zenjones

In my meditation group we are studying the being kindness meditation in Ezra Bayda’s book, Zen Heart. Ezra is my teacher, has been my teacher for eight years. He is a very good teacher.

Before Ezra was my teacher, I lived in Boston and read daily in Joko Beck’s two books, Nothing Special and Everyday Zen. These books, especially Nothing Special, spoke to me in ways that no other had. Every statement rang true, and I felt that for the first time in my life I had found a practice that overlaid perfectly my own spiritual thoughts and beliefs. (more…)

They go at it twice a week. It escalates throughout the night, until somewhere between midnight and 6 a.m. the yelling and the thumping wakes me up. I lie there and listen, trying to convince myself that this is their choice, they have been married for 30 years, it’ll be over soon. But lately their words have become clearer and they are definitely threatening. I imagine one of them dead, and me having to say to the reporters, “Well, I listened to them for years, but never did anything.” Also, after a bad night, I wake up trembling and spikey. And shut down. Anxious and afraid, I spend the day jumping at the slightest sound.

So I wrote them a letter, with the name of a therapist, and I said that if they didn’t stop, I’d call the police. And I gave a copy to my landlord. I think they will be evicted now. It will probably take a month.

Yesterday, the day they got the letter, I crept around the house, afraid they’d come over. I saw the wife get the mail and walk into the house. Then there was thumping. Violence is so unpredictable. Am I next? And, of course, it calls up all the sensations of when I experienced domestic violence personally. As a child, there was so much fear and dread. And that conspiracy of silence–we never talked about it in my house. I’ve just broken that covenant. I’ve brought in the outside world to their private hell. Since they brought their private hell into my little world.

I have this expectation that my life now will be free of violence. I have a non-violent husband and non-violent friends. Must I be reminded of the horrible way people can treat each other? Must I be reminded of my own experience?

Well, yes. That is the face of God. It reminds me of that poem we sometimes read at the Zen Center in San Diego, “Please Call Me By My True Names,” by Thich Nhat Hanh, about the pirate who rapes the little girl. It easy to feel compassion for the little girl, but the real shocker in that poem is the part where we must say,

And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am my next door neighbors.

I can see my neighbor Kate lying in her hammock reading. It’s a hot summer day, and she’s in the deep shade of her little sycamore grove. It looks idyllic. While I’m up here slaving away, grumble grumble.

But actually, she might be not feeling so idyllic. I’ve learned that what you look like on the outside has no relation to what you feel like on the inside. This same neighbor sees me meditate in my front room early in the morning, and she thinks I’m all peaceful and at one with the world. Hah! Half the time I’m planning something just to keep from being present. The other half the time I’m either (1) doing the dual awareness meditation, or (2) forgetting to do the dual awareness meditation, or (3) bringing myself back to the dual awareness meditation with this promise, “Just take three breaths, then you can go back to planning snacks for your nephew and niece when they get here next month.”

Still, I look at these images of meditators and I think, “I want to be like them!” assuming they are always present. But maybe they are planning snacks for their guests? And maybe this is a good time to practice with expectations.

I was going along just fine (don’t all my stories start that way?) when a friend compared the difficult situation she was going through with one I endured a few years ago.

I immediately got a little nauseous and my brain tried to change the subject. But then I remembered: say yes to everything. So I stayed there with the discomfort, I kept calling my mind back to that time. I reaized I can only remember vague parts of that horrible day…

Update: I talked to my zen teacher and he suggested I talk to someone who was there that day and see if they could tell me what they remember. Oh, yes, thank you, Ezra. That’s exactly what I want to do, rehash one of the most humiliating days of my life. Well, maybe not rehash, since I never hashed it in the first place.

There is a quote from Ezra in his new book about noticing how unkind you are to others, about that being a phase of practice. And I have hit it in a new way. Of course, it’s always there. But in practicing with anger, I have become aware of all its attendant and lovely incarnations: impatience, irritability, judgement, annoyance, blame. And oh, I do those. Sometimes it seems that I am only those. And I do them in relation to my husband. And I want to stop, just stop. I want a self-improvement program. But my practice is to just be aware of them, to experience the sensations in my body—both the initial anger reaction, and then the remorse reaction. Oooh, fun. But the sensations will not kill me. They are just uncomfortable.

I have been doing the 3 vows:

 

May I say yes to everything,
Going to the roots of fear.

May I be aware without ceasing,
Letting life just be.

May I see the face of God in everyone and everything,
Living from the heart of Being Kindness.

 

10 or 12 times a day, plus for part of my daily sitting period. I hate to say this but that darned Zen teacher was right: this breathing into the center of the chest does seem to be dislodging the stone that blocked my heart. How, I shall not question.

Each day I fall in love with a different vow.

But this—this self-loathing for the anger I direct at my sweet and kind husband—how is this the face of god? I believe it is the face of god because it is an experience that pretty much all humans have, and that I will come to accept. That, in fact, I accept in this moment. Not that moment. Just this one.

Next:

The face of god.

Yesterday, Christmas day, I was completely preoccupied with dread of this sesshin. I could not be present in the way I thought I should be, so I had to be present in the only way possible: with what was. I castigated myself, I judged myself and my husband, I tried to find reasons to become angry, I read obsessisively, I planned and fretted. There was a moment, in the evening, as my husband and I sat on the couch and listened to Maya Angelou read “Amazing Peace,” a Christmas poem. For a moment I realized that this was it, this was peace. 

This morning I am entering into sesshin, even though I haven’t left the house. I am noticing my nervousness. I am being very careful with my preparations—with blow-drying my hair, shaving my legs. Tomorrow I will wake after a night on the floor with no shower in sight, my hair stuck in silly mode, intent only on being present. But today I cling to my identity out here, and to the fact that I can slip back into that identity in a week.

So I will struggle not to have expectations, and all the other million and one struggles that are practice.

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.

My good friend is staying at my house for a couple days. Early this morning, we were supposed to go meet another friend for coffee. But I was no longer in the mood, so I went into his room, where he was sort of still asleep, and said, “I don’t want to go get coffee this morning.”

He started to sit up and stretch and he made a really loud noise. I said, “Shhhh!” just sort of automatically.

He said, “You are so weird.”

I said, “What?”

He said, “You and your husband are so weird. I talked to your next door neighbor and she said she wished you would make more noise so they could feel more comfortable making noise.”

I was speechless. At first, it hurt really bad. My best friend calling me weird! I had no idea!

Even just remembering this makes my arms and shoulders feel all heavy.

I left the room and went and sat on my bed. I watched the volcanic eruption: anger, blaming, justifying, striking back, resentment. I felt myself armoring up with tension.

So I started with blaming, and as I became aware of it, I cut it. And then justifying. Cut. And then anger. Cut.

Then there was a little analyzing, which was nice. I find it a refuge. That hurt lead immediately to fear: I had no control. I thought I knew how my friend felt about me, but he thought I was weird. And then the anger.

Oh, and the disconnection. That’s what I wanted more than anything–to just disconnect. I wanted to tell him to get the f* out of my house and leave me alone. Oh, it went on and on. But every once in a while, I could cut it, I could recognize that I was doing it.

Which doesn’t mean I didn’t take some lovely time out for revenge fantasies.

And so I am incredibly grateful to my practice. Because I didn’t say or do any of those things. I noticed. And I recognized that it was just me.

And I got on my bike and went for a ride, and even in the midst of all my turmoil, it was a beautiful morning in the wine country, and the angry moments shrunk down. And by the time I got back home with the groceries, I could concentrate on trying to stay connected. Even as my friend hovered around me, obviously sorry for what he’d said, and scared that I would be mad.

But the big deal for me is that I felt the hurt and fear first. For me, anger follows so quickly on those feelings that I never get to experience that hurt. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was real.