Mercurious

In Post-meditation, be a Child of Illusion

2011-06-17T13:58:00.000-05:00

For quite a while now, certainly in the 40 years or so I've been reading about such things, conventional descriptions of mind/brain biology and evolution have suggested that the human mind/brain is really a multi-leveled organ. The organ in our skulls is actually a multi-part brain, with primitive, instinctual elements overlaid with functions that are increasingly evolved and refined.

At the base level of the brain stem is what is sometimes called the "reptilian" brain, a non-thinking brain that responds on a wholly instinctive, preverbal level to basic urges of pain avoidance, pleasure seeking, self-preservation. This faculty is so primitive, we're told, that it doesn't yet even really process sight and sound, but offers nothing but base instinct and emotion. It's the organ that is the source of murderous rage, animal lust, insatiable hunger, terror and fear, blissful pleasure.

Evolved from this is said to be a large, multi-leveled cortex devoted to trafficking sensory input, organizing it, and making rational sense out of all of it. This is what we normally think of as the human brain, and is the source of all thinking and most everything we normally call "mind." The thing we call "thinking" is, by some descriptions, nothing more than a highly complicated system of organizing sensory data.

While we think of this big-lobed, cauliflower-like mass of soft tissue as a lordly object worthy of reverence, many neuroscientists will point out that the thinking brain really does no more than articulate and manage the same base impulses that drive the reptilian brain. Most thinking, most cultural advances, most lofty scientific exploration and thought, after all, is really still about seeking peace and pleasure, avoiding pain and discomfort. This rational brain is, in the final measure, only very slightly more evolved and refined than the reptilian brain that makes us jumps when a loud noise startles us, or recoil in disgust when we see decay.

Much more mysterious, and only now starting to draw some notice, is a mind-brain function that serves a more transcendental role. It is a mind capacity that has been known by mystics over the centuries, but one that has recently been observed and commented on by science, as well. It is a faculty of pure awareness itself, which exists on a level entirely divorced from the push/pull faculty by which we avoid pain, seek pleasure, and scheme to survive as an individual organism. People sometimes imagine that this state is a kind of "observing self", an inner reporter or journalist. But that's not it, either, because with genuine awareness there is no sense of self vs other, no distinction between an observer and objects being observed. There is only utter, non-judgmental immersion in the experience of phenomena. It's as though phenomena is experiencing itself.

I think that even moderately serious meditators have had small tastes of this level of mind. It's a place of serene acceptance of all things as they are, free of all wanting or rejecting. It is entirely devoid of all the fear that fuels virtually all activity attributed to the mind. Time falls away utterly during these revelations, as do all dual concerns of all kinds. Good and evil, life and death, merge into a single taste. There is no longer any need to want or avoid anything at all; you take comfortable refuge is whatever is. Of course, this lovely sensation vanishes almost instantly, in the time it takes us to recognize that it's something unusual. It disappears just as soon as we remember to pick up the familiar blanket of unhappiness, as soon as we remember to separate ourselves from our experience.

Our glimpses of this unique state are maddeningly rare, terribly brief. So fleeting, so unusual, that we convince ourselves that this transcendence, this liberation, is something we must desperately court, something to be achieved through great effort. It is, we believe, a pinnacle to be climbed.

Only gradually do we come to the suspicion that this condition we rarely glimpse is actually the natural, true state of things. It's a treasure lying at our feet, not found at the top of a forbidding pinnacle. We may soon recognize that realizing this transcendence does not require us to do much of anything, only that we give up all the self-induced effort that has prevented us from seeing things as they are.

Like a man who hoards pennies, unaware that he owns a gold mine, we suddenly see that the "mind" we've defined for ourselves is actually the hindrance that has prevented us from seeing the genuine nature of mind all this time. The pain and suffering that dominate human life and govern nearly all of our actions turns out to be the result of delusion; and escaping the cycle of suffering requires nothing more than the courage and despair to see plainly.

Even the first glimpse of this reality changes things for all time. Pain and suffering will return, but now and forever more when they visit, you'll have the quiet, secret understanding that they are clouds formed from illusion and will vanish like smoke when the winds freshen. One must only be patient.

Synchronicity

2010-12-27T15:57:00.000-06:00

For the last two weeks, I've been in the grips of a mild obsession brought about by a random event that seems anything but random. First, a little background.

Thirty years ago or so, partly because of a scholarly interest related to my graduate school studies and partly because of simple personal interest, I became deeply interested in the symbols of mythology, both as they related to the history of religion and as they applied to human psychology. For several years as a young man, I read everything I could get my hands on from Jung, Joseph Campbell, Eric Neuman, Sir George Fazier, and other such people.

One thing led to another, and I started a family, began a career, and my interests moved onto to other things: gardening, politics, science, publishing. My collected works of Jung not only weren't on the shelves anymore, but I couldn't even tell you for sure what boxes they might be found in.

Then, two weeks ago, though, while riding the bus to work, I glanced up at two illuminated billboards on adjoining faces of an office building near the downtown basketball arena, Target Center. One electronic sign was advertising the University of Phoenix, the other was a commercial advertisement for Bacardi rum. Nothing particularly unusual about that, but what leaped out to my view was that the symbol for the University of Phoenix was, predictably, the mythological bird the Phoenix, renowned for rebirth from ashes. The symbol for Bacardi, on the other hand, is the somewhat sinister bird of the night, the bat. The juxtaposition was striking, to say the least, and it seemed impossible that it was mere coincidence these symbols of light and dark, rebirth and death, should appear adjacently and simultaneously.

Jogged from sleep, I began to see symbols everywhere in the days after that; in the partial sunrises engraved on building entries, in the intertwined snakes on the office stationary of my medical clinic, in the peacock that still stands for NBC broadcasting, in the arch and ornament of a road bridge spanning the Mississippi.

From boxes in the basement, I've now retrieved dozens of yellowing books on the subject matter, and on my busride today was thoroughly engrossed in Joseph Campbell's "Masks of God: Primitive Mythology." Also out of the boxes are Jung's titles on alchemy and collective unconsciousness, waiting for me at home.

The time must be right, because what I now lack in sheer scholarly stamina I now seem to make up for with perspective. Now in the last trimester of life, I read things much differently, and with greater understanding, than I was an impatient though energetic young man of 20.

I feel like I'm rediscovering a favorite hobby, and can't wait for the long bus rides to and from work.

Neither Fish Nor Fowl

2010-10-28T16:59:00.000-05:00

For each of us, a religion or any other form of spiritual practice really serves as an allegory, an approximation of our deepest spiritual truth, offering ideas and practices that aid us in our pursuit of happiness. I know of virtually no one, though, who can say that their religion perfectly represents what they believe. I've known devout Christians who quietly but vehemently sense that reincarnation is a fact of existence. I've known Hindus for whom Catholic rituals resonate profoundly. In fact, if you find anybody who subscribes heart and soul to every aspect of their chosen religion, it's likely you've found somebody with a rather serious mental defect. (No Sarah Palin jokes, please.)

While most of us have practices that lean toward one of the major faith systems, it seems to me that in the final measure, each of us has an entirely individual structure of beliefs that can resemble, but never be identical to, another person's.

I'm now 54, and for fully 30 years now, my spiritual practice has been most closely represented by Buddhism. I respond most positively to Buddhist philosophy because of its intellectual precision, its cool detachment, and its belief in following the evidence of logic and experience. In its better moments, Buddhism can be one of the most tolerant of belief systems, though it, too, can have its parochial moments, especially when it comes to individual schools within the Buddhist world passing judgement on one another.

Yet for all of that, when asked to name my religious membership, I take pause and have to acknowledge that I can't really say that I'm a Buddhist. I miss membership in the club because of a single belief that most definitely violates the rules for authentication as a Buddhist.

Strictly speaking, Buddhists simply do not believe in a deity called God, thinking that such beliefs are largely irrelevant to the the pursuit of enlightenment. That is, in fact, one of the central appeals of Buddhism, that it is free of the heavy-handedness found in most deity-based religions. The inherent atheism of Buddhism is the Achilles heel for me, the final membership requirement that just eludes me.

Because in my heart of hearts, an intuition tells me that underlying our experience is some kind of central Truth that universally present for all of us. This energy feels to me quite concrete,with an inherent intelligence and humor about it. It's not that I adhere to any kid of cult of personality when it comes to deity——I certainly don't think of God as some kind of uber-personality that dwells in someplace called heaven. But for all of that, the supernormal energy I sense is something that communicates with me when I choose to ask and listen, and it's distinct enough for me to feel a kind of "I-thou" relationship to it.

Uneasy about this lingering belief, I sometimes pretend that it's "buddha-nature" I'm sensing here. To no avail; something that feels a lot like God continues to lurk around the corner, like a drug dealer trying to tempt school children. At the end of the day, it appears I'm a Missouri-Synod Buddhist.

Citizens of 4F, Oct. 20, 2010

2010-10-20T12:55:00.002-05:00

Grey-haired Martha sits at nearly the same latitude each morning on the 4F bus into downtown Minneapolis. Sometimes it's the left, and sometimes the right, but always she is very nearly one-third of the distance back from the front of the bus.

Each morning she reads the same magazine: TV Digest. Until I noticed this, I wasn't even aware that the magazine was still published anymore. Now it's an oversized publication, like People or Newsweek, not the small Readers-Digest size that I remember from years ago. I'm kind of amazed that it's still in print anymore, though if any magazine has a chance to survive in our culture, it would be one devoted to television, I suppose.

I'm also impressed that Martha finds enough new to read there each morning. Other than the schedule logs themselves, the editorial content of TV Digest looks to be pretty sparse. Is Martha just boning up on the evening TV schedules each and every day? Or does the magazine now have enough editorial content to offer 4 hours or so of reading each week?

Martha begins each morning sitting adjacent to the window, but as the bus begins to fill up, by about Franklin Avenue, she moves to an aisle seat. This has the impact of making it hard for anyone to sit next to her, and so it seems like a slightly mean-spirited thing to do, like those people who place their briefcases or backpacks on the seat next to themselves, effectively denying the seat to folks who might wind up standing. I don't like thinking that this is the kind of person she is.

So I settle on a more charitable explanation. She moves to the aisle seat so that, if another person comes and takes the window seat, she won't have to disturb them when her bus stop comes on the south edge of downtown and she arises to exit.

I'm not entirely convinced, though. It's the TV Digest that spoils it for me.

Autumn in More Ways than One

2010-09-30T08:18:00.003-05:00

Here in Minnesota, by the time the calendar announces the start of autumn, we're already in full sway. A few of the maples begin turning their colors in early September, and my staghorn sumac was hinting yellow by mid month. Winter, too, will impatiently come well before the Dec. 22 calendar date, often settling in here shortly after Halloween.

Autumn has always been my favorite time of year. There's a poignancy about it, as we're always well aware that the first killing frost is just around the corner, even while the gardens and landscapes are at their most colorful. Minnesota is mid summer is a lush place dominated by greens, but as autumn begins, the greens are beginning to turn to yellows and browns, and the garden plants still flowering take on an almost neon intensity: brown-eyed susans, asters, mums.

For some people, autumn is a somewhat sad time, but I've never felt that way about it. There is just a hint of melancholy about it, but it's that kind of nice melancholy, like you get before going to bed after a full day of boisterous, fun activity. Winter for me is a time of peace and contentment, as so it doesn't particularly bother me that summer is over. Summer 2010 was a little stressful for me this year, with a difficult economy making for a challenging work situation, and a bum knee giving me a fair amount of physical pain to accommodate. So I find myself ready for a more restful autumn and winter.

The last couple of years have found me feeling even more nostalgic in autumn, and I wonder if this is perhaps because I'm now in the early autumn phase of life myself. I'll be turning 55 later this year, eligible for senior citizen discounts at Perkins restaurants, and with a family legacy that has most everyone moving onward in their 60s or 70s, I'd be fooling myself to imagine that I'm still a young man. You might think that this would be sobering or depressing, but strangely it's not.

I suppose I take comfort from the fact that I've never seen a winter that wasn't followed by spring. It's just that one day in the future, spring will look quite a bit different than ever before.

Leaving the Club I Once Belonged To

2010-09-08T14:34:00.003-05:00

I'm perilously close to handing in my lifetime membership card as a Christian.

I've not really been a practicing Christian for awhile, but the last I looked I had some rights to be grandfathered into the club. As an infant, I was baptized in the church, and if I'm not mistaken this kind of makes me a member by default, much the way being born in the US automatically makes you a citizen.

Christianity is certainly my heritage and my culture, but events over the last week or so——some dramatic, some quiet—are making me seriously think about formal and forever disavowal.

• The nutcase preacher in Florida who is promising to burn copies of the Qu'ran on 9/11.... Now, I know that freedom of speech makes such a thing legal and technically defensible, but surely we can all agree that it's a bad idea, in incredibly poor taste. The outpouring of criticism of this wack job, though, has been slow to emerge if you ask me. The fact that "normal" Christians remain so silent in response to this and other actions of their lunatic fringe is disheartening. And this morning, I even heard some member of the conservative press begin to express defense of his planned actions.

• On the bus the other day, a fellow sitting near the front bid me farewell when I reached my stop, with the words. "God bless you sir. Jesus loves you." Now, normally I don't particularly care about such displays, but on this day I suddenly was struck by the fact that this demonstrates a kind of arrogance I don't much appreciate. Especially in the more fundamentalist wings of Christianity this kind of "witnessing" is expected, but it seems to me to be quite a presumptuous stance to assume that your God is the one that I really want blessings from. I wonder what this fellow would think or say, for example, if I replied " Blessing of the prophet of Allah upon you." My hunch is that he might be offended, perhaps even enraged. Hari Krishnas were banned from handing out flowers at the airport years ago around here, but nobody thinks twice about trying to impose Jesus on others.

• A pair of women offering the Gospel knocked on the door last night, wishing to speak with me about Christ. "Sorry," I said, quite politely, "But I don't share your particular practice."

"You're not a Christian?" One said, aghast. "What, then?"

"Well, I might well be Jewish," I said. "Or I could be a Hindu, or Buddhist, for example. Actually, I don't really care to discuss that with you, as it's really a private matter."

"We'll pray to the Lord for you, sir," the other said as they turned away in horror.

• At the bus stop this morning, a Chevy Impala with a fish decal in the back passenger side window pulled up and began honking frantically at a stopped car holding five members of Somali family, the distinctive headwear of the mother and three daughters being unmistakable. Our fellow in the Impala desperately wanted to turn right on red light, but the Somali father ahead of him was obeying the traffic prohibition, which dictated "no turn on red."

Once the light turned green, the Somali driver quietly turned the corner and pulled over to the curb to let the American driver roar by. As the Impala turned, I saw additional Christian decals and bumper stickers on the back of the car.

This, frankly, has been my general experience of Muslims in my own community——as conservative, law-abiding folks who rarely make waves at all, and tolerate a good deal of angry abuse at the hands of Christians, some of whom vocally express their hatred.

I know that it's certainly not fair of me to paint all Christians with the same brush that colors the wacky few; just like it's illogical for Westerners to dress all Muslims in the robes of Bin Laden. But damn it, it begins to make you ashamed of your own heritage. On the eve on 9/11 anniversary, I read statistics that western retribution for 9/11 over the last 9 years has led to the death of at least 110,000 Muslims in Iraq, of which 95,000 are thought to be civilians, according to the Associated Press. That's a ratio of 30 teeth for one tooth, and Lord almighty, we appear to have no intention of stopping anytime soon, as the crusade continues in Afghanistan.

Do the Christians I see around me really, truly believe that this is how Jesus would act? If not, then why aren't they speaking up?

Here's my membership card. Take it, please.

Writhing, as a Spiritual Practice

2010-09-02T11:00:00.003-05:00

When I look openly at my own experience of life, and look nakedly at the behavior of people around me, it seems to me quite clear that in the base experience of human life, discomfort plays an important, crucial role. Discomfort comes in many forms, from mild restlessness to outright pain, but in all shades and variations, this discomfort is really the organizing principle for our lives.

I remember once seeing a film done by sleep researchers, in which the typical night's sleep for various test subjects was condensed into 30-second long fast-motion film clips. What was striking was that a "good night's sleep" featured a few moments of utterly relaxed motionlessness, but was mostly a matter of tossing and turning and writhing, as the subject twisted away from physical discomfort and tried to find a few moments of comfortable respite.

This strikes me as a microcosmic of what human life is like, as a great deal of what we do, both individually and culturally, is a form of writhing——an attempt to move out of discomfort and into comfort. It's something of a no-win battle, as no sooner do we find a comfortable position in which to lie, then it grows wearisome and uncomfortable, and we're left to writhe in a different direction to relieve the newly arisen discomfort. This seems evident on so many levels that I wonder if it can be disputed at all.

The creation of government is an attempt to reduce the discomfort of chaos; science is an attempt to establish comfort, either by simply relieving our terror of the unknown or by relieving physical discomfort through practical applications. Art is an attempt to articulate the dramatic interplay of comfort and discomfort and thereby make it understandable. Religious mythologies create stories that explain the origins of comfort and discomfort, and how to court one and banish the other.

I walked through a modern American mall the other day, and counted three store shops devoted to massage, acupuncture, oxygen inhalation and other forms of relieving physical discomfort. The other retail stores existed to serve other methods for courting pleasure and distracting us from pain. The entire capitalist structure it seems to me, exists in particular to nurture pleasure and banish discomfort, through dedication to the pursuit of happiness. When we suffer from great discomfort as a society, we're very likely to go to war to attempt to take gain some comfort, taking it from other people.

This may seem like a slightly cynical view of life, but I'm not sure it's really anything to moan about at all. It really seems to be mostly a matter of simple mechanical physics. Our experience of cycles of comfort and discomfort aren't really all that different from the physical laws we observe in the natural world, where periods of pacific weather give way to stormy turbulence, which then discharge energy and allow a period of peaceful, calm weather to settle in again. Calm landscapes are periodically thrown up in mountainous upheavals and earthquakes, then the landscape gradually erodes again to form calm plains. A boulder perched on the edge of a cliff strikes me as being quite uncomfortable there, and is much relieved when it tumbles into the valley and releases the precarious imbalance.

So our experience of comfort and discomfort, pain and pleasure, may be nothing more than our subjective experience of normal universal physical properties. Wherever you look, you see the matter-energy matrix in a constant flux between periods of comfortable equilibrium and disturbed imbalance. It is the way of the world. The periodic arising of sorrow and unhappiness, and the subsequent appearance of peace and happiness, may be every bit as normal as the brightly shining sun that churns evaporated water vapor from oceans into storm clouds, which then must be relieved by thunderstorms before the sun can shine again.

Subjectively, there is some philosophical peace-of-mind to be had simply from understanding that the cycle of discomfort and comfort, pain and peace, is a natural one. At the very least, it makes it hard to feel put-upon by life's challenges, and it eliminates the "it's not fair" attitude that governs the emotionally immature.

It's something of a cop-out, though, to passively dwell here, tempting though it might be. For the truth is that the writhing itself, the instinct away from discomfort and toward peace, is in itself a natural function, and it's here that spiritual practice fits in. Spiritual practice, after all, isn't about detached philosophical acceptance, but rather, it's always a tool for improving the success of the writhing itself. When you look at the practices and rituals of any spiritual system, you quickly see that they don't really offer acceptance of the suffering, but always propose beliefs and practices aimed at discharging the energy, for facilitating the motion toward peace and comfort.

Even Buddhism, arguably the most detached and accepting of practices, holds as one of it's four basic tenants that its techniques offer an end to suffering. Every other system of spiritual practice also offers its own form of salvation from suffering, and that fact alone proves my contention: spiritual practice exists in the zone of writhing, that transition zone from pain and discomfort to peace and ease. Spirituality helps us writhe more successfully, much the way a lightning rod discharges the energy of a thunderstorm without burning down the barn.

The success of a spiritual practice, then, should be judged not by whether it offers never-ending happiness (clearly impossible), but by how well it helps us routinely negotiate the motion from imbalance back to equilibrium, from sorrow to peace, whenever those imbalances arise.

Autumn Approaches

2010-08-19T10:15:00.003-05:00

In the last week here in Minneapolis, we've strung together the first small group of fall days. The wind directions have shifted, the wind speeds have increased, the humidity has dropped, and the piercing days of harsh blue sky punctuated by thunderstorms have given way to days of puffy white clouds skidding across the sky from dawn to dusk.

There will be days where summer returns, but this week is a harbinger of things to come. A welcome harbinger, as there is no time of year more glorious in the upper midwest than autumn.

The gardens are feeling the effects of August heat at the moment, with hostas and other foliage plants scorched around the edges and looking pretty puny. but soon, as I begin to clear out the dead daylily foliage, the colors of brown-eyed Susans will become more intense, asters will begin to bloom, mums will emerge, and the overall color intensity of the garden will become exceedingly bright and vibrant. All of this will happen well in advance of the fall foliage change in the maples and sumac, which will push the garden into otherworldly status. The quality of the light in Minnesota also changes in Autumn. As the sun shifts back toward the equator, the light become more oblique and dramatic. Biting insects begin to go dormant, and there is nothing more pleasant in the world than sitting for a few hours in the cool sunlight of a Minnesota autumn.

Citizens of 4F, Aug. 17, 2009

2010-08-18T14:50:00.005-05:00

Vincent sits on the right row of inward facing seats at the front of the 7:12 4F bus into downtown. He is in many ways a very typical young man in the 28-32 year-old range, and the fact that he is typical is mildly disturbing to me.

Looking over his face, I count 13 pieces of metal piercing various aspects of his face, if indeed that was a tongue stud I saw peeking out a moment ago. In addition to this, there are pieces of hardware in his upper and lower ears, his eyebrows, his lips, his chin, his nostrils. In his earlobes are round disks of the type you used to associate with aboriginal natives of Africa or the Amazon. It is for the moment just a small insert disk in his ear lobe; the habit is to start small and gradually increase the size of the disks.

Once upon a time, this look would have marked Vincent as a rebel of some degree, but it is not at all unusual today. Not only do you see young adults like this at the hip downtown ad agencies, but it's also quite common to see them dressed in suits working as loan officers at banks. In my office, there are several young adults with vivid body art tattoos that run from toes to scalp. Nose studs are now so common that they no longer warrant noticing.

It is certainly a sign of my fuddy-duddiness that I'm quietly appalled at the proliferation of body mutilation among young citizens. As I study Vincent, and others like him, I wonder what inner processes lead them to compulsively deface the physical body that nature has given them. I simply can't imagine the appeal of going to a body art studio to have my flesh drilled and bored for the insertion of nails, studs, chains and other hardware. I try to imagine a situation in which I'd want to do such a thing, and I can't. And I have a pretty good imagination.

Even as I'm thinking this, though, I recognize my indignation isn't entirely legitimate. Vincent and others of his kind are only extending an established human trait to an extreme degree. The human animal is the only one I can think of that routinely chooses to to mutilate itself in the name of ornament. At the mild end of the spectrum is coloring our hair, shaving whiskers from our cheeks and legs, wearing earrings. Carry the habit several degrees to the right, and you're goring your genitalia to hang heavy chains. All of it, even ordinary grooming, is a form of self-mutilation, when you look at it nakedly. All manifestations of this impulse seem to serve the paradoxical purpose of shifting your identity away from the norm, and thereby establishing your membership in a different group. I hope, anyway, that this is the motivation, and that it's not a manifestation of self-loathing.

And so if I was going to be true to my disapproval of the shocking idea of piercing the glans of one's penis, would I not stop shaving, stop trimming my hair, stop wearing cologne? What makes my form of ordinary self-mutilation better than your more creative effort? After all, is piercing your nipples any more barbaric than having our sons routinely circumcised at birth?

Disconcerting thoughts at 7:15 in the morning. Must try a different antihistamine.

The Garden in August

2010-08-06T08:00:00.006-05:00

I've now officially become one of those gardeners who has specific dates for routine seasonal activities.

I realized last night that when the tree frogs begin to chirp at night—an event that usually begins around the first of August—is the time when instinct tells me to spread the previous year's compost over the flower beds.

August is a very dry, hot time in the upper midwest, and mulching the beds with compost now will help keep the soil cool and moist into the autumn. The plant material added to the compost heaps last fall have now broken down fully, and emptying the heaps now also creates space for the shredded leaves and other plant materials that will become available as I begin to take care of fall cleanup beginning in a few weeks.

In addition to the compost itself, I'll also start adding the grass clippings to the garden, over the layer compost. Up to now, those grass clippings have gone into the compost bins themselves. Some gardeners believe that raw grass clippings are a problem if they are used to mulch beds directly before they have been allowed to break down, but I've never found this to be a problem, largely because I d0 feed the gardens anyway, and the breakdown of green grass clippings never causes the nitrogen deficiency that is sometimes bemoaned. As the grass clippings turn to the color of straw, the visual effect is pleasing, as well, looking like a lighter shade of shredded bark.

If you mulch with grass clippings, though, you should do so only if you are not treating the lawn with herbicides. Adding chemical-laden grass clippings to flower beds may have bad effects on your flowers.

I"m not one of those gardeners who insists that all plants must be surrounded by clean, pristine soil. In the routine, day to day acts of deadheading old flowers and removing stalks, I snip up these bits and spread them over the garden as I go, so that the beds themselves do their own composting all summer long. Small twigs picked up from the lawn also get broken up and spread between the plants, so my gardens tend to resemble a forest floor in many ways. This isn't at all evident from a distance, though, so my gardens look quite manicured from a casual distance.

Next spring, the gardens will have quite a bit of organic debris that has wintered over the top of the soil, and rather than raking all this off, as some compulsive gardeners do, I will simply dig this material into the soil before planting time. The overall benefit of this approach is that it reduces the amount of fertilizing you need to do, as well as keeping the soil friable and easy to work with.

Now for Something Completely Different

2010-08-05T11:44:00.007-05:00

This moment, the one you are experiencing right now, is a perfect one.

To say this does not mean that this moment is a pleasurable or enjoyable one for you, necessarily. That's what we usually mean when we say things are "perfect"——that we really, really like the way things are right now. But to equate perfection with desirability is an egocentric viewpoint, not one that has big picture validity. In fact, this very moment, in its perfection, might offering me pain, or unhappiness, or some other form of discomfort. The perfection of the moment has nothing whatsoever to do with me liking the quality of that moment.

This moment is a perfect one because it is the only possible outcome resulting from the events leading up to it. The "effect" of this moment has been governed with the unavoidable logic of the "causes" preceding. If I happen to be unhappy with the moment, that doesn't spoil it's perfection, because the nature of this moment, including my feelings about it, is the logical result of things like memory, my previous life experiences, my attitude, my outlook, the current mixture of hormones and enzymes and neurotransmitters in my brain, my current physical condition, etc, etc.

In other words, dropping dead of a heart attack is a perfect result, if viewed as the logical consequence of heredity factors, poor eating habits, a dissolute living style, or a sudden contact with high voltage power lines. A truly horrific world would be the one where you don't die when a giant grand piano crashes onto your head from an overhead pulley. We need for the world to follow logical physical principles, and so it does. So how else could any moment be anything but perfect?

Viewing the world in this way——seeing each moment is a perfect one-- isn't to then suggest that we're supposed to "accept" whatever happens to us and not take action to change it. After all, perfection is also present in our resistance to the circumstances of the moment, in our choice to move in another direction.

At the same time, there's still a profound peace to be had from recognizing the perfection of the moment, even when it's unpleasant, because it then frees you from disagreeing and wrangling with the reality of it. A lot of grief we bring on ourselves isn't so much the actual pain, as our disagreement and refusal to acknowledge its truth and reality.

An interesting change begins to happen at the very instant you acknowledge the perfection of any moment. Things become exactly as they are, and immediately there is a burden that lifts from your shoulders——the burden of constantly trying to improve and perfect things. You find yourself entering into experience very directly, since there is really nothing to accomplish in a perfect moment. You just live it with a full embrace. The past is irrelevant ( it doesn 't even exist, really), and the future is interesting only because the current moment feeds it. Each moment is what it is, and the very next moment becomes an utterly logical and perfect result of the previous one. The power of our actions becomes blindingly evident, and you begin to feel a precision and economy and powerfulness in how you make choices. What you do in response to this situation is, in itself perfect, and it will lead to the inevitable (perfect) experience of the next moment. There is nothing to change, really, and nothing to regret. Only experience.

Normally, this method of seeing things comes to us in tiny little flashes, with considerably more time spent lamenting the past or worrying about the future. It is possible, though, to find yourself recognizing and embracing the inherent perfection of this moment, then the next moment, then the next moment, so that there's really nothing else but this moment, perpetually. Strangely, it's a form of immortality. String a thousand of these moments together, and it becomes a 15-second experience that can change everything and rewire your circuits in a major way.

*****

This kind of approach to phenomenology may seem pretty esoteric and exotic, but in reality you can find it in the mystical traditions of almost every major world religion. In Christianity, for example, you will find such a practice inherent in "The Cloud of Unknowing," a seminal work of Western Christian theology.

I began to learn about it through the study of Dzogchen, a branch of Tibetan Buddhist practice, that is also known as "The Great Perfection." Depending on your leanings, you could look to either source for more information on this way of viewing the world.

Made for Walking

2010-07-30T11:47:00.003-05:00

The knee injury I'm recovering from has turned out to have relevance to my spiritual practice. I suppose that shouldn't surprise me.

I'm now at a point where I'm beginning to take tentative forays out walking without the full-leg brace, and I've found that the six weeks of relative inactivity has caused my right leg to lose most of its memory of how to walk. I can, indeed walk, and can even do so without much of a limp, but it takes very deliberate focus and concentration. I don't walk with habit right now, but with very conscious intent. Rather that walking on auto-pilot, I have to focus and very deliberately raise the knee, extend the calf while raising the toes, plant the heel, rock forward on the ball, and gently push off with the thigh to deliver my weight to the other leg. Again and again and again. It occurs to me the act of walking is really nothing more than a series of controlled forward falls. Odd that I didn't realize that until now.

Forgetting the deliberate actions that go into walking causes the leg to go spastic and wobble like overcooked spaghetti. A feeling of utter vertigo arises whenever I stop thinking about how to walk. Very peculiar indeed.

Every time I walk, then, becomes an exercise in meditative focus. A few minutes of this causes me to break a sweat, not through exertion so much as through mental concentration. There will come a time pretty soon when I'll walk again completely on autopilot, but the fact is that I enjoy the wonder of walking much more when paying attention to it.

Matters of Mind

2010-07-29T13:11:00.004-05:00

Over the ages, a lot of energy has gone into discussing and arguing and articulating the presence of a split between mind and matter, a divide between mind and body, in the human experience. It's at the heart of all psychoanalytic theory, and seems to underlie most religious systems. It's widely accepted, for example, that all the various parables about a fall from grace, an alienation from God, are metaphors for this schism between the physical, corporeal world of the material body; and the ethereal realm of the mind and spirit. They are thought to be two separate states, which we would desperately like to reunite. It's the base state that creates various legends of falling from grace, being cast from the Garden of Eden.

Yet the older I get and the more hours I log in pure observation, the more convinced I become that the schism doesn't exist, never did exist, and that much human sorrow occurs simply because we subscribe to an idea that was erroneous from the get start.

I say this largely because I'm increasingly aware that there is just no real separation between mind and body. A disturbed mind is soothed by relaxing the body, and relaxing the mind is the surest way to relaxing the body. Recently, I've learned that healing my broken knee has been in no small measure a matter of relaxing my mind about the whole matter. It's a package deal, and always was so.

The world as we know it is really a construct of mind. One cloudy day might be dreary experience indeed that interferes with all our happiness; another rainy day might be delightful excuse to lounge with a book and listen to rain tap on the leaves of giant hostas outside an open window. The same worlds, but entirely different worlds, thanks to the various spices which the mind brings to experience. There is no world to experience, in fact, except the one flavored by mind.

We have no experience of the world at all that is independent of mind, and you are therefore left with no conclusion except that mind and the material world are utterly indivisible. You can't be aware without being aware of some thing, so does it not then follow that they are indivisible aspects of the same phenomenon?

So, although we generally think that coming to wholeness and happiness is about healing some kind archetypal division or achieving at-one-ment between matter and mind, perhaps the truth is that this perceived wound was imaginary all along.

The sense of separation we long to heal turns out to be the separation we've chosen for ourselves.

Creatures Know

2010-07-23T13:05:00.003-05:00

I've always quietly believed that our identities aren't at all fixed in time and space, but that who we are this moment is entirely different than who we are the next.

Animals seem to know this quite clearly, as they treat me much differently when I'm in the role of gardener. It's not always fondness I'm feeling from animals, but I do know that I'm a different being altogether when I'm gardening.

It's as though gardeners are somehow kindred spirits to creatures in the garden. Normally, animals sense the innate animosity of the human species to their kind, and react defensively, or with fear, toward us. Gardeners, though, get treated differently. For example, I've never, ever been stung by a wasp or bee when puttering around the garden, even though that's normally where I come across stinging insects. Put me in a car, though, at a picnic, and I'm just as likely to get stung as the next fellow.

Squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons, birds of all types might be startled and flee from me if I come upon them on my walk to the bus stop in the morning, but when I'm tending the garden, it is largely as though I'm invisible. I've had squirrels run over my feet on the way to the birdbath to drink. Chipmunks have run up my legs to sit on the end table next to the armchair on my patio when I'm sitting there quietly reading. Voles come up from the ground to look at me. Birds actually flock to me when I'm watering the garden, as they know the moisture will raise worms and other invertebrates out of the soil for them to eat. One robin, when it spots me, will come and scold me severely until I spray the water for her.

Rabbits have no fear of gardeners. Though we hate them passionately for the mayhem they inflict on the lilies, they know full well that no gardener is capable of violence against them. Once, a mother raccoon came down out of the ash tree in the yard with her baby gripped in her mouth, paused in front of me to allow me to compliment her family, then scurried back up the tree to the hollow spot where she nested.

Alas, though, the mosquitos haven't yet learned that I am their friend.

When it Rains, it Pours

2010-07-21T16:09:00.003-05:00

Still recovering from knee surgery on the right leg, yesterday the extra strain on my left leg caused me to pull a muscle in the left calf, leading to an extremely interesting double-leg limp that is amusing everyone who sees it. Late in the afternoon, a routine dental appointment was made more complicated when the hygienist, a direct descendent of Eva Baun, scraped away a portion of my gum, exposing a nerve, then sprayed cold water rigorously over it. The spot has been throbbing ever since, though sometimes the pain in my legs mercifully distracts me from the fact.

My wife, who, bless her heart, has managed most all of the serious home maintenance tasks since I've been gimping around, has strained her lower back to the point where she struggles to get in and out of a chair without help. If I cinch up my leg brace really tight, I might be able to help raise her up or lower her into the rocking chair, though neither of us has any confidence that we won't collapse in a joint heap on the floor.

A mere month ago, we were a hale and healthy couple in the early phases of vibrant middle age.

Today, we're far along into our decrepitude, and it's is our 31st wedding anniversary. Any recommendations for how to celebrate? Perhaps a nice domino delivery pizza, and some really stiff cocktails. Ah, the romance, it never dies.

Ah, Now I See

2010-07-14T07:46:00.003-05:00

In many schools of Buddhist practice, mantras play a significant role. These verbal syllables, which are either recited silently or spoken aloud, serve as the focus for meditation. Single-pointed attention to the mantra has the effect of quieting the mind of extraneous thought.

The use of mantras isn't unique to Buddhism. Many traditions use some form of mantra practice. Practitioners of hatha yoga, for example, are well aware of the importance of the single syllable om in their practice.

In Buddhism, there are a plentiful number of mantras used, ranging from the simple above mentioned om, to the hundred-syllable mantra that some devotees recite hundreds of thousands of times as tool for purification. One of the most common Buddhist mantras is the six-syllable mantra om, mani, padme, hum. (Pronunciations are tricky with these mantras; this one usually is recited like this "Ome, mah-knee, pay-me, hung."

But a mantra that I have found very useful is a three syllable version: Om-ah-hum. In some practices, the recommendation is to utter (or silently recite) om in sync with your inhalation, hung on the exhalation, and, in the empty, quiet space between inhalation and exhalation, to observe the ah.

The simple mantra continues to reveal things to me the longer I use it, and over time I've found it to be a convenient grounding anchor whenever turbulence arises in my life. For me, the om and hum correlate to the yin and yang dualities, and can serve to represent any version of opposing energies that are present for you: pleasure-pain, good-evil, creation-decay. This revolving cycle of phenomenon is the way of the world, and the mantra is a way of reminding me of this basic truth of the rise and fall of all things.

Things get really interesting, though, in the "ah" between the "om" and the "hum." The middle syllable of the mantra, for me, represents a quiet openness, a non-judgmental spaciousness that serves as the ground, or matrix, in which all the om-hum phenomenon unfolds. It is, in essence, the syllable that represents pure awareness, which by its nature does not judge, but simply"knows" that phenomenon is being experienced.

Dwelling in the "ah" isn't a particularly familiar thing for us, because normally we are pretty much enslaved to the revolving cycle of our mental phenomenon, and really don't experience it with any kind of objectivity. We are either caught up in our feelings or emotions, or we're obsessed with our thoughts, and it never occurs to us that there's another quiet open state that is neither emotion nor thought. There is really no accurate metaphor for this spaciousness, although its sometimes said that glimpsing it is like suddenly recognizing the sky when you've spent all your time worried about clouds. When we do glimpse it, though, the feeling of relief is profound. Recognizing the "ah," and learning to relax and dwell there, is really what a spiritual path aims for.

The Ying and Yan of it

2010-07-13T14:16:00.007-05:00

A word of forewarning: At the end of this post, I'm showing a couple of photos of my damaged right knee, one of which is a bit graphic....

Three weeks ago, I had the first modestly severe injury in my 54 years on the planet. Prior to that point, it was all simply a matter of cuts, bruises stitches——a few things causing small scars, nothing more serious. I've been damn lucky, in other words.

And my recent ruptured knee tendon is relatively modest in the greater scheme of things. In this time and place, there is nothing life-threatening or even permanently disabling about it. Still, it's the most truamatic physical insult I've ever had, and it will give me an 8 to 12 week experience of what it means to be disabled in our culture. I won't walk without crutches until late in the summer, and it may well be after the Christmas before I walk normally again.

Interesting lessons to be learned here. Principle among them is the reminder of the interplay of decay/death on the one hand, and restoration/healing on the other. It's never before been quite so obvious to me that these opposing energies are intertwined, codependent even, in everything we see around us.

The fact that my knee gave way so laughably easily on Father's Day, is, on the one hand, indication of the gradual progress we all make toward the "big dirt nap." Twenty years ago, I routinely jumped, fell, twisted, banged this knee with a good deal of vigor, and never had any problem with it at all. Now at 54 years of age, though, with soft tissues beginning to harden and lose their resiliency, a relatively gentle slip on the steps caused this important knee tendon to tear away with an audible pop, leaving me in a heap in the steps.

It is, of course, just one indication of the future coming for us. The aging process is quite naturally one of steady, gradual decline, and my torn tendon of today will become a faulty hip of tomorrow, a kidney stone the day after, a heart attack or stroke some time after that. It is utterly inevitable, and to pretend that we don't decay is to cruelly delude ourselves.

One of the benefits of having an injury of this sort, and especially of the physical therapy that goes into recovery, is that you are forced to become more health conscious and watch your body and care for it a bit better. And simple observation convinces me of something else indisputable. If decay can't be avoided, healing is also inevitable. I'm supposed to exercise my knee three times a day, massage it, study its pain patterns, break down the scar tissue to make sure the mobility returns. To do this involves a fair amount of discomfort, but it also shows me that the knee is ever so slowly, gradually, but inevitably, improving and healing. The scar down the center of the knee is beginning to lose its angry look, the motion in the joint now is nearly 90-degrees, and the knee itself now begins to feel like it belongs to me again, compared to just a week ago or so, when it looked and felt to all appearances like a block of concrete.

A second lesson is that healing in hindered, and pain increased, when we resist. The pain of physical therapy, for example, is very largely a matter of the fearful resistance we bring to the process. Healing is in large part a matter of learning to trust the knee again, to relax into the healing. What's true here seems very likely to be true of other forms of injury and insult—whether spiritual, psychological, or otherwise.

I see this because I'm required to pay such close attention to the knee, but I'm relatively sure that its also true of every form of injury and insult we ever experience. We do decay, constantly. But we also heal and evolve, constantly. And healing is in large measure a process of relaxing.

The following three photos are in reverse order. First, the knee today, second the knee a week ago. Stop here if you're squeamish. Below this photo will be what the knee looked like three weeks ago under the operating knife.

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An Introduction to Pain

2010-06-28T11:29:00.002-05:00

My life has seen moments of dabbling in psychic pain, but my 5-1/2 decades on the planet has somehow spared me the experience of severe physical pain. Up to now, I've broken no bones, had no surgeries, no serious burns. My physical traumas have been limited to an occasional sprained ankle, many cuts and bruises, but nothing whatsoever that's more serious than than that. I've been exceedingly luck and blessed that way.

Last week, though, fates gave me just a small taste of real pain. It was a lesson my education has been sorely lacking.

On Father's Day, I slipped down the back stairs, and upon planting one foot on the bottom step in an effort to catch myself, the major tendon and smaller ligaments in my right knee said "oh no, you don't," and turned loose of their grip on the surrounding bones. In scientific terms, it was a "complete rupture of the patella tendon, and partial rupture of anterior patella ligaments." Among the symptoms was a knee cap that decided it would rather take up residence floating above the muscle in my lower thigh, rather than over the knee joint itself.

All I know is that it hurt, big time. It hurt in the way that causes you to gag and pass out, even when doped up on morphine, at the moment the paramedics try to lift you onto the stretcher.

I"m on the mend now, three days after surgery to repair on the damage, and the pain is now entirely manageable. I now find myself, though, with the utmost respect for those folks who deal with serious burns, or joint problems that create steady, neverending pain. I don't know if I could do it, as this little, ordinary, garden variety tendon tear is just about as much as I care to deal with.

I've observed some things about this kind of sudden physical injury and associated pain.

• The shock is to the system as much as to the pain endings. To suddenly have a perfectly serviceable body part stop working entirely throws the system into disarray. The notorious pain from the first few days was largely a product of associated body parts shocked at the disruption to the status quo. Pain spasms in butt mucles, lower calves, toes, stomach unrest, were all just about as debilitating as the ache in the knee itself. In fact, the lessening of pain over the last few days has been largely about coaxing the rest of my body into relaxing the tension they were holding out of empathy for the knee parts.

• A good part of the pain is entirely mental. In this case, the physical pain itself was greatly increased by the simple mental thought of knee parts disintegrating within. It was a shocking thought to me, and hence the pain was equally shocking. At the point where I began to understand the mechanics of the various holes and loops and sutures the surgeon had drilled and threaded and sewn, the whole thing became much less threatening and hence less painful. Knowledge ameliorates pain, it appears.

• Pain management medications can and do work, but like everything in life, there are tradeoffs. The benefits, other than obvious pain relief, is that the colors on your flat screen TV become considerably more intense, the music more compelling, odors from the garden more intense. The drawback is that you will invariably deal with a little bit of sweating and irritability as each dose wears off, not to mention the disappointment when television is no longer interesting. For myself, anyway, I'm following these guidelines: pills to reduce pain and allow sleep: yes: Pills to make daytime television seem more interesting: no.

• Severe pain tends to be undifferentiated pain. In the process of getting better, the global throbbing ache has given way to a series of clearly identified pains of the various incisions and stretched body tissues. On one level, the pain is probably just as severe as it was early in the week, but now somehow understanding the locus of each throb, being able to identify and understand it, makes it considerably more manageable. I take this to mean that attention and focus have some benefits for dealing with pain.

• Don't listen when nurses tell you that pain medications will constipate you. Under no circumstances should you take the recommended laxatives, because a single small dose will open the floodgates for many days to come. No minor thing, when partial disrobing is required for each use of the restroom.

Time for Me to Move to Mars

2010-04-20T15:00:00.003-05:00

I think of myself as relatively well informed, but every so often I learn of some new ugliness found on the underbelly of our species. Silly me; from time to time I even begin to think our species is a noble one.

A recent Supreme Court decision has struck down a law forbidding the distribution of films depicting illegal cruelty to animals.

The fact that the Court would strike this law down can be viewed as tragic in its own right. That's not what is so disturbing me, though. What is really horrifying about this is the reason the law was created in the first place. It was enacted during the Clinton administration to combat a then up-and-coming trend:

Crush-fetish videos, favored by a segment of our population who finds something sexually gratifying about live-action depictions of women crushing rodents, kittens, and other small mammals to death with the spikes of their high heels.

USA Today, CNN, the LA Times are all reporting this quite casually——almost like it's no big deal. Yet I had no idea whatsoever that this kind of depravity even existed. It appears to be so prevalent that most people are already aware of it.

By comparison, the test case that came up before the court seems almost tame——a fellow who wants to sell videos of pit bulls fighting brought the case to the court, arguing that the law is unconstitutional. In his favor is the fact that the current law is so sweeping that it would technically make it illegal for animal rights activists to show the crimes the spirit of their activist causes. The court agrees, and now this fellow will be able to print and sell his dog-fight videos, alongside "Girls Gone Wild."

This is what it has come to. In a world of pedophile priests, crush-video sadists, snuff-film collectors, ordinary dog-fighting fans have begun to seem almost wholesome.
The court carefully notes that it does not condone crush videos, but can't see any reason to forbid dog-fight enthusiasts their fun.

Citizens of 4F, March 10, 2010

2010-03-11T08:14:00.002-06:00

My walk-sprint to the bus stop is successful, and I arrive there several minutes before the bus arrives.

As I relax against the back wall of the enclosed shelter, and my mind becomes slow and receptive, a street appears in my experience of mind——as with all experiences, it is a mixture of sensory data coming in from eyes and ears and skin, plus memory, plus subjective feeling.

It is Marquette Avenue in downtown Minneapolis, between Third St. and Fourth St., at 5:33 pm on March 10, as experienced by myself.

This street that appears in my experience is utterly unique, and will never appear again. At no other time will the light and overcast weather be exactly the same; never again will the melting ice and snow create exactly the same sculptural shapes on the sidewalks; never again will my own mood and memory and outlook be exactly the same.

This street, utterly unique and temporary, appears nowhere else but in my mind. For no one else is this street exactly the same as the one I experience. The fellow standing next to me——although he might see a few details that resemble the details in my own experience of the street——is experiencing a different street than I am. Perhaps his emotional day has been such that the street seems terribly dreary and foreboding, not the mysterious and symbolic street that I am experiencing right now. Perhaps his hearing is much more acute than mine; perhaps he has more perceptive sense of color, and sees a more vibrant display in the reflected lights of the wet pavement.

Not only is my street unique to me, but in the very next moment, I will myself experience an entirely different street, as when the bus pulls up to the curb, there will be a glad urgency to get home to a warm supper followed by relaxed time spent reading or planning the spring garden. Slight differences in sight and sound and smell and memory and mood will create an entirely new experience. In fact, merely noticing what I am currently experiencing causes it to vanish and be replaced by a new experience.

This is the nature of all phenomena, all experiences. They occur only in our minds, they are utterly unique and belong to us alone, and they are instantly vanishing in the very same moment they first appear.

Depending on your outlook, this realization can be quite terrifying, or it can be jubilantly freeing.

That too, may change moment to moment.

Some Buddhist Basics

2010-03-02T12:19:00.005-06:00

In the Buddhist philosophy that I follow, it is thought that human suffering is the result of the cyclical reliving of behavior patterns. The human condition is said to be one of both quiet and overt suffering, because we are trapped into repeating the same behaviors again and again. For very fundamental Buddhists, this is believed quite literally——that the human soul/personality is actually reborn again and again in subsequent lifetimes. For Buddhists of a more symbolic bent, it's taken as a comment on our human habit of reliving the same behaviors and problems again and again within this life.

Either way, though, the driving mechanism of this literal or figurative rebirth is the energy of hunger, hatred and ignorance. The cyclical, recurring problems of our existence arise because because we don't see things as they are (ignorance), which leads to either some form of subtle or obvious longing or attachment (hunger), or some form of resistance and aversion (hatred). These three problems are very intimately connected, and making progress on one leads to progress on all three. In other words, seeing things as they are quite naturally causes a reduction in grasping or aversion, and reducing grasping will naturally lessen hatred and cause us to see things more nakedly.

The principle tool of spiritual development, for Buddhists, is meditation, and the goal of meditation is quite simple: to practice the surrender of our pulling and pushing, our hatred and hunger, and thereby see things as they are. Should we ever accomplish this permanently, the legendary result is nirvana——the escape from the dreariness of cycle repetiion. Fundamentalists believe that such a soul no longer requires rebirth; more modern believers suggest that such accomplishment will cause this life to be one of peace and happiness.

To the westerner approaching Buddhism from a different culture, all this will feel pretty alien and unnatural, but very gradually almost everyone who steadily practices will see some literal truth to it. Most of us see it only in small glimpses, especially at first, but it is surely there: surrendering aversion and grasping causes you to see things much, much differently, and the result is a peace of mind that is most definitely transcendent and can be life changing.

Buddhist practice can seem to be a bewilderingly complex system of practices and lessons, but it's important to understand that it is all really about this very simple goal of surrendering hatred and longing, and seeing phenomena as they are rather than through the filters of wanting and disliking. Although there are many different schools of Buddhist practice, they all share this goal. The practices that focus on seeing the impermanence of phenomena, for example, focus on this because it automatically shows you that there is no logic to clinging to things that will vanish in a moment. Practices that focus on non-selfish compassion for others are designed to lessens our attachment to ego. The "middle way" that is so much a part of Buddhist practice is largely about applying antidotes to the extremes of greed and hatred in an effort to find the silence that occurs when they are neutralized.

On a very practical level, I have found that there is a tangible physical sensation to this surrender of longing and aversion. At meditative moments when I momentarily know myself to be in the zone, there is an almost cellular sensation that an energy which normally grips us, like magnetic charges either attracting or repelling, suddenly falls silent. The feeling can be a bit unnerving and ungrounding, and can even frighten you at first. But if you can come to trust it, you find a delicious sensation of peace and calm within it. A frantically spinning hamster wheel suddenly falls silent. I think that my own practice, whether it involves one lifetime or many, will be to gradually trust this sensation and rest comfortably in it more and more often.

And progress doesn't require any kind of massive accomplishment, but rather just an ongoing surrender of the habits that interfere.

Obsure But Wonderful Film

2010-03-02T11:52:00.002-06:00

In our quest to see as many of the Oscar nominated films as possible, my wife and I made our way to a distant suburb to see a collection of documentary short films last night.

There's one little film that perhaps you'll run into on HBO or available through Netflix that you really owe it to yourself to see.

Music by Prudence is one of the most uplifting little pieces of 35-minute movie-making you'll ever want to see. It's about a group of very seriously handicapped young adults in Zimbabwe, who suffer from physical problems so disfiguring that initially it causes you to wince slightly. This is a part of the world where physical deformities are regarded by folk legend as signals of witchcraft, so these young men and women are quite seriously ostrocized by their culture, in a country that is among the very poorest on earth.

Yet to a man and woman, these are some of the happiest people you'll ever see, and the key to their happiness is music. The lead character, Prudence, leads a small group of musicians and singers who put together absolutely angelic performances. The interactions between these people are some of the most loving and creative moments you can imagine.

This is one of those stories that will quickly put your own minor life complaints into complete perspective. See it if you can.

Replying to Michelle....

2010-03-01T10:37:00.002-06:00

My friend Michelle, at Full Soul Ahead, asked an interesting question to my previous post: "Re the depression, how did you climb out?"

At least here among my blog friends, I've made no secret of the fact that two pretty serious bouts of depression & anxiety have visited me twice in my life. When people ask me about how exactly I beat it, though, I agonize a bit over what to say. I fear that people may take my experience as a prescription for their own course of action, for one thing. Each person's experience is different, and I worry that people will assume that my method will work for them. Everybody is different, and I most assuredly don't want anyone assuming that my way is for everyone.

But for what it's worth, I will tell you what salvaged me:

• Chemistry counts. I know people who steadfastly believe that they can and should pull themselves out of depression by their own bootstraps, without the benefit of medical help. They see it as a moral failing, and insist that moral strength is the only prescription. I"m not one of those folks. Refusing all medical help for these things is a bad as seeking medical help indiscriminately. In my case, medicines did help me both times, but I did quickly learn that I was helped by doses that were far smaller than what is normally regarded as therapeutic. Even at the smaller range of normal prescription levels of an anti-depressant, for example, I became exceedingly irritable. At one-third of that small dose, though, I found that strong feelings became muffled just enough that I could recognize and deal with what I was feeling. Beyond this, I became aware that the types of foods I ate had a dramatic effect on my mental world, and as I ate more carefully, I became less susceptible to depression and anxiety. Whether it's Prozac or garlic, I approach these substances somewhat in the spirit of alchemical elixirs that offer benefits if used carefully.

Chemistry, though, turned out to be part, but certainly not all, of my emotional well being.

• Surrender. This is certainly something I hesitate to recommend broadly, but in my own case, I eventually found that an enormous amount of my unhappiness came about because of trying desperately to avoid my own unhappiness. Turning directly into it, the path of least resistance, finally was the only option left to me, and ironically was what led me out. I'm not a traditionally religious person, but there was certainly something like "turning over to a higher power" at work here, where acknowledging the depth of misery was crucial to coming out the other side. I came to understand that these dark nights of the soul existed for a reason, and that, well "resistance is futile." Because depression can and does kill people, though, I think that one cannot go down this path unless you have some kind of good teacher or therapist watching out for you as a safety net. In some regards, my depressions were normal life events that had to extinguish themselves before I could move on, and I'm well aware that some form of higher power or buddha-nature helped me in this.

• A mystical lifestyle. That might be putting it too radically, but I did come to realize that a highly rational, scientific outlook wasn't a good fit for me in the long run. In the periods before my depressions, I was living in a pretty rigid manner, while in reality I was much better suited to a "more things in heaven and earth than dreamed of in your philosophy" kind of life. When I woke up and became aware of an archetypal, symbolic style of living, I found that my depression and anxiety lifted, and that both the inner and outer world began to make sense to me. At the point where my life has become exceedingly literal/scientific again, I run the risk of more depression and anxiety. When I stay open to other interpretations, I'm far happier. So it's not Carl Sagen and Stephen Hawking that does it for me, but Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung. For me, anyway, the traditional Western lifestyle feels like living in black & white, while technicolor exists in the world of Black Elk, and Tibetan Shamans, and the bhagavad gita.

Perhaps this all just makes me sound flakier than before. Still, Michelle did ask....

Regarding Andrew Koenig

2010-02-26T07:56:00.003-06:00

Depression is one of the most insidious diseases there is. It recently took the life of former actor Andrew Koenig in Vancouver. He is the son of actor Walter Koenig, better known as Chekov of Star Trek fame. Andrew had some acting credits to his own name, specifically as a minor character in a television series about teenagers some time back. When you look at photos of him over the years, you see a chameleon-like visage that changes appearances quite radically every few years. It gives you a hint that he may have been a troubled soul.

We now know that Andrew faced a lifelong battle with depression, which he finally lost up in Vancouver last week.

I fortunately don't have experience with that kind of lifelong agony, but I have twice in my life had extended episodes of very serious clinical depression, the kind that required hospitalization. The first episode lasted almost two years, the second only a couple of months. It was many years in the past, but even now it's not something I talk about other than with very close friends, because mental illness in general, and depression in particular, makes people exceedingly uncomfortable. Some people make nervous fun of people suffering from emotional disorders, which I suppose is evidence of how frightening it is to them. In many respects, our attitudes toward mental illness have barely evolved at all from the days when we viewed it as a sign of demonic possession.

I remember once at a cocktail party, though, finally getting fed up with someone who was poking fun at depressed people, defining them as emotionally weak——the Prozac nation. First, I admitted that I had myself suffered from depression 20 years earlier.

"So, tell us about it," he said, blushing just slightly but not really honestly regretful of his arrogance. "What are we missing?" He gestured to some of his friends who were listening and trying not to smile at their buddy's wit.

"Well," I said, "Did you ever have one of those days where you just wake up on the wrong side of bed, where you're a little grumpy and just "off" for the whole day? Kind of like having that mental achiness that goes with a bad cold, but without the sniffles?"

He nodded, and there was a trace of a smug smile on his face. "Yeah, I know. That's what I mean. What's the big deal with being depressed. People should just get over it. You obviously did."

"Now, think for a minute about what it would feel like if that bad day lasted not for a day or two, but three or four months at a time. And if you started to think that maybe that's really how it was going to be forever."

He kept nodding, the smug smile softening only a little bit. "Well, yes," he said. "But plenty of people have real chronic health problems, arthritis for example, and they get by just fine. Life is tough all over."

"Right. But what I've described to you is a very, very mild depression. So mild you almost wouldn't even call it that. I mention it because its the only thing you might understand. But if you took that sensation I'm talking about, made it 100 times worse, so that it felt like you were wading in thick molasses up to your neck, extended it for years at a time, then you'd have some idea about what real depression feels like. You wake up with it, you eat with it, you go to your kids' soccer game with it, you work with it, you shower with it, you sleep with it, you dream with it. Then you wake up with it again. Day after day after day. Pretty soon, it seems clear that it will never, ever change. This is now your life."

His face blanched then, visibly, and he took a tentative sip of his scotch and water. "Well, if that really happened to me, just like you describe, I'd probably blow my brains out."

"Exactly," I said. "I wonder if you'd have the courage not to."

Heavy Stuff, but Interesting

2010-02-23T15:32:00.004-06:00

I've been reading some pretty interesting material on the subject of Dzogchen buddhist practice recently.

Essentially, Dzogchen is a form of practice in which the subject for meditation isn't your breathing, or a mantra, or a candle, or anything at all like that. Instead, Dzogchen practice involves studying the nature of mind itself as the object of meditation. The concept suggests that careful, naked examination of the nature of mind-itself, all by itself, can lead to enlightenment. Here is where you come into phrases like "clear luminosity" to describe the essence of mind.

This is pretty heavy, estoteric stuff, with subtle nuances that go on, and on, and on. Dzogchen appears to be very, very old, dating back to the shamanistic days of the original Bon religion of Tibet. It was then adopted and modified by Buddhism when it migrated into Tibet from India.

The essence of the practice is that looking at the mind in a very detached, objective way allows you to see that thoughts and feelings all arise and are self liberated within the arena of mind-itself, with no real help from us, and not much burden. While all that arises in the mind is utterly temporary and without substance, the mind itself is timeless, in that it isn't born and doesn't die.

The practice is really about allowing yourself to relax into mind-itself, and simply allow thoughts and feelings to come and go as simple expressions of the mind, but without any more significance than that. As a common analogy goes, it's keeping the sky in mind, but not being distracted by the clouds.

In the context of this recent study, I came across an idea that struck me as very interesting. The commentator was observing that what we take as "reality" virtually always contains a large percentage of mental elaboration and modification. What we take to be "real" is actually merely an idea of what is real.

Life become much simpler and much pleasanter, if we keep in mind that that what we experience is almost always a large part mental ornamentation and imagination, and hence should be treated playfully.

We Are What We Eat (Oh, the Horror)

2010-02-22T12:32:00.002-06:00

For several months last year, with my physician's warnings about rising blood sugar dangers ringing in my ears, I had cleaned up my act. I'd deleted a good many carbohydrates from my diet, saw my weight begin to drop, my blood sugar return to good levels. Felt good.

A trip to China and the Christmas holidays saw me regress a bit, and the evidence was clear. My waistline and blood sugar levels began to swell again, though I didn't return entirely to the previous ghastliness.

So I cleaned up my act again a few weeks ago, saw some real progress, and felt much, much better. I always do feel a lot better when I eat well and exercise well. Long walks, cross-country skiing, meals of vegetables and Rye Crisp, and once again, presto chango, I started feeling spry again.

But today at lunch, I happened by the cafeteria at the government center while running an errand, and a provocative cheeseburger reached out, grabbed me by the neck, and forced me to eat it. I felt quite helpless about it, with a mixture of carnivorous defiance and guilty pleasure. Meat has become lessen appealing in recent years, and beef in particular is now rather rare for me. But man, that cheeseburger had my number today.

Now, an occasional cheeseburger won't kill me, it's true. But I"m quite puzzled at this common human behavior--doing things we know are bad for us, that we know will make us feel bad——despite all evidence and logic that tells us to knock it off. I suppose nearly everyone has certain self-defeating, self-repeating habits, but I sure do wish I could throw this monkey off my shoulder for good.

I knew while eating it that the burger wouldn't sit too well in my stomach this afternoon, and sure enough, a once-familiar, after-lunch grogginess is already beginning to set in.

In the spiritual world, it's known as "digestive karma," and was first mentioned in one of the Buddha's lesser known sutras, known as the " Sutra of High-Density Lipo-Proteins"" Another lesson from that sutra reads:

"Verily I say to you, Ananda, he who hides the fresh onions with melted cheese will soon find himself reincarnated into another life, where he shall once again face the choice of cheddar vs whole grain. Choose wisely, Ananda."

Reconsidering New Age

2010-02-11T12:22:00.002-06:00

I was probably 12 years old when I started reading books about spirituality and mysticism. It started with an interest in yoga philosophy, and the first descriptions I read were in the scholarly writings of Colliers Encyclopedia. It wasn't too long before I was ordering books from our local bookstore. There was no Barnes & Noble, online or otherwise in those days, and so some of the things I special-ordered took many weeks to arrive to our small town in southern Minnesota.

It's no exaggeration to say that I've read many hundreds, perhaps even thousands of books on spiritual subjects over the years. Right from the start, though, I had a very healthy skepticism of anything that reeked of too much cultural popularity. These subjects weren't all that widespread in the 1960s and early 70s——no bookstore would have a "New Age" section, for example——but I still shied away from anything that was too highly touted by celebrities. When the Beatles traveled to India to study with the Maharishi in 1968 or so, I was already quite familiar with Hindu philosophy at the age of 13, but wanted no part of anything that the Maharishi, with his fleet of Rolls Royces, was preaching. Instead I read a bit of Patanjali, and some of Krishnamurti, but you couldn't get me to sit still for the Maharishi at all.

The 1960s were the era of transcendent psychodelia, and while I might read and agree with some of what Aldous Huxley wrote, I turned off the Don Juan stories of Castanado when I came upon that silliness about parallel universes of space aliens living among us.

It seemed to me that the quickest way for a spiritual mystic to lose all credibilty was to be widely praised by popular culture, and even more, to show an eagerness to make a lot of money from one's spiritual teachings.

What this means is that for the better part of 40 years, I've eschewed the Deepak Chopras, the Robert Blyes, and always opted for the source material from which many of these people freely, and sometimes dishonestly, borrowed. Even now, I find it almnost physically painful to browse New Age, whereas the Religion sections of my local bookstores have armchairs dedicated to my patronage.

And for this reason, it's only now, with a lifestime of reading under my belt, that I just now picked up Eckhart Tolle's book, The Power of Now.

For years I've had a quiet, arm's length distain for Tolle, based partially on the cottage industry that's grown up around him, and partly for his borrowing of the name of Meister Eckhart. I sincerely doubted that anyone among the disciples of Tolle even really knew who Meister Eckhart was, much less had read him, so how legitimate could this whole Eckhart Tolle phenomenon be, anyway?

And so it has come as quite a shock to recognize that a good deal of what Tolle says in this book has the strong ring of truth. I speak as somebody who has studied these subjects in a pretty academic and serious way for many years. Unlike most of these New Age celebrities, Tolle has me more often nodding in agreement than wincing in disbelief. If there is one criticism to be made, it might be that Tolle doesn't really credit the origins of some of this wisdom, or acknowledge that his insights were discovered long ago. For example, the idea of "Now", as espoused by Eckhart, is virtually the same concept as "suchness" or "isness" which the Tibetans were studying centuries ago.

But that's a fairly minor cricisism, as it seems entirely possible that Tolle legitimately saw some of these things afresh for himself, and didn't learn them from others. As I browse the book, I am finding myself again and again agreeing with things that I've seen for myself through years of study and meditation.

Is Tolle enlightened? Did he experience a sudden awakening that transformed his life?

I don't know for sure, but it's not something I can boldly discount, either. If it wasn't for the fact that Tolle has created enormous wealth for himself, I'd be even more likely to give his book a prominent place on my shelves.

God, I hope I'm not going to have to reconsider Carlos Castanada.

2010-02-05T16:28:00.002-06:00

I ran across this over at Grumpy Lion, and thought I'd share it here——a wind generator losing its safety brake in a storm.

Citizens of 4F, Feb. 5, 2010

2010-02-05T15:26:00.003-06:00

What has become of Donald, I wonder?

Donald has been a fixture of the morning 4F bus ride into downtown Minneapolis for nearly every single day of the last three years. He is a high-functioning adult with some form of developmental disability; a chronological age that appears to be 40-something, but a personal manner that makes him seem like 10 or 12 years of age. He carries an oversized lunch box and wears converse tennis shoes, sometimes covered with rubber over-boots. When it's cold he, wears either a Twins ball cap, or sometimes zips on the hood to his parka. Very often he plays a hand-held video game on the ride downtown. Twice, I've seen his cell phone ring during the bus ride, and it appears these calls are from some family member checking on his well-being. He is very deliberate and careful when he takes out his phone, and he talks loudly and clearly to someone who obviously knows him well.

Donald and I have never spoken. He sits near the front of the bus and has already boarded by the time I get on. There is never room for me to sit near the front, so Donald and I only meet eyes briefly in the morning as I pass by him. Though I have no specific knowledge of this, I have always imagined that Donald must be a participant in one of those social programs that pairs up people with disabilities with jobs that offer benefit to both the businesses and the workers. Minnesota is one of those places with a lot of these kinds of programs. Although our Republican governor has undermined some of these opportunities, Minnesota remains one of those places that offers many subsidies to improve life quality for people in need, and when I see these cheerful, slightly handicapped people working about town at various businesses, it always makes me optimistic for human civilization, or at least for the Minnesota version of it.

Once, I ran into Donald at the downtown Target store while running errands at lunch. He recognized me instantly from across two check-out lanes, and broke into a broad smile of recognition. His hand started to come up in a wave, but then he shyly edited himself and simply continued to grinned broadly. He was gone long before I made my way through my own line.

After two years of seeing Donald every day, I've not seen him at all the last two weeks. I wonder if the economy has taken his job, even here in compassionate, liberal Minnesota. Surely not even this economy could be that cruel. Or, perhaps is he sick, or hurt in some way. It's just not like him to miss the 4F bus.

I hope Donald is alright. I would feel much better if he were back on the bus.

10 Favorite Movies of 2009

2010-01-13T16:31:00.003-06:00

Well, there are still a couple of movies we haven't seen that stand a chance at cracking this list. Crazy Heart, with Jeff Bridges is getting great reviews. And The Bad Lieutenant, with Nicolas Cage, is getting some impressive buzz, too.

But other than these, there's not much chance of anything else cracking the top ten before Oscar time rolls around, so with that, I'll give you my own 10 favorite movies of 2009, along with encouragement to try and see them if you haven't.

But first, a couple of words about films that didn't make the list. September Issue, the documentary about the creation of a single edition of Vogue magazine is highly recommended, and nearly made the list. Other honorable mentions incliude Julia and Julie (Streep wonderful, slightly pedestrian script), District 9 (great unexpected sci-fi), and Star Trek (saw it twice, always a strong indicator of a good movie.)

Here, without further ado, is the Mercurious list of 2009's best movies:

10. Inglorious Basterds. This movie was expected to be huge, and it almost lived up to the hype. Finely crafted and wickedly funny. Could well have placed higher, but its expectations diminish its placement a bit.

9. Zombieland. Uproariously, incredibly funny. Ferris Buhler meets Night of the Living Dead. Outlandish commentary on American culture, with an incredible cameo appearance in the center of the film.

8. This is It. The documentary about Michael Jackson's farewell tour rehearsals. Unexpectedly moving and fascinating.

7. Paranormal Activity. Low budget, exceedingly effective horror. Not graphic, just tense. This made the list because I so admire the ability of a clever group's ability to do a good movie on $10,000 or $20,000.

6. Food Incorporated. Very good documentary about the American food industry. Will change how you shop for food.

5.Precious. Hard to watch, but bringing this to screen took an act of heroism on the part of many people.

4. 500 Days of Summer. A triumphant statement that a comedy need not be vulgar trash like The Hangover. Delightful, and also realistic.

3. The Informant. A sleeper of a Matt Damon film, that gradually causes you to grow more and more fascinated.

2. Up. Far better than Mr. Fox, I thought. Clever, moving, funny, visually stunning. If it doesn't vie for best picuture, it would be a shame.

1. The Hurt Locker. Almost no one knows about this documentary-style fictional story of Iraq bomb-diffusion experts. Amazing, amazing movie. Not gory, so you can see it without fear. The best movie of the year.

Citizen of 4F, Jan. 12, 2010

2010-01-12T08:12:00.005-06:00

554447Mood is a strange and fickle human quality.

After two days in a quietly gray mood, I find myself this morning in a mood that is equally quiet, but most definitely happy. How exactly did this transformation occur? I wonder. It happened very subtly.

Perhaps it began when friend called me late yesterday, excited with good career news. She has an infectious personality, and it was pleasant to listen closely to her happiness.

When I left the office for the day, though, was when I noticed a definite uptick in my mood. Part of it was that at 5:15 pm, for the first time in recent memory, the sky was still light. At these latitudes, a cloudy overcast in the days just prior to the Dec. 21 solstice will see Minnesota night lasting from 4:30 in the afternoon until the following morning at 8:30 or so. But it was clear yesterday, and we're now more than three weeks past solstice, and so paying close attention shows that the painstakingly slow crawl back to spring is already underway.

More than this, though, the sky was painted with a whole spectrum of colors thanks the setting sun, and if you paid close attention, you could see that the sky echoed every color you could see in the neon store signs reflected in the windows: blues, reds, indigos, oranges, yellows—in the far west, you could even see pale greens streaked across the sky that echoed the green of streetlights in "go" mode. The whole thing left you with a feeling of wonderful symmetry between the natural and manmade worlds.

This morning, rather than go to work in the darkness, I took a later bus, stopping first for coffee and the New York Times at the nearest Starbucks. As I read the arts section, I noticed a father and son sitting off in the corner. The son was perhaps 13 or 14 years old, and was struggling with unhappiness of some kind. It wasn't clear to me if the boy was perhaps ill——his face was slightly flushed--or if he was wrestling with some early adolescent angst of some kind. But at one point his father reached over and gripped the boy's wrist in comfort. Like most boys in early adolescence, the young man's face showed a mixed response to this public display of affection from a parent, but it pleased me to see this father ignore the rules of adolescent protocol and comfort his son in this way.

On the bus ride, one could see that the foggy night had painted the trees with a hoar frost that looked like the most delicate lace. The urban forest around the skating rink at Lyndale Farmstead park looked like something from the most fanciful set in a Tim Burton movie.

When I am in a productive stretch, I have sometimes found that a 30 or 45 minute bus ride will find 2,000- or 3,000- word business letters or blog posts composing themselves in my head between home and office, so that all I'm left with is transcribing what has mentally hatched. It's pleasant to realize, for this one morning at least, that a bit of that creativity has returned.

William James, the pioneer psychologist, wrote more than a century ago, that "the strain of attention is the fundamental act of will."

Perhaps transforming unhappiness into happiness is really just a matter of choosing what to pay attention to.

Citizens of 4F, Jan. 11, 2010

2010-01-11T12:21:00.002-06:00

When the work day promises to be especially hectic, I catch the early 4f bus at 6:15 in the morning. When it arrives at my downtown stop, the sky will be just hinting at sunrise, but the stars will still be in full force.

We're in the heart of Minneapolis winter, and although it is a relatively balmy 10 degrees this morning, the mood on the bus seems especially sober this morning. Of the six people alrady on the bus, three have their heads leaning up against the glass windows, either their eyes are shut, or they are looking forlornly at the morning night outside.

At the front of the bus behind the driver is a young man I think of as David, who looks, more than anything, like the common artistic representation of Jesus Christ, except wearing a worn hooded sweatshirt under a insulated denim jacket. He has long brownish hair and a reddish beard, and a slightly Roman nose. His eyes are closed. Logically, he is probably just fatigued after an active weekend, but there is something about him that suggests a somewhat more existential weariness.

I look at others on the bus, and I recognize one of those mornings where the gentle suffering of being human is quite evident. Not a happy face to be seen. No anguish either, but lots of very quiet borderline sorrow in the air. It's before dawn on a Monday morning after all. And it's winter. And it's MInneapolis. As more and more passengers board, the mood isn't lightened at all.

There is only one exception to this prevailing mood. Midway into downtown, two young adults get aboard at different stops. They clearly know each other, and carry on a silent smiling conversation with one another sitting across the aisle facing one another. Let's call them Luke and Heather. They look like a Luke and Heather to me. The carry identical gleaming silver coffee mugs, and smile at one another and mouth silent phrases to one another. But then Luke gets off the bus, and Heather's face falls into the same expression of quiet sorrow I see on all the other faces——myself included, I suppose.

This is all rather depressing, so I try to think up some lesson here, some encouragement with which to face the day. I think to myself, "Life isn't easy for anybody. Knowing that, we should try to be nice to one another. "

Not the pithiest motto. But for this Monday morning, it will have to do.

A Thought

2010-01-08T13:03:00.002-06:00

A thought that occurred to me last night....

Perhaps genuine freedom isn't so much about choosing either option A or option B, but more about about having both options available.

"I'm going to do B, not A," is its own form of bondage. But "A and B are both possible" is a genuine form of freedom.

This is true not only of actions, but of attitude, I think. Mired in a bad mood, merely recognizing that a good mood is a possibility has plenty of power to liberate. When angry, simply considering the possibility of friendliness is often all that's required for transformation.

Book & a Movie; January 2010

2010-01-06T16:17:00.003-06:00

This month's recommendations:

The Mind & the Brain (2002, by Jeffrey M. Schwarz, Harper Collins).

For those of us of a somewhat spiritual bent, modern science offers much to be dejected about. The premise of modern science is that all phenomenon, including human aspiration and feeling and passion, can be reduced to logical and predictable interactions between ions, electrons, amino acids, neurotransmittters. If you really listen to what science says, and believe it, you're left with the empty sensation that free will doesn't exist at all.

Schwarz, though, points out that modern behavioral science never really grew beyond Newtonian physics. All that it takes to restore the wonder about the nature of human consciousness is to learn a little bit about quantum physics, which not only make room for human consciousness and free will, but argues that nothing else really explains the way the world operates.

I can by no means do justice to the author's arguments in a few short paragraphs. Suffice it to say that this is truly exciting work that seems to offer genuine evidence that our intuition was right when we decided that human consciousness was something magical and mystical and worthy of our wonder.

My film recommendation is a bit harder this month. Not much that blew my socks off. So rather than a single recommendation, I'll simply give one-to-five star reviews of the last few I've seen:

Sherlock Holmes. Three stars. Pleasant diversion with interesting twists on the personalities of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. But needlessly complicated plot line that grew tedious in hour two.

Avatar. Three stars. Startling technology that makes you want to buy the DVD for the special effects features. But James Cameron is about as deep (shallow) as George Lucas in his handling of archetypal mythologies.

It's Complicated. Two stars Delightful acting by Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin. Tedious plot and terrible written dialogue.

The Road. 3 stars. Yeah, depressing, but very finely acted. You have to be into post-apocalyptic nightmares, though.

Hello darkness my old friend.

2010-01-06T08:02:00.004-06:00

Every so often, a Black Thing comes knocking at my door, and with a wicked grin it demands to come inside for a short visit to relive the good old days. I know him well, because twice in my life he has been a long-term visitor. On one occasion, more than thirty years ago now when I was a troubled young man, the Black Thing not only dwelled with me for the better part of two years, but was a virtual bedmate. Some years later, when my mother was dying of cancer, he came for another visit that was mercifully shorter, only about two months or so in duration.

He's also popped in for spot checks at other times, and last night brought one such visit.

A panic attack for me begins quite innocently, with nothing more than an unusual and very particular sense of expectation. It's not an unpleasant feeling at first——more like the slight nervousness you might feel before speaking in front of a group, or like the prescient sensation you get if you awaken early on the day of a vacation trip to a far-off land. Last night, out of a sound sleep, I awoke to this feeling of expectation, which, even if it's been years since the last one, is instantly identifiable.

Within moments——or maybe its just a split second, because time is very hard to gauge--the feeling of expectation blossoms into an inexplicable terror. A friend once asked me to describe what a panic attack felt like, and the closest I could come to was this: it's like you're walking down a sunny street on a spring day, a song in your heart, when you step off the curb to cross a boulevard, and realize that a speeding bus is a split second away from smashing you into oblivion. The heart-in-the-throat, stomach-sickening, thought-exploding volcano is a panic attack.

Panic attacks for me can last anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours, and however long it might be, the doomsday bus travels at 90 miles-per-hour for the duration, and remains inches from crashing into you, never further and never closer. It defies all physical laws, as the impending doom never resolves itself, but hangs in the air eternally. Taken individually and seen in retrospect, no single panic attack is all that big a deal. It doesn't leave lasting damage, and once it's past, the feeling from moments earlier seems as distant as the moon.

In the very darkest times, though, when the Black Thing lived with me, the panic attacks were always on the long side, and I was seized by 10 or 12 each day. I awoke with them, went to sleep with them, and was roused from fitful sleep by attacks of panic. For two years in 1975 and 1976, my days consisted of panic, and the dread waiting for the next attack of panic. There was literally no room for happiness. Though not as graphic to onlookers, this kind of panic disorder is just about as debilitating as a pattern of frequent epileptic seizures.

T'was a very dark time, in other words.

That's really the horror of infrequent return visits of the Black Thing in the years since those times. An occasional panic attack isn't all that problematic, but it always does remind me of that time when panic attacks put me on the verge of madness. When they happen, even now, I wonder if it harkens a return to those days, or if at some point the doomsday bus will fail to disappear and remain forever poised inches from crushing me. I fear, in other words, that the panic won't end. There is likely an element of post tramatic stress in all this, I'm sure, since when it happens, I relive some memories that even today I haven't told people about.

When the Black Thing revisits like it did last night, there is some comfort in knowing that a drugstore a few blocks away does carry medicines that can help a bit. Long experience has taught me the very mild doses of a particular enhancer of neuro-transmitter action can help lessen the severity and frequency of panic attacks. Should they start to become frequent, that's an option. But as anyone who has lived through some kind of mood disorder——whether serious depression, OCD, or anxiety disorders——can tell you, medicines really address symptoms, not causes. A well chosen drug treats physical sensations associated with a disorder, and doesn't exactly cure or prevent them. The benefit of a drug is rather like putting on long underwear and a heavy coat when the winter night is bitterly cold. It makes you more comfortable, but it doesn't turn winter into summer.

Long experience has also told me that another part of the solution, the more real solution, is willful action that, on the face of things, seems entirely counter-intuitive. Although every impulse you have during a panic attack is to run, to flee, the truth is that if you actually try to run away from panic, the terror will continue to pursue you relentlessly. Strangely enough, though, turning directly into panic, staring it in the face, shining awareness into it, is one of the best ways to make it evaporate. If there is any one thing I can point to that caused the Black Thing to leave me alone, finally, it was this kind of meditative approach to the whole thing.

So very often the best solution is not to distract yourself, not ignore a panic attack, but to study it quite directly and objectively. In the throes of a panic attack, what I find is that gradually the observing aspect begins to come to the fore-front, while the panic itself recedes and becomes a subject for study rather than a beast that has you by the throat. The inner sensation is very much like dialing a radio tuner away from the channel playing terror, and to a frequency where a documentary narrator observes the pounding heart, the racing thoughts of horror, the wild impulses. Wes Craven becomes David Attenborough. It become evident that panic is drama, not truth, and that it carries no real long-term meaning or significance.

Last night's visit was a mild one——fifteen minutes or so——yet I admittedly feel a bit rattled today. Literally rattled, as though the nuts and bolts of my nervous system were slightly loosened, so that I clatter around a bit like the tin woodman.

It's not altogether a bad thing, though, as I find that this morning I am a little less full of myself, and a little more attuned to the people around me, wondering about what kind of quiet pain they are hiding themselves, and how they deal with their own visits from the Black Thing. It is more prevalent than we think, though it surely wears different costumes when it visits our friends, neighbors and coworkers. Perhaps it's true that some knowledge of our own pain helps us empathize with others. I also try to view it philosophically, even spiritually, and to learn something from these visits. Rilke, I think, said something like "perhaps every black thing just secretly wants to be loved." And the Buddhists have a practice called 'feeding hungry ghosts," which involves acknowledging that our spectres do truly exist and must be recognized if they are to be overcome. If the Black Thing's come back to visit, it very likely means that I've not paid close enough attention recently.

Color Me Livid

2010-01-05T16:46:00.002-06:00

Here's one for the books:

On "Fox News Sunday," Hume — the former leader of Fox News' political reporting and host of "Special Report" who now serves as an analyst for the network — said that [Tiger] Woods' recovery "depends on his faith."

"The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith," Hume said. "He is said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. My message to Tiger would, 'Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world."

Holy crap, Batman. I'm not exactly sure you can call Tiger Woods a Buddhist, exactly, since as far as I know he simply professes to practice meditation. But to suggest that the religion that spawned Jimmy Swaggert, John Edwards, et al to be the one best suited to redeem moral sleaze....well, really folks. You can't be serious.

Seriously Brett. Buddhists aren't perfect people, but on a cosmic sinfulness scale, I would put my Buddhists against your Christians any old day of the week.

Book & a Movie for December

2009-12-23T16:04:00.003-06:00

In a pleasant surprise, I stumbled upon The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak.

Story of a young girl in Nazi Germany, so you might not think this is holiday reading, especially since the narrator is Death himself (now you know why I like it). But this is an exceedingly charming and heartwarming book that continued to surprise me in quiet ways right to the end.

Strongly recommended.

Last night we saw Clint Eastwood's movie about Nelson Mandela, Invictus. The theater was filled with slightly restless young adults who drifted in when Avatar was sold out, but to their credit they found themselves engrossed in a very good and uplifting film about one of this century's most remarkable men. Clint Eastwood has emerged as a true wonder himself, turning out a very good movie each and every year——something you never would have dreamed the Dirty Harry movie star would achieve.

Very fine movie.

(By the way, an extraordinarily good film, The Hurt Locker, has been rereleased into select theaters after getting lots of Golden Globe buzz. If you find it playing near you, see it.)

A Theory, part II

2009-12-23T13:19:00.002-06:00

A couple of posts ago, I argued (a little bombastically, I admit), that the central concern of life has has to do with those ineffable tastes of happiness and unhappiness that flavor our experiences. Understanding the maddeningly slippery nature of these qualities is really the driving motivation of our lives, I suggested. In our heart of hearts, every man and woman would like to undersstand happiness and unhappiness, and have some degree of competence at courting the one and escaping the other. Pretty much all other endeavors are slightly muddied or disguised forms of this central instinct.

And so this means, very simply, that a well-lived life becomes an honest study and appraisal of the causes of happiness and unhappiness, and testing out methods of cultivating the happy and weeding out the unhappy.

I'd submit that every religion, every spiritual practice, every cultural endeavor, all forms of science, can really be boiled down to this basic elemental wish: "I want happiness. I want to be free of unhappiness." Keeping this idea in the forefront seems essential to an understanding of self and others.

Home Again

2009-12-21T17:23:00.002-06:00

I've now recovered slightly, after the previous 24 hours have seen me on three separate flights enroute home from China. The flights themselves totaled 17 hours or so, but add another 3 hours trapped on the tarmac in a plane with two different mechanical problems, and it was not a pleasant day.

The day began at 4:00 am in Nanjng, China, where we left for the airport in the wee hours for a flight to Beijing. Not a big deal, except for the fact that I'd been struggling with the stomach disorder that plagues many visitors to China. The projectile vomiting had subsided, fortunately, but I was still dealing with (ahem) some disorder at the other end of the digestive tract, if you get my drift. I was finding it wise to be within ready reach of a toilet at all times. Mind you, a toilet in china is very often a squat affair, not the nice porcelain throne we normallythink of.

But no big deal. Planes have toilets. Chinese cab drivers are nothing if not blindingly fast. Off to the airport.

Safely into Beijing in a nice two hour flight that required only three trips to the toilet. Plenty of time for connecting flight to Beijing, and waiting lounge had a bathroom right next door. It was even a western style toilet. And it even featured toilet paper--not a common luxury in china.

The 12 hour flight from Beijing to San Francisco wasn't terrible, but it was 12 hours, after all, which is a hell of a long time to sit on a plane. I sat on the aisle, and the restroom was always at ready reach.

It was, however, an hour late getting into San Francisco, which meant we had to race frantically through the airport. Planes don't wait, even for planes for tourists with rebellious digestive systems. Because San Francisco was our port of entry back into the US, we had to clear customs, of course, and SF airport was an absolute zoo, with thousands and thousands of people, exaggerated by the fact that many east-coast bound travelers had had flights cancelled due to storms.

But really, not all that big a deal, so far. Though feeling extremely wan and pale, I was two thirds of the way home. We made the final flight, moments before the gate closed.

Then the plane pushed back from the gate. And we proceeded to sit on the tarmac for a full three hours while two different mechanical problems were addressed. Now, I normaly love to fly, but I have a peculiar claustrophobia when it comes to being confined in small spaces with lots of people. I can ride an elevator alone all day, but cram it with people and I have to count my breaths carefully on a long ride up a skyscraper. I don't have normal flyer's phobia, but rather a fear of being confined in crowds, and on a full plane, that time between the closing of an airplane's hatches and getting airborn is one that often sees me meditating quietly and struggling against panic. Once aloft, I have no problem, because I'm quite aware that if the damned thing crashes, it will break wide apart, and I'll surely be free of the crowd. Violent death doesn't trouble me at all, but God, spare me a crowded small space.

Our plane was crammed to the gills, and I found myself sitting in the very last row against the window--you know, the seat that won't even recline. And upon announcing that the plane wasn't moving for at least two hours, the crowd leaped to their feet to line up for the rest room.

And me, fighting a stupendous case Chairman Mao's revenge.

Well, no, I didn't soil myself in public, although in reality, it really wouldn't have mattered, because the plane had at least 12 infants aboard, at least 10 of which already had soiled diapers. Nobody would have spotted my transgression. After struggling with a bit of claustrophic panic for an hour or so, I found my way over the crowds and stood in the back galley area and nervously talked with the chief steward, who seemed to recognize my brand of claustrophobia. In a place where I could pace just a bit while eyeing the red emergency handle on the back escape hatch, I managed to get by okay.

To United Airline's credit, they did eventually get us back to a gate and allowed us off to use restrooms and eat, and it was a much cheerier crowd that got on board once the plane was fixed. I made it home fine, fell asleep for 20 hours, and now feel almost human.

Perhaps I'll next be able to describe a bit about China. For the moment, though, I'm simply to have survived the whole thing.

A Theory

2009-12-03T08:28:00.004-06:00

There is a rather simple model for understanding the human experience.

In our experience of the world and its phenomenon, there are are always two strains or flavors evident to us. Every "object" that enters the field of our awareness carries a kind of positive or negative magnetic charge that creates either a feeling of pleasantness in some degree, or a feeling of pain and unpleasantness in an opposite degree.

These positive and negative lenses, through which we perceive the world of the mind, pretty much inform everything we do, everything we aspire to. Virtually all of human behavior can be understood in terms of pursuing pleasantness and avoiding unpleasantness. At the end of the day, it is the basis of all science, all religion, all culture, all instinct.

In this, at least, Freud was correct when he suggested a pleasure principle as the driving motivation for human experience.

Pleasantness and unpleasantness——happiness and unhappiness---come in a thousand different degrees and flavors, and are described by thousands of different names. The experience of unpleasantness, for example, can be described as mildly as "restlessness," or as boldly as "loathing." Pleasantness can be simple "satisfaction," or as all-consuming as "bliss."

Close examination of our experience will reveal that every phenomenon born into our awareness carries some portion of a positive or negative emotional charge. The Buddhists will say that there is also feeling that is entirely neutral, but I'm not sure about this. It's true that some experiences don't really elicit much in the way of either longing or aversion, but looking closely at these moments it seems to me that the positive and negative are more or less balanced at these times——not missing altogether.

There is, I suppose, some scientific support for this, as modern physics describes negative and positive charges to the basic workings of matter & energy. Perhaps our subjective sensation of pleasantness and aversion is really nothing more than a manifestation of that truth of physics.

In any case, I think that when cavemen first recognized that faculty of awareness in themselves, it was the awareness of pleasantness vs. unpleasantness that was the primary mystery, and was probably more mysterious than life and death itself. The experience of pleasure and pain, after all, usually seems connected to our actions, at least in part, while life and death are largely outside our control altogether.

So I suggest that religion, science, culture, etc,, aren't about understanding the mystery of life, but rather the mystery of happiness and unhappiness.

All the mythologies of religion, for example, seem to me to be stories and characterizations revolving around the dance between positive and negative, happiness and unhappiness. To "God," we attribute the causes and origination of happiness, while "Evil" is the king of all that seems to be the source of unhappiness. This explains why evil is different for every person. In the experience of war, for example, nobody in the conflict ever cheerfully admits that they are serving the cause of evil. Evil always lurks in the other fellow, they guy who is compromising my happiness.

Religion is ultimately an effort to understand happiness and unhappiness, to court one and escape the other. Buddhism states this quite boldly as its intent; other religions dramatize it through elaborate mythologies.

Similarly, the working of science, government, art & culture, seems to be mostly driven by the mystery of happiness and unhappiness. Many governments, for example, use the idea of "the greatest good for the greatest number" as their driving principle. Science, at the end of the day, is about improving our health and comfort, and eliminating discomfort. Art seeks to articulate the drama of happiness and unhappiness, and ultimating to foster happiness through the creation of beauty.

Happiness and unhappiness exist nowhere but in our selves, our subjective experience. No outer physical event in the world is inherently good or bad. A terrible thunderstorm may be bad to a person caught out in the rain without any shelter, but it is good to the farmer longing for rain to quench his parched fields. It is entirely relative and subjective.

Good and bad, happy and unhappy are also slippery qualities. It's very common, for example, to pursue some activity that ostensibly seems to be happy-making, only to find that it's long-term effect is to create unhappiness. LIkewise, it's common for experiences of present unhappiness to prove to be long-term causes of greater happiness. So a well-lived life is very much about studying and evaluating the causes of genuine a happiness, nurturing those causes and weeding out the obstructions. It is a life of intelligent experimentation and observation. Hence, a man given to hedonism early in life may realize that a more genuine happiness comes about through a somewhat more ascetic approach to life.

Good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant, happy and unhappy exist only in the matrix of our awareness. If a phenomenon is extricated from the context of our awareness of it, it is entirely empty of such judgments. So it is the field of awareness itself where the science and study should be aimed. God is not in his heaven, nor the devil in Hell. Neither do they exist in other people. Only within.

Part II

2009-11-20T16:39:00.003-06:00

Okay, so if you're more or less on board with the premise of the previous post——that our species' angst arises because of the dissonance between what we want (permanence and stability) and the shifting, squirming impermanence that circumstances really offer——where does that leave us?

Assuming that a happy state is what we all seek, there are two conceivable solutions. One, we can attempt to create permanence and stability in our circumstances and in our identities. We can try to make the world fit our desires. Generally speaking, I think this is human solution of choice. We try to make become permanently healthy, to solidify our level of comfort in the world. Through career, or family, or good deeds, we try to give our name and reputation some permanence, even eternity. Hence, a wealthy man builds a law school and names it after himself; an artist seeks glory; an actor, a star on the hollywood walk of fame. Nations try to establish themselves as cultures for the ages. We try to convince ourselves that we are real, in other words.

These efforts can work for a little while--at least long enough for us momentarily convince ourselves that we're succeeding. We actually can change the world to our liking, at least for a little while. We can extend the average length of a healthy life. We can send men to the moon. We convince ourselves these are momentous, fabulous victories, signifying everything. We ignore the fact that to die at 90 rather than 70 is, at the end of the day, still to die. Most every human triumph, in the final measure, is slightly hollow, as the truth is never really escaped. I'm exaggerating this for effect, but you get the idea.

Eventually, the rug gets pulled away, and illness visits, poverty descends, or reputation becomes sullied. Waistline sags, the memory grows feeble, friends forget us. And through it all, we're constantly trying rebuilding the sand castle, trying to defend the illusion against the evidence.

This is the point where disillusionment can be an important gift. To become disillusioned, after all, means to be relieved of your illusions——to forfeit your false beliefs, in others words. It's not a terrible thing to wake up and see that a lot of our ambition is rather meaningless.

The danger, though, is that we'll swing to the opposite pole. If I can't make life constantly to my liking, we think, then it automatically means that life is shit. Nihilism can set it. There are people who travel in this direction, but never come to the point where there realize that nihilism is its own form of illusion.

Rather than seeking to remake the world to match our wishes, the second option, the one much less traveled, would be to work with the wishing itself, the illusion, and see if we can't bring it more into alignment with the ways things really are.

This, I would suggest, is the more revolutionary approach, and the one that perhaps has more real potential for creating a happy life. It is a life of letting to to things as they are, and it is quite alien to us. We really can't believe such a thing is possible, and dismiss the mere idea as lazy hogwash. We defend our right to hold on to delusion.

A bit of experiment, though, can begin to convince you that there's something to different approach. Perhaps our ability to truly and wholly "let go" can only happen for a sporadic few moments at a time before the need to control things again reasserts itself. Pay attention, though, and you may realize that those few moments of utter surrender to the world is as peaceful as anything you've known.

Some people with whom I talk to about such ideas will mutter that such a life would be nothing more than laziness. A life without the attempt to control the world is no life at all, they'd say.

In point of fact, though, a life of surrender very often will mean abandoning our inaction, and allowing oneself to act with unusual strength and power in accordance with the natural flow of things.

A tiny little glimpse of this approach can be experienced through a very simple meditation exercise once taught to me.

"As you pay attention to your breath, abandon the illusion that "you" are breathing. Instead, consider the possibility that the universe is breathing you."

Part 1

2009-11-20T08:58:00.005-06:00

I don't think it takes great powers of observation or enormous insight to conclude that the human animal exists in a kind of restless condition. There are some philosophers and nihilists who would describe the human condition as one of never-ending suffering, sorrow, or original sin. I don't know that I'd go quite that far; but if you practice mere observation, it does seem logical to conclude that our species is vaguely dissatisfied with its existence, and is almost always squirming and striving for something more. Spend a day looking around, and you will see that virtually everyone seems to be longing for things to be different. It is the reason behind most everything we do.

I have a theory about why this is so, and here it is: the reason we, as a species, are unhappy is that we're not entirely sure that we exist.

There is some classic philosophy behind this, which can be found in both the occident and orient. The argument is something like this: For something to truly, concretely exist, as a phenomenon it would be concrete, definite, tangible. Moreover, as some philosophers have tried to show through logic, something that truly "exists" would not materialize or dissolve, but would have stable, non-ending existence.

Since none of these qualities can possibly be applied to the concept we call "self," we exist in a kind of nervous worry about who and what we are....or even IF we are.

Consider the evidence. In almost every circumstance, who we are changes moment to moment. One moment I'm a husband, the next a father, now a friend, later a son to an aging father. A supervisor, an underling; an intellectual, a screaming sports fan. Even in the absence of other people and changing circumstances, the self I identify in my thoughts changes every few seconds.

Our emotional view of the world, which may define us more than almost anything else, is the most shifting experience of all. Blissfully content one moment, irritated the next. Happy as a clam today; on the wrong side of the bed tomorrow. Full of wisdom and common sense....30 seconds later forgetting where I put my eyeglasses.

25 years old one minute, a second later, I'm 53 years and counting.

The reality truly is that there is a new reality with every passing moment, and that nothing whatsoever is real in the sense of being concrete and stable. In the very moment that some phenomenon occurs, it is already vanishing. No wonder we're all a bit anguished about our place in the cosmos.

That's the real nature of things: flux, change, impermanence. Unhappiness, it seems to me, arises because we don't like the real nature of things, and we're constantly fighting against it. It's not much more complicated than that.

Don't Learn....Remember

2009-11-09T16:54:00.003-06:00

The grandfather sat back in his rocker and looked at his grandson. Not for the first time, he was again amused and also flattered that the young man continued to seek his opinion, even now that he was no longer a child. Highly unusual for young adults in these times, when most had little interest in the views of old people. His grandson, though, wasn't exactly a typical twenty-something, that's true.

"Okay then, one more bit of advice before I drive you to the airport," the old man said, then paused. "Don't strive to learn anything at all. Instead, allow yourself to remember."

The grandson merely raised his eyebrows.

"What I mean is this," the old man continued. "The truest wisdom will never feel to you like something added, like something you're learning new. More often, it will be something that was already evident to common sense. It will always feel like you're remembering what you've known all along." He stood up, checking his pockets for car keys. "That's how you know it's the real thing. Wisdom will feel like something remembered."

The Philosopher and the Monk....and a middle-age guy in Minneapolis

2009-11-03T09:41:00.003-06:00

On the bus ride home the other day, a woman across the aisle was reading a book with a great title——"The Philosopher & the Monk," and yesterday I picked up a copy of my own.

I've just started reading it, but can already heartily recommend it. The book is a dialogue between a French philosopher and his son——a one-time genetic biologist who gave up a promising career to follow Tibetan Buddhism. The book follows the Socratic method, in which questions and answer gradually divulge a fully developed philosophy for living.

These guys are considerably smarter and more talented than me, but for all of that, there is something in this story that echoes a bit of my own experience in the world. This father and son dialogue is strikingly similar to my inner dialogue over the years. At one time I was a pretty typical westerner, enamored of the power of science and rationality, without much at all in the way of religious sentiment. When I was a kid, I was pretty sure I wanted to be a scientist of some kind. As a young adult, though, I became greatly disenchanted with results of science and technology in human culture, and found myself drawn to various mystical disciplines, and Tibetan Buddhism particularly resonated with me.

Although I continue to read a lot of science to this day, I'm always struck that science only manages to shift the boundaries of the unknown, and never actually eliminates the unknown at all. And no matter how much scientific knowledge gets collected, it has never had much impact whatsoever on the overall experience of genuine human happiness. Nor has science done anything whatsoever to reduce the causes of human unhappiness. Cell phones are now used to detonate roadside bombs, which can hardly be called progress.

Spiritual study, on the other hand is in some ways the study of the subjective truth of human happiness and suffering, and as such strikes me as a discipline of critical importance. Personally, I gravitated to the Buddhist model for several key reasons: First, it is non-theistic discipline which has no need for dogma or superstition. In fact, Buddhism encourages you to trust the evidence of your own experience, and never to trust anything completely on faith.

I have also found the Buddhism offers a clarity and simplicity lacking in other traditions. It is a straight-ahead philosophy with little nuance to it. Most late-arrivals to Buddhism, in fact, are surprised when they discover that the principles mean exactly what they say, and that there is no need to read between the lines.

But it now begins to sound like I'm advocating, when all I meant to do was recommend a good book, which just happens to articulate the inner questions many westerners have about the role of spirituality in a modern society.

The Philosopher & the Monk, by Jean-Francois Revel and Matthieu Ricard.

Baby Boomer Shame

2009-10-29T09:01:00.004-05:00

My 24-year-old son emerged into the job market from college at a very bad time—in the heart of a very bad economic recession. He's one of those young people who have been unable to find work in his discipline of choice (Physics) and instead is working at a grocery store doing variety of duties. In some ways, he's quite lucky to have this, but I wish better for him, of course.

Occasionally I find myself a bit glum for his situation. This is no longer an era where every hardworking young person can find a good-paying job quickly. He's really not able to put much money away in the job he has now, and it may be a long, long while until he'll be able to join the middle class routine of home ownership, new car, etc. LIke all parents, I'd like the very best for my son, and his economic struggles are hard to watch.

But it also occurs to me that my perspective is colored by an expectation of affluence that is perhaps a bit unreasonable to begin with. The last 30 years of so has seen a period of pretty unprecedented wealth among white-collar Americans, and who is to say that this current slump is not a long-overdue reality check for our entire culture?

When I back away for a moment, I realize that my son's situation——struggle though it is——would be enviable to most of the world's population. He maintains his own apartment, albeit a small, very basic one. He keeps an aging car running well enough to get around town. He has a good circle of friends, a social life that include a bowling league, fantasy football. His job doesn't pay great, but it offers full benefits, and is enough for him to save a bit of money to go on a carefully planned week-long skiing vacation every January. His tight budget makes him choose between electronic amenities——he has a cell phone but no land line, and has decided that internet access is more important than cable TV. He has a pet dog to which he is extremely attached. He lives carefully, but you wouldn't describe him as poverty stricken. He is disciplined enough to live well within his means, and doesn't carry any credit debt whatsoever. No college loans, no credit card payments.

Overall, he gives every indication of being pretty darned happy. So why is it that I want for him to have a large home mortgage, a new car loan, and all the rest?

Among friends of my own vintage, I have few who have commented to me that the bad economy has caused them to re-evaluate what is genuinely important to them, and a couple have said that they have now found a new-found freedom in living simply and efficiently, and no longer particularly even long for the expensive luxuries they once regarded as automatic.

However, there are more of my contemporaries who seem to feel that affluence is their birthright, and they simply won't tolerate moderation.

We American baby-boomers were unbelievably lucky to have dropped onto the planet at the time we did. Perhaps its time we learned the reality that Gen X and Gen Y Americans, and the rest of the world, are taking in stride.

We could start by supporting health care reform that benefits the greater good. Everywhere I look, there are aging baby-boomers arguing against health care reform, because it might create slight friction against our expectations of getting everything we want, when we want it. I overheard an office mate on the phone the other day, cussing out a health clinic because they didn't want to provide H1N1 vaccinations to healthy folks until the at-risk children had been innoculated. The accusation was that perhaps these innoculations were going to uninsured people rather than those with health insurance. We're the ones who deserve it, was what my colleague was saying.

Makes me a bit ashamed of my generation. I can't help thinking that we're in this pickle because baby boomers have been snorting riches from the trough for far too long.

What Next, Teacher?

2009-10-25T16:44:00.004-05:00

Sunday mornings nearly always find my wife and me sitting on the living room floor reading the
Sunday papers. When we find something that especially offends our sensibilities, we'll read aloud some bit of absurdity. Often it involves politics, sometimes cultural trends.

This morning, the subject matter was James Arthur Ray, the self -proclaimed self-help guru whose Arizona sweatlodge recently killed 3 people, one of whom was a local woman from Minneapolis.

Ray practices something he calls "practical mysticism," and travels about the country giving free self-help lectures hook people into signing up for his paid retreats, which go for a cool $10,000 per week. James Arthur Ray's "credentials," according to the article my wife read aloud, was that he had read voraciously over his lifetime, on subjects including science, psychology, religion. "Huh," my wife said. "You read the same subjects, and I'll bet you know a hell of a lot more than he does. Maybe we should go into business...but wait a minute..you're an honest man, so I suppose that wouldn't work out, really."

All of which got me to thinking about the issue of spiritual guides, and how tricky it is to find somebody who is a legitimate teacher. It's relatively easy to spot the obvious frauds. You'd have be quite stupid not to see that L. Ron Hubbard was bogus, for example. And this James Arthur Ray appears to cut largely from the same mold. These guys are easy, because anytime somebody's primary goal is make money, it's obvious what's really going on. And a few of the legtimate teachers are pretty much beyond reproach. Doing a little reading about Thich Nat Hahn, or the Dalai Lama,for example, and you'll be hard pressed to find anything that dilutes your admiration.

But others a little trickier. The Indian mystic known as Osho, for example, has some legitmately deep writings, but when you look a bit closer, you learn that he was also famous for a fondness for Rolls Royces. The Hindu leader, the Mararishi who instructed the Beatles in the 1970s is another example of spiritualism corrupted by materialism. In modern times, I find myself puzzled by the case of Eckhart Toll, for example. When you listen to his taped lectures, there is most definitely something legitimate and sincere in the message. But the fact that his philosophy has become such an obvious money-making cottage industry means that I remain uneasy believing that he's the real deal. The novels of Paulo Coello are seriously interesting, but he too, seems to be mostly about making money and promoting himself.

Similarly, I don't quite know what to make of people who flock to "the secret" with its law-of- attraction philosophy. I have friends I respect who have been greatly reassured and helped by this movement, but when I listen to and read the material, I have an uncomfortable sensation that it's a variation of magical thinking, in which folks imagine that spirituality is about gimmicks to help you get what you want. True spirituality, it seems to me, has almost nothing to do with getting want you want, but rather about developing acceptance and joy with what you already have in any moment.

So what is the answer? For me, anyway, I suppose it's largely a matter of going back in time and studying some of the original thinkers, for whom history has already established some judgment of their sincerity. You cannot read Meister Eckhart, for example, and not know that this is mysticism of the first order. Even this is not foolproof, though, for upon close examination of one of my favorite Buddhist teachers, Chogham Trunpa, I learned that he died from advanced liver disease due to a lifetime of heavy drinking.

Maybe, at the end of the day, the real key is to court inner silence, and listen to no one but the inner voice deep inside us.

I think it's best not to do this in an Arizona sweatlodge, though.

Killing Me Softly with French Fries

2009-10-07T14:35:00.003-05:00

I'm very much like many middle-aged Americans. I don't have a lot of terribly bad habits, but I eat an occasional muffin for breakfast, have a burger sometimes, succumb to the chocolate-chip cookie every so often. Okay, maybe I do this a little more than "every so often." But I try to offset this by staying moderately active, eating a good volume of vegetables and fruits. I take my daily fish-oil capsule, a multivitamin. I don't smoke; I drink in very small amounts.

It hasn't been enough.

In the last year or so, I've been increasingly aware of what seemed like signs of the years encroaching. Energy level ebbing a bit; spare tire around the middle continuing to expand uncomfortably. My sleep hasn't been great, nor my mental focus. I was peeing, very, very often. Mind you, these weren't terrible problems, and I more or less just assigned them to the process of aging.

At my routine physical a few weeks ago, though, my doctor gave me a reason for this quiet malaise. Though my blood pressure and cholesterol and PSA numbers are within acceptable levels, my blood sugar is now becoming uncomfortably high. Although I technically have "prediabetes", if subsequent physical exams show the same rate of glucose increase, I would be two years or so away from having a formal diagnosis of diabetes.

A rather stern lecture from my doctor, as well as a fair amount of reading over the past few weeks, has sold me on the merits of radically changing my diet. At first, I ruefully felt that this diet pretty much cut out everything that might be at all tasty. I joked that I was allowed to eat all the spinach I wanted, plus three cashews each day.

But what my research, and my own experience, is now telling me, is that modern Americans are being quietly poisoned by food that is as deadly as it is tasty. The food corporations in America are not your friends.

We all might guess that sugar and fat are bad things for us, but as my doctor and other experts are telling me, the more insidious culprits are corn, potatoes, refined flour. These food substances are now present in so many food combinations, and are available for such ridiculously low prices, that they have come to dominate the modern American diet. Incredibly rich in starchy sugars, these substances alone are creating the blood-sugar emergency in America. The U.S. food industry has demonstrated true genius at combining food flavors in ways that make their product every bit as habit-forming as cocaine.

Stay away from white foods, I'm told, or foods containing these substances, and we very likely can avoid the epidemic of diet-related diabetes that threatens so many of us. And it's not only older Americans susceptible to this; young kids are showing up with this kind of diabetes at alarming rates.

So I began to eat nuts, vegetables, salads, certain "safe" fruits, lean meats almost exclusively. Whole oat cereals in moderation, an occasional low-carb cracker heavy in fiber, but no bread at at all. Non-sugar yogurt. Green tea, but no other caffeine. During the first week of this new diet I felt simply awful. Avoiding cookies, muffins, burgers, french fries was very, very hard, even though I hadn't seen myself as a glutton for these things. That's how powerful the hold is on these foods, engineered for "mouth-feel" and flavor combinations, and dissolving instantly in your mouth. For a week, it really did feel a lot like withdrawal from an illegal drug, with headaches, irritability, digestive distress. I began to pee even more often than before. "Holy hell," I thought. "If this is health, I'd rather be diseased."

But after a week or so of different eating, I suddenly began to feel much better. The monkey was climbing down off my back. Seven pounds evaporated from around my waist almost overnight. My energy level began to climb a bit, and my mental focus was better. The sluggish late-afternoon doldrums that I'd had come to view as inevitable faded away, and I found that I could focus adequately right up to closing time at the office. Most encouraging was the fact that my appetite became more manageable, even though I was eating less. The rollercoaster of blood sugar highs and lows was seemingly largely behind my sometimes ravenous appetite. While my fasting blood-sugar levels haven't yet diminished much, I feel considerably better and have a good likelihood or reversing my pre-diabetic condition, given a little time.

So there you have it...I'm the poster child for that coming epidemic of food-related diabetes we've all been reading about. It would be ludicrous for me to proclaim myself a victor over my eating urges. I've only been at it a few weeks, and I don't pretend to have such self-control that I can avoid every slice of pizza that winks at me. But what I have learned recently does help , as I've come to see delicious food offered so plentifully and so cheaply as something of an evil conspiracy against consumers.

For those of you interested, I can recommend a book and movie that will open your eyes to these issues. The movie is "Food, inc." The book is "The End of Overeating," a truly revelatory expose of how the food-engineering industry has successfully made legal addicts of many Americans.

This Week's Book Recommedation

2009-09-27T09:14:00.005-05:00

I'm most happy to heartily recommend Eric Weiner's book, "The Geography of Bliss," to all fellow travelers interested in the study of happiness.

A long-time foreign correspondent for NPR, Weiner's premise for the book is that he's grown weary of the the new-age approach to happiness--that it's holy grail to be found deep, deep within our selves--and decides instead to approach happiness as a place. He travels to various parts of the world where the populations rank high on the happiness scale (and a couple that rank very low) to see what he can learn about the condition of happiness.

The book reads like part travel writing, part depth psychology, part philosophy and part personal essay, and it is a wonderful read, front to back. It's sprinkled with juicy quotes from a variety of folks, and like all good books will give you dozens of additional books you want to read.

It's not too much of a surprise to find that Wiener, in his investigation of places, arrives at some qualities of happiness that actually speak to the soul. I kept a running list of some of the items he spots as elements of happiness in the various places he visits:

Tolerance
Work
Boredom
Chocolate
Nature
Choice
Attentiveness
Low Expectations
Relationships
Freedom of failure
Language
Love
Belief
Trust
Creativity

There are interesting observations on American culture to be had here. Nowhere else in the world, Weiner points out, are people so intent on having their way that they would find it necessary to have automobiles where driver and passenger are entitled to separate climate controls, or beds in which each partner gets to choose their own firmness level. Oddly enough, such freedom seems to make no one happy, and in fact interferes with genuine relationship, one of the keys to happiness.

Particularly interesting is the chapter on Iceland. Perhaps is because of my own Scandinavian background, but there seemed much to be learned from the example of this small country, where people are not only allowed to fail, but cherished for it.

Good book, highly recommended.

Not Your Ordinary Map Quest

2009-09-17T16:34:00.004-05:00

Late in the afternoon, several different trains of thought combined to create an amusing and odd diversion.

Today, I was considering the possible publication of a book that would require the use of GoogleEarth images. At the same time, I've recently been thinking about a short vacation to China in order to visit my daughter who is studying in Nanjing for the semester.

Studying GoogleEarth images while musing on the book, it occurred to me to wonder how an airplane flight to China would be routed from Minneapolis——would it go up over the polar region as the shortest distance between two points? Or would it go by the more expected route, to the west coast and then overseas?

So I typed in directions: Minneapolis to Nanjing.

What I got was wholly unexpected: Walking/driving directions to China, which you can follow along visually by clicking turn-by-turn buttons. Among the directions were several dozen traditional directions, but then in Seattle, the map tells you this:

"Kayak across Pacific Ocean. Go 3,879 miles."

This brings you to Hawaaii, where we "turn left at Kailima Dr. Go .5 mile."

And then:

"Kayak across Pacific Ocean. Go 2,756 miles."

At this point, the directions turn into Japanese, then Chinese characters. but clicking on the direction buttons produces a fascinating zoom in-zoom out journey from distant satellite views to street views, back and forth.

Don't really need to go to China anymore. Went there this afternoon.

By the way, if you haven't downloaded and played with Google Earth, you owe it to yourself.

Old Dogs, Old Tricks

2009-09-15T16:18:00.005-05:00

I spent the weekend in Washington DC with four old friends I've known since I was 12, 13 years old. We went to junior high and high school together, stood up for one another at our weddings to high school sweethearts, watched our children grow up, progressed in careers.

This particular DC gathering represents a large segment of the group with whom I have played a ceremonial Christmas-time game of Monopoly since 1972. For 37 years, I've grown older with these guys over Monopoly played on the very same board. In 1972 we were shaggy headed, bearded, and some of us stridently liberal. These were Monopoly games of a peculiar intensity. At times, the negotiating of real estate between rolls of the dice has been measured in hours.

Today, there is considerably less hair on some of us, but the beards persist on several, and these days we argue health care reform rather than US involvement in Vietnam. A bit more honest conservatism has crept in, although Obama has now snared even the single Republican among us.

Over the course of these three recent days in DC, I was struck by the fact that each one of us had changed, and yet we're still largely the same fellows we were as boys of 16. We have surely mellowed and refined a bit. It's as though time, like a wind, has carved us into unique shapes that still bear the imprint of the original. John is still by far the classiest among us, Jim is still the somewhat eccentric dreamer and musical whiz, Todd retains the common-sense bombast for which he was once famous. JD is family-guy personified, as well as sports expert without peer. If my pals were asked, I'd imagine they still see in me some of the same edgy introversion I always had. It did please me, though, to realize that we had all been improved favorably by time——in character, if not in waistline. We have all enjoyed success in career and especially in family. It is an unusual group of well educated and highly opinionated men, but as a group I saw that in middle age we have grown more tolerant and less arrogant than we were in the old days. At least that's what I felt about my friends; I'd like to think I've moved a little bit that way, too. I will admit, though, that a couple of times this weekend, sheer sentiment led me the thought that I'm not quite worthy of friends this fine.

What I have always loved about this group of guys is the quality of the conversation. In the old days, we would gather together each summer in the week before going back to college, holing up at a northern Minnesota fishing resort to drink copious amounts of beer and argue politics and religion until dawn each and every day. Today, we drink manhattans and Irish whiskey and Grey Goose vodka, but the quality of the conversation is, if anything, better than ever. On the metro subway back out of downtown at 2:00 am Saturday, the debate among five middle-aged gentlemen wearing ties and coats, over whether Huckleberry Finn and the musical Finnean's Rainbow had racist themes, was rather unique sight I imagine.

This is now, and always has been, a very competitive group of gentlemen. Over the weekend, we played several rounds of games on playing boards that are yellowed and faded, with pieces made of old-time wood, not modern plastic. While coming out on the short end of two game of Risk, the outcome was different in the game that truly matters.

I kicked ass in Monopoly.

I Wish There Was Another Explanation

2009-09-08T12:25:00.003-05:00

When I was in graduate school, one professor told me two rules that are essential to a genuine critique of how literary art works on an audience.

1. Repetition is always meaningful. The first time an image appears in a novel, it might be random. But when it appears again, it begs to be examined as a metaphor.

2. When an author chooses a particular detail, it's always valid to ask "why this, and not that?" In other words, every choice is made for some reason.

I find some of this valid to the current political atmosphere, and the conclusions I come to aren't happy ones.

Barrack Obama elicits a fearfulness that has never before been seen in politics, despite all the evidence that the man's nature is as genuinely hopeful as anyone ever seen in the office. When looking at the paranoid shrillness of the far right reaction to Obama's first year in office, the following questions come to mind.

1. Would anybody be worried about political indoctrination of children if John McCain had won the election and wanted to address school children on the first day of class? Did anyone worry about this when George Bush I or George Bush 2 did it? Why Barrack Obama and no one else?

2. Had Hillary Clinton won the democratic nomination, would anyone have worried about her native born status? Would any other candidate in the entire election have elicited this question? Why was this question asked of Obama only?

3. Would any other candidate winning the presidency have cause people to vehemently scream about "wanting their country back."? Why did the conservatives not holler this when Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter were elected?

Alas, there is really only one conclusion to draw, and it's not one I really want to accept, even of right wing nuts.

It's the fact that Obama has African ancestors that is behind every bit of this nonsense. Why does this fellow, and this fellow only, draw this kind of response? you must ask. And, why do these ridiculous concerns keep being repeated, again and again, even in the face of all evidence to the contrary?

What these folks really want——no mistake about it——is to have their white domination back. It's Obama's skin color that seems foreign to them——not his birth certificate.

Obama's birth certificate is indisputable, yet we keep hearing that he is alien. The President's speech to school children has nothing whatsoever political in it, yet even after it aired, the conservative blogs were filled with venom about his attempt to steal their children.

I'd love to hear a genuine argument that all this is based on politics rather than racism. I don't see how it can be done. When I hear Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Bachmann make their arguments, I'm genuinely embarrassed for their lack of self-awareness.

The KKK, at least, is honest about the nature of their hatred.

53, Going on 92

2009-08-30T13:55:00.008-05:00

With my wife attending the state fair today with a girlfriend (thanks be to God; I hate the fair), I drove down early to Cannon Falls, Minnesota and rode the valley bike trail. The paved trail runs 19 miles from Cannon Falls to Red Wing along the converted bed of the Chicago Northern railroad line. The Cannon River meanders between bluffs and over a couple of waterfalls on the way to the Mississippi River, and the railway bed/bike trail runs along side on the south bank of the river. In the old days, I occasionally hiked this rail bed, but a decade or so the railroad ties were removed and a paved bike trail laid. Most of the rail runs through hardwood forests, though there are a couple of stretches through open meadows. The summer has been cool here, and autumn is just about upon us. The sumac is starting to turn, and the wind is brisk, out of the north. I can see my breath in the air at the beginning of my ride.

Some days it is wild flowers that draw my attention, but today it was the birds. A partial list: brown thrasher; hairy woodpecker; catbird; wild turkey; gold finch; alder flycatcher; bald eagle; killdeer.

I'm really just starting to get my aging legs in bike shape, but suddenly I realized that I had passed mile post 15 , which meant that I had another 15 miles to get back to the car. At mile 24 on the way back, I stopped to rest, and was shortly joined by another lone biker, named older fellow named George, riding a casual cruiser much like mine. We are odd men out, because most everyone is riding much more stylish mountain-style bikes than ours. I'm pretty slow, but that's really fine by me. I long since got used to riding at a leisurely pace that actually lets me identify the birds I see.

George and I chatted for a few minutes, and he mentioned that he lived in Cannon Falls and rode out to milepost 7 almost every day on this trail. I felt just slightly self satisfied, mentioning that I had gone to milepost 15 that morning.

"Yes," George mused. "I used to occasionally go to Red Wing and back (a round trip of 38 miles), but that's a bit far for me these days. Once I turned 80, I began to find that 15 or 20 miles was plenty."

"80?" I said, quite shocked. "How old are you now, George?"

"I turned 92 in June," he replied, mounting his bike again. "Nice to meet you, young fellow."

I watched George ride away, and spent a few minutes finishing my sandwich, wondering if 40 years from now I'll still be in the mood for biking. I rode at a decent clip the six miles back to Cannon Falls, but it wasn't until the outskirts of town that I caught up to George.

I told myself that had I not already done 25 miles, I'd surely have caught him much sooner.

An Illusion of Perfection

2009-08-26T09:22:00.003-05:00

To casual passersby, my front lawn is an admirable feature.It has the apparent uniformity of a green felt surface on a billiards table. Some of the neighbors who know me well admire it because they know it is achieved largely without the benefit of chemicals or fertilizers. I never fertilize it, and only the dreaded crabgrass ever gets a treated with spot spray of a selective herbicide. Never, ever, does the entire lawn get broadcast with a layer of any chemical. The fact that it is so green and smooth puzzles the folks who can't acheive anything like it, no matter how much modern chemistry they bring to bear.

My secret is quite simply this. The lawn is horribly imperfect, by design. As any avid amateur landscaper knows, a lawn isn't a uniform culture, but is a hodgepodge of many different types of grasses, and also includes a fair percentage of non-grass species. Over the years, I've become quite familiar with my lawn. At various places, certain types of grass come to the forefront. In a spot in front, a large expanse of fine fescues prosper---my very favorite grass, fine to the touch and easy on the eyes. In other areas, hardy bluegrasses are dominant. In some areas of my back yard, very short bent-grasses dominate. While bentgrasses are very good on golf course greens, they aren't quite so fine for lawns, as they are rather hard to care for in the heat of summer. These small isolated colonies of single species are the exception rather than the rule, and they are in fact susceptible to tragedy.

Most places, though, you will see that the lawn is a mixture of things--bent grasses and blue grasses and fescues. And it isn't all desired grasses, by any means. Much of my seemingly perfect lawn is horribly imperfect. Small spots of wild violet can be seen many places, as well as creeping charley here and there. There are a few plantains scattered about, the occasional dandelion, some oxalis, a bit of chickweed. Overall, though, the effect of all this imperfection is a pretty perfect looking lawn. When weeds sometimes get dominant, I extract a few by hand, with a hand operated core plugger that both removes the weed and root, and also takes a core plug out of the ground which helps with aeration. I never, ever strive for a perfect lawn, though.

The lawn looks great exactly because it is diverse and imperfect. Years ago, I once tried to acheive one of those perfect golf course lawns, and I found that the effort to create singularity and uniformity was disastrous. I reseeded a large section with one very expensive grass seed, which failed miserably. Such attempts are also disastrous in the garden, as any gardner quickly learns that the healthiest garden is not one free of all pests and diseases, but one in which many, many different pests exist in small numbers that keep things in balance. Try to keep black spot fungus off roses entirely, and you open the door to devastation from aphids, for example.

In the backyard near the raspberry patch, there is now a patch of lawn where the fescue is dominating. It's very pretty for the moment, but I won't be at all displeased if a bit of creeping charley or a few violets join the party.

Similarly, time has taught me that my inner landscape is a happier and healthier place when a few weeds are accepted as part of the plan. A bit of sadnes occasionally, a sprout of temper once in a while, an occasional outbreak of pride---nothing to worry about really. Perfection, I think, isn't the goal at all, but the enemy of peace.

A Stormy Mood

2009-08-25T08:28:00.004-05:00

A bit of negativity has settled over me today. Actually, it's quite a bit of negativity. In the greater scheme of things, today is just the ebb portion of the overall ebb-and-flow cycle of life, but for today, anyway, I'm quite aware that it's the ebb with me today.

The outer atmosphere here in MInneapolis has been in this kind of cycle, too. Repeated bursts of stormy turbulence, broken by a day of beautiful sunshine and calm winds. This rhythm has been present for two weeks now. Physicists tell us that one of the dynamics of a thunderstorm is built-up negative electrical energy that suddenly gets discharged through the action of lightning striking the earth. It's a necessary action. Early this morning, another such storm passed through the city.

I became aware of the negativity about 2:00 am last night, when I awoke sensitive to a shift in the feel of the air——the return of an oppressive humidity after a short break of nice, dry air. It's been very damp here recently, and while gardening early in the evening, I was aware of a good deal of mould and fungus about. Mold is one of those things I'm allergic to, so it was no surprise that when I awoke, it was with eyes swollen partway shut and itchy skin and eyes. Allergy is another form of negativity. Like many common human ailments——asthma, psoriasis, arthritis, diseases like lupus—--an allergy arises when the human autoimmune system turns against itself in some way These ailments are negativity made physical, and they are a large part of the human experience.

This physical negativity crossed over into the emotional realm, and this morning I found myself nursing a mild but evident negativity and irritability toward people around me. My wife, who turned on the TV at 5:00 am to get a weather update; the bus driver who lurched around without consideration for his passengers; the young male passenger wearing his trousers down around his thighs, ghetto style; the woman who bumped me in the head with her umbrella; the car driver racing to beat the red light. I was quietly irritated with just about everyone this morning, and it occurred to me that emotional negativity, dark emotions, are really nothing more than a subtle manifestation of the same negative energy that sends thunderbolts from the heavens to the earth during periodic thunderstorms.

Nothing to fret about, I suppose. Storms this morning are what make clear skies possible in the afternoon.

Simple Energy

2009-08-24T14:12:00.004-05:00

Waking up in the morning, there is a simple decision to be made. Most days, we make this decision without even really recognizing that we're making it. If you court a habit of careful self-observation, though, you will perhaps come to recognize this decision you make each morning, each moment.

You can choose to live the day by applying the brakes. Or you can live your day in free-fall, going with the flow.

I suspect that this common decision process is a matter of energy, with a physics very much like magnetic energy. Either we react against things as they are——like magnets of the same polarity repulsing each other; or we're drawn into life, like magnets of opposite polarity pulling one toward one another.

It's easy to get in the habit of reluctance, of applying the brakes. Living this way, you feel a quiet protest against things as they are. You resist the mortality of the physical body as seen in everyday ache and pain. You're a little reluctant to get out of bed, to do things. In this mode, your knee-jerk response to the world is one of quiet negation, reluctance, ennui. My hunch is that this impulse arises as a rejection of that most formidable of truths—that we're mortal. In an attempt to deny that truth, we quietly deny life itself.

Normally, I think, this mode of reluctance is present from time to time in all of us, but within a context of give and take. Resistance one moment is replaced by attraction the next, and life is an orchestra of interplay between two energy strains. Fortunately, not many of us are mired in negation all the time. Most of us experience both.

Still, it seems to me that one mode or the other generally has the upper hand in most people. Many people live recessively overall, with reluctance toward the world as it is. This is, I think, the actual prevalent attitude of our culture, this quiet fear and reluctance toward life. Others, rarer individuals, have a happier, more risky approach, in which they meet most of life's idiosyncracies with interest and enthusiasm, moving forward rather than resisting life.

And I further believe that this isn't a matter of fate or innate personality, but rather that we can choose which club to belong to. The default is the recessive style, I think, as culturally it seems to be the status quo. Fear, after all, pretty much rules us these days, and because it's so common we don't realize it's a choice.

But although there is some leap of faith required, it is entirely possible to release the brakes and make the leap into the unknown land. I know a few people who h ave managed it, and others who experiment with it from time to time.

A teacher once described this moment to me in the following way: "It's like jumping from an airplane, only to realize that there is no ground to crush you when you fall. Not only that, but there never was any ground to start with."

Citizen of 4F, Aug. 19, 2009

2009-08-20T08:32:00.003-05:00

On the 4F bus into downtown Minneapolis today, the mood seemed strangely Mevillian to me.

One of Herman Melville's many strokes of genius was his ability to articulate mankind's struggle to behave in a universe where nature is often indifferent and even hostile to our wishes and preferences. That's the mood I felt on the bus this morning.

Yesterday, during a cool day-long gentle rain without thunder or lightning or wind of any kind, some upper level disturbance suddenly caused a small tornado to drop down through the cloud cover and tear up a small portion of south Minneapolis, about a mile from my home. In a retangular swatch roughly 2 blocks by 12 blocks in size, at least 100 trees were uprooted and flung onto cars and houses. Outside this area, there was literally no sign of wind damage of any kind, and the pattern of the debris tells the authorities that this was a freak tornado.

Fortunately, no one was hurt in any way, but we here in Minneapolis love our trees, and the sight of 100 destroyed elms, ashes, and lindens causes us much sorrow. All evening long, mournful sirens of emergency vehicles sounded in the near distance, as emergency workers tried to restore power and clear streets of debris.

This morning, the drizzle continues as the bus picks its way through the torn branches of south Minneapolis. The cloud cover starts barely 1,000 feet above us, and the tops of the downtown buildings are buried into ragged gray cotton. It's a somber day.

On the bus, Stephanie is having an off day. A stunningly pretty blonde woman in her early 30s, Stephanie normally is kind of a self-illuminating source of energy. Today, though, she's just plain off, and she knows it. Twice she checks her appearance in a hand mirror, and finally gives up in disgust. Pretty woman are probably more often the source of envy, but the burden to keep looking pretty is not something most of us really understand. A pretty girl having a bad day suffers more than usual.

A new passenger boards at the Super America filling station on 48th street. I'll call him Tom. He has just finished his morning grooming in the gas station restroom, and sips a small cup of cheap gas station coffee. No bus pass for him; the small change he drops into the till is real money to him. He tries hard to be cleaned and groomed, but he is very likely a member of the homeless community, and it's hard to stay presentable when you sleep on the ground several nights a week. His face has a haunted look to it that's hard to ignore.

I open the New York Times, and the first thing I see is an extended feature article about palliative care physicians——the folks who help people in the end stages of terminal disease, as they try to make that final transition with a minimum of indignity. The article has particular meaning for me, as a friend of ours is suffering from cancer that's invaded almost every part of her body, and what I'm reading is directly applicable to what she's going through.

It's a dark morning in every regard, and the only thing that brings me any optimism is the knowledge that nothing whatsoever ever stays the same for very long.

The weather report says the weekend will be a beautiful example of early fall weather.

So Have I Heard....Nine Parts

2009-08-19T08:10:00.007-05:00

"1. The genuinely happy person is a rare cat indeed. Whether you choose to call it "quiet desperation" or to describe it in other terms, the typical state for most people is, at minimum, a murmuring dissatisfaction with the human condition. Except for rare interludes, we typically want things to be different from what they are. How could happiness be remotely possible in this case?

"2. This quiet unhappiness and rejection of actual conditions—it's born out of mistaken assumptions about the nature of things, and especially mistakes about the nature of who we are. Unhappiness is wrong understanding. There are no other causes.

"3. Our dissatisfaction arises because we are separated and distant from our own experience. In our self-imposed exile, in our detached watchfulness, we are starved for absorbed connection to things as they really are. Rarely are we genuinely "in the flow." Instead, we watch and study and pass judgment.

"4. Our unhappiness is always self imposed. It comes from no other source. There is no "other" that causes our unhappiness.

"5. Evidence of the antidote is available to us. No man or woman is so morose that he or she hasn't glimpsed genuine contentment and happiness. Alas, it scares us and we'd rather not look closely at it.

"6. Happiness occurs when we are absorbed and fully invested in our own experience, without detachment and separation. Even bare examination of our moments of happiness tells us this.

"7. A leap of faith and trust is necessary for happiness, in which our self-imposed exile is surrendered. Fear must be risked. You must leap before you learn that you're already floating.

"8. There is no "self" standing behind and creating our experience of the world. Instead, "self" arises out of that experience, out of the phenomena of the world. Self does not create your experience. Self IS your experience.

"9. The "self" that is commonly described is a false self, and is the principle cause of unhappiness. True self is the full, fearless merging with our own experience. True self is realized when we "fully embrace all the joys and sorrow that life offers" (Joseph Campbell), and no longer watch from a distance."

(I said to myself, walking away, "Physician, heal thyself.")

You Think Healthcare Ain't Broke?

2009-08-16T20:08:00.004-05:00

During coffee break time, some folks at the office have been arguing that health care reform isn't necessary, that we have the best health system in the world, and that we really don't dare trust the government to guide health care reform.

These are folks who are all perfectly healthy.

Let me tell you a little story about our perfect health care system.

Five weeks ago a friend of ours, who religiously goes for health checkups twice a year, went to the doctor for a cough that had turned into pneumonia. She belongs to one of the major health care organizations in this area.

One thing lead to another, and within three days, she was told that she had cancer virtually everywhere in her body--bones, brain, liver, lungs.

"How could this happen?" she asked. "Three months ago you told me I was in pefect health."

The answer was, effectively, a shrug. "These things happen." This even while they acknowledged that such widespread cancer was almost certainly brewing for several years. However, some of the test that would reveal cancer are expensive, after all, and doctors receive bad marks from insurance companies if they ask for too many tests.

In the weeks since, she has undergone brain surgery to relieve pressure, but has been told not to really hope for a cure. The twenty-four-hour a day nursing care she requires will not be paid by her health insurance, unless she is first destitute. Nor can she go to a nursing home for care, unless she first liquidates every asset she owns. So she goes home, where friends and relatives care for as they can, until things get critical and she must go back to the hospital for IV treatments until she stabilizes enough to go home again. Mind you, the cost of hospital care is infinitely greater than it would be to have the nurse visit her at home, but this really isn't possible under her insurance plan.

Hospice care is an option, but again, this really isn't possible unless she surrenders completely and gives up all payment from her insurance company. Her health insurance offers nothing resembling hospice care.

So the "finest health system" in world failed to find cancer that had to have been developing for several years, even though they have done physical exams twice a year for decades. Then, the health system cannot really offer any help whatsoever to someone wishing to quietly fight their terminal disease at home.

We have the finest health care system in the world. Provided you are perfectly healthy.

Strange Bedfellows....Or Perhaps Not So Strange

2009-08-12T13:29:00.003-05:00

This is an interesting development. Certain conservative Republicans have recently begun using language that associates the Obama administration with Nazi philosophy. Their attempt, of course, was to use old loathing for Nazis to somehow gain support for their own opposition to Obama's efforts. Hence, a government that actually legislates in an effort to do what's best for all citizens is being portrayed as Nazi social control. Sara Palin created the preposterous myth of "death panels" precisely to try and paint liberals with a nazi paint brush.

This is surely ironic, because there has never in American history been such a clear demonstration of propaganda. Lie often enough, the right wing seems to think, and people will surely take it as truth. They're banking on the assumption that George Bush's strategies are still applicable. The old mantra "WMD, WMD, WMD," has now been replaced by "Obama is Hitler, Obama is Hitler."

I doubt that the Republican intent was to actually gather modern nazi sympathizers into their own fold, but that seems to be what's occurring. Suddenly, swastikas are sprouting up all over, and they are being used under the ruse of being demonstrations against health care reform. Who spraypaints swastikas on the office signs of liberal senators? Why, modern nazis, of course, who now have sponsors like Newt Gringrich.

With some glee, the folks who delight in Nazi symbolism have begun spray-painting hate messages in the context of fighting health-care reform. AFter all, it's not the folks holding civilized town hall meetings that behave like nazis, but those shouting them down right and left.

Neo nazis are coming out of the woodwork, having found their rightful place, at last, in the company of Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. You can see the skinhead relief, their joy, at finally being welcomed by a major political party. At some point soon, we're likely to see the Republicans begin to disavow their new allies. Perhaps Sara Palin, in moment of uncharacteristic insight, was sensing this perhaps when she backed away from her "death panel" metaphor.

Then again, the Republicans need all the help they can get. The modern nazi conservative may be a more significant voting block than we think.

We Have Met the Nuts...And They is RIGHT there.

2009-08-06T15:59:00.003-05:00

I used to think that crackpot-ism was a not ideological phenomenon—that there were just as many liberal crackpots as conservatives.

But an objective look at the current news is beginning to say otherwise. The silly nonsense——or outright lies——being spread around by conservatives regarding Barrack Obama's birth origin, and the conspiracy theories being spun about the dangers of the new health care proposals, have reached new levels of sheer idiocy.

It's not so much that there are crackpots out there shrieking this nonsense that is shocking. What's truly mind-boggling is that this extremist stuff is coming from folks who ought to be mainstream conservatives. YOu have Lou Dobbs on CNN giving credence to the folks concocting elaborate plots by Obama's mother to pave the way, 48 years ago, for her son to one day become president. YOu have members of congress (Michelle Bachmann, to be precise) spinning loony-tunes conspiracy theories over one-world-government use of US census information. Some of these pundits are convincing senior citizens that Barrack Obama wants to force them to commit suicide so that there will be more money to pay publicly for abortions.

This current batch is so unbalanced that Ann Coulter——Ann Coulter!——is now beginning to disavow them.

Used to be, these people lived on the fringe. Now, the fringe has moved to the right side of Mainstreet USA.

For those interested, some interesting and objective debunking of this stuff can be found on factcheck.org.

Zen & the Art of Rotten Mood

2009-08-06T10:24:00.000-05:00

A good friend called the other day, a bit discouraged because she'd been visited by a couple of days of Rotten Mood, after having enjoyed a month's worth of Good Vibration. Although she didn't say so directly, I had the feeling that she was interpreting the Rotten Mood as a bit of personal failure, as perhaps an indication that her recent good stretch had been canceled. The good stretch had made her feel like she'd turned the corner in some way, so the return of Rotten Mood perhaps hinted at some sort of failure on her part——perhaps an indictment that her recent life changes weren't as valid as she hoped.

This got me to thinking about the role of Rotten Mood in my own life. LIke most people, I am periodically visited by Rotten Mood myself, so here are some personal reflections on my own reactions to it.

First, I don't think it makes sense to simply blow off Rotten Mood as inconsequential or meaningless, tempting though it may be. Rotten Mood that repeats frequently, or comes and stays for a long period of time, is called clinical depression, and this isn't something you can pretend doesn't exist. Rotten Mood seems to me like a natural form of pain response. Just as the burn impulse causes you to recoil from a hot stove, Rotten Mood needs to be acknowledged as a subtle form of pain. It exists as a natural response to some previous conditions, and basic intelligence dictates that we pay attention and learn from it. Rotten Mood, for example, may exist because we have worked ourselves into a state of exhaustion, and we need to cut it out. Or, it may exist because our brain is starved for some kind of nutrient it needs. Sometimes a handful of peanuts or a bit of Prozac might be in order. Rotten mood sometimes visits me after I drink wheat-based beer, for example, which is a signal for me to stop ingesting allergens. On even more subtle levels, Rotten Mood may be the result of a mental delusion or wrong belief. I've known those causes, too. Rotten Mood, like everything, has its causes.

It's also true, though, that Rotten Mood is only that——a mood. It has no particular concrete or permanent reality, and its entry in the encyclopedia doesn't have a photo attached to it, because there is nothing to point to. In very many instances Rotten Mood simply needs to be accepted for a short while until it decomposes and becomes resurrected in some other form——such as bemusement or even Good Vibration. I've noticed a somewhat paradoxical thing: fighting Bad Mood often seems to prolong it, while bland acceptance causes it to get bored. I viewed Rotten Mood as my own tragic failure for many years, which seemed to encourage it to sleep next to my bed, longing to be recognized.Once I gave it its own space, Rotten Mood no longer yells in quite the same way, but is fairly willing to yawn and stretch occasionally and watch TV in the den.

I Stand Corrected

2009-08-04T08:02:00.004-05:00

A few years ago, the new federal courthouse building in towntown Minneapolis commissioned a renowned landscape architect, Martha Swartz, to create a public plaza between the courthouse and city hall.

It was a peculiar-looking thing, extremely avante guarde to my way of thinking. I pretty much hated it, as I prefer natural-looking landscapes, and this was one was strange, to say the least. The concrete plaza was interrupted with tear-drop shaped mounds of dirt and grass, placed at a steep pitch, arranged diagonally across the plaza. Concrete cast logs served as benches, with other wire mesh benches also placed in diagonal patterns. Crossing the plaza was an exercise in zig-zagging among the mounds of grass, the concrete logs, the benches.

The arrangment was in large part done this way as a hindrance to potential terrorist attack, as the plaza was rendered virtually impossible for a truck loaded with explosives to cross. No Oklahoma City potential here. This was partially the reason for my distain, since capitulation to this kind of paranoia always annoys me.

Some years later, this plaza is the place where I wait for my commuter bus home from the office, and it has become one of my favorite parts of the downtown landscape. By late afternoon, nearby buildings have blocked the sun, throwing a cool, comfortable shade across the plaza. The grassy knolls undulate gently in the wind, and the jack pines planted in them not only cast shade, but give the plaza a pleasant pine-needle aroma. Waiting for a bus here is among the most pleasant things imaginable, and I have been known to leave work early, or let the first bus line go through, simply in order to spend some extra time here.

Martha Swartz, I stand corrected. I've even looked up your web site, and in the future will visit other public landscapes you've designed.

Tastes Okay to Me

2009-07-30T14:45:00.003-05:00

As some of you who read these pages regularly know, my interest in things spiritual goes back to childhood, and I have for decades been seriously interested in the mystical edges of various spiritual traditions, from aboriginal shamanism to the writings of the Christian desert fathers.

Buddhism holds a particular resonance for me, in particular because its own form of mysticism is really not supernatural or magical at all, but genuinely metaphysical.

For many, many years, on the esoteric edges of Tibetan Buddhism, I occasionally bump into a concept that's sometimes referred to as "One Taste." (For those of you interested, it is in the Dzochgen and Mahamudra teachings where you usually run into this). Sometimes, the phrase used is "the yoga of one taste" or "the great perfection."

The concept can be maddeningly complex and subtle, but in the most general explanation 'One Taste' refers to a fully realized attitude toward human experience, in which the good, the bad, the ugly are all seen and accepted as the natural play of the mind. An adage sometimes used is "nirvanha, samsara (the hellish opposite of nirvahna)--no difference." In this particular school of practice, the follower not only understands, but virtually lives this slogan: "Form is none other than emptiness, emptiness none other than form."

Now, I'm normally far too egotistical and unevolved to really understand this concept, except in the most academic and intellectual of ways. Bad stuff happens, and I get obsessed and grumble and whine about it just like everybody else. Ever so rarely, though, something clicks within me and I actually get glimpses of a different way.

In the last few days, I have awakened to a throbbing headache, broken out in painful itchy allergic hives after eating something spicy, listened to an author bitterly complain about my company's lack of marketing skill, had my foot run over by a law-breaking motorist, moderated a disagreement between two cat-fighting employees, and had my wife impatiently snarl and snatch the television remote contol from my hand because I didn't change the channel quick enough to "So You Think YOu Can Dance."

My responses to these events haven't been all Buddhist and touchy-feely at all. "F@#@ You" has leaped from my lips several times over the last few days. I've become quite angry many times lately.

But the responses, while entirely human and normal, have also carried a fair amount of good humor with them. When I get angry, I get playfullly angry. The entire pageant has really just felt to me like the energy of the universe going about what it does quite naturally. None of is particularly good or bad, this or that. It's just the normal stuff of experience, a single form of experience just manifesting in various ways. And it's this simple faculty of experience——the knowing of stuff as it happens—— that lately I've found so mesmerizing and satisfying. The subjective goodness or badness, desireability or dislike of it, has seemed largely irrelevant——like television programming you can turn on or off at will. Interesting but not carrying any profound seriousness.

It's possible that this string of odd events has caused me to artificially go to an false "happy place." Perhaps the tension is building without me knowing it. Maybe walking home from the bus stop tonight, something will snap and I'll stomp on a small puppy.

At the moment, though, the good, bad and ugly of life all has the same flavor to me, and it's a pretty good taste. I'm sure to fall back asleep again shortly. But that's okay too.

Three Good Books

2009-07-29T13:58:00.003-05:00

It's not real often I can recommend three excellent books at the same time, so such an opportunity can't be ignored. It's entirely a coincidence that two of these books have strangely similar names.

1. The Year of Magical Thinking. It's always a treat when a world-class novelist turns to memoir, and this is no exception. This is Joan Didion's memoir of her year of adjustment after the sudden, unexpected death of her husband. Any effort to describe why this book is great would be woefully inadequate, so I'll simply say it should be must reading.

2. Magical Thinking. This collection of autobiographical essays by Augusten Burroughs, the author of Running with Scissors, is painstakingly crafted, and is by turns hysterically funny and shockingly honest. A great, great read.

3. Rain Gods. James Lee Burke's books could be relegated to the category of pulp fiction, given the subject matters. These are all crime mystery/thrillers. But he is one of the few such authors producing books that I reread periodically, because they cross over from popular fiction to true literature. With heroes and villains who are fascinatingly complex, there are Burke novels that I've read as many as four times——that's how interesting they are. The plots are unmistakably masculine and sometimes a bit raw, but this last novel is good enough to remind you of No Country for Old Men.

20, 25, 30, 35 and Counting

2009-07-28T09:24:00.004-05:00

Over the weekend, we attended our 35th reunion of our high school graduating class of 1974. Hard to believe, but true. I felt some trepidation about this, as like most people, I see a much different image in the mirror today than I did 35 years ago, and I wasn't particularly eager to read shock in other people's eyes when they realized who I was.

Naturally, my anticipation was far worse than the reality. All of us have changed, of course, but I was certainly no more shockingly transformed than other members of my class, and am probably a bit better preserved than the norm.

What was most interesting was the general tenor of the reunion. Like most of these gatherings, there was a general mood perceptible in the group at this one. At the 20th class reunion, I remember there being a good deal of energy and optimism, as we were all right in the heart of our career years, still believing that the best years were just about to arrive. It wasn't a particularly realistic mood, but it was invigorating.

By the 30th reunion we in our late 40s, and I remember that there was a prevailing mood of quiet disappointment and even cynicism. I remember talking with many people who quietly expressed that their jobs/marriages/parenting lives hadn't turned out quite the way they wanted. The dreams that had still been percolating 10 years earlier had now been dashed. Divorces had come for some; job layoffs for others; others just hadn't achieved the happiness they expected as their birthright.

So I didn't know quite what to expect at the 35th reunion. I feared that the mood might be even more negative than five years earlier. So it came as a welcome surprise to find that some level of optimism had returned to the group. There were a few people who still seemed mired in maintaining old illusions——the blonde class bombshell embarrassed herself by pouring herself into a black cocktail dress that is now much too tight; another class member still is seeking the big overnight success that is always just out of reach; another woman continues to complain to others about every negative thing in her life, just the way she did 35 years ago.

But for the most part, what I heard on Saturday night was a group of former classmates who have now put things in perspective. For the most part, we no longer are seeking more out of life, but have learned to take satisfaction in what we have. There are those among us who have enjoyed notable career success, but few people talk about it any more, and absolutely nobody brags about it. Everyone now understands how illusory those acheivements are. Instead, we talk about empty nest living, about our now-grown kids. A surprising number are speaking fondly of grandchildren. We laugh about the shared experience of being middle aged and developing arthritis, and shake our heads at the foibles of our children and the younger generation in general.

It was just fine. And I no longer worry about the year 2024, when the 50th reunion will come and we will hobble in at age 68. I'm looking forward to it, in fact.

Two Sides to the Same Train

2009-06-30T13:43:00.002-05:00

When you start riding this train, you feel as though the window shades are drawn tightly shut on this side of the railway car, the side you’re sitting on. Your only view is through the windows across the aisle. There, the scenery you see out the window is horrifying and fascinating all at the same time. It’s complicated scenery out those windows, where you see the people outside engaged in all kinds of confused things. As the train passes by, the people you see by the wayside are busy planning and plotting and worrying, and things aren’t ever exactly as they seem. The people you see out that window always seem to be distracted by other things as they go about their business. It is a very interesting landscape, but also quite exhausting. It is a little like watching a neverending Bosch painting, with all manner of horrifying and terrifying and interesting things going on there. There’s a lot of addiction and compulsion and habit to that life, and not much freedom.

You started riding this train, frankly, because you were just exhausted with that scenery out there. It is the scenery of your everyday life, and you boarded the train hoping to escape it. Perhaps you imagined that after a long, long train ride, you’d find scenery that was more peaceful and joyful. And so you start to ride, turning your head away from the open windows in renunciation of what you see there, the way you've lived up to now.

Pretty soon, though, as you learn how to relax and let go, you begin to see some new, unexpected scenery through the cracks around the window shades on this side of the train, the windows right at your elbow, and maybe soon the shades start to come up a little bit. Or maybe one after the other, a shade or two goes up fully, exposing new windows and entirely different scenery.

And you see that the scenery on this side of the train is much, much different. Much simpler, much cleaner. It was there all along, it wasn’t something you needed to travel long distances for. Maybe you see something like the scenery in parts of Italy, with the blue sea below you, small white sailboats sailing around; and across a azure bay, towering snow-capped mountains in the distance, white billowy clouds filling the sky.

The scenery on this side is much simpler, and when you pass by people in the landscape outside, you see that they don’t seem to be planning or plotting at all, but they are simply doing things. Doing simple things, and doing them simply, elegantly. No addiction, no compulsion, no dreary habit. It is a free landscape.

It is a clean, straightforward landscape, with no subterfuge, no horror. Everything is workable here, everything is pretty much as it looks. No mystery; things are what they are. Things are exactly what they appear to be, no more.

When you become aware that both kinds of scenery exist on the same train ride, there may actually be a point where you’re really not sure that you want the new, cleaner, simpler landscape. You may feel some nostalgia for the horrific Bosch, garden-of-earthly-delights way of living. After all, it is in some ways more interesting than the simple beautiful way of living. It is also more familiar to you, more comfortable in a strange way, so you may actually find yourself preferring the sorrowful life. The clean way of living can seem a little boring, if you’ve been obsessed with confusion for most of your life.

Careful examination will probably tell you which scenery you truly want, but there are people who glimpse the clean way and then reject it. That is their choice, though they may not even realize that they are making that choice.

The important thing is that you recognize that where you turn your gaze is a decision that you make, and that both scenes are present at all times. It’s not that you must travel thousands of miles and many years to see the new landscape. It’s simply a matter of raising the blinds and turning the direction of your head.

You will even come to realize that the beautiful scenery is to be found immediately out the window closest to you, on your side of the train, not across the aisle, and that it’s actually easier to see this than to crane your neck and peer out the opposite side at the ghastly scenery. Following the horrific way of living actually takes the greater effort.

This is one way of looking at the path you've chosen to travel.

Genetics Isn't a Choice

2009-06-26T16:44:00.002-05:00

My mother and I didn't have a great relationship, and I've worked relatively hard over the years to create space between her legacy and my own character. There was time that I bristled with resentment simply because somebody remarked that my wavy hair reminded them of my mother's. Emotionally volatile, occasionally abusive, and self-absorbed to the point of narcissism, my mother was a troubled personality any way you look at it. I've lived my life trying to be different from that example, though I was never so naive as to think I've escaped those genes entirely.

The ferocity of that insistence has lessened a bit as I grew older, but it's not gone away. I like to pretend that my own habits and personality are more like my father; to say I am like my mother always feels like something of an insult to me. Even now, 13 years after her death, this is true for me.

Yesterday, though, somebody I work with mentioned that one of the key to my modest success in this particular little corner of the business world is that I have a "big personality" that can hold its own amidst some very dominant personalities around me.

It startled me, at first, because I am first and foremost a shy fellow, and it surprises me when people see me as a forceful personality. But I was also startled because I recognized that there was some truth to this, and that this particular trait is one I owe to no one but my mother.

My father has always been, and always will be, a very unassuming and retiring personality. While he was quietly successful as a small town school teacher, it's not likely his character could have succeeded in the world of frequent business trips and meetings with corporate executives.

There are lots of ways I'm exactly like my father, and I'm thankful for them. But there are also lots of ways I'm like my mother, and after all this time, it's kind of silly to keep thinking this is a bad thing. What choice do I have, after all?

At 53 years of age, is this a sign that I'm growing up?

Big Brass Ones

2009-06-24T16:18:00.003-05:00

Okay, so once in awhile I play hooky for a day, turn off my cell phone, don't answer E-mails, and go to the woods to hike without telling anybody.

Once, I tacked on a couple of extra days to a business trip in order to go hike up to the base of the Matterhorn in Switzerland.

A few moments of pure alone time, when nobody knows where you are, or what you're doing, is a perfectly understandable guilty pleasure.

But today we learned that the governor of South Carolina——the frickin' governor——disappeared for several days, over the Father's Day weekend, of all times. He told staff members that he was going to hike the Appalacian Trail, but couldn't be reached under any circumstances. It is, we're told, fairly typical behavior for this governor.

We now know that the governor instead was vacationing in Argentina with his girlfriend. He tearfully admits the extramarital affair, and regrets the hurt he has caused his family.

What the hell gives with politicians? Spending their whole lives courting public attention, they still somehow imagine that they can get away with anonymous affairs, laisons with high priced call girls, or gay sex trysts in airport bathrooms.

I don't know which is worse....arrogance or stupidity.

Coping, Today

2009-06-24T07:52:00.006-05:00

I don't know if this says something about my own nature, or whether it's something more or less inherent in the modern western world we live in. But the truth is that I honestly cannot remember the last time I felt the contentment that goes with feeling that everything's done which needs to be done.

My work days end with dozens of in-progress tasks, all with very urgent deadlines, that aren't yet completed. On a given day, I've probably made progress toward completing some of them, but the moment one small duty is completed, two more have popped up to take its place. Contracts to negotiate, schedules to be approved, budgets to be created, initiatives to be launched.

At home, there are always garden beds to be weeded, siding to be patched, carpeting to be replaced, floors to be refinished, leaky faucets to be repaired, kids to be counseled, trip reservations to be made.

It can all be a little overwhelming and crazy-making, especially when I get seduced by the wish for an end to chaos.

So my method of coping is this: Rather than aiming for permanent Completion of Duties, I simply give myself a small moment of private recognition whenever I've done something that is helpful in any way. Days are generally full of these small opportunities, ranging from opening a locked door for an employee who needs access to a studio, to approving a check request, to making a decision for somebody who needs one, to answering a question from a consumer who calls with a problem. At home, pulling a single noxious weed is helpful, changing the bag on the vacuum cleaner is helpful, so I take note of that small act of helpfulness.

Generally, this means small celebrations of what I CAN do, and little time spent thinking about what I WISH I could do. Focusing on the process of life rather than a goal.

That's in my better moments. In more difficult ones, I still long for a perfection that is far beyond me.

Rueful Chuckle for Friday Afternoon

2009-06-05T16:19:00.002-05:00

I ran across this little postcard message tacked to the wall outside a colleague's office.

The caption is illegible in this photo captured on my phone, but this is what it says:

"As much as I try to be a
spread your wings and fly type....

I just can't stop
trying to burst people
into flames with my mind."

I started to laugh, then realized I wasn't sure if I was on the giving or taking end of this mood.

Never what it seems....

2009-05-29T13:19:00.004-05:00

In the above-street pedestrian skyway system of downtown Minneapolis over lunch today, I found myself following behind a young woman, whose appearance begged to be described as "sharp" in every scary sense of the word. I'm not sure if the word for this style is "punk" or "goth" or what, these days; but her hair, dyed jet black, was spiked in spear-shaped shards. Her lipstick and nail polish was glossy black, and rivets and nails and safety pins and railroad spikes seemed to pierce most every bit of exposed skin. The tattoos that covered her neck , upper back and arms were the stuff of horror films: dragon's fangs and barbed wire and thorns. Black leather and black denim comprised her wardrobe.

As she passed through one of the doorways over the skyway tunnel over 5th Street, her right hand balled into a fist and she punched the handicap button that opens the door automatically for disabled folks.

Aha, I thought to myself. Another spoiled young person, too damned lazy to even open a simple door for themselves.

But then I saw coming toward us a elderly pair riding single file in motorized scooters. Clearly husband and wife, they were almost certainly in their late 80s or 90s, and they now aimed their rides toward the door that had opened magically for their passage.

The scary girl didn't even acknowledge the old folks as she strode past them with hobnailed boots, but both the husband and wife each gave a small knowing smile as they rolled past toward the door she had kindly opened for them.

Reality is rarely exactly what we think it is.

Stop Smiling!

2009-05-27T12:08:00.002-05:00

In news of the absurd....

Four U.S. states have passed laws that forbid drivers from smiling while posing for drivers' license photos.

The apparent reasoning is that face recognition software has trouble identifying you in surveyance photos if your reference photo—typically your drivers' license photo—doesn't feature an utterly neutral expression.

The states of paranoia where you're not allowed to smile: Arkansas, Indiana, Nevada and Virginia.

A transportation representative in Pennsylvania notes, however, that "in Pennsylvania, people are allowed to smile."

An Old Man Rants

2009-05-22T11:19:00.003-05:00

Okay, so I'd like to not sound like a grumpy old man, but what's with kids these days? Does nobody teach them the basic manners of existing in the world? I'd very much like to collectively scold the parents who raised the current generation of young adults.

Very often it's on the bus that I observe this rotten behavior on the part of young adults, but sometimes it creeps over into the workplace itself. Cases in point:

• Last week, I found myself surrounding by young working people on the bus, each of whom was wearing ear-bud style headphones for their i-pods, but each of whom was playing the volume at such high levels that everybody around could hear the music clearly. What in the world this was like inside their heads is anybody's guess. Do these kids actually imagine that the rest of us need to hear their music, too?

• Next to the bus, a car driven by a young man pulls up. Windows are down, the better to boom out hurricane-level bass tones from huge speakers mounted inside his car. It is deafening to everyone one the street, even to passengers sequestered behind closed bus windows. WTF! If you want to blow your brains out with hip-hop music, could you not at least close the damned car windows?

• A frequent happening, on the bus and almost everywhere these days, is the young adult who thinks nothing at all about having a private cell phone conversation in crowded places, where the details are impossible for the rest of us to avoid. I'm hear to tell you that if you riding the 4F downtown bus, you just are not important enough to annoy the rest of us with your stupid phone calls. Save it until you get off the bus, already. Older folks seem to have some sense of decency about public phone calls——most of us turn off the phones when in crowded places, or we seek an out-of-the-way corner to have the conversation. No so with the youngsters. They are just too self-important to consider other people.

• And finally....today I arrived at the office to find a young female coworker painting her toenails a bright shade of scarlet....seated in the company lunch room.

Honestly, folks. Feral children raised by wolves have better manners than this crop.

A Mother of a Day, Apparently.

2009-05-14T16:22:00.002-05:00

The recent Mother's Day weekend wasn't all that good for somebody is very tall, living in downtown MInneapolis, it seems.

About 9 ft. above the sidewalk on the wall of the Red Dragon Polynesian Bar & Restaurant, somebody used a piece of limestone gravel to very neatly engrave a message in block letters. It is clearly visible to anybody riding on the west side of the 4F bus:

MOM
SUCKS

Citizens of 4F: May 12, 2009

2009-05-12T15:42:00.002-05:00

John doesn't ride the 4F northbound bus every day. When he does, though, he is always quietly memorable.

John never has correct change, and always goes through an elaborate routine of asking bus passengers for the exact change for the fare meter. Sometimes, he travels all the way to the back of the bus before finding change. This morning, I'm digging through my pockets, but John hits paydirt two seats ahead of me. This elaborate ritual is only one of several strategies for making sure John is noticed.

The most ironic strategy is his clothing. John wears Vietnam-era army camouflage clothing, trousers and a field jacket, over a leather motorcycle vest. Designed to keep the wearer hidden in the jungle, the clothing stands out like a beacon when you wear it on an inner city transit bus. John aims to be seen, pure and simple, and uses the accoutrements of hiddeness to do so.

John also wears a black ball-cap with "POW" printed on the bill. This morning, he noisily opened and examined a printed flyer announcing some local event for Vietnam veterans, just in case somebody on the bus misses the point.

I have some obvious skepticism about John's history. He is roughly my age, and I'm just a little too young to have served in Vietnam. It's very, very unlikely that somebody JOhn's age would have been a POW. I do have friends and acquaintances who served, though, and I have noticed that most of them go out of their way NOT to be recognized as Vietnam veterans. With lots of veterans, you can know them for a long time before they talk about these experiences with you.

The fact that John makes such a loud display of this, along with his somewhat young age, makes me wonder if it's a ruse, if he is simply seeking attention by dressing as a veteran from this ghastly American time.

This morning, John politely but very audibly asks some passengers near the front if they will vacate the handicap seats, since he is "a disabled veteran." They comply, although John's disability doesn't seem to be anything that is physically evident. It does create attention, though.

I'm not particularly offended by John's actions. His masquerade, if that's what it is, is a bit heart-wrenching, and I find myself interested in what desperation in John leads him to seek attention in this way. If it is a mental illness, it is a subtle one, as his general demeanor doesn't resemble the occasional schizophrenic you might see on a city bus. He really doesn't make a loud scene, ever. He just goes about making sure he is seen, at all times.

I have a theory that much of the general angst of human life occurs because we're quietly afraid that we don't really exist in the world. We seem to be constantly testing this out, checking in various ways to make sure we exist. At the very least, we're very definitely unsure of exactly HOW we do exist, and unsure of exactly who we are. Am I husband? Father? Friend? Boss? Seeker? Depends on circumstances, and on how I feel at any given moment. Rarely, though, am I the same person this moment that I'll be in the next.

So it seems to me that John is just a slightly extreme example of the same impulse that causes us to buy a car brand for what it says about us (subaru, or Humvee?), or to pick clothes because they make a statement about either our frugality or devotion to top quality. It's why we color our hair, and why we trim our beards in a certain way——because we're concerned about how we're seen and recognized in the world. We convince ourselves we exist because we see that we're seen by others.

I realize that this morning, I'm wearing my red Tibetan/buddhist ballcap. I thought it was because the eastern sun is awfully bright in the eyes when walking to the bus stop. But now I realize that I've been noticing other passengers looking at it when they walk by me on the bus.

And on some quiet level, that was the point. My cap is both practical, but is also a statement, and a mirror by which I know I exist. I have several caps, but chose this one for reasons of identity.

John and I are different only in technique and degree. In essence, we're brothers.

Yo. Anybody still there?

2009-05-11T15:18:00.003-05:00

Well.

Bless me Father, for I have strayed. It has been two months since my last blog....

For the better part of three years, I blogged more days than not, and yet I glanced up today and realized that more than two months have passed since I last wrote anything at all on these pages. I'm well aware that the nature of the blogosphere is that I'm now whispering into a silent canyon, and that it will take time to reestablish ties with my blog friends. So be it.

When I realized how much I missed blogging, and how long it's been, I started to write an excuse for why I've been absent. I started to lament about how busy I've been at work, how I needed a break to recharge the batteries, yadda, yadda, yadda.

This was horseshit.

The truth is that I stopped blogging because awhile back I received a couple of slightly hostile comments from some reader who apparently saw through my attempts at anonymity. Somebody who knows me. The comments weren't even all that mean-spirited, just quietly derisive. One, for example, spotted the fact that I had posted during the business day, and took me to task for the frivolity of blogging during salaried hours. I had a hunch that it might be one of my coworkers who had stumbled onto my anonymous world.

That's all it took to shut me up. Two quietly critical comments, and I went into cyber-hiding for two months.

This response on my part was just jam-packed with residual neurosis.

Although I've made big strides toward growth, the fact is that I'm still not all that good at dealing with criticism and hostility. I'd very much like to say that I'm spiritually mature enough to have equanimity in the face of criticism, but this would be another load of horseshit. Sometimes, rarely, I manage true equanimity and good nature, but just as often I react with hurt feelings by going into a very deep shy shell; or I respond with mean-spirited and vindictive words. In other words, I either withdraw very neurotically, or get aggressive in kind of acerbic, intellectual way. My words have hurt people on more than one occasion with severity that outmatched the original insult.

A teacher trying to help me with this character trait once suggested the following as a response to hostility and criticism.

"Accept the blame for everything bad that happens to you. It's much easier than trying to fight it."

I didn't know it at the time, but this attitude has quite a long history in certain corners of eastern spiritual traditions. In Tibetan Buddhism, for example, the Lojong practice includes the following slogan: "Drive all blames into one," which actually means exactly the same thing as the words of my teacher.

Although I think the literal slogan wants us to understand that bad things happening in this life may be the result of karma in a previous life, it also has some practical meaning for modern folks who don't buy the reincarnation thing for a moment.

In daily life, there is quite a lot of personal effort that goes into defending our territory, in trying to convince quiet enemies (and ourselves) that we're really, truly good guys.Accepting blame works because it simply frees us of all the energy that goes into defending our territory. Without territory, life is much simpler.

So if somebody berates you verbally (or on a blog page), the practice is just to accept that, on some level, we deserve it. If that's too difficult, maybe we can accept it as the fodder for our spiritual practice. At the very least, we can usually acknowledge that bad circumstances have come because of very specific causes, and since this is true, there's not much merit for moaning about life's lack of fairness. We may get cancer, for example, because genetically we have the predisposition for it, or because we have smoked, or because our environment is polluted. Bad things are the logical outcome of bad circumstances. We deserve them, in other words, not because of some kind of moral calculus, but simply because the world works with a kind of ruthless and utterly dependable logic.

The practice of accepting blame then begins to free you, as you come to realize that being subject to bad things, or being a flawed individual and getting criticized for it, isn't the end of the world. It's just the stuff of practice.

So for today, anyway....to anyone I've offended in this life or a past...

Sorry. It's quite certain I deserve any hostility or criticism you'd like to deliver, and a whole lot more besides. I'll try to do better next time, though, as I'm working on my heart of darkness.

Day in the Life

2009-03-05T09:16:00.004-06:00

I awoke in a bad mood today, and on the ride to work I looked at the mood with some diligence. I realized that a bad mood, at least for me, comes about when I begin to resist the world, to push back against it. My posture today is one of stiff-arming the world, or at least the people in it.

For tracking purposes, I keep pretty detailed logs of my daily work activities, and upon review this morning, I found that yesterday I received 67 E-mails (not counting those filtered out as spam), of which 37 required E-mail responses from me. I took 14 phone calls in person, called five people back to fulfill obligations from the previous day, and made notes to return calls for four messages that arrived when I was out of the office. Two authors called me to ask why I hadn't responded to their proposals for dreadful books.

There were four staff meetings of various types yesterday; my calendar for the week lists 19 total meetings for the week.

Sixteen different people sought me out informally yesterday, to answer questions, sign checks, make various decision major and minor. Three people felt the need to tattle on coworkers for a various transgressions. Some days, my job seems to be more about making decisions for other people rather than accomplishing anything real. This is one of those days when I'm reminded of Jean Paul Sartre, who I think may have been the one who remarked that "hell is other people."

No particular mystery to this bad mood. Spring is nearly here, and I am badly in need of a day of solitude in the garden.

Ordinary Life

2009-03-01T09:39:00.003-06:00

Life has been exceedingly ordinary lately, by which I mean it has been just fine. Utterly nothing in the way of excitement, but a good deal of satisfaction in the merely ordinary routines of life. When I was in my 20s, such a life would have struck me as boring. Back then, I was deeply attached to emotional excitement and drama, and created insecurity for myself as a means of entertainment. These days, I seek simplicity in all things, and have found that find territory is far more interesting than the world of adrenaline.

The economy is a bit nerve-wracking, and I wish economic times were better so that my son could be pursuing something other than the grocery-store job that lets him pay his basic expenses only. But we've been through such times before, and this recession will likely pass. He is getting by, which is more than many people can say, and will likely do just fine when times improve. My daughter is midway through her college education, which likely means she'll come out into the job market just about the time the economy improves.

I'm in the enviable position of having my health and my faculties, and a job that offers just enough challenges to be interesting without being overly stressful. My wife and I spend weekends cross-country skiing and taking in movies, and going to real estate open houses. Though we're not in the market to buy a house, years ago we routinely went to open houses as a low-cost form of Sunday entertainment. WE never lost the habit, even though we're not ready yet to downsize to a smaller home. There is something quite fascinating about going to real estate showings, especially about the little glimpse of a stranger's life you receive. Invariably, I glance at the books on the shelves to see what I conclude about the personality of the owner. This isn't entirely a voyeuristic habit. My career revolves around home improvement, and I study homes to see what kind of countertops are installed, what brand of appliances are most popular, what kind of styles the decor uses.

Not that there is anything certain about this life; nothing to be taken for granted. One of us could be diagnosed with cancer, or could find ourselves in a car wreck. Or I could lose my job. A fire could destroy the house. Any of a dozen different events could change life in a dramatic direction.

The uncertainty of it all is part of what makes this ordinary life so very precious. Making dinner while doing the dishes and watching CNN is delightful precisely because tomorrow it may not be possible.

This Sunday afternoon will see a two-hour cross-country ski session, followed by a visit to two or three homes on the Parade of Homes, which just opened here. Then we'll chop vegetables to make a home-made Mexican dinner, and settle in to watch that favorite show among middle-aged folks, The Amazing Race.

Life couldn't be better.

Bionic Americans

2009-02-14T11:31:00.002-06:00

Some friends were over for dinner and a movie the other night, and during the after dinner conversation, we found ourselves in agreement on one observation about our modern lives:

Growing older in America these days is largely a matter of exchanging our organic components for bionic equipment.

We're all relatively early in the phase of middle age, but it has started nonetheless. Everyone in the room wears corrective lenses of some kind. In my head are now four synthetic teeth--two gold crowns, two ceramic ones. As documented elsewhere on these pages, I also now wear a hearing aid in one ear--I'm the first among our immediate group to succumb to this symptom of decrepitude.

One member of the group is a breast cancer survivor and speaks fondly of her bionic boob. We're at that age where cancer seems less like a tragedy and more like an inevitable rite of passage, albeit a grueling one. Once a rarity among our peers, we know know dozens of folks living with cancer.

Even our food has become less organic and more mineral. I quietly supplement my diet with a handful of vitamins and minerals that make a distinct difference in how I feel. Such things would have seemed silly 20 years ago, when my body was a paragon of efficient metabolism. For less efficient older bodies, though, the only way to dump enough calcium into the bones is by taking pure calcium supplements. I have one friend who takes this to extremes, devouring 20 or 30 different supplements and vitamins each day.

It will only accelerate as we grow older. We'll add second hearing aids; somebody will eventually need a mechanical heart valve, or an internal insulin pump. Knee joints, hips, shoulder joints may eventually need to be replaced by bionic alternatives. This is no longer an aging process, but a swap meet.

I'm not complaining. The way I figure it, before long I'll be able to buy night-vision eye glasses, and hearing aids will be able to eavesdrop on other people's thoughts.

Tommy, Can You Hear Me?

2009-02-03T20:18:00.003-06:00

At what point, exactly, did I become a senior citizen?

Okay, that might be pushing it a little. I likely have at least a quarter century of life before grown-up diaper era begins. But still....

I'm in Baltimore this week meeting with a major manufacturer with whom my company has an ongoing licensing relationship. It's a relationship we've had for 20 years, and I visit here every couple of years to visit the brand managers and meet other licensing partners who also have partnerships with the mother corporation.

This manufacturer is one that keeps its marketing group very young in both chronological age and spirit. There are half a dozen of them that form the interface for all us partners. ONe of other brand partners from the west coast and I were ruefully wondering where this company puts employees when they turn 50....we sure can't see any around. The brand managers I worked with 20 years ago, although they're said to still be with the company, are nowhere to be seen anymore. Perhaps it's because they've been promoted to higher profile jobs. Maybe, but there is also the uncomfortable hunch that older workers are kept out of sight simply because....well, because they're old.

At dinner tonight with all 11 of the branding partners from around the globe, I realize that whereas yesterday (20 years ago) I was a young kid on the block, today has dawned and I'm now the fellow talking knowledgeably about what is like to have grown children. I find myself treated with the deference that young people offer their elders. Whoa, how did this happen?

I don't really FEEL all that much older, but the evidence is all around me. The corporate colleagues who I once drank with late into the night have now gone on to....other places. I don't really want to drink with these...youngsters.

I may well be the only person in the room who has clear memories of the day JFK was killed. The brand manager across the table vaguely remembers being in highschool when the space shuttle Challenger blew up on take off. He says this, outright. He says this the way our kids will mention the world trade center towers.

At the evening meal, I found myself again cocking my head and looking directly at folks as they speak around the dinner table. I have had this mannerism for a long time. This gives me the appearance of being whimsically interested in what everybody has to say, but the truth is that this is what allows me to follow conversations, what with my advancing deafness. Looking at people directly as they speak allows me the visual cues that comes with amateur lip-reading, and cocking my head, I find, creates a kind of stereo effect that clarifies speech for me in noisy places. If I can't see people's lips as they speak, I no longer understand them at all, and I wind up nodding and smiling, and hoping they haven't asked a question that requires a direct answer. When the mental effort becomes too great, I take a break and go to the lobby to check E-mails and text messages. I'm not that important, really, but it gives me an excuse to take a break from trying to hear.

In truth, this deafness is not a matter of age, really, though it has certainly become worse over time. I was only 15 when they identified some pronounced hearing deficits, but it is only now, with the financial obligations of raising kids just about done, that I can finally do something about it. Hearing aids are damn expensive. It just wasn't an option while I was paying for kid's braces, for college tuition. I have, I'm told, about 40% of normal hearing over much of the audio spectrum, so it is long overdue. It's also somewhat a matter of consideration for others, as I'm quite sure my work staff and family will greatly appreciate me being able to hear.

It does make me feel old, to be subscribing to assisted hearing. My dad was just eqipped with hearing aids recently, and he is 78. But my final session at the audiologist last week——the session where I actually got to wear hearing aids for the first time-- put a whole new light on the issue. I tried several different models in live action tests, and a couple of times found my eye welling up with emotion at what I was hearing.

It was a stunning revelation. I felt like a partially blind man suddenly given eye glasses. I had no idea the world sounded so nice, so crystalline. Nor did I know that simple conversations could be something other than a strain and a challenge. For decades now, virtually every conversation has been a source of tension, because it takes considerable mental effort and focus simply to understand. I have greatly preferred phone calls to in-person conversation, for example, because my phones have volumes controls that can be turned up to let me hear.

My new hardware arrives next Tuesday. Old I might be, but soon I'll hear again, in a manner I've not known since I was a teenager.

Morning, awake

2009-01-24T07:34:00.005-06:00

At any moment, there is present within us a clear, thin quality of bare awareness. No matter how deeply possessed by physical pain, there is still a quality that simply knows the pain. No matter how consumed by ecstatic pleasure, there is still a quality that simply knows the pleasure.

This quality has both the thinness of single microscopic thread, and the vastness of a whole cloth. It is both detached, and at the same time fully interested and present for all things. It has a pleasant coolness, but is at the same time comforting and warm.

Aware of pain and pleasure, it neither hurts nor thrills. Aware of both hatred and hunger, it neither yearns nor despises. Aware of basic physics, it neither pushes nor pulls. Aware of body, aware of thought, it belongs neither to the body nor to the psyche. Aware of the coming and going of all things, it isn't born, nor does it die.

A glimpse of this quality is very much like awakening well rested on cold Sunday morning long before dawn, when the senses are keen and you find yourself with a crystalline perception of the creaking of cold timbers, the throb of the furnace, the sounds of early morning birds and the newspaper delivery man crunching through the snow in the front yard. Nothing has changed, all the challenges and pains and pleasures of the world remain, but at this moment there is nothing whatsoever to be accomplished, nothing to be done but to lie still, rest there, and be aware of it all.

The spiritual life in the final measure isn't about some kind of muscular, mystical transformation. It is not an alchemical process but a geographic one. We don't transmute lead into gold, we just open our eyes to stoop and pick up the nugget. Hunger and hatred, passion and pain, birth and death remain: those are simple realities of physics. But they manifest within the landscape of awareness. We don't become aware or achieve it; we travel to it, we awaken to it, because it was there all along.

Citizens of 4F, January 16, 2009

2009-01-16T15:03:00.003-06:00

Another bitterly cold morning in Minneapolis, the third in a row. This one's 21 below zero. Across the bus, I see a young woman who is engaged in an elaborate toiletry ritual, applying her makeup with equipment drawn from her purse. This seems so odd to me on a cold, cold day when no one really cares what they look like, that I can't help but steal glances at her.

This isn't a simple touch-up of lipstick. She has a metal eyelash curler she uses to perform repeated surgery on her eyelashes, then goes through a very elaborate and complete ritual of mascara and eye liner and several applications of skin makeup, applied with careful caution while studying herself in a small hand mirror that is bouncing about with every movement of the bus. I am incredulous to see, as a finale, that she reaches up beneath her sweater to vigorously apply deodorant to her armpits. The entire process, curling eye lashes to treating the armpits, takes a full 20 minutes of bus ride.

Inside, I find myself slightly offended by this lack of respect for fellow passengers. I dislike that she has subjected us to this spectacle, one which most people would practice in the privacy of their own home. By all appearances, there is no developmental problem her that indicates the girl doesn't understand the social niceties. She seems to simply not particularly care that she is showing us this private activity.

My inner dislike of what I'm witnessing is something I recognize as unhappiness, although of a mild form. Examining the sensation, I realize that what make is making me unhappy is the personal disagreement I feel. I would like to negate what I'm seeing. I dislike it. I take issue with it. I'd like her to get off the bus, to leave this space. I don't want her to be.

Compounding this is the the fact that I also don't much like the fact that I'm quietly, arrogantly, judging this girl so harshly. My own judgmentalism is unpleasant to me, and this all by itself slightly increases my quiet unhappiness with the entire situation.

Then, though, I find myself becoming interested in the whole 'nowness' of the thing. I find myself curious about this girl—what must her inner world be like, for her to apply makeup and personal hygiene products in front of complete strangers on a crowded bus? Is her own workplace so oppressive and judgmental that she dare not venture in without being in full makeup? Is all this evidence of arrogance, or is it instead profound insecurity?

I"m also a little fascinated by the inner sensation of my own personal judgment, my own disagreement with the circumstances the world has presented me with today. The unhappy feeling is interesting, in some ways—it feels a bit like a negative electrical charge, or like magnets of similar poles thrusting against one another.

In the interest, in the curiosity and attention toward things as they are, I find that the rejection of things has now eased and is replaced by a more accepting feeling. And in the acceptance there is no longer unhappiness, but instead a feeling that can only be described as contentment and even a quiet happiness. It is faint, but none-the-less there. Unhappiness has given way to happiness.

This ebb and flow, this dance of happiness and unhappiness, is present virtually all the time, I realize.

Upon leaving the bus, a blast of cruel cold air feels for all the world like the burn of caustic lime.

This time, it's not so easy to find the acceptance.

Happiness Defined——and Briefly Explored

2009-01-08T07:57:00.004-06:00

Happiness is a lot like pornography.

It was a Supreme Court justice, I think, who famously observed during a high-court hearing that, while he didn't know exactly how to define pornography, he darned well knew it when it saw it.

Happiness strikes me much the same way. We all recognize the quality of happiness when it comes upon us, but pinpointing its definition, or arriving at a rational explanation of its causes, is maddeningly difficult.

But some kind of definition is necessary, and so I'll propose the following:

Happiness is our subjective and personal sense of peace, contentment and well-being.

And with that, we're off to the races.

*******

I was decidedly not happy yesterday morning when I awoke. My immediate mood was one of resentment and irritation. The first memory that came to me was of tearing apart the house the previous night in a vain effort to uncover the vast mouse civilization my wife was sure infested us (she'd seen a mouse scurrying across the basement earlier). And also quickly in my mind were the previous day's battles with several employees who have been stubbornly clinging to very poor work habits. Fully a dozen people had sought me out the previous day, either to complain about something or demand that I accommodate their needs with some action. The upcoming day promised much more of the same.

I very much wanted to be left alone yesterday, and was quite aware that this wasn't in the cards in any way, shape or form. Altogether, I found myself in a mood of pronounced irritability and resentment over the demands that other people were making on my time and attention.

The mood lasted a good part of the morning, and although the unhappiness I felt wasn't of a very pronounced level, it was most certainly there. I was not a happy fellow.

Yet as I looked closely at the mood and the unhappiness I believed was being caused by it, there was quite an obvious truth to be seen. The anger and irritability I was feeling did not inherently create the unhappiness. My unhappiness resulted largely because I felt an intense resistance, fear even, to the mood of irritation. It was resistance that made me unhappy, not the mood itself.

This is a bit of my own karmic legacy, I suppose. When I was a little person, angry people were dangerous and threatening to me, and as a result, to this day I have a very intense distaste for anger within myself. Quite frankly, my own capacity for anger frightens me, and I'll do almost anything to avoid it.

My morning unhappiness seemed to be largely the result of my inner war, my rather panicky need to deny my irritable mood of the morning. Unhappiness was the result of my judgment regarding reality, not so much reality itself.

As an experiment, I opened the gates to an inner pasture and released my irritable bad mood into the expanse of the pasture. I allowed it the freedom to roam. I stopped fighting it, in other words, and simply gave it some space. Gradually, as the morning wore on, I found that my unhappiness diminished greatly, and even the irritability itself began to relax and lay down in the pasture to sleep.

I don't know that I was necessarily happy by noon, but I surely was a great deal happier.

So for myself, anyway, I conclude that unhappiness on this day perhaps had less to do with actual conditions, and more to do with inner disagreement, inner conflict. Unhappiness seems to be largely the result of inner judgment and conflict, while happiness is fostered by self acceptance.

Happy, Happy 2009

2009-01-07T08:14:00.005-06:00

It's a new year, and as an experiment, I've decided to dedicate Mercurious 2009 entirely to one subject:

The study and pursuit of happiness.

No promises. I can't say that I'll define this elusive and maddening and mysterious human quality with any kind of certainty by the end of the year. I don't know that any of us will have a greater understanding of happiness when 2010 dawns. What I will commit to, though, is making sure that each and every blog is addressing some aspect of happiness—its definition, its pursuit, its absence, its manifestation, its achievement, etc.

Happiness is, I think, the single most important human pursuit there is, and I can't really think of anything that offers discussion fodder that is more productive or enjoyable.

See, we've already started.

Citizens of 4F, December 30, 2008

2008-12-30T08:08:00.004-06:00

Admittedly an amateur, I am nonetheless a devout and fascinated student of human behavior. Watch carefully on the 4F bus line, and you begin to see that much human behavior is governed by a quiet, low-grade fear—a vague uneasiness about our place in the world.

If you observe people when they are not interacting with others, when they are alone with their thoughts and unaware that they're being observed, they very rarely wear an expression you'd call happy. As I watch each passenger climb the front steps onto the early morning 4F bus into downtown, only one out of forty appears noticeably cheerful, and this individual's happiness comes because he knows the bus driver, who greets him warmly.

It's not that the people are by nature unhappy, for the expression you see on their faces doesn't reflect this, either. But by almost every objective measure, the faces you see show expressions of mild concern, vague worry, slight uneasiness. So much so that you can't help but begin to suspect that this quiet existential unrest is really the norm for people, the common denominator for human experience.

Upon boarding the bus, each individual's response is remarkably the same. They begin to scan the seats for a place to sit. This decision seems also to be made in response to a quiet fear and unease, for unless they spot a familiar, friendly face to join, virtually everybody selects a seat they intuitively feel to be safe. It is rarely the most convenient seat nearest the exit they take, but the one that their visual scan tells them that the neighbor will be least intrusive or threatening. Only on very rare occasions is actual physical safety the determining factor in choosing a seat. The Minneapolis bus routes during the daytime are remarkably safe. The danger people are trying to avoid is wholly psychological and perceptual. The threat we worry about is largely to our space, our personalities, not our physical person.

Most people prefer to take a seat where the neighbor is already absorbed in a book or magazine or I-pod music, since a passenger already involved in this way is less likely to intrude on us. People carefully avoid sitting next to someone who appears too chatty and cheerful, too likely to insist on conversing. Men boarding the bus will invariably chose an open seat next to a woman; some sort of primitive territorial imperative seems to be at work here. And women boarding the bus, too, will usually look long and hard for another woman to join. A lone man with an empty seat will be the last one to get a riding partner, especially if he isn't engaged in a book or newspaper.

I noticed quickly, and to some dismay, that the empty seat next to me seemed to be among the very last ones filled, and it worried me slightly that my person was somehow repulsive to my fellow passengers. Then it occured to me that the problem might be that I was too interested in them. I saw that people quickly looked away when they saw me watching them closely as they boarded. As an experiment, I started occupying myself with a book, or studying people secretly in the reflected glass rather than looking at them directly. I quickly found that I was less threatening then. Once I appeared to not be watching, my empty seat filled quite quickly. Other experiments followed. Taking off my heavy overcoat makes me less threatening. Sometimes I wear a ballcap with a Buddhist-influenced design on the front, and on these days I strike others as utterly innocuous; they will travel well into the back of the bus to take an empty seat next to an apparent Buddhist.

Sometimes in the morning, there will be a young man or two on the bus who chooses to sprawl insolently over two seats. Often, these are the young men who wear low-riding jeans around their hips, and puffy-down Starter jackets with the hoods drawn tightly over their faces. They project an air of intimidation and blustery machismo, and it seems to work, for few people will choose to encroach on these empty seats until it a full bus makes it necessary. When this happens, though, the real nature comes through, for when somebody finally sits down next to these surly young men, they cringe and cower toward the window, staring outdoors with their dark, fearful eyes. The false rage and posturing has been covering up deep fear all along.

Citizens of 4F, December 15, 2008

2008-12-16T08:42:00.005-06:00

Winter officially begins a week from now, but it was minus 11 degrees this morning on the predawn streets of Minneapolis, with a 12 mph wind out of the northwest.

I awoke early and well refreshed, so I set out on foot early, well before dawn, for a local coffeeshop near the bus stop. Dawns on very cold mornings are piercingly beautiful, and I had a hankering to see it this morning. Mysteriously, the temperature will often dip lower by a degree or two exactly at the break of dawn. I've never exactly understood why this is, but I've seen happen dozens of times, so I know that it is no myth.

It was still quite early when I got my coffee, so I decided to walk some more along the bus route toward downtown. Dawn broke as I marched along. I was dressed well for the weather—four layers from the waist up (turtleneck, sweater, insulted hooded sweatshirt, knee length car coat; two layers of wool socks; insulated long underwear under sturdy canvas trousers. So the morning didn't really feel cold, so long as I walked with moderate briskness to keep the blood flowing. I felt considerably warmer than the bus passengers standing at the bus stops waiting for their rides. Many wore long, puffy down coats with the hoods drawn tightly around the face to form tiny portholes. Only the white puff of visible breaths gave hints that these were organic humans and not robots.

I had to drink my coffee quickly. Within two minutes, all heat had been absorbed by the cold air, and a minute or two after that, the dregs in the bottom of the cup were icy.

In this kind of weather, standing motionless, it would take perhaps half an hour before I began to feel chilly, and in another hour or so, I might start to shiver, even under all these clothes. Moving, though, it is quite easy to walk almost indefinitely, and there have been days when I have walked the entire 6 mile distance to or from work in this kind of weather.

In a half century on the planet, there have only been two occasions when the Minnesota cold seriously threatened me. Both happened when I was a much younger man, when I somewhat foolishly found myself alone in the deep woods on bitterly cold days.

Once I was cross country skiing near my parents' home, and found myself in white-out conditions on a vast hilltop meadow, unable to see which direction I was supposed to go. I had skied so hard that the first layer of clothes next to my skin was soaked with sweat. The air temperature that day was minus 27 degrees, I later learned. I was fortunate to find a shelterbelt of trees, where I managed to build a fire and get warm before setting out for home. When I was young, I was at least wise enough to usually carry matches when I went out into the winter woods alone. When the wind died away briefly, I could determine the rough direction I was supposed to go. The house was less than a mile away, actually, but by the time I reached it, I was blinking away the layers of ice that were forming on the moisture on my eyeballs.

On another occasion, I was climbing a 400-foot bluff near my wife's parents' home on a bright, clear, minus 25 degree day, and by the time I got to the top, I was sweating heavily. The real danger in cold weather actually comes from overheating, because it is easy to break a sweat under heavy clothes, and once this happens, the winter seizes you with chill and hypothermia very swiftly. On this day, though, I was carrying camera equipment in a backpack, and used one of my lenses to focus the bright sunlight and kindle a fire in a pile of brush I assembled. Once warmed, it was relatively easy to hike the two miles back to the house.

But th, and today I would know enough not to overexert on dangerously cold days. And I'm not in the wilderness at all today, but on the civilized streets of Minneapolis. I walked no more than two miles before the morning grew late enough that I had to catch the 4F bus into downtown. The walk has offered just enough of a challenge to invigorate me.

Over the final four miles to the office, though, I counted through the bus window 13 bicycle commuters on their final approach to downtown. I feel a mixture of awe and ridicule when I see the bikers fighting treacherous black ice and deep snow in the winter. They dress like spacemen, virtually encased in plastic and fabric against the cold. One of my colleagues at the office is one of these bike commuters, and the only weather he doesn't brave is lightning storms. In all other conditions, he'll bike 11 miles each way between work and home.

Even though I'm a virtual lifelong Minnesotan, the heartiness of my fellow citizens still amazes me.

Season of Good Cheer?

2008-12-14T09:35:00.002-06:00

I know a handful of people who get giddy with delight in the holiday season, which now virtually stretches from Halloween to Presidents Day, it seems.

But really, the tiny group of folks who get all goofy with good cheer in the weeks leading up to Christmas, they are the exception that proves the rule.

It seems to me that there is far greater number that find the holidays to be taxing and exhausting, at best, and I dare say that fully half the population goes through some form of melancholy at this time of year, ranging from mild discouragement to clinical depression.

This year seems worse than ever. The Salvation Army--always serving as a Christmas reminder that lots of people are desperately poor--reports that donations in Minnesota are a full $1 million below target. Religious violence between Muslims and Hindus has erupted in India, at least giving us something other than Muslim/Christian war to worry about.

One of my editors is struggling with newly erupted grief over the loss of her mother, who died at this time last year. My son, an honorable and hardworking young man, is banging his head against an economy that is hiring no-one at the moment, trying to keep his optimism amidst a steady drizzle of "Sorry, we're not hiring" letters from employers.

My best friend is exhausted from a lifetime of caring for family members, a duty that gets even more weighty at the holidays. The only corporation that seems to be thriving is WalMart, which perhaps gives their leadership reason to chortle that using third-world child labor isn't as bad as everybody thought. My dad, a paragon of strength and health for the first 65 years of his life, has in recent years begun to fall apart mechanically, and last week underwent an extremely painful shoulder surgery.

These various forms of human suffering are always present, of course, but they become much more obvious at the holidays, because this is the time we feel such pressure to be of good cheer, to ignore various forms of suffering in favor of yule-tide good will.

So I don't know about you, but this year I've decided just to feel what I feel, and say the hell with al this false effort to put lipstick on an ugly pig. There is suffering in the world, lots of it, and it doesn't go away just because Hallmark runs a tear-jerking holiday television movie.

In my rebellion, I feel better already.

Citizens of 4F, December 5, 2008

2008-12-05T08:26:00.002-06:00

At 7:30 am each morning, Donna is waiting at, or near, the corner of Hennepin and Fifth Street in downtown Minneapolis. Usually she is right at the bus-stop itself, but sometimes I see her waiting on the nearby platform of the light-rail train that shares a stop at this intersection.

Donna isn't going anywhere, I think. She waits at the bus stop as part of her social routine, simply to watch the people come and go. I know this because I have occasionally run out from the office at 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning to run errands, and often Donna is still at the corner, watching the people.

I imagine that Donna must live right here in downtown, perhaps in the large subsidized housing apartment just up the street. She is too well groomed and well fed to be a homeless person, but her dress and demeanor also make it clear that she's not part of the morning workforce. She is too relaxed, too content for that.

Donna always wears khaki green clothes—pants, jacket, stocking hat. In warmer weather she will wear military-style green canvas shorts and a green camouflage t-shirt, but this time of year she's well bundled against the cold. Donna appears to be in her mid 50s or early 60s, with short salt-and-pepper hair that still is more black than gray. She is a very full-figured woman.

Donna is roughly 3 feet tall. Privately, I would say that she is a dwarf, though these days I'm never sure what the proper term is. It was "little person" for a time, but I'm told that that is regarded as insulting today.

It is, of course, Donna's short stature that has drawn my attention, and it's the reason I notice her each morning at the bus stop. It's also the reason why I'm so curious about her life story. Why does she come to the bus stop every morning? What does she do with the rest of her day? Does she have family? A job?

My fascination with Donna is, of course, a kind of bigotry, since I likely would not be interested in her at all—might not even notice her—if she looked like everyone else.

I read somewhere that this physical condition is growing steadily more rare as improvements in health care and prenatal care cause fewer and fewer little people to be born. I find myself imagining some kind of futuristic novel set at a time when the number of dwarfs has gradually dwindled.

The novel would be called "The Last Dwarf," and in it, the title character would be a vastly powerful, religious figure who commanded enormous control due to her one-of-a-kind status on the planet. Until the final pages, the reader would not know if the last dwarf was a figure of good or of evil.

Immediately, I'm ashamed that I've used Donna as fodder for my perverse imagination.

I"m not sure I'll be able to look her in the eye when I see her tomorrow morning.

Space Exploration

2008-12-03T09:57:00.003-06:00

This morning on the bus ride into downtown, a young man took the seat next to me. He was munching on a large, chocolate covered sweet-roll with one hand; in the other hand he was thumbing through a novel. Not just any novel, but a graphic comic-book novel with bright, violent colors. In his ears were audio earbuds, through which MP3 music was audible, even to my failing hearing. At one point, the young man even took a phone call, removing only one of the earbuds to talk, while continuing to eat and to read his comic book at the same time.

It was a voracious orgy of sense fulfillment, and I both admired the young man's ability to juggle so much data, and was worried for his mental well-being.

His was an extreme example, but in this young man I recognized a pretty common human urge. As a modern culture, if not as a species, we seem to be intent on filling up all available emptiness and space with sensory stuff. I cannot even use a public restroom these days without also reading advertising placed at eye level on the wall above the urinal.

Because we are so intent on filling up every empty moment, every blank space, with excitement and sensory input, we might logically conclude that humans have some inherent nervousness and fear regarding openness and space. We're told that a large percentage of Americans are now so uncomfortable with silence that they use television and radio as sleep aids. If modern humans don't hear the voice of God, it may well be because they've chosen to distract themselves with Muzak instead.

This speaks, I think, to a certain existential uneasiness we have about our own identity. It's the information flowing through our senses that gives us an illusion of concrete solidness, and we force-feed ourselves all this experience, all these sights, all these sounds, all these tastes, to reassure ourselves that we do actually exist. Our deepest fear, I think—the one underlying all the other forms of nervousness—is that we don't truly exist. If we keep the forms flowing fast enough, we can fool ourselves into thinking otherwise.

And so one of the very biggest moments in a spiritual practice comes when we finally run up against the inherent spaciousness of existence. This seems to be a necessary stage no matter what spiritual tradition you practice. Some Christian practices place a supreme value on "surrendering to God," which is a metaphor for recognizing the relative insubstantiality of our "selves". In the various eastern traditions I have studied, there comes a point when the practice inevitably discovers a certain kind of emptiness or hollowness that is quite jarring and disconcerting.

For example, ever one I know who has had a serious meditation practice speaks of coming to a time when the quiet, relaxed seeing-of-things-as-they-are reveals that things we once viewed as solid and concrete are in fact extremely fluid and ever-changing. It's certainly not all that hard to recognize that emotions, thoughts, beliefs, feelings don't have any material substance, and it's not all that long that you begin to recognize that even the things you regarded as physically solid, such as mountains and boulders, exist solidly only within a split second of time. Nothing is genuinely real in terms of permanent solidness; everything is in motion, at all times.

Lots of meditators will acknowledge that this is a point where they're forced to work through a time of despair or even depression. After all, we turned to spiritual pursuits in the first place in order to transcend the temporal, to discover something eternal. What we discover, instead, is that nothing eternal exists, whatsover. Form is the most fleeting of all things, and we begin to feel that we are being devoured, evaporated by this spaciousness we didn't really want to see. The very first intimations of this can be extraordinarily shocking. The rug gets pulled out from under you entirely, in a way that can feel quite devastating. Lots of people even talk about a physical feeling of vertigo, a sense that they are falling, when they glimpse the true spaciousness of things.

But then, if you begin to experiment at resting in the spaciousness, the fluidity, you begin to sense that it is within this spaciousness that genuine awareness, genuine freedom exists. You are falling, yes, but there really is no ground that is going to shatter you when you hit. You begin to have moments when you begin to appreciate the ocean, because you are no longer fighting waves. When spaciousness and fluidity are the matrix, all things become possible.

Ever so gradually, you learn that the antidote to pain isn't to grasp for the shore of a particular island, but to swim freely among all the islands.

Suffering is largely the process of trying to make things solid, when their inherent nature is spaciousness.

For Now, Anyway

2008-12-02T19:36:00.003-06:00

A recent change in my work life is greatly cutting into my available time for blogging, and also for checking up on your blogs, which is a far more serious crime. My job now involves direct supervision of 20 people, many of them remarkably immature personalities, and it is very rare that I'm able to put together more than 20 minutes to focus on a single task in between interruptions. Sometimes, days go by before I can get back to cyberworld and check up on what my friends are doing.

So life has become a bit more dense lately, but strangely, it hasn't particularly affected my level of happiness. What I'm aware of is a kind of controlled frenzy, but within it there never seems to be a lack of space or perspective. I feel a bit like a conductor orchestrating a large group of rowdy musicians. It's noisy, but all the notes are still defined by the space and silence surrounding them.

I'd like to think this hints at a certain spiritual maturity has been reached, but this could well be wishful thinking on my part, ego puffing itself up. I am aware, though, that in recent days I feel a good deal of comfort and trust in my instincts to respond appropriately to circumstances, even very difficult ones.

A phrase from a favorite teacher keeps popping up for me. "...(true practice) is realizing that space contains matter, that matter makes no demands on space and that space makes no demands on matter. Spirituality is a panoramic situation in which you can come and go freely and your relationship with the world is open. It is the ultimate non-violence."

For this moment, anyway, I get it.

Citizens of 4F, November 18, 2008

2008-11-18T11:20:00.004-06:00

As the bus pauses at the corner of Lyndale at 29th St. to board a sizable group of passengers, then to wait for a red light to change, I look down from my window on the right side and watch a man performing an odd ritual. Dressed in three layers of thread-bear flannel shirts against the 15-degree morning, the man takes three pieces of trash from the street refuse barrel, scribbles some secret note with a red pen, then drops them back in the barrel. First, a discarded package of Marlboro cigarettes; then a Starbucks coffee cup; then the cardboard sandwich container from Arby's. Three or four words on each item, then tossed back into the trash.

It would be easy to dismiss this action as belonging to a psychotic homeless street person—the man has a bit of the troubled disheveled appearance you see in such folks. It's possible the man is delusional and is writing sad and tortured messages to some imaginary friend or enemy. But except for his shabby clothing, the man is relatively clear of eye and doesn't have the other mannerisms you associate with the homeless mentally ill. So I find myself hoping that perhaps this is some kind of technique for communication among the rational homeless wandering the streets of the inner city. Without cell phones, perhaps leaving messages in trash cans is a viable means to tell your friends where you want to meet up later, or where a warm bed for the night might be found. Such a message would surely be safe from prying eyes, since the garbage sweep comes through in the wee morning hours and it's not likely others will be digging through trash to intercept these pieces of dialogue.

As the bus pulls away, the man tosses his last message into the trash can, and heads up the block for Lake Street, slinging a worn rucksack over his shoulder as he goes. I fight back the urge to jump off the bus and follow the man to learn more of his story.

This Is.....

2008-11-15T10:26:00.003-06:00

If my early morning mediation session is especially relaxed, my awareness of mind sometimes takes a shift, so that there is a more leisurely awareness of each phenomenon of mind as it arises. This is in sharp contract to the waterfall cacophany of thoughts and feelings that normally tumble one upon another at breakneck speed in my awareness.

An air vibration behind me enters awareness, and I can physically feel the oscillation of tiny membranes in my head.

This is hearing.

My feeling regarding this sensation is utterly neutral. It is neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but it does interest me, and my mind begins to form a rudimentary constellation around the sense object.

This is feeling. This is interest.

Instantly, and inextricably linked to the hearing and feeling, myriad associations move toward the new constellation. Memories join the bare object of hearing, and this leads to the recognition and name of this sound as "plane taking off from airport."

This is perception.

Perception continues, the constellation builds. From the sound I know the direction the plane is heading, and memory of maps tells me the likely destination is Detroit, or New York, or Boston. Mental images of these cities arise, and now there is a new sense object for the mind to constellate around. New feelings: Detroit--unpleasant. Boston--pleasant.

The perception doesn't fade until well after the initial sound object, the noise of the plane, has faded.

A skin sensation arises, along the back side of my body.

This is touching.

This time, an immediate feeling of pleasantness joins the constellation.

This is feeling: pleasant.

Perception arrives in the form of memory and language and naming.

This is perception; this is warmth.

In response to pleasant feeing, an energy of attraction arises. I want more warmth.

This is desire.

A new skin sensation arises, this one along the front of my body. This, too, is touch, but this time the constellation is a little different.

This is feeling. This is unpleasantness.

Perception tells me that this is "cold." An almost magnetic energy of repulsion, aversion now joins in.

This is aversion.

A subtle energetic shift takes place. I am aware of an intention to capture warmth, to escape cold.

This is intention.

Another energy is present, though, one that intends to study rather than react.

This is restraint.

I am now aware of two constellations around touch sensations: one dominated by pleasantness and warmth, the other by cold and aversion. Close examination, though, indicates that they do not occupy the same space; they aren't experienced at the same time, but oscillate back and forth so rapidly that there is the illusion of simutaneousness.

In truth, there is only one "this is" at a time.

The present constellations seem to grow tired of their existence all by themselves, and quietly die and fade away. Others various constellations replace them: Itching. Story-telling. Planning. Muscle aching. A fantasy. Smelling bacon.

None of them need to be avoided; none need to be captured.

Gradually during the course of the meditation, I become absorbed in the sheer knowing, the "this is" of every phenomenon that arises. For this time, anyway, I have no investment in things being different, and am nothing more than a student of what's arising.

This is delight. This is peace.

Occasionally, this fascination with the bare "this is" of experience follows me off the meditation cushion and informs the entire day. This is more common on leisurely weekend days, especially when bad weather enforces an indoor indolence, but even a work day may sometimes be treated with a steady fascination with things just as they are, whatever they are.

More and more these days, the fabric of a spiritual life seems to be just this simple.

"This is."

Citizens of 4F, November 13, 2008

2008-11-13T07:57:00.003-06:00

Here in MInneapolis, the start of winter really isn't timed by any kind of celestial solstice. At this latitude, the start of winter is marked by Halloween. Halloween weekend is when Daylight Savings Time ends, and on the first workday after the weekend, passengers riding home on the 4F bus at 5:00 in deep darkness, staring at skeletal trees already bare of leaves, understand full well that winter has fallen.

We've had a couple of minor temporary snow falls, but thus far winter is resembling a kind of very cold London pea soup fog. Some years, this phase may last into early December, although we do have years in which we begin shoveling major amounts of snow on Halloween, and are still chopping ice off of sidewalks on Earth Day, the first weekend in May.

The fact of winter is evident in the citizens of 4f. Minnesotans are, as a group, a fairly somber lot, perhaps because of the predominance of Scandinavian blood, and this becomes even more evident in the early days of winter, as we struggle a bit to accept the reality of it. The citizens of the commuter bus have pulled a bit further into themselves, a bit deeper into the books and newspapers and ipods they carry, and for a time now, the bus rides will be rather quiet as people get used to commuting in the middle of the night.

Soon, this will change as people begin to join into the comraderie of surviving winters together. Last year, one bus I was riding became mired in a snow drift alongside a curb once, and a large group of laughing passengers leaped from the vehicle to help push it to freedom. The nature of winter changes, too, by January. It may be bitterly cold in the heart of winter, but generally the skies are brilliantly clear and bright, and the sun pretty much scours the sourness out of any soul.

For now, though, we've pulled into ourselves a bit as we glumly contemplate a winter that's as appealing as a glass of muddy water.

MInneapolis has begun to weave some fancy new hybrid electric buses into their fleet. Along with the notable energy savings, these buses have state of the art electronics. An LED display gives time, weather conditions, and bus stop information to passengers who care to glance at the glowing banner near the ceiling at the front of the bus. High-tech defrosters on the side windows keep the glass clear for viewing, no matter how many moisture-breathing passengers are riding. A gentle recorded voice announces the various bus stops, in case you might be relaxing in contemplation with eyes closed. Best of all, the buses have variable lighting. My favorite driver, Frank, is something of an artist at using the lights. He brightens them to full fluorescent daylight only at the stops, to allow passengers to safely make their way to the exits, but otherwise he dims them a bit. They're still bright enough for the passengers who want to read, but dim enough that the rest of us can gain comfort by staring into the glowing storefronts, coffeeshops, and art galleries that line Lyndale Avenue in the unnaturally early twilight.

But not even this technology can mask the fact that we've now begun six months of winter. Each of us will need to make peace with it in our own way.

A Few Words Regarding "Suchness"

2008-11-11T18:45:00.003-06:00

For the vast majority of practicing Buddhists, the lifestyle is about practice--following common sense living patterns that are intended to remove the elements that hinder our ability to be happy, and to cultivate those that nurture happiness. We try to avoid hurting others, avoid bad habits, in order to be happier, and to help other people be happier.

The idea is that living in such a way will very gradually cause us to evolve out of the habit of suffering. For traditional Buddhists, it's believed that many lifetimes of such gradual evolution will eventually bring us to the brink of full awakening, or enlightenment.

In a relatively small corner of the Buddhist world, a somewhat mystical and esoteric corner, the focus is on View. The belief here is that one can come to enlightenment all at once, in this very lifetime, by opening one's mind suddenly to see the truth of how things are. Some forms of Zen practice fall into this corner, as do the Tantric Tibetan schools, such as Dzogchen. To become awakened here is said to be a matter of achieving permanent non-dual awareness, an awareness in which it is seen finally that observer (witness) and the observed phenomenon are not two, but are the same thing. It's here that you run into strange sayings, such as "Emptiness is Form; Form is Emptiness."

It is in this corner of Buddhism where you run into a term that is sometimes translated as "suchness," or "is-ness," or "thusness." I first ran across the term while reading Ken Wilber nearly 10 years ago now, but I didn't really begin to understand it at all until I began to study the Tibetan teachers from whom Wilber was borrowing his ideas. In particular, I would recommend Chogyam Trungpa, who elucidates these powerful ideas like no one else.

A vastly oversimplified explanation of "suchness" is that it is our state of mind when we flash to a genuine experience of non-dual awareness. At these moments, past and future cease to exist, and we are entirely within the absolute perfection of a moment. All striving is seen as pointless, since each moment is a perfect one. There is no goal to achieve; it was a delusion to have been pursuing a goal at all, since Buddha-nature is already ours. We are said to experience "one taste," in which observer not only merges with the observed, but understands that there was never any separation at all.

Trungpa describes these glimpses as "flashes," and points out that once experienced, the ongoing practice is to cultivate and stablize our ability to dwell within the flash of the awakened mind.

I had studied these ideas and contemplated them for quite a long time before I had the first such small flash of really understanding what these very smart people were talking about.

It occurred during a lecture I was attending at a local meditation center. That night, the teacher was elaborating on the nature of awareness, in particular talking about how to shift one's attention during a meditation sitting from the beginning object (in our case, the breath), gently onto the faculty of awareness. We talked for quite some time about this very important element of meditation practice: resting comfortably in bare awareness.

Then the teacher said "And it will be interesting to note that at no time is it possible to be aware of nothing. To be aware, is always to be aware of some thing, some phenomenon. Phenomenon, experience itself, is always connected to awareness. You cannot have awareness without an object. And vice versa, I suppose."

Flash.

There was a common sense truth here that I saw, so simple that I was stunned to have missed it for so long. Of course awareness occurs only with an object, and this implied a reflexive truth: that all objects, all phenomenon, include awareness within their fabric. In all things, awareness is included. It is inherent in all phenomenon. It could be no other way. It's only our mistaken view that prevents us from joining into this cosmic awareness. In one writer's words, "you no longer look up and admire the sky. You become the sky."

In the years since, I have had other flashes, and I suppose its fair to say that the experiences both awe me and terrify me a little. Unlike the Dzogchen masters of Tibet, I'll almost certainly fail to fully awaken in this lifetime.

In my own rare and fleeting glimpses of non-dual suchness , my experience is of a complete dissolution of boundaries between self and object. But unlike what occurs in madness, this dissolution carries with it not annhilation of self, as we commonly fear, but a vast and natural expansion of self into a kind of grand awareness that is implicit in all things.

The paradox of progress in this kind of practice is that it's really not about achieving anything at all, but about systematically surrendering all the things that obstruct our genuine awareness. First and foremost among these obstructions is the terrible defense of the small self, sometimes called ego. It is this defense that fills our normal everyday life, which is exactly why we imagine that awakening is a difficult feat rather than wonderfully simple. Pretty much everything we thought we knew turns out to be a delusion.

Even with pitifully small experience, I would warn you that this is very serious practice that requires much discipline and fearlessness. It most definitely should not be viewed as some kind of shortcut for people too impatient to practice moral living. Expert teachers will tell you that you have to pretty much surrender everything you've believed about yourself to practice in this kind of way. After 10 years of rather serious study, I know just enough to be careful.

No Expert, Me.

2008-11-10T20:12:00.005-06:00

Sometimes in these pages I am asked to speak as an authority on Buddhism. While I'm flattered at this, I also feel compelled to say quite honestly that I should not be regarded as any kind of expert. I am not a formal teacher of Buddhism, nor am I a veteran of lengthy meditation retreats that have given me the keys to the Absolute.

My practice is that of an amateur in every sense, and while it's true that I've avidly studied these subjects for a long time, it would be a mistake for anyone to see me as anything but a serious beginner.

While there are many various spiritual traditions that interest me, Buddhism has always held a special appeal for me. Partly this is because there is an intellectualism to Buddhist study that appeals to my need for cerebral exercise, and partly it's because Buddhism has a clean coolness and clarity that I find to be an enormous relief and antidote to the fiery emotional winds that once dominated my life.

But if pushed to really define why I see myself as a Buddhist, the reason can be summed up by one single experience.

About 15 years ago, one Saturday morning saw me shopping at a local indoor retail center in Minneapolis, a relatively avant guarde section of town known as Uptown. In one of the upstairs galleries at the shopping center, I came upon a pair of Tibetan Buddhist monks working on an elaborate geometric mural painted with colorful sands, known as a mandala. The exhibit was sponsored by some American-Tibet exchange program, and the room was sparsely decorated with a simple Tibetan alter with some small shrine objects, but it was extremely simple by most standards.

Mandala artwork is a well-known craft in Tibet. These large sand "paintings" are created on the floor, by artisans who sit cross-legged on the floor, applying the dyed sands to outlined patterns with tools that most closely resemble those pastry bags that bakers use to apply fancy frostings to wedding cakes. Sometimes the designs are purely geomentric; sometimes they resemble landscapes or other natural scenes. The artist sits cross legged, hold the nozzle of the bag where he or she wants the sand to fall, then gently taps on the metal tip so a fine layer of sand drifts down and covers the wood base. A variety of nozzles are used, depending on the relative coarseness or fineness of the design.

In can take days, weeks, or even months for a mandala to be completed, depending on its complexity. Ultimately, this is an exercise in understanding the temporary nature of existence, since the artwork is never preserved, but is soon cast to the winds or allowed to wash away in a river.

On this particular morning, the two young monks were nearing completion on the mandala; a small flyer announced that in a week, the mandala would carefully be carried down to the shores of Lake Calhoun and allowed to wash away. A number of observers came and went during the hour or so that I sat and watched the monks. Once, a man paused to ask me a question, a fact that puzzled me until I realized that the khaki trousers and Minnesota maroon sweatshirt I was wearing was very close to the saffron and gold robes the monks were wearing. I had by mistaken for some kind of tour guide or sponsor for the exhibit.

The work was painstaking, with the monks hunched over in a position that would have been agonizing for you or me. They were about three hours into a four-hour work session. Eventually, they'd be relieved by helpers.

Then a young family with two small children came into the gallery to watch, and something in me know that problems were brewing. The mandala could not have been any more delicate, and the boys were about 4 and 6 years of age. No genius was required to see what was coming.

The moment of disaster was both entirely innocent and quite dramatic. One of the young boys, as they sat off to the side to watch the monk, kicked off his boot---which sailed across the floor and smeared colored sands to all four corners of the compass, effectively ruining the portrait. Days worth of work were instantly ruined.

Now, I know that Buddhist monks were supposed to be patient and kind, but nothing prepared me for the response of these two young monks, perhaps 20, 25 years old. I would have supposed that even these fellows would have to wrestle with anguish and possibly impatience at seeing their work ruined. In my mind's eyes, I imagined that they'd struggle with a bit of anger, probably successfully fighting it back, then grinning and bearing it.

That's about the best I'd have hoped for for myself, on my very best day. But even though I was watching with utmost intensity, I saw not the least flicker of dismay in either of these young monks at seeing their hard work demolished in a moment. Instead, one of the monks simply asked for the boy's name, then lettered his name in finely scripted colored sands on the floor of the gallery using his bag of slendidly colored sands. The boy was at first startled at not being scolded in any way, then lit up like a Christmas tree when he saw his name emerge on the floor.

I watched the monks for another hour, long after the family left. When I finally stood up to leave, one of the monks stood, and bowed to me with a smile as I left. I wasn't asked for any contribution, wasn't handed flowers, didn't receive any literature asking me to join the club.

As I looked back through the storefront glass, the monks were already back at work, in intent and joyful concentration on a task they well knew was entirely ephemeral.

That day, I knew that I'd very much like to be like those monks. If not in this lifetime, then perhaps in another.

Concentration, Spiritually Speaking

2008-11-07T15:20:00.006-06:00

The subject of "concentration" gets a lot of attention in spiritual circles, particularly among Buddhists. Concentration is courted in a meditation practice is thought to be a trait of substantial benefit to progressing on a spiritual path. However, confusion often arises because the traditional western definition of concentration isn't quite the same thing as the Buddhist meaning of the term.

Modern westerners approach meditation with a gung-ho goal of achieving a fierce, single-pointed that involves a highly focussed, intellectual obsession with some object that has been selected for attention. While this kind of concentration, similar to what we used to cram for an exam in our school days, can be useful for beginning to quiet a mind that wanders wildly, it isn't exactly what genuine concentration is about.

Spiritual concentration is a more refined thing. It's is not about intellectual ferocity, but comes about when a mind exists in unity and connectedness to circumstances as they actually are at the moment. Concentration is absent whenever the mind finds itself alienated from real conditions, obsessed instead with goals and outcome.

Browbeating oneself into banishing all thoughts, sweatily focussing on the breath, or a mantra syllable, or a flame, or an mental image of a lotus flower, isn't the end goal at all. This rudimentary form of intellectual concentration is useful only as a bare starting point for beginning the process of quieting the mind. It should be dropped the moment we begin to glimpse the quiet awareness beneath, which is what we're actually seeking.

What we're seeking to join ourselves to during meditation is not an object at all, but the restful, wide awake quality of bare awareness itself. A concentrated mind isn't one that lacks thoughts, feelings and concepts. It's one that is awake, present to whatever phenomena are occurring.

In practical terms for the meditator, this kind of concentration will have a more subtle feel to it. When I reach it in my own sittings, it's sometimes accompanied by a physical sensation of first becoming microscopically small, then paradoxically large. This kind of concentration feels like a fine jeweler's hammer—much smaller and humbler than a sledge hammer, but capable of far more intricate and powerful work, in the end. It's this tool, after all, that can carve diamond.

To Meditate

2008-11-05T15:59:00.005-06:00

A colleague who learned that I meditate regularly asked me about it the other day. It turns out that some years ago she had struggled mightily to "get" meditation, and was rather wistful about the fact that she hadn't made it work for her. It was, she felt, a rather serious failure in her life. In listening to her words, it was obvious that she had been anticipating dramatic changes, had wanted them badly, and was disappointed with herself at failing with something she wanted so much.

I'm always somewhat matter-of-fact when describing what meditation can and will do for you. In truth, expecting dramatic, mystical results is one of the surest ways to hinder yourself in a mediation practice (or in any spiritual endeavor, for that matter), so I surely don't really play up this aspect of the practice.

One of the best definitions of meditation I ever heard came from a Tibetan Rinpoche, Chogam Trungpa, who said that mediation practice was really nothing more than "making friends with your own mind."

A similarly useful and reassuring definition came from a teacher of basic insight practice, who said that meditation was really nothing more than "experimenting with letting things be exactly as they are, with no pushing or pulling."

(The movement from "concentration" to "insight" meditation comes about naturally. At the point where you are truly letting go and letting things be as they are, insight arises automatically.)

Such definitions might quietly disappoint you, if you're looking for something more earth-shattering. It's not until you're well into practice, perhaps for many years, when you finally realize that these simple definitions have a quiet, earth-shattering quality after all.

When you start a meditation practice, it's essentially not much more than setting aside 30 or 40 minutes a few times a week, or perhaps each day, to just let the mind fall quiet, to see what might happen, to see what it feels like. It's not uncommon at first for this to feel like a slightly guilty pleasure, since the luxury of letting the mind go quiet is so very alien to us.

This is because our normal status for being in the world is one of incessant, never-ending willfulness. Virtually all our energy is spent in pulling or pushing against things as they are, in an effort to transform them into something that suits our liking. So to take a break, even for a few minutes, may seem like an utter waste of time, a luxury that delays our accomplishment of goals. I, for one, fiercely defended my willfulness, seeing it as the engine that allowed me to accomplish things in life.

Very gradually, though, as the mind begins to settle just a little, a quiet insight starts to take shape. There is another way of being in the world, and that is simply to act logically and naturally based on circumstances as they happen to be at any given moment. You begin to see that you can "be" in the world by just responding to things as they are. All the mental pushing and pulling --the desire and aversion–-have absolutely no impact on changing things. The experience of wanting or rejecting, in fact, are entirely unpleasant, when examined directly.

No amount of wanting will cause a dirty sink to miraculously become clean and neat.

Washing the dishes, however, does the trick.

"Hold on a second," you might say. "If you don't hate a dirty sink, or want a clean kitchen, then the place will never get cleaned." The common belief is that desire and aversion are the fuel that makes the engine of accomplishment turn.

But I'd suggest to you that this isn't so. A decision to wash the dishes can well arise simply because the kitchen is chaotic, and the natural thing to do with chaos is to create order. Wanting and hating are symptoms of having failed to act intelligently, not a fuel that causes us to act.

Willfulness-- pushing and pulling, desire and aversion--need not enter into the equation. Without willfulness, the world begins to act through you, and you begin to have a sense of experiencing things as they are, not as an affront to the way you'd like them to be.

In the early days (perhaps the early months, or years) of a meditation practice, the meditation session itself is a novelty, is something far different than the way you lead your life off the mat. Gradually, though, you find that the outlook you have while meditating begins to carry over into the rest of your life. Eventually, you start to live a meditative life, and everything that happens becomes a part of your on-going practice. "Hmm," you think when your tire blows out on the freeway. "How interesting the way my heart pounds during fear," even while you matter-of-factly slow the car with precision and pull safely over to the shoulder, rather than panicking.

So what I told my colleague was this, as she expressed her disappointment in herself over her expectations for meditation. "The feeling of disappointment....Are you experiencing it? Right now?"

She paused for a moment, then nodded.

"That's mediation," I said.

Thoughts on Emptiness

2008-10-16T11:00:00.003-05:00

The Buddhist practice as it has evolved for me more closely resembles a practical science than it does a religious practice. Meditation is nothing more than a technique for becoming familiar with the activities of our mind and studying it. Everything else——all the highly touted spiritual goodies— simply flow from that common-sense observation.

What I invariably notice is that very precise, close observation of almost any subject always has the effect of eliminating the subject's solidity. Study a piece of marble and you begin to see the veins of ocean sediments, even the individual grains of sand—not a big solid chunk stone. Meditation, like any form of observation, introduces space into any object. And in the case of mind-study, it introduces space into thoughts, emotions, concepts——all the stuff that we sometimes treat as though they have material concreteness.

Some years ago, after I'd already studied meditation for a few years, there came a quiet little breakthrough. On the cushion one day, I was looking at some very old, very ingrained hostility toward a family member that had arisen in me. It was a very common thing for me in those days. I was looking at this hostility very closely, studying all its nuances—when the thought suddenly came to me:

"This is only a feeling. It has no weight, no physical body, no substance of any kind. This feeling is present only in this moment, and only in my mind. It can't be photographed or recorded in any way. It is not real, but only an odd mental activity."

The "solid thing" was a story I had been telling myself. Over and over.

And instantly, the decades-old resentment I'd been nursing was seen as a rather bad plot in a soap opera. It wasn't real in any truly identifiable way, other than as a weird little constellation of enzymes and hormones and brain chemicals that had strangely come together for a moment. And I felt, for perhaps the first time, that my emotions didn't own me, nor I them, but that they were just phenomena with their own cycle of life.

That day didn't mark an absolute turning point. I still have times when I'm gripped by worries and irritations and fears—times when I treat them as though they're my possessions. But with increasing regularity, as I get more astute at studying these mind activities, I see them as little more than stories that my mind habitually tells itself. Deep seeing reveals this to be true about virtually everything —everything—that troubles me: it always turns out to be nothing more than a temporary construction of mind. Not real in any kind of demonstrable way, less concrete than water vapour.

This, I've come to realize, is one way of looking at the Buddhist concept of emptiness. When you look at anything closely, you realize that it has no permanent, concrete substance at all, but is merely a snapshot of energy in time. All things arise, all things pass away, and the illusion of stability and permanent realness is just a story we tell ourselves.

Even a chunk of marble is really just a collection of recently bonded sand particles on its way to becoming sand again sometime in the future.

Initially, I found myself a little saddened by this recognition, because something in me really wanted some things to be permanent. Gradually, though, I'm recognizing that it's the clinging to permanence that causes much of the sadness and pain. Turn loose, go with the emptiness, and illusion begins to fall away and a pretty delicious freedom begins to cook.

Friday in the Countryside

2008-10-13T09:53:00.010-05:00

I'm a country boy who is now perfectly at home in the city, but one drawback of the city is that it encourages you to dwell mostly in your head. By the end of last week, I was checking my 401K balances twice a day, and was fuming about lies being spoken by political candidates. Then I suddenly awoke and realized that I had been deluded into believing that the stock market was a real thing rather than a useful fiction created by greedy people, that politics is meaningful, and I knew it was time to hit the country.

Minnesota is a fabulous place, because you are never more than a few minutes from genuine, unspoiled countyside. State Parks, National Forests and Parks, State Wildlife preserves abound in these parts —there are more than 200 in Minnesota. I live in the heart of Minneapolis, but six miles from my house is Fort Snelling State Park, where there are 20 miles of trails meandering along the Minnesota River Valley flood plain. Even in the middle of the city, you can sometimes see whitetail deer, coyotes, fox, and wild turkey.

But when I played hooky from work on Friday, it was William O'Brien State Park that was my destination. O'Brien is located about 30 miles northwest of MInneapolis, on the river bluffs of the St. Croix river that forms the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin. This part of Minnesota is unique, in that it is one of the few areas of the Midwest that were not scoured by glaciers during the last ice age. As a result, it is filled with limestone bluffs of prehistoric vintage. Driving through this part of Minnesota, you are reminded of the segments of France where neanderthals created the famous cave paintings—that's how old the landscape is.

It's a little-known secret that appreciating natural landscapes is best done on cloudy, even rainy days. While sunny autumn days have more brilliant colors, the muted pallet of a rainy autumn day is artistic in a way that defies description. You see more on a misty day, where subtlety reigns.

It has been a late fall here in Minnesota, and as a result the autumn colors, even at this late date, are a mixture of many shades of green along with the yellows and reds and oranges of traditional fall. The forests here are a mixture of conifers and hardwoods, but the predominant species are birch, oak, maple and ash, which means that reds, yellows and oranges are the predominant colors. The most vibrant color now, though, comes from the grape ivy creeping up the sides of trees, and the sumac that fills the transition zones between the hardwood forests and the open prairies that cover the tops of the hills.

The woods were pretty much deserted; campgrounds were empty, and I passed only two other hikers all day long. It was ideal, because solitude is what most restores my spirit. It not really much of a hike, at least the way I would have defined it 10 or 20 years ago, because the tails are wide and smooth and well groomed, and not all that demanding. Still, when I tallied up the distances between checkpoints on the map at the end of the day, I found that I had put in a good 9 miles of strong up and down walking, punctuated by lengthy stretches spend sitting and meditating.

That night, soothing pleasantly tired legs in front of the fireplace as I ate homemade pea soup, I realized that the day's prescription had pretty much cured my current ailment.

For the moment, anyway, I didn't give a damn about the stock market, or about presidential politics.

Tuesday Buddhism

2008-10-07T10:53:00.007-05:00

Buddhist philosophy begins with position that is terrifically different than the tenants of most western spiritual beliefs. This perhaps explains why it feels so alien, especially to those of us raised in Judaic/Christian traditions.

The degree of difference can be clearly seen when you look at the Buddhist version of genesis:

In the beginning, Buddhism would argue, human beings mistakenly made a incorrect distinction between matter and space. To matter, and the various physical forms assumed by matter, they gave the name "real." Spaceousness, however, was demoted to a position of non-reality, so much so, in fact, that to this day we believe that space is nothingness, a void.

This belief in the primacy of form makes up what Buddhists term the first of five skandas, sometimes translated as "aggregates" or "heaps". The skandas represent five different mistaken assumptions human beings make, which form the foundation of a cyclical, unhappy existence. Each of the skandas is a karmic result of the preceding skanda, and depends upon the others.

So the first skanda, form, arises due the human decision to reduce spaciousness to non-existence, and to give primacy, and false permanence, to the various shapes that matter takes. The first human error is in separating matter from space, in separating various forms from one another, and in believing in the truth of "this vs that."

Note how radically different this position is from Judaic/Christian mythology, where the separation between matter and space, rather than being the cause of misery, represents the birth of reality. In this mythology, it is God, not man, that separates heaven from earth.

In the Buddhist cosmology, the second skanda arises when we strangely choose to take up a relationship to the various forms that we have noticed. We create the illusion of ego by creating a feeling that we exist in relation to the various forms that have arise. Feeling is the second skanda, and it is created because we hold to a belief in self and other. "This is me, and that is not me, and that's how I know I exist," is the logic.

The third skanda is usually called perception, and with this skanda there arises an impulse to take some kind of action in relationship to the various forms perceived by ego. We respond with longing to the form, with hostility to the form, or with indifference to the form. This is the skanda that is responsible for desire and hostility in all their forms, and it exists to prop up the illusion of ego/self. We grab for the things that support our sense of self, we reject those that threaten it.

The fourth skanda is usually translated as intellect. This aggregate includes a complicated system of mental concepts and beliefs, a framework that attempts to make sense of various forms and their relationship to one another. In modern western society, this is the skanda that is most highly celebrated. We may, in fact, view intellect as the supreme accomplishment of the human species. Buddhists, however, regard intellect as a construct built on faulty foundations (the previous skandas) and do not find it of particularly important value.

And because intellect cannot exist without a context, the final skanda is consciousness, which is a somewhat artificial ocean upon which the intellect bobs and sails. In this context, it does not mean awareness, which is a non-judging quality that does not discriminate. Awareness is much different from the skanda of consciousness, which exists to give relationship and context to ego and form. Awareness leads us to awakening; consciousness (as defined here) is something of an obstruction.

For theoretical Buddhists, the skandas represent the basic fallacies of human existence, and are the root of all unhappiness. On the face of things, this fact could depress us mightily, since the skandas seem to represent pretty much everything we consider part of the human experience. What could a world without form, with intellect, without passion, without consciousness possibly look like? we wonder.

The key to the Buddhist path is pretty simple, though. We simply look at the initial premise of the first skanda—that form is separate from spaciousness. Is this really true? we ask ourselves. And we then ask what existence would feel like if we ignored the illusion of separateness, and behaved as though form and space are not separate, but are the same phenomenon.

It is no oversimplification to say that this is precisely what represents awakened enlightenment—the discovery that form and spaciousness are not separate at all. For Buddhists, meditation is not a religious practice, but a laboratory in which we experiment with our assumptions regarding matter and space.