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. 

Covid-19: Pause

In the book Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach says the first step in this practice is learning to pause. She defines pause as a "suspension of activity, a time of temporary disengagement when we are no longer moving toward any goal." (p. 51.)  This, she explains, allows us to be fully present, attentive, and listen.

Covid-19, with its disruption to our culture of consumerism and frantic activity, provides an opportunity to pause. I am grateful for the space to pay more attention to areas of life that matter most, even as I navigate the pandemic's stress and uncertainty while trying to keep up with my job and other responsibilities. I'm biking with my 17-year-old son. Sitting zazen with practitioners in Anchorage and Portland in the early morning hours via Zoom. Taking daily walks through the neighborhood and woods behind our house, sometimes accompanied by my wife or one of the children. Playing guitar and singing with my daughter as she learns to sing alto on old Southern Gospel hymns that I sang as a child...

Pause.

Know how much is enough: Confidence

Reading Dogen's Eight Awakenings of Great Beings. Today, I read the second one: "Know how much is enough." Speaks to a ground of being that is content, not "constantly pulled by the five sense desires and pitied by those who know how much is enough."

A word that comes to mind is confidence. Not arrogance or certainty but the embodiment of trust in what matters most.

Social Justice: Message and Delivery

Yesterday at a conference I'm attending in Portland, I sat through a three hour session led by a professor and advocate for social justice. Her critique of the current state of affairs resonated: Neoliberalism has taken over higher education and the same dehumanizing ideology in the mainstream P-12 educational system destroys human spirits. However, the relevance of her message was eclipsed by her visibly angry, patronizing, and judgmental delivery that came through in "mini lectures" and in the way she offensively criticized participants who spoke up during the discussion parts of the session.

I do not question her sincerity or the importance of her message, but the delivery reminded me of a Donald Trump rant rather than an informative, thoughtful, and provocative message about such an important and timely issue. Interestingly, more than once as I read the pre-conference article that she authored and during her live presentation, the thought crossed my mind that she is doing exactly what she is criticizing the oppressors of doing: She is presenting a dogmatic, simplistic dualism that places participants in a position of having to choose between a commitment to social justice based on her point of view or remain in the safety of their unearned privilege. There was no space for respectful dialogue, different perspectives, dissent, or the complexities of dispositions and development related to individuals' commitments to social justice.

The presentation prompted a several questions as I consider my personal engagement in social justice work and the approach of broader movement. For instance,

• What is the goal in these types of presentations? Is it to unveil what is going on and invite others to share in the struggle for social justice? Is it to shame people from privileged positions? Or is it to voice one's own unresolved, internal anger and hurt? 

• To what extent has the presenter--the advocate--done his or her own work? By work, I mean the internal work related to positionality, privilege, and the emotions related to these parts of our experiences and identity. I would dare to bet that the extent of effectiveness is directly correlated with the extent to which one has processed his or her own issues, reactions, and identities related to these themes.

• In what way does the presentation create unnecessary defensiveness and resistance? I realize there are folks who do not want to see their personal privilege or the ways the "system" benefit them at others' expense. I'm not referring to these individuals, although they too need to hear the message. Rather, I'm referring to folks already committed to social justice, who see how structural issues create and perpetuate injustices and want to make a difference. The presentation yesterday unnecessarily dismissed and marginalized many of these people. 

• What role might contemplative approaches play in creating the conditions for individual and social transformation? I think we have to go deeper, look beneath the surface and consider what it takes to change from the inside out while also emphasizing and never losing touch with the necessity for real life, on the ground action. This work is not about mind games or generating warm and fuzzy feelings. Instead, it is about facing intense suffering and taking actions that relieve suffering at the individual and collective levels. 

Summer Morning: Friday, June 3, 2016

Snapshot of this morning. Eva on couch reading Pirateology. Annette painting Zena's fingernails. Asa just beginning to stir. I am working on writing project at home before heading to office. Summer morning.

Tooth Removed, Trauma Revealed

When I was 15, the night before the finals of a junior high basketball tournament, I had a dream about playing in that game. While dreaming, I violently slammed my face on the window sill next to my bed, abruptly awakening to a bloody mess, a gashed lip and broken front tooth. The next morning, I saw our family dentist who cleaned the wound, bandaged it, and sent me off in time to play in the game. Our team won. And I played one of my best games ever.

Over the years, this tooth has offered several reminders of the trauma. First, about 11 years after the event, while living in a remote Alaska Native village, a painful abscess developed resulting in an emergency trip by small plane to Bethel where a pipe smoking, hippie dentist lanced the abscess and performed a root canal. Ten years later, the root canal failed so I had it redone and a crown installed. Then, early this fall, 36 years after the original incident, the revised root canal also failed, leading to an extraction just three weeks ago.

The dentist who pulled my tooth encouraged me to use IV-sedation, saying "this is the type of procedure we usually do with sedation." I declined, ostensibly because I wanted to work immediately after the procedure and needed to be alert. However, the primary benefit of not undergoing sedation did not reveal itself until the procedure was underway and I realized this was something I did not want to miss.

While the tooth was being extracted, I heard loud crunching and cracking as the crown broke into little pieces and fell into the back of my throat. I felt intense pressure as he ripped out a part of me deeply embedded in flesh and bone, so close to my brain. I had dreaded the procedure, but interestingly, when in it, instead of resisting, I found myself releasing, giving in, attempting to "help him" remove the tooth. When it finally popped out, he held it up and said matter-of-factly, "Well, here is the problem."

After the procedure, I sat alone in the reclining chair. I washed out my mouth then stood up to leave the operatory. I noticed a table behind the chair, and there I saw the blood-stained, lifeless tooth peacefully laying on a tray surrounded by soiled gauze and metal dental instruments. I felt an urge to pick the tooth up and take it with me as a keepsake, a memento of sorts. Instead, I just looked at it and begin to feel an unexplained sense of regard, a strange kind of reverence. I stood there for a moment, then walked away leaving the tooth behind.

On one level, this was simply a tooth that had gone bad: "here is the problem." Yet my reaction, what I experienced during and after the procedure that day, suggests I'd also attached a story to it. I don't grasp the fullness of that story, what it means or has to tell me, if anything. Perhaps my work is to drop it, let it go and just see the tooth for what it is, or was. Or maybe it would be useful to listen to the story, explore it, unpack it... I don't know. But I do know the tooth is gone, and I am beginning to feel better.