Spending is the new saving


I just spent $80 buying four tickets to my daughter’s upcoming theatrical debut. Hours earlier, I spent $137 on a pediatric dental check up. (Oh, the pain of having no cavities.) We celebrated by spending $5.60, even with a coupon, at the overpriced ice cream store. I haven’t even tallied the cumulative damage of grocery shopping six separate times last week.

The sum total is I hate to spend money, and I never hated it more than now.

But after reading one of my favorite mamas shout it out, and the country’s most sensible columnists spell it out, I had a revelation earlier today. I’d better go with the flow. In fact, I’d better flow even mo’.

Spending is the new saving.

The only way to keep this boat afloat is to start bailing it out.

We’re going to have to save this sinking ship by spending money.

This is acutely painful to me, and in that way I can be sure that it is my penance. Because it is so powerfully my own lesson, I have to start by apologizing for dragging the whole globe into this ordeal with me. Sorry, shipmates.

***

I know, I know. After I just railed against wanting the things we don’t need, now I say we need to buy what we don’t want. What I’m really saying is what I’m saying to myself. I cannot be both optimistic and fearful, trusting and stingy, loving and miserly. I did my best to cover my bases. I didn’t expect it to turn out this way. Now I’m going to have to do the really difficult thing.

I’m going to have to admit that it didn’t turn out the way I expected it to.

I’ve read what some of you write about financial pressures, where you stand, what you’re in and what you’re not. Layoffs and loans. Skimpy paychecks and thrift store bargains. Market trauma. Unopened IRA statements. Maybe you had a lot to lose and did. Maybe you didn’t, so you’re not far behind. Either way, we’re all in it together. And I will say this: I have had my time to work hard and save money. What I saved was never intended just for myself, but to ease the way for others: my daughter’s education, my family’s age and infirmity, my commitment to the dharma, and a comfort against the vast dark specter of uncertainty. I am no financial genius, and I am no saint, but I felt, up to now, secure. But more than that, I felt smart, disciplined and dutiful.

But I’m none of those things. I have no insulation from bad news or disappearing digits. No buffer from the bottomless bottom line.

But as of now, I have four tickets to some guaranteed good times, and paying top buck is the only way I can share.

God bless us, every one.

The jingle of a tin cup


One very late night among many very late nights lately, Georgia spoke up before falling asleep. Does this mean I am a professional? she asked. I assured her. Yes, you are a professional.

My nine-year-old is a professional. A professional beggar. She was the last in a cast of dozens given a role in our little town’s live theater performance of “A Christmas Carol.” She is deep into final rehearsals and costume fittings, and this is where our story turns. She was cast, or so we presumed, as a beggar girl. The costume is for a beggar boy.

You don’t have to tell me that to a nine-year-old, the difference between a boy part and a girl part is unfathomable and untouchable. And although she has been counseled by her parents that there is little to be done at this late and desperate hour, no fix or balm; although everyone has tried to convince her that playing a boy is Oscar bait for pretty girls, she cannot be sold or satisfied.

Because she is safe in expressing all of herself to me, her deep and dark feelings, she does. Every morning and night she tosses them up to me, her worrisome frets and ceaseless spins, about how to change the costume, how to replace it, get around it, make one more phone call, concoct one more reason, convince the powers that be, etc. etc. chapter and verse. (Mind you, she does not under any circumstance want to quit the show. She is an actress, first and last.)

On the way to school on Friday morning she lifted her chin and said again, as if anew, “I still really need to change that costume,” perhaps hoping that phrasing it as a need instead of a want would score results from her miracle-making mom.

I stopped cold and said icily, in a voice that would freeze your eyeballs: IT’S NOT IMPORTANT!

And it’s true, it’s not important. It just wasn’t a very nice thing to say.

We are beggars, the both of us. She is begging me to do something. And I am begging her to do nothing. We are, each of us, nearly always begging for what we don’t have.

***

A long time ago I had a Buddhist boyfriend who dumped me (but that’s another story) and as he got sick and tired of me he started to say abruptly rude things. They were probably true, but as the saying goes, I wasn’t ready to hear them. I hear them now! One thing he said was that I needed to learn the difference between need and want. He probably said it in the context of my complete debasement, in the midst of vain and endless pleading, while I clutched his pants leg, being dragged across a parking lot, wailing But you can’t leave! I need you!

The difference between need and want? I hadn’t a clue at the time. He set me wondering even as he set me wandering and I presumed that he had achieved some lofty kind of Buddhist understanding far beyond a groveling earth-dweller like me.

(Beware any Buddhist who appears to have attained any understanding, particularly the lofty kind.)

He hadn’t achieved anything, but he was right. I really didn’t need him, although my “needing” of him did set me off on this path to satisfy my wants, and I really did need that. We all do.

***

What is the difference between need and want? One starts with an “n” and one starts with a “w.” That’s about all I can distinguish. They are just words we either like to use or don’t like to use, choose or don’t choose, to label our dissatisfaction, our unfulfilled desire. Because really, whether we sanction something as a “need” or not, do we really need it? And when for a breathless moment we want something, do we really want it for long? I guess not, because look how easy it is to live without all the things we once wanted, and none of the things we don’t have but still think we need.

Life really is pretty easy by itself, unless we need or want for something different.

Needs and wants are the things we beg for, whether it sounds like begging or not, whether we are aware or not, no matter what the circumstance, no matter what the costume. Begging is the role of a lifetime. The curtain rises, and we start begging. The curtain closes, and who knows what becomes of the beggar? The real question is this: when, in the brief span between the rise and the fall, will we ever stop? When will we ever enjoy the show?

Shhhhh! It’s starting.

***

A reminder to put my whole self in the cup, and get the world in return.

Photo originally uploaded by Alastair Bird.

The way out is out of my way


Since I’ve come home from sitting so much has appeared. Thousands of words flew out by themselves. I wrote a piece this week that amazed me so and reminded me that writing – and everything – is not a thought process, but its own process. We do not write words but the words write us, and then we can read them along with everyone else and learn something.

The piece I’m referring to won’t be visible for a few months, and when it is on paper it will be brand new to you and me both.

What I want to say is how inextricable stillness is from motion and motion is from stillness. Either one, when unlatched from the hindrance of our repetitive critical thinking, makes things happen! When I am stuck, I go for a walk and get unstuck. When I am going nowhere, I sit still in meditation, open my mind and get somewhere.

I hope that you try it for yourself. Getting out of your own way is the way out!

Soon I’ll be in motion again near and far. I’m always inspired by the chance to meet and speak with practicing parents and/or practicing Buddhists, and if you are anywhere in the neighborhood, please go out of your way and come along:

Thurs., Nov. 20, 7 p.m.
Palos Verdes Hills Nursery School

Sun., Nov. 30, 10:30 a.m.
Rime Buddhist Center
Kansas City

A spot of shine


This week I have a new article appearing in the quarterly magazine Buddhadharma, entitled “Looking Under the Bed.” It brings to light my rather poorly hidden view of the urgent need for real practice. The magazine is on newsstands this week, and my commentary is partially excerpted here.

I am grateful to the editors of Buddhadharma and the sister publication the Shambhala Sun for their kind and steady solicitation of my work. I encourage you to read as much of the publications as you can online, and to consider buying the current issue or subscribing. It’s true that there is too much debate and discussion about Buddhism in Buddhism (that’s the -ism I can do without) but there is always a need to refresh and encourage yourself in the Way, particularly by reading things that might make you uncomfortable!

You might also have noticed a new entry in my blogroll: the Shambhala SunSpace, a new editors’ blog updated frequently with short bursts of shine. Take a look under it all for yourself.

Edited to add: Find your own Buddha night light here.

It felt like a chain around my neck, but it wasn’t


There are many, many things that are dear to me, but one of the dearest is a reader.

A dear reader contacted me with this finding, a sterling silver “breakfast cereal necklace.” Yes, that very breakfast cereal that is so dear to us mothers, dear because it infiltrates and overtakes our lives and carpets and tabletops and carseats, ground into dust on floorboards, sofas, strollers, and high chairs, hidden in tiny fists and under tongues, carried in ziplocks, diaper bags and purses, never ever to be without until the day they disappear for good.

They disappear. You can try to cast them in silver and string them around your neck, but they disappear, and that’s what makes them precious, our Cheerio days. They disappear.

This is a road that is neither solid nor silver, and all the more priceless for leaving no trace.

Thank you, dear reader.

First is last


Suffering from the peculiarly exhausting cocktail of jubilation, mileage, time change and things-to-do, I opened up the mail yesterday to find at long last the arrival of our his-and-her first edition Obama-Biden car magnets, the ones we anteed up for months ago in hopes of having the final word on the subject.

That’s OK. I think these two will stick around for awhile.

Now do you believe?


Happy days are here again.

And this is unbearably sweet: my girl, born in the dwindling days of 1999, insisted on staying up past storytime, past bedtime, to see the returns on TV. This is her president; this is her time; this is her change; this is her country; this is her faith; this is hers. Thank you, thank you, for giving it to her, and for allowing me to watch, tears welling, doubts receding, as she asked, “Where’s Joe?”

This is her vice president too.

This is all more than I can say, but everything we deserve.

America, my home.

In case you ever thought one person didn’t matter

Just hold up your hand.

Wear in love


I’m back from my very long trip to a very close destination – a meditation retreat at the Black Scorpion Temple near Tepotzlan, Mexico. A Zen retreat is the most thorough instruction in being present to the life of no distance, the life right in front of you. Thank you friends for watching this space over my silent week with no expectations.

Coming home after time away is startling in more ways than one. Parents on the school playground might say something like, “You look rested,” and I usually think, Who me?

A monastic retreat schedule can seem overwhelming. Doing it is completely undoing. It demands all of the effort you usually exert avoiding paying attention. It wrings all the worry and distraction out of you. It produces the most beneficial kind of fatigue. It uses you up and fills you with nothing at all. Who me?

So that’s how it was coming home to a dark house last night after a long travel day. I saw a small package in the stack of mail on the kitchen table. I knew what it was. I am brimming with the sweetness of it, and I have not even opened it yet. Inside is a name. Who me?

A dear new mother and artist Stacy de la Rosa, sent it to me as a gift. Inside the box is a hand-stamped pendant with a name. The pendant is like these, photographed more beautifully than I will be able to. The name is Maezen. It is what we Buddhists call a dharma name, the name given to me by my teacher when I took the formal precepts as a student. Some people see it and think it is my maiden name, and in a way it is. That’s okay. Nearly everyone sees it and wonders how to say it. That’s okay too. In my sangha, or practice community, it is the only name anyone calls me.

When we take a dharma name, it is a subtle and profound teaching in how attached we are to concepts. Our mind is so swiftly conditioned to an acquired understanding of names and labels. Like all forms of delusion, we attach and identify erroneously with names when they are just tools. Identifying yourself with a certain name is like mistaking the fork for the food.

And yet names are very powerful, as powerful as anything and everything if we completely embody it without a second thought. The name Maezen is one that I not so discreetly asked for in tribute to my first teacher Maezumi Roshi. His name was pronounced (by most of us) as My-zumi. The name I now carry is pronounced (by most of us) as May-zen. Bearing it helps me to remember him, and to forget as well.

Who me?

I see the words that Stacy wrote on the accompanying card, and having worn myself to a point of unhesitating attention, I will do exactly what it says.

Wear in love. Isn’t that beautiful? I so recommend that you wear it too. No matter what you call it, love is what answers to everything.

Bumpkin Palinator

Hey kids! This is really fun and educational too. Use the Pumpkin Simulator to carve up your own quickly disappearing electoral map. But remember, as scary as it might appear, this picture is being made out of a completely empty gourd. So make yours quick, because a face like this won’t last long after Halloween!

By any other name


Children’s books that forever changed my life.

Of course, you say, of course she’d like that book. She chose the name.

My daughter is named Georgia, but not for the artist O’Keeffe. My daughter is named for two great-grandfathers on both sides of her family. One an architect; one a farmer.

So this book, once again, is rather for me. Georgia O’Keeffe is my namesake, my mentor, as an artist and an independent being. As a heart and an eye and a hand that saw the big truth in small things.

My Name is Georgia
A Portrait by Jeanette Winter

Her entire life story is told in these 48 pages of spare text and evocative illustrations. Her own girl, with her own way and her own way of seeing. Drawn by the urge to meet the faraway up close, to render mysteries plain and true so people would see.

I went to the New Mexico desert.
So far away that no one ever comes.
I was satisfied to be all by myself.
I did things other people don’t do.

I painted my sky BIG,
so people would see the sky the way I did.

Find the fearless footprint, hear the song of truth and echo it back over the mountains. Paint your life BIG so people will see.

My earlier favorites are shelved here, here and here.

On little cat feet


Children’s books that forever changed my life.

It turns out I have an affinity for things French (besides fools and fries). Today I send you in the direction of a cat that travels, in the inscrutably self-actualized nature of a cat, across the entire country of France to find his original home.

This is the sweetest, shortest evocation of a spiritual sojourn that I have ever read.

The Cat Who Walked Across France
By Kate Banks
Pictures by Georg Hallensleben

Kitty lives in a stone house by the sea until the day he is shipped north, with all the other lifelong belongings of the old woman who once scratched his ears and stroked his back. Soon he is forgotten among the unclaimed and disused. Until one day he leaves.

Children playing ball would chase after him. And the cat would scurry up a tree. But when he nestled in its branches, he would remember the tangy smell of lemons ripening on a branch under a window at the stone house by the edge of the sea. And he would move on.

May we all move on through a life as lush as the French landscape until we reach a wide open front door, settle into a warm, familiar spot and come to rest, knowing we are home.

Earlier recommendations here and here.

The last to leave the shelf


Children’s books that forever changed my life.

I often tell people that every book they read to a child they read to themselves, and therefore not to miss the urgent message that is being delivered into their own hands, from none other than their own lips, and through their own eyes.

Of late, as I’ve recounted, the shelves of my daughter’s room have been cleared of those things that never had much to give or from which every use has already been wrung. A few children’s books remain, all of which my daughter has outgrown, none of which I have or ever will.

This week I’m going to recommend them to you. Some are rather obscure; others, not. Each of them arrived into my hands and heart when I needed them most. Every time I read them is precisely when I need them most. I entrust their magic to you.

Pierre’s Dream
By Jennifer Armstrong
Pictures by Susan Gaber

Pierre is a lazy, foolish man who has no job, no interests and no hobby besides sitting under the olive trees in the afternoon thinking of dinner. That alone recommends him as a hero to me, however in this telling he does far more. He falls asleep, and he begins to dream a dream of fantastic proportions and unbelievable feats.

“Very realistic,” he murmured. But as it was his dream, or so he thought, he had no fear. “For of course, I can wake up at any time,” he reminded himself.

Pierre taught me to stop distinguishing between those things I only dream of doing, and those I do. He teaches me still. The distinction, you see, is only fear.

Pierre’s dreams are very realistic, and so are yours. Wake up and surprise yourself beginning with this book!

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