The Edge

I think I have been mad for quite some time. Most of the past year, to be sure. For quite some time before that. Not the madness of insanity, though I would argue that "insane" is a fitting descriptor. No, this was a dull madness, an everyday madness, brought on by only thinking rather than seeing, listening. I think, perhaps, it was the pain of the past year that made me realize it. Once I learned to sink beneath the pain, sink the thoughts and be here, in this moment, and some moments are harder than others...once I learned to sink at will rather than at the whim of chance, I could tell the difference. With the mind not sunk, the thoughts race and race and race, and they think nothing of consequence, though each thought seems like the most consequential idea in all of the world. Sunk down, fewer thoughts come, and those that come have meaning. Substance. It is possibl to be aware of more than the square foot in front of your eyes when the thoughts are sunk. Possible to recognize your own pettiness and madness. So, for the moment, I am striving to stay sane.

It reminds me of when I started trying to incorporate the taiji walk into my everyday gait. My legs weren't quite strong enough to maintain it past a certain distance, yet when I lapsed back into the old way of walking, I felt ill. I preferred to sink my weight back down and let the legs work rather than fall back into former habits. That's what this is like. With the mind sunk down, everything is clearer, but it takes effort right now to keep it sunk. When it rises back up, the madness comes again, and I feel sick. Now, at least, I can push the mind back down, but there is some...mental strength required to keep it there. It took several months for my legs to build up to the point where I could keep from bobbing up and down as I walked. Perhaps it will take the same amount of time for my mind to stop bobbing up and down as I live.

Of Several Minds...

This past week, I think I finally figured a few things out. I've been in a great deal of pain since last February, but every so often it would...just...stop. I didn't know why, and invariably the surcease would not last for long, but there were these blessed moments of release. I think a big part of why I did so much hiking this past summer: looking for those moments of release. Those were even less lasting, but sometimes as I topped the rise and beheld the view before me...the beauty would overwhelm the pain.

The pain finally started fading in September. I started feeling more like myself. There were still some off moments, but overall I was above the "functional" stage I'd been at. Then last week I was able to observe one of the moments where the pain stopped. And realized that the only difference was that I had slid below the level of the bodily mind into...something else. The spiritual mind? Sounds too fancy. Maybe "the real mind." I had become so focused on the physical reality that I had lost touch with the real mind living beneath all that.

Could I have realized this sooner? Felt a bit less pain? I honestly don't know. I think the pain has to be felt, and moved through. Maybe I could have bought myself a few more respites, but that's about it. It was only after the pain had already begun fading that I realized it was all tied into the bodily mind. The real mind hadn't been touched.

A Tribute

The Crocodile Hunter, may he rest in peace, was one of the few public individuals who was clearly in each and every moment he had. Every creature he saw was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, and he meant it each and every time. Whatever else he may have been and done, that is what I will remember about Steve Irwin. It is a lesson everyone could stand to learn.

Om Eim Saraswatyei Swaha

I found this mantra in Yoga Journal, with no real background presented, so I went to look it up. I was hoping to find a pronunciation guide beyond the one in yoga journal, or better yet an actual sound-file of it, but no luck. Admittedly, Wikipedia's Sanskrit page might be of use, but there's so much information there that it would take me quite a while to sort through. :^)

This is a mantra to invoke the energy of Saraswatyei: a feminine manifestation of the scholarly and artistic. The page linked to in the title identifies her as a goddess, but I see the gods and goddesses largely as symbols. They have a reality, but they are not the whole of the reality. Rather like words and language. The word stands for something in the language, but it is not the language itself. And, language-wise, I have found chanting in Sanskrit to be deeply soothing and energizing all at once. Back in my pagan days, I read that the reason for spells and such being in archaic languages was so that the analytical part of the brain would be quiet and the imaginative, evocative part of the brain would be active. I think that's what's at work with these Sanskrit mantras. Yes, there is a meaning, and we can look that up, but the words themselves don't have a direct meaning for us. Of course, if I ever get around to learning Sanskrit, that will change. ;^)


(Yeah... I haven't posted anything here for a while. For a while, when I thought about posting, something inside of me would freeze up. Then I didn't seem to have anything to post about. So I'm going to give it a try again and see if I can make this a regular habit once more. I've been wanting to start up for a while, but this is the first thing I found that both felt worth posting and didn't make me freeze up.)

Fear

"I must not fear. Fear is the mindkiller. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past me I will turn to see fear's path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

—Frank Herbert

[I]f you understand fear—which can only take place when you come directly in contact with it...—then you do something; only then will you find that all fear ceases—we mean all fear, not fear of this kind or of that kind.

—J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

They say that it's not the pain that bothers us so much as the fear of the pain. But even then it's not so much the fear as the avoidance of the fear. For a minor example, I used to have a minor phobia about spiders. I would avoid them and stay as far away as possible. Then one day I sat down and just watched some spiders, and they were fascinating, and beautiful. Fine, I will react if one is crawling on me and I don't know how poisonous it is, but otherwise there is nothing to fear.

Before my grandma's funeral, I forgot to pack anything nice to wear, so I went out and found a black taiji tunic embroidered with yellow dragons. My mom freaked out. She was terrified that Grandma's hometown friends would start spreading gossip: "Did you hear what Hazel's granddaughter wore to her funeral?!?" I said, "Great! I'll be immortal." Mom wasn't amused, and she was under enough stress already that I agreed to a compromise (a black Chinese style shirt with a black dragon; apparently it was the bright yellow that was freaking her out). But it's rather ridiculous to allow this sort of fear to rule your life.

Sometimes fear is useful: it tells us it would be a bad idea to go play with the growling bear, for instance. But if it freezes us in place when we should be acting, then it is no longer useful. It's not so much about "facing" the fear but rather "accepting" it. Fine. I'm afraid of "X". I admit that, I explore that feeling, and then I decide if an action is required. Most times, I find that it wasn't "X" I was afraid of, but some idea associated with "X", and then the fear would vanish. And, interestingly, when I'm really in a situation where fear would make sense, I am usually too busy reacting to notice. I remember a few close shaves on the interstate where I had to do some very careful maneuvering. If it had gone badly, I and my passengers might have been killed. But I wasn't thinking of that. I wasn't thinking at all: I was responding. It was only after the fact that I realized how close it had come, and by that time there was no point in fear. It was done.

Who for Whom

(This is from Thomas Cleary's translation of the Lieh Tzu, included in Tales of Inner Meaning)

Once a man held a huge banquet with a thousand guests. When someone presented a gift of fish and fowl, the host said appreciatively, "Heaven is generous to the poeople indeed, planting cereals and creating fish and fowl for our use." The huge crowd of guests echoed this sentiment.

A youth about twelve years old, however, who had been sitting in the most remote corner of the banquet hall, now came foreward and said to the host, "It is not as you say, sir. All beings in the universe are living creatures on a par with us. No species is higher or lower in rank than another, it's just that they control each other by ifferences in their intelligence and power; they eat each other, but that does not mean they were produced for each other. People take what they can eat and eat it, but does that mean that heaven produced that for people? If so, then since mosquitoes bite skin and tigers and wolves eat flesh, does that not mean that heaven made humans for the mosquitoes and created flesh for tigers and wolves?"

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One point of major annoyance for me is modern society's assumption that humans are superior to all other creatures. Yes, we can do things that other creatures cannot. We can build machines that emulate much of what other creatures do. But there is so much we cannot do that is done everyday by some other creature without effort. And even those things that we can do are forced. They do not come of themselves, but only after great effort. A bird spreads its wings and flies when it is ready. We have to dig materials out of the earth, build factories, design and plan and plot... and we call ourselves clever and powerful for exerting massive effort to do something that a bird does without effort. *sighs*

In the Fog

Yesterday, my family and I drove back from Colorado, from my grandma's funeral. I had the last driving shift, and the sun had gone down. Sometime before we made it to the Wyoming/Idaho border, I encountered a thick patch of fog. Then it was gone. Then another patch, and another, each one seemingly thicker than the last. Finally, the whole world was swallowed up in fog. I slowed down enough that I would have at least three seconds to react to anything that came out of the fog. Sometimes this meant 40 mph, sometimes 55 mph, depending on the density of the fog. I had been tired before I started driving, and it would seem that dealing with the fog should increase that tiredness, but it didn't.

Instead, I felt fully alive and awake. I was fully in the moment. I had to be. I had to be ready to react to a slow car ahead of us, or an animal running out from the side. It seemed that the world shrank down to the foggy dome around us, and I was one with that world. In fact, this driving was easier than the driving I'd done in full, clear daylight. Fewer distractions, and more of a need for mindfulness. I admit to feeling relief when we hit the clear patches, but while I was in the fog, the fog was all there was.

I ran across a few appropriate phrases and ideas this morning.

From Thomas Cleary's translation of Vitality, Energy, and Spirit: "Able to reach the point where there is no enjoyment, [sages] find there is nothing they do not enjoy. Since there is nothing they do not enjoy, they reach the pinnacle of enjoyment." When I am in the moment, I enjoy nearly everything I do. When I am not, when I am thinking of all the other things I would rather be doing, then everything becomes miserable.

From Larry Rosenberg's Breath by Breath come the ideas of vittaka: bringing attention to an object with both energy and mindfulness, vicara: maintaining interest in the object, piti: enlivened energy or anticipation, and sukha: the pleasure of peace and calm. These are ideas that come from the Buddhist practice of vipassana meditation. The first thing I found of interest is that I have experienced all of these states at various times. First in yoga practice, later in taiji and meditation. But they all came into play as I drove through the fog. I had to focus on the road ahead of me, and keep all my senses alert for any change. When something did change, I felt excitement/anticipation/adrenaline, and used that to heighten my awareness. Then when I found that I could meet all the challenges, a sense of peace and rightness descended over me. I did not fight the fog. I accepted and embraced it, and in doing so, I was able to meet it.

Shattered

If there's a trigram in the I-Ching for "shattered," then it aptly describes most of my last week. On Monday, the front left window of my car literally shattered while I was on the interstate. On Thursday, I found that my arrow had indeed hit its mark, but had not had the hoped for effect. On Friday, my last surviving grandparent died. So I'm a bit confused right now, in that I'm "supposed" to be upset, or angry, or...something. Yet, in this moment, I am content. Happy, even. I'm not entirely sure why, but I suspect it has something to do with "living in the moment."

I can make myself become upset. I can go back in my mind to Friday morning. I had slept on the couch in Grandma's basement, and around 6:30 my mom came down and turned on the light. I was awake enough to mumble "Was that really necessary?" I'm not sure she heard me. "...I think she's gone..." was all she said. That woke me up. Grandma went off dialysis on Monday, and she'd been fading fast ever since. I went upstairs and slowly approached Grandma's room. She was still, frozen in time. One hand half-clutched the rail of the hospital bed they'd brought for her the day before. One toe stuck out between the bars. Her mouth was open...eyes closed. I didn't really need to check for a pulse, but I did. "She's cold," I said.

When I go back to that moment in my mind, I feel the pain. Yet as soon as I bring my mind away from that moment, the pain goes with it. When I go back to the moment when I learned what effect my arrow had, there is pain. Yet in this moment, there is only piece. The past is gone. Only this moment remains. And in this moment, my grandma no longer suffers. In this moment, there is no more waiting. In this moment, I am at peace.

And, in the human way of things, I feel an echo of guilt that I am not dwelling on the past, not wallowing in the pain. But it is only an echo, and is easy enough to recognize and ignore. And the window that shattered on Monday...it got replaced on Tuesday. No one can replace my grandma, of course, but eventually that empty place will fill again.

Reality

(Note: This post is Babylon 5 inspired. The Vorlons ask "Who are you?" The Shadows ask "What do you want?")

There was a time when most of my actions were dictated by what I thought I was "supposed" to do. I'm "supposed" to get upset over things. I'm "supposed" to try and fit in. I'm "supposed" to get good grades. I'm "supposed" to pick a hard major, because I got good grades. It wasn't until I burned myself out doing a double major in four years that I really figured out that I wasn't "supposed" to do anything. I was just "supposed" to be.

There's a danger in that realization, though: the danger of then doing nothing at all. But at the time, I had spent so much time on what I thought I was supposed to be doing that I had no clue what it was that I actually wanted. I think that was my very first meditational experience, sitting down in a quiet place and asking myself, "What do you want?" I had no clue. The usual things that people list, like money, a job, a family, meant nothing to me. I think I spent a year asking that question before I finally decided that since I didn't know what I wanted for me, I'd just start sending out positive thoughts to the rest of the world.

Eventually, I answered the question, "What do you want?" with "I want to be me." It was a good, satisfying answer that brought its own question: "Who am I?" In college, I had defined myself in terms of my mood and my major, largely. And in terms of what I wasn't. I wasn't a Methodist any more. I wasn't a high school student. After a while, I wasn't a teenager. I wasn't really interested in research (so why the devil was I majoring in physics? because I was "supposed" to). I didn't have much else when I started asking "Who am I?" again. The most useful answer to the question turns out to be "I am me." But at least I have some positives to add now. I am a Taoist. I am a taiji player. I am a teacher. I am a writer. But those are what I am, not who I am.

The thing is, it's impossible to be who you are while you're busy being someone else. And whenever you do what you're "supposed" to do, you are being someone else. You are living up to someone else's expectations, fulfilling someone else's dreams. I don't mean to suggest that people skip out on obligations to others, but that we honor those obligations because we want to, not because we are supposed to. And if we find we have obligations that we do not want to fulfill, perhaps it is time to start asking "Who am I?" and "What do I want?"

Thoughts on Freedom

(Note: I will try to update more often... I just needed time to think some things through.)

Without a rope, people bind themselves."

When based on compassion, this can be a good thing. Though I may feel anger at someone, I do not loose that anger. Though, at times, violent thoughts may arise, I do not act on them (except constructively, by finding some useful and productive way to express such thoughts). Such binding is internal, not external. I know that I could do something, but I do not care for the end results, so I do not.

When based on fear, or craving, the binding is harmful. It traps us. We get caught in a web of "ifs" and "maybes" and fear of the unknown stops us from acting. But the unknown is all around us. I could die on the way to work this morning. I could be hit by a meteor while I sleep, or come into contact with a rare poison, or be attacked by a dog. There are more things unknown than known, yet these insidious mental "what-ifs" trap us, prevent us from acting.

I recently broke free from such a trap, and loosed the arrow that I had held onto for so long that my arm had begun to shake. I do not know whether it has hit its mark yet, nor do I know what effect it will have when it does. Yet in loosing the arrow I have freed myself. Oh, the "what-ifs" still rise up in my mind, but it is easier to let them go now. It may have been a foolish thing to do, yet it needed to be done.

arrow now in flight—
free only in the falling—
frees me while I wait

Frustration

*sigh* The more I read of both atheist and religious blogs, the more I think they miss the point entirely.

Asking me whether or not I believe in Tao is like asking me whether or not I believe in the table sitting in front of me. The question is redundant and idiotic. Asking me whether Tao exists is equally idiotic. How might I respond? Verbally, I would likely say "Mu." In person, I would probably pick up a glass and drop it on the floor. Or take a match and set a book on fire. Or wave a flag in the air. Or hit the questioner with a stick. If the questioner doesn’t understand, the question was doubly idiotic.

Yet I see people try to answer the question of whether or not God exists, and they actually answer with yes or no. If they actually understood the question, such an answer would be impossible!

There are several koans along this theme already, so this is hardly original, but I haven’t seen this precise version: The teacher spoke to the monks, saying, "Do you believe in the gods? If you answer yes, then the gods do not exist. If you answer no, then they do. How, then, will you answer?"

Another related quote/koan: "When we understand, there we sit while yes and no chase each other around the circumference."

The Iron Flute

About a week ago, I finished Nyogen Senzaki's The Iron Flute. It is a collection of 100 Zen koans, with commentary, and I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in either Taoism or Zen. Back in the archives, I've posted many of my favorites, so I won't post any here.

Each koan has commentary with it, and the commentary is iself a koan in most cases. However, my favorite part of the commentary is that it has been built onto over the years. Genro, Fugai and Nyogen have all added comments (Nyogen's being the most recent), and they weave together like a conversation, or sometimes an argument, clarifiying and confusing all at the same time. There are cases where the commentary opened my eyes to a meaning I hadn't seen before, and other cases where I thought I understood until I read the commentary.

One final thought. This is not a book to sit down and read all at once. Perhaps some people would get something out of it that way, but I sure wouldn't. I read this book slowly. First I tried one koan a day, then I decided that wasn't enough. I would read a koan one day, and reread it the next. Sometimes I would reread it the third day as well, but usually I moved on. So I've been working on this book since last August. It was well-worth it, and I'm sure I'll come back and reread them all again at some point.

Books

In 1934, Krishnamurtie said, "Why do you want to be students of books instead of students of life? Find out what is true and false in your environment with all its oppressions and its cruelties, and then you will find out what is true." Repeatedly he pointed out that the "book of life," which is ever changing with a vitality that cannot be held in thought, was the only one worth "reading," all others being filled with secondhand information. "The story of mankind is in you, the vast experience, the deep-rooted fears, anxieties, sorrow, pleasure and all the beliefs that man has accumulated throughout the millennia. You are that book."
...
"Truth cannot be accumulated. What is accumulated is always being destroyed; it withers away. Truth can never wither because it can only be found from moment to moment in every thought, in every relationship, in every word, in every gesture, in a smile, in tears."

—from the introduction to The Book of Life by Krishnamurti

I'm sure Krishnamurti appreciated the irony of being a writer of books... :-) However insightful, however erudite, the words of another belong to another. Only your own experiences belong to you. Words may point you in a useful direction, or give you some idea what is possible, but the next step is always yours.

I like Krishnamurti's take on truth. It is not Absolute Truth that is frozen in a rictus of death; it is Living Truth. It stays the same by constantly changing, in each and every moment. "Nothing is trivial," as Brandon Lee's character said in The Crow. All the little things together form the truth in each moment, and in so doing are no longer little.

From the Chuang Tzu

The way has reality and truth; it has no construction or form. It can be given but not taken; it can be attained but not seen. It is based on itself, rooted in itself; it has always been there, even before the existence of heaven and earth. It spiritualizes ghosts and gods, gives birth to heaven and earth. It is ahead of the absolute pole, without being high; it is beyond all limits without being deep. It was born before the universe and yet is not ancient; it is senior to antiquity, and yet is not old.
...
"What kills the living does not die; what gives birth to the living is not born. What it is brings on everything and sends off everything, breaks everything down and makes everything. Its name is peace from agitation. Peace from agitation is attained only after agitation."

—from The Essential Tao, trans. Thomas Cleary

The "absolute pole" most likely refers to the North Star, which seems to stay fixed while all other stars rotate around it. It is considered best to emulate that star, to attain a place where you do nothing and yet everything is done. The Way cannot be old, since it is newborn in each and every moment. It cannot be young, since it has always existed. In other words, labels are useless. :-)

For the second paragraph, consider this Zen koan: "What is your original face before you were born?"

Gods?

On Pharyngula, I just ran across this quote from Richard Dawkins: "We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in." I've come across similar claims on other atheist blogs recently, and I find that "all" is inaccurate. I know of at least one exception: me.

First, I don't find the concept of "gods" all that useful. It is certainly true that they exist in the mind, i.e. in the same sense that Middle Earth and Hogwart's exist. For me, that is enough to grant them at least some reality. Any particular god has exactly as much power over a person as that person grants in his/her mind. That is, gods are subjective phenomena: their attributes vary depending on the person perceiving them. Any god held to have specific characteristics falls into this "subjective" category for me. Is such a god useful? I would answer that it depends on the person doing the believing.

The Tao is different. It embodies all characteristics, and none. I would also include the Sufi experience of God in the non-characteristic category based on my admittedly brief readings of Sufi texts. Likewise, I would include the direct experience of the Divine reported by mystics of all sorts. But as soon as you start trying to label and define any god, you have limited it, separated it. It is no longer the Ultimate, but a subset thereof.

New Year, New Calendar

Well, I didn't get another Daily Zen calendar this year. This one is called "Wisdom of the East." I'd had the Daily Zen calendar two years in a row, and there were quite a few repeats so I tried something new. The saying above seems nicely applicable. Now, if I only knew where those symbols came from. ;-)

ADDENDUM:
Found an online Symbol Dictionary, but so far I've only found one of the symbols. Ah well.

The symbol in the top left, that looks like the Greek letter psi with two lines through the stem, stands for magentism or magnesium.

The background for the one in the top right might be a variation of a sun-symbol (four points enclosed in a circle), but I haven't found it exactly.