zenjones

Ezra gave a really wonderful talk on practicing with politics on Sunday. It’s a big subject—there’s lots of juice around these things, especially now with the election coming up. Sitting with the group, I struggled with the instruction of my practice and of my teacher and with my very real desire to be right. To be proclaimed right. To have my fears be recognized as reality and not the illusion that they are.

But then I remembered my work with the death penalty. I have been against the death penalty since I can remember. For most of my life I have thought of those who didn’t agree with me as blood-thirsty, uncivilized, fear mongers. It was so obviously wrong! And I was so obviously right.

In a conversation with Ezra about four years ago, I heard him say that the death penalty’s “wrongness” was not a truth with a capital “T”. At first I was really mad. Was he one of them? How could he make claims like that? But I thought about it and thought about it and thought some more, and realized that he was right. That humans killing humans could just as easily be the “right” thing—it certainly had been going on for long enough.

This realization was just what I needed to get a little distance from my righteousness. It was my belief that the death penalty was wrong, and I could work to change it, but it was still a belief and people who disagreed with me had a belief and their’s was just as real as mine.

Without all that heat and self-righteousness I was able to talk to people who disagreed with me. And, more importantly, I was able to listen to them. Some of them live in this town. Last year, at the Future Farmers of America parade, Dale came over to talk to me. He was happy to see me, and I him. I didn’t think, “There’s that blood-thirsty ignoramus that’s pro-death penalty.” I thought, “There’s that nice guy, who thinks that it’s important that justice be served, and that the death penalty is one small way that justice can be achieved in our society.” We like each other, we respect each other, and we disagree on this subject. 

So I will continue to practice with this. And maybe the next time someone tells me that Obama is a Muslim (it actually happened!) I won’t laugh in his face. I’ll listen and find out why they believe that.

It faded over last weekend. And the thing I miss most is the confidence. I don’t know if that’s exactly what I’d call it. But I didn’t second-guess myself. If I wanted to do something, then it was the right thing to do, and I was off doing it. Now, since the big fade, I talk myself out of it. I stay home. I don’t take chances. I don’t try new things. I don’t expand my world.

I’ve always liked self-help programs. I like the way they lay it all out. The way they say, Do this and this, and you will be cured! Your problem will go away! I like that illusion of control. But I long ago recognized that they don’t work. I’ve only bought one or two self-help books, and that was after a lot of research. And they didn’t work.

Still I clung to my attraction. All I needed was the right key, the right instruction, and suddenly I would be all better.

I turned to my zen practice in a moment of clarity, 15 years ago. But I never saw, ’til this sesshin, how my practice could affect those fears that hold me back. I thought it would be an intellectual thing–I’m an intellectual, that’s where I like to play. But it wasn’t.

It was something in my body. And I want it back.

Oh, yes, I am floating on the post-sesshin pink cloud. But this one was really special, really something else.

A southwestern fable sort of sesshin, with coyotes and snakes and roadrunners, with starlit morning walks to the dawn sitting. Not to mention the very helpful houseflies that brought me back to earth when I thought I was in heaven.That then became the teacher of how to remain in heaven. Oh, that housefly. I was so grateful to him for teaching me that feeling him walk on me was a gift.

Gratitude was the theme of this retreat. One of our readings was by W.S. Merwyn on saying thank you to those things we most want to turn away from. And Elizabeth closed the sesshin with a lovely statement: This is the most grateful day of my life.

What else can I tell you? About the new sesshinistas who kept smiling at me, who reminded me of my first sesshins when I positively yearned for someone to smile back. And the Questhaven literature that made me smirk with superiority until I noticed how like our practice it was: the value of silence, the primacy of awareness. We are not so different, as much as our similarities scare me.

And our lovely teachers, struggling with their pains, their difficulties, their own suffering. How do they choose us? Oh, so grateful.

I remember one minute, feeling good, sitting strong, the afternoon light pouring in on the carpet, the stone floor, my fellow sitters glowing in the golden sunlight, and the delectable breeze, thinking, “I never want this to end.” And then, not five minutes later, “When the heck is this going to be over?” The wonder and glory and goofiness of being human.

It stays with you in such a magical sort of way. As we flew, we walked, we drove homeward, we laughed and shrieked like teenagers. And then, when the 18-wheeler chose not to run us over, Susan remarked on how nice he was, how good all people’s intentions were.

Still giddy.