Beyond Non-Blogging

I haven't had much to say lately.

"You don't have to tell everything! This is ZEN! It's about keeping your mouth shut!"

Evan was expressing the best of Lao Tsu in his own inimitable style:

Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know.
-Tao Te Ching

(Which is not to say that silence implies some sort of deep knowledge. Although many have risen to prominence in the estimation of others merely by keeping their ignorance to themselves.)

But maybe that's it. I don't have anything to say. And I feel less qualified than ever to make observations about anything.

-

I signed up for an online writing course. In spite of my tendency to silence, I have written a couple of little paragraph-stories. In which the man getting off the bus turns out to be wearing a chicken costume. In the ghetto, at night. Not realizing the woman he's about to stumble into and injure with his beak is, in fact, his former....

I guess that qualifies as creativity. I'm not sure. But let's assume the creative juices are there. And yet I do not blog.

Perhaps nothing has been happening in my life of late. That would be a reason not to blog. (Although many do not find this a deterrent.)

But a sudden rediscovery of Yoga has torn me open and sweated me down to nothing but a stinky slick on the mat. And the High Anglican midnight mass I attended on Christmas Eve left me with plenty to say about ceremony, the Eastern heritage of Christianity, and the palpable power of their communion.

I have visited with friends. I have written a damn good haiku. I have told the truth and kept a secret. But I don't feel like writing about any of it here.

Stories about Zen, too; observations about practice; ideas about what it all means--these aren't interesting anymore. The experience of these is more compelling than ever. But talking about them? Reading a book about them? Please.

I started this blog to keep family and friends apprised of the details of my life while I lived in a Zen Buddhist training monastery. I barely had time to keep my nails trimmed, let alone keep in touch with people individually. But those days are over. I am a denizen of the world, and I received a slew of Christmas cards that proves I am at least minimally "in touch" with someone. And with you, still, my fourteen loyal readers in Corvallis, Fife, Dublin, DC, Portland, Redmond, Gualala &c.

When you're not reading this blog (which should be most of the time!) check out my current favorite, Power, Seduction and War. It's worth putting your squeamishness on hold for. I promise. The blogs he partners with are pretty awesome too, from what I can tell.

See, there are LOTS of people in this world eager to talk and talk, even if I'm not. Enjoy.

Reasons to Keep Moving

Charlie takes me through the dark trees of Golden Gate Park, past the bison and the windmill, to see the sun set behind the ocean. The waves are enormous.

His motorbike has sparkly-disco-crazy blue paint. I haven't forgotten how to hold on. We putt up and down hills and then find our way to dinner with an even older friend.

In the early morning, I enter my first (and so, in some ways, only) zendo. Here again. Breath establishes in body. Upstairs we go for service. I wish it would never end. Soji. Breakfast. Lots of hugs and news. Bowls full of soft sweet persimmons, ripened to the point of syrupy perfection.

Being loved this much is dizzying. I don't have to be anything for these people but myself, even if I share more than I should. In these years away, old edges have softened, and we just remember feeling close to one another.

In San Francisco

The city teems with people, the motorists are aggressive, but otherwise it is as I remember.

My old house smiles back at me; my friends are a bit wiser and more settled than they once were. A trip to the Zen Center elicits rounds of smiles and hugs. Coming back to this life is like touching a lover's familiar face.



The theme today has been what decent folk my friends are. One slides a cushion behind my back; one counsels me to never give up on the invisible but obvious sweep of life's purpose. Lessons aplenty if you agree to hear them.

I walk with some trepidation toward the house where H lives with his girlfriend. Turns out he and I are dressed in nearly identical coats, with dark turtlenecks underneath. Still in tune after all these years. He treats me to the perfect dinner, helps me retrieve the last few things I have stashed at his place, and hugs me long and hard upon parting.



There is no substitute for this person; it is insulting to look for one. Decency, familiarity, and knowing someone so well that conversations happen with the eyes alone; there's nothing to try to replace. Just a new life to enter. And gratitude for past and present.

The Metaphysics of Pool

There is nothing in this world that cannot be seen as Dharma, because every phenomenon must necessarily embody the truth of existence. Whatever part of that we perceive is therefore nstructive.

I’ve been learning to play pool, and because I am human, I find meaning in the game. The pool table is a map of the world, where individual balls, inextricably linked in fate, roll around, and sit, and are blasted without warning.

Pool is beautiful and satisfying because it is simply mechanics at work. The world is rife with variables, but the pool table is an orderly realm where physics reigns cleanly and absolutely. The laws of life are no less certain: You will end up where you are headed. You will strike what you aim for. You will gain what you singlemindedly pursue. And then you will have to start all over again.

We have all sorts of ideas about what we’re doing in this world, but they really don’t matter. For the most part, we roll around as predictably as billiard balls: depending on our habit-energy, an angry person will get angry; a powerless person will forget her options; a distracted person will stumble. Our power, or befuddlement, or reactive fear is the outcome of past action. And it is when we are struck--by the threat of success, or love, or death—that we see the person we have become.

If there’s anything like free will in this life, it has to do with the qualities you cultivate. That you will be struck and that you will roll goes without saying--but how smoothly you will roll, and how far, is up to you. Perhaps.

The game’s end is no mystery. At some point we will all drop out of sight. Until then, the balls clack and the game goes on now: traipsing home across a dark and rainy city, skirting the puddles of dark water that pool in every intersection. Waking up in the morning, shifted and moved by another day’s adventures. Planning and waiting; aiming to forget the self, again and again.

Whatever we touch is changed, as we are changed by it. It’s not just that contact with other things—trees, sounds, people, flame—affects my life. It IS my life. We move the world, the world moves us; any separation is academic. There is nothing else to be, and nowhere else to go.

Might as well chalk up the cue and get to work.

The New Look

Tree Face
Originally uploaded by Shugetsu.

Any day now, once the optometrist's have removed digits (theirs) from orifice (theirs), I'll get my spiffy new glasses. The old ones died a sad and sudden death.

(This purchase impedes progress toward purchase of my true object of desire: a camera. I'm thinking the Canon Powershot A630, the model ranked best in the under-$250 range by the New York Times.)

Until the new glasses arrive, I've been my wearing my sporty green-tinted prescription sunglasses. I get odd looks, especially at night. The sunglasses, along with my fedora and pea coat, make me look like a secret agent. No one will sit next to me on the bus. It's an interesting (and hopefully finite) sociological experiment.

The Antiquity Challenge

Fake Oldness
Originally uploaded by GrantMeStrength.

FlickR buddy GrantMS picked up on my idea to "old-ify" a photo I took in Porltand's Japanese Garden. Anybody else up to the challenge?

(If you're not able to download the photo from FlickR, let me know and I can email it to you.)

Little Rules of Thumb for Today

For managing grumpiness about everything-in-particular:
Contemplating that everything ends...This moment, and this, are over...Grumpiness requires persistence of view.

Relationship rubric:
Am I resolving and simplifying my karma with this person, or am I complicating it?

Truths You Know In the Body

The day I saw him, I knew.

We became friends right away. Three years later, we became lovers. Until that happened, I thought I knew him, but I was mistaken. He did something I had not known was possible, which was to love simply, without need. It was a novelty to feel so safe. Perhaps ours was a lucky match, to be marked by such easy caring. But I think it had more to do with him, with his having grown up feeling secure and loved.

After four years of cocktails, travel, and lazy mornings curled together, things between us ended. I had taken much for granted. And then I was devastated.

But love-without-need was the gift I took away with me. I can try to describe it, but the only way to understand is to feel it. It is something known by transmission from one human to another. It becomes a truth in the body, a way of being rooted in yourself. This unselfish love frees the heart to be as large as necessary; lets it feel and not be threatened by feeling; allows others to become who they are.

The second gift I received from this relationship required incubation for months and years before it could be realized. It is the experience of how time heals; how the heart mends after loss. This is slow, but is as inevitable as life itself. We can heal from tremendous pain.

Now, I’m more delighted by life than I was on that day ten years ago, before I knew any of this. I’m sadder, too, seeing how things can be..versus the way they often are.