We can see how our effort to understand something makes it complicated, and therefore, more easily misunderstood. Why, how, what does it mean? Explain it, debate it, defend it, describe it! The search for meaning robs our life of meaning.
Read the rest and leave a comment on “The Laundry Line”
my blog at Shambhala SunSpace
my blog at Shambhala SunSpace
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Falling upside down
August 10th, 2009 - 3 Comments
Mother’s Autumn Plunge
Saturday, Oct. 10, 2009
Assisi Heights Spirituality Center
Rochester, Minn.
There is a story about what brings me up so high this time, so far out there, beyond any place I’ve ever been or even seen on a map.
There is a story about how all of us – against odds, hope and reason – will come together for another day of effortless oxygen and quiet astonishment.
Listen. It is the story of your life.
About two years ago, I got an email from a complete stranger, the lovely writer Elissa Elliott. She had read a powerful essay by novelist and teacher Dan Barden, “Writer as Parent: No More Aching to Be an Artist,” in Poets & Writers magazine. Dan was another stranger to me, but he wrote convincingly about what my book had meant to him in the early confounding years of parenthood when ambition and opportunity seem forever lost.
Elissa read Dan’s words, and then mine, and in a flash, she let go of her well-founded fears about motherhood. “I believe I can do it,” she wrote to me.
I lost touch with her until a year ago this month, when I read about her adoption of Liliana, now three, from the Ukraine. We can always do the thing we are most afraid to do; indeed we must.
I’m humbled and awed at the mysterious force – wind, breath, words – that can release us from old fears and resistance. Awed, and yet it happens all the time. It happens when we exhale. And when leaves fall.
When Elissa wished off-handedly for a retreat in her northern neck of woods, I didn’t know where she lived. I only knew I could find it. I trust it’s on my way. More than that, I trust it is the way.
How lovely to see that Rochester has a 100-year-old tradition of healing. And that our retreat home, Assisi, recalls my own conversion experience to the unholy goodness of the whole wide world. How awfully kind that airlines are offering insanely low fares. I have my ticket to paradise.
If you live in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota or North Dakota, I insist you come. If you live in Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana or Michigan, I’m saving you a place. If you live north of the 32nd parallel, especially if you don’t even know what that is, let go and fall up to the Autumn Plunge. And tell your friends.
We’re blowing in the wind and diving into a golden pond of wonder. Turn everything that’s stopping you upside down.
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10 early warning signs of a preteen
August 6th, 2009 - 4 Comments
1. How old do you have to be to be a preteen?
2. This is definitely my color.
3. This is definitely not my color.
4. Awesome.
5. I wish you would have talked to me about it first, Mom.
6. Because I mean, like, it’s my life, you know.
7. I’m just not that into it.
8. Random.
9. Do you think I can pull this look off?
10. When are you joining Twitter?
OK, that last one wasn’t her. It was me.
So, like, why don’t you follow me on Twitter? Because it’s like my life, you know, only I’m not going anywhere!
The world needs a homemaker
August 4th, 2009 - 28 Comments
Forgive the double posting from The Laundry Line, but this is so very important to see everywhere we look:
Last week I attended a retreat and came home infused with quiet calm and well-being. Then I glanced at the headlines in the newspaper and was shocked anew at the unimaginable depth of pain in this world. The scope of suffering is inconceivable. How can we respond in the face of this? Where do we begin to do good? I will tell you the only way I know to begin.
Empty the full hampers, sort and wash the laundry without resentment or commentary.
Sweep the floor of dust, mud and crumbs at your feet.
Don’t ask who made the mess.
At the grocery store, give your place in line to the person behind you.
Ask the checker how her day is going, and mean it.
On the way out, give your pocket money to the solicitor at the card table no matter what the cause.
Buy a cup of lemonade from the kids on the sidewalk stand. Tell them to keep the change.
Roll down your car window when you see the homeless man on the corner with the sign. Give him money. Have no concern over what he will do with it.
Smile at him. It will be the first smile he has seen in a very long time.
Write a thank you letter. Yes, a letter. If you do not have a reason to write one, do it without a reason.
Do not fight with your partner, your roommate, your spouse, or your children. If that seems impossible, just do not engage in the next fight, and don’t worry about the one that comes after. It might not come.
Do not try to convince anyone else of your point of view. That’s why they call it “point” of view. The point is just you.
If you feel yourself tensing in frustration, no matter what the circumstance, say, “I’m sorry.”
Do not indulge in despair over the futility of your impact or question the outcome.
Make yourself at home and take care of it as your own. It’s the only one there is.
Tiny bubbles
August 2nd, 2009 - 29 Comments
Celebrating the news that my next book, Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life, will be published by New World Library in time for Mother’s Day 2010.
The half-life of Susan Boyle
July 26th, 2009 - 8 Comments
Half-life: The time required for something to fall to half its initial value
Last week my nine-year-old was in the chorus at what was billed as an All Stars Concert for 60 kids in a summer theater program.
Just do the math and you know that 60 kids can’t All be Stars but try selling that to the kids or their parents who paid admission.
The day before the show, she fairly exploded with expectation. Then show time came. We couldn’t see her in the second row of 60 kids sing her heart out, but we know she did a fine job. Walking to the car after, she said, “I’m depressed.” Stardom will do that, apparently. The high lasts through one rendition of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!” before you’re slammed back to the hard pavement of the parking lot, as we see so painfully time after time.
I mean no insult to my daughter, or anyone else’s ambition, but our cult of stardom, this collective craving for instant inflation, the plucked-from-obscurity-to-overnight-hysteria thing, has me vaguely ill, as though I’ve been overfed.
We seem to have become sensation junkies. Each week a new sensation goes viral, whether it’s astonishment à la Boyle, grief à la Jackson, or this week’s cherry on top, the wedding dance being sensationalized for its “novel way of sharing matrimonial joy.”
Everyone puts on a good show. Indeed, All are Stars.
But gravity always has the last word. The simple cruelty of physics brought Susan Boyle swiftly low and likewise ensured that Michael would never rise to the occasion. I too, feel depressed, after I blow up ballooning expectations that inevitably blow up.
Now we have newlyweds that have reached, within a month of their nuptials, a summit that will surely never be scaled again. Two Today Show appearances in two days. Perhaps next they’ll be invited to have a beer at the White House. I know a thing or two about marriage, and this honeymoon would be hard for any ordinary couple to recover from.
Most of us have never seen anything like it, but there’s a veritable YouTube subgenre of choreographed wedding dances out there, the couples spreading their ambition for matrimonial joy by breaking into breakdance and hip hop, then posting it on YouTube just for friends and family. Tell me: are you surprised? These plucky couples and their videos feed the diet of morning news shows which are front and center in the televised wedding business. Weddings are already afflicted with an increasingly outrageous need to trump all. Don’t you know thousands, maybe millions, of betrotheds are now scrambling to top a new bar in the wedding-as-viral-video department?
When did we stop seeing the obvious? Viruses make us sick, and can even kill.
I hope Georgia picks herself up and keeps going for the love of performing. I hope Susan Boyle endures for the love of song. I hope the happy couple stays together in anonymity and health, as I wish for all couples. And I hope Michael Jackson rests in eternal peace.
As for me, I’m going away to a place where I can practice spreading another kind of sensation: obscurity.
Don’t worry, you’re safe. It’ll never go viral.
To be continued
July 23rd, 2009 - 3 Comments
Buddhist scriptures, Buddhist doctrine, and Buddhist philosophy are no more than intellectual formulations of zazen, and zazen itself is their practical demonstration. From this vast field I will abstract what is most essential for your practice.
Buddha devoted himself exclusively to zazen for six years and eventually, on the morning of the eighth of December, at the very instant when he glanced at the planet Venus gleaming in the eastern sky, he attained perfect enlightenment. He spontaneously cried out, “Wonder of wonders! Intrinsically all living beings are Buddhas, endowed with wisdom and virtue, but because men’s minds have become inverted through delusive thinking they fail to perceive this.” The first pronouncement of the Buddha seems to have been one of awe and astonishment.
The first declaration of Buddha is also the ultimate conclusion of Buddhism.
I hope to have succeeded in conveying to you the importance of zazen. Let us now talk about practice.
Select a quiet room in which to sit.
Don’t wrap your head around this
July 23rd, 2009 - 3 Comments
How can we fully illumine our life and personality with the moon of truth? We need first to calm the surging waves by halting the winds of discursive thought. We must empty our minds of the “conceptual thought of man.” Most people place a high value on abstract thought, but Buddhism has clearly demonstrated that discriminative thinking lies at the root of delusion. I once heard someone say, “Thought is the sickness of the human mind.” From the Buddhist point of view this is quite true. To be sure, abstract thinking is useful when wisely employed – which is to say, when its nature and limitations are property understood – but as long as human beings remain slaves to their intellect, fettered and controlled by it, they can well be called sick.
Muddy water world
July 22nd, 2009 - 2 Comments
Between a supremely perfected Buddha and us, who are ordinary, there is no difference as to substance. This “substance” can be likened to water. One of the salient characteristics of water is its conformability: when put into a round vessel it becomes round, when put into a square vessel it becomes square. We have this same adaptability, but as we live bound and fettered through ignorance of our true nature, we have forfeited this freedom. To pursue the metaphor, we can say that the mind of a Buddha is like water that is calm, deep, and crystal clear, and upon which the moon of truth reflects fully and perfectly. The mind of the ordinary man, on the other hand, is like murky water, constantly being churned by the gales of delusive thought and no longer able to reflect the moon of truth. The moon nonetheless shines steadily upon the waves, but as the waters are roiled we are unable to see its reflection. Thus we lead lives that are frustrating and meaningless.
All ears
July 21st, 2009 - 3 Comments
Everyone should listen with his or her eyes open and upon the speaker – in other words, with their whole being – because an impression received only through the hearing is rather shallow, akin to listening to the radio. Each person should listen as though the message was being given to him or her alone. Human nature is such that if two people listen, each feels only half responsible for understanding, and if ten people are listening each feels responsible to be but one tenth. However, since there are so many of you and what I have to say is exactly the same for everybody, I have asked you to come as a group. You must nonetheless listen as though you were entirely alone and hold yourself accountable for everything that is said.
Monsters are midgets
July 19th, 2009 - No Comments
I kept my eyes open the whole time! Those monsters are midgets!
Faith is forward motion.
