Backyards of Success

-2 and clear—a cold day in the darkest time of year. Christmas, a blur of memories and movements converging from years past. 

COVID and a pinched nerve allow me to isolate without a flood of questions, disrupting a role as butler for a dynasty buzzing below--an infectious virus.

Children here, young adults now, figuring out their places in the next generation of whatever makes sense in an absurd world: envisioning grandeur; chasing perfection; expressing aggression.

Outside my window, childhood objects disintegrating in the backyards of success. 

 

January 2025

 The first month of 2025 came and went. A flash. 

A few highlights:

• Participated in a daylong zazen retreat with the Anchorage-based Upright Noble Zen. I joined my son for the practice period.
• Three days after the retreat, I dropped him off at the airport for a flight to England. He is studying humanities at Oxford in a Middlebury program. 
• On the 18th, I returned to my childhood home in SW Arkansas to see my aunt before her exit. Alzheimer is vicious. As I sat with her in silence, the three unavoidable realities--old age-sickness-death-were in full view. She died the day after I returned to AK.
• #47 was installed in the Whitehouse on the 20th. Hateful authoritarian edicts undermining democracy, promoting racism, creating anxiety and chaos across the nation and beyond. 
  

Return: December 30, 2024

I began this experiment 14 years ago to break through "writer's block," an ego entangled in lies, distortions, and doubt—years of practice. The last post was in December 2021. Entries from Darkness 2022-23 remain drafts. How heavy before the collapse? I know.

Today, the sun is bright, the sky is blue...clothes drying, dishes washing. 

Let go of a hundred years and relax completely. Open your hands and walk, innocent. 

(From "Song of the Grass Roof Heritage" by Shitou Xiqian, 700-790)

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Holding Environment: Is this "good enough?"

 

I saw this picture of me holding my son when he was about one year old (2004). Reminded me of Mark Epstein's references to D.W. Winnicott's emphasis on the "good enough" parent, one who meets the child with an attuned holding environment from which the child emerges as an intact human being.

"An infant who is held well enough is quite a different thing for one who has not been held well enough...The reason why this special property of infant care must be mentioned...is that in the early stages of emotional development, before the senses have been organised, before there is something that could be called an autonomous ego, very severe anxieties are experienced.  In fact, the word 'anxiety' is of no use, the order of infant distress at this stage being of the same order as that which lies behind panic, an panic is already a defense against the agony that makes people commit suicide rather than remember. I have meant to use strong language here. You see two infants: one has been held (in my extended sense of the word) well enough, and there is nothing to prevent a rapid emotional growth, according to inborn tendencies. The other has not the experience of being held well and growth has had to be distorted and delayed, and some degree of primitive agony has to be carried on into life and living. Let it be said that in the common experience of good-enough holding the [parent] has been able to supply an auxiliary ego-function, so that the infant has had an ego from the early start, a very feeble, personal ego, but one boosted by the sensitive adaptation of the [parent] and by [the parent's] ability to identify with [the] infant in relation to basic needs. The infant who has not had this experience has either needed to develop premature ego functioning, or else there has developed a muddle." (Winnicott, cited in Epstein, 2013, pp. 29-30--Trauma of Everyday Life) 

May my holding be good enough.

Projections and Identifiers: "You can't...You should...You are"

Lately, flooded with memories of messages from childhood, infused with identifiers of what I could not do, what I should do, and who/what I am.

"You can't spell."

"You can't write."

"You can't read."

"You don't get math as fast as..."

"You should take the easy classes..."

"Here's the teacher's edition with the answers to make it easier for you."

"You are slouching! Stand up straight! Suck in your gut! Look confident!"

"You're so 'sweet,' so kind."

"You're lazy...you won't amount to anything."

"You should be an insurance salesman."

"You look good."

"You should go outside and practice basketball--stop sitting in the house playing the piano with that 'fat [racial slur] woman!"

"If it weren't for these damn kids..." 

"Don't trust anyone."

"You will respect me!!!" 

"You're too sensitive."

"Be a man!"

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Others' projections? Mostly.

Identifiers? Not necessarily.

Take care of problem and keep walking

I easily conjure up lofty ideals about what it means to walk a spiritual path. These fantasies are nurtured by a spiritual industry that offers tantalizing retreats and other products promising happiness and liberation. These marketed commodities interface with my constructed ideas of a successful spiritual life, perhaps one characterized by "daily practice" or an unwavering awareness of "big ideas" such as transformation...consciousness...non-duality...In terms of an authentic spiritual life, these notions are delusions. They are bull shit.

Zen teachings offer the reminder that practice is action in daily life: Taking care of what needs attention when it needs attention. Taking action fully without expecting a particular result or reward. Tending to problems as they arise without attaching to a preferred outcome.
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So how can we know the state of "the self prior to our parents' birth," or thusness or what-is-just-is-of-itself? This is a big question, a big project for us to research. The best way to do this research is just to sit down and do zazen, and let the flower of life force bloom in thusness. That is all we can do. Nothing else. In other words, whatever problem we have, we have to take care of it and constantly keep walking. (Katagiri, 1988, p. 54. From Returning to Silence: Zen Practice in Daily Life)

How much is enough: Consumer

The second awakening is to know how much is enough...If you want to be free from suffering, you should contemplate knowing how much is enough.  (From Dogen's Eight Awakening of Great Beings)

Immersed in a culture of acquisition and consumption, capitalism turns everything into commodities that can be acquired, bought and sold. In this context, humans are primarily defined as Consumers, valued for what we produce and consume. Billions of dollars are spent on ads to manipulate desires and fears with the promise of satisfaction if we just buy this item, or attain this symbol of success.

Living out how much is enough is radical in any place and time: It's always going against the grain of dissatisfaction that's inherent in the human condition. However, in a context where everything is translated into objects of consumption, the teaching itself is easily perverted: It too becomes a commodity. Thus, the challenge to enact how much is enough in these conditions should not be underestimated.