Listen

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

A headline on the news services this morning spoke to me. It reported that a storm was gathering in the US senate. I immediately saw a senator addressing an empty chamber with other senators huddled in their offices, surrounded by staffers, looking for ways and means to sink or float whatever. The thought occurred to me that this is an exemplar of our most serious contemporary problem: no one listens.

We seem to run through our lives with an agenda in mind. First, get what I want. Second, be as distracted as is possible in the process.

Listening requires stopping first and releasing our grip on what it is we are carrying, second.

Zazen is a powerful tool in learning not only that this is possible, but that it is of great benefit to do so. When we practice zazen, we stop. We gather ourselves together. We take our seat with deliberation. We address the universe as it is, not as we wish it to be.

I have lived a great deal of my life wishing to have each moment be different than it was and I can attest to the fact that such a way is crazy-making. Not only do we not experience anything directly as it is, but we tarnish what is with our attitudes about it. We are like the walking dead. To be alive, we must be present.

Take the backward step to life.

Be well.

The Point

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

Playing online chess with really good chess players around the world is an exercise in humility. I decided not too long ago to only seek games with players ranked at exactly my rank and upward to three hundred points. This forces me to play with very good players each game. It also allows me to immediately (or nearly so) see my smaller errors. One thing I've noticed is it is much easier to yield defeat after a blunder when playing someone ranked above me. I wonder about this.

Now, that is not the point, the point is to notice such things.

We spend much of our lives (or at least I have) not noticing. We have our eye on future possibilities, as an Argentine opponent once phrased it. Aging, like playing vastly superior players, informs us: future possibilities are less interesting than present delights. Noticing becomes increasingly important, I suspect. And as we practice, we notice more easily.

Again, not the point. Practice for itself is the point, not for insight, not for small awakenings, not for anything we can name.

Just practice.

Be well.

Crazy is as Crazy is Decided

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

Overnight I dreamt about thanksgiving and gratitude. How are they the same? How are they different? But this led me to another question, an age old question, the question of measurement.

The measure reveals more about the measurer than the measured. The measure is a set point created by the measurer. Of course, there is no set point except in the mind of the measurer. Absolute zero? No. In relation to what?

With human beings, we measure in ranges. Normal is between this and that range of something. Not going outside of these limits can be very important, say for our health, if we are talking about body temperature, for example.

Measures of value, quality, and behavior, these on the other hand, are a challenge. We measure in relation to our set point. In physics and chemistry, this point may be established through empirical testing. Absolute zero is as low as we can go: no motion of molecules in relation to one another. But in life sciences, the matter changes drastically as the observer is now measuring himself. I say life sciences and include earth science, biology, and psychology in this because even earth science chooses as its set point the ability of human beings and other life forms to survive. Measurement can only occur in relationship and all measure is a mental construct.

From a Zen point of view, a point of view that requires a dissolution of (or complete integration of) set points, measurement is a product of delusion. This is to say, it is a product of dualism. In Zen, the Absolute and the Relative are one.

I am reminded of Alan Bates in the film, "King of Hearts" or Jack Nicholson in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" or one of the core messages of Hellerman's "Catch-22". What is crazy? What is aberrant? We assume we know as we place behaviors in a context of values relative to ourselves. Axe murderer? Definitely aberrant. Why? Because she/he behaves in ways decidedly not like me. Extremes, however, do not make a case.

My point is that as part of our spiritual practice we must be willing to realize that how we see, how we evaluate, and how we then behave are not based on anything but social norms established by the group. As groups change, so too, the basis for evaluation.

This is important to us because we tend to forget the essentially relative nature of our judgements and live with them as if they are the manifest truth. As we do this, we become more and more blind to diversity and its value, change and its value, growth and its value.

We become prisoners of our own minds.

Zen practice is about releasing us from such constraints.

As we practice we are free and easy in the marketplace.

IP

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

The world is still here. I did yet another sleep study last night. This time with a CPAP for sleep apnea which I have, they say, a very mild case. Always seeking a solution seems to suggest always seeking a problem. It is an interesting position being the Identified Patient. Life becomes a laboratory and I become the experiment. Observers understand everything then in terms of this or that. Yes. And then the solutions. Pills, machines, and, of course, more tests.

These are just a bother, to use Willie the Pooh's word, the real issue is the interior landscape.

What is it to live as if there is a problem, an illness, a condition, underneath everything? Behavior and thought suspect? Framed in some pathological picture?

Life lived this way seems to dismiss or diminish the health of a person. No matter what else is, illness is in the scope.

Zen makes it possible not to do this. Zen takes what is, just as it is. Removes the frame and opens the cage.

Fly bird, fly.

Alas, in the end, no where to go.

Be well.

When the Cat Becomes a Lion

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

Joy is a wonderful thing. Eyes light-up, smiles happen, heart-rates jump, all sorts of healthful chemicals flow through our bodies. So, why shouldn't we desire it?

Desire is one of those kleshas, those toxins we are taught in the Buddha Way to avoid. It is equated with greed, a poison that overcomes us and disallows our awakening.

Sunday at our discussion after Zazen, we talked about how wanting something has been co-opted and transformed into needing something by the marketing forces of corporations. But they are not necessarily to blame. We, ourselves, do this simple conversion. It is rather like the simple slip from "is" to "ought" and not actually recognizing that the two are not connected. We human beings desire.

Desire in itself is not the problem. It is what we do with it. Recognizing desire is just like recognizing a thought or a feeling. No problem. Return to your breath and be still. Increase the space between the desire and the action to obtain the object of the desire. Desire is with us always. So?

When desire becomes need it becomes a "problem". If I desire to feel good and at some point begin to "need" to feel good, I am vulnerable. If I desire to have peace and at some point need to have peace, I also am vulnerable. To what? Behavior that is hurtful and harmful to self and others. The "I" takes on such a central and obsessive role that other cannot be seen.

So the practice is to notice and take the subtle but very important backward step into stillness. What is the Buddha Way? The Middle Way.

Be well.

Suffering

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

Sitting with someone who is suffering is very challenging. We wish the person was not experiencing pain, we would like to relieve that pain so the person will not suffer. Our hearts feel. We suffer in our desire to relieve suffering.

What to do. Nothing. Zen practice is to be. Yet, to be in a particular way. This way of being is the way of the Buddha.

Increasing the space between the perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors we experience, we allow for stillness. Moving deeper in that stillness, patience. In that patience, concentration, generosity, morality, and diligence arise.

Through these perfections, we see the one thing that remains: just do.

Be well.

Morning Note

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

A busy night last night. We had a party for Daughter-in-Law Maggie in honor of her completing a course to become a physical trainer. She did her testing for her certificate, but will not know the results for a couple of weeks. It was delightful to see the joy in her face as a cake and special dinner was presented!

This morning Robert Yee of Robert Yee Productions, will visit us in the Zendo. He has been following our sitting for the last week videotaping in order to produce a short video on streetZen. The film will be a part of the Mesilla Valley Film Festival here on December 5th. I am uncertain how he will pull this off: a movie of people just sitting?

That is his. This is mine. A mantra to live by.

We also have an extra dog with us. Zeesa, friend Deana's Labrador. Together with our other three (we are watching son Jason's dog, as well) we are up to our hips in fur. I am learning much about myself with these pets. They are what they are and need what they need. Dogs bark, chase our cat Pete, and otherwise do things that are not always appropriate. If my mind is open, to problem, if closed, big problem. The practice is to keep my mind open. Thoughts in, thoughts out. That's the way.

Be well.