A Little Dose of Faulty Understanding

I don’t really know what happened yesterday, but I feel better now than I have in weeks.

I was desperate. And I love Green Tara, the Tibetan goddess who became a Buddha. So I gritted my teeth and signed up for a one-day Tara retreat at the Maitripa Institute. It wasn’t cheap, but it cost far less than the ridiculous amount they charge for classes, say, or their not-very-modest gala dinners. It’s a different model, I tells myself. But I don’t need to pay big bucks to stick with something, or to value the Dharma, dammit. They don’t know what they’re losing, driving me away with their high prices. Or perhaps they do. They lose those who still have hope--and they attract those who, in a final act of desperation, are willing to pay.

I paid, and I was served lunch, and buckets of sweet milky tea, and I sat with people I did not know and did something completely new. It was lovely.

The jokhang, or hall, is floored with smooth bamboo-- the better for those full-body face-on-the-floor prostrations. Giant statues bedecked with gold and rugs and mysterious symbols are enshrined in the front, behind glass. The sitting arrangement is buckwheat zafu and modestly-sized zabuton.

To do a Tara puja you follow along in the book and chant the same thing over and over. When afternoon comes and you are still chanting the same thing, they make it more interesting by inviting you to circumambulate, or to lead the chant, or to make an offering on cue.

The cue comes from the rinpoche. He sits even during the breaks, a young coarsely-built Tibetan of sterling reputation. He gives instruction and offers bits of insight in a monotone, rocking back and forth while addressing the lectern. His smile is colossal, his humor comes easily, and he takes the proceedings seriously. We are all there because we need something, and he knows this.

What we do together brings a goddess into the room.

Near the end, he takes the Tara image off the altar and blesses us. The gold statue is heavy and reassuring on top of my head. But it is the hours of chanting to the One who dispels conflict that has an effect: I realize the inner conflict is of a piece with the outer. Feeding one gives rise to the other. And really, no one wants conflict. We want to be understood and appreciated. We want it to be OK--in our way, on our terms. That modest little impossibility, “it has to be this way,” is our undoing. Seeing the conventional world clearly, a Buddha feels compassion. Seeing the ultimate aspect clearly, she knows the wisdom of the emptiness of phenomena.

I have been undone too often these last three weeks. I have not been happy. And yet now, life is not a problem. This part of it--this part where I work hard for little money and lots of faultfinding--is both an integral result of all that has come before, and a key component of what the future must become.

When we are finished, we stand, and then the rinpoche is in front of me, holding out his hands. I take them. They are huge and fleshy, and feel as if they’re made of nothing at all. He looks in my eyes.

“Thank you,” he says. I squeeze the nonexistent flesh in reply.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

OM TARE TUTTARE TURE SVAHA

What a Parent Should Do

I was inspired by a talk given by PSU psychology professor Leslie B. Hammer at the Pacific NW Association of Independent Schools conference, held at Catlin Gabel School on October 12. My notes follow.

When anxiety takes hold, the cognitive field narrows, the world collapses into good and evil, and it becomes impossible to evaluate relative risk. In this state, a B- on a child’s paper evokes a similiar response to the child being attacked.

There is a correlation between kids gone awry--kids stuck in a swirl of depression, sex, drugs or delinquency--academic pressure from parents, family disengagement, and elite schools. In fact elite schools have higher rates of teen dysfunction than poor schools. (This sounds incredible, and I wonder if the studies corrected for the fact that students in poor schools often self-select themselves out of school.) But even so, the more affluent, the more pressure, the more messed up the kids are. Correlations can be tricky: they don’t say anything about causes. So it’s not that grade-obsessed parents necessarily cause teenage misbehavior. Rather, parental response focuses on the concrete readout of a life in crisis, without focusing the underlying causes, without addressing the kid’s social and emotional experience.

Family life is about enjoying one another. Period. You need unstructured time; you can’t arrange to bond. Kids and everyone need unstructured time to allow imagination and creativity to flow.

Happiness, and the Causes of Happiness, consist of: giving and receiving love; finding and using your gifts; and living a meaningful life. Period. Once basic subsistence needs have been met--not “middle class” needs, but subsistence needs--there is no longer a correlation between money and happiness. With increasing wealth, proxy variables start to stand in for satisfaction: a new car; the college sticker on the car; building your kid into a designer package that will win admittance into a selective school, rather than the best fit for that person’s needs and growth. There is a dissatisfaction that sets in with progressive material status

Studies on the introduction of the internet to homes show an increase in depression and alienation, and a decrease in family time, once a household becomes wired. Screens do not develop relationships; people do.

Relationships are not a frill. They are critical to personal health, proper development, and success in life. There is this focus on academic “basics”, but studies clearly show that emotional health is crucial to educational success at all levels: when kids feel safe at school, they learn better and do not drop out. At all developmental stages, “Secure Attachment” is a result, and a cause of, attunement and responsiveness.

There is plenty of literature on Secure Attachment in early life, but what does it look like for a teen? If your kid can offer a strong “YES” in agreement with the following five statements, that’s a tremendous predictor of future success and well-being.

• My parents accept me for who I am.
• My parents respect me.
• My parents want to know my opinion about things.
• I want to know my parents’ opinion about things.
• When I’m worried about something, my parents are there for me.

This session ended up being about parenting, and what sort of relationship I want to have with the child growing inside me.

A Flash of Something

In the absence of a project assigned from somewhere, reflective writing is the only kind of writing I do. There has been very little reflective writing of late.

Creative energy has been going elsewhere: to a new job of daunting emotional proportions (who knew teaching science involved so much drama?); to keeping body and soul nourished somehow (too much cheese makes everything irritable, while going unfed is discouraging); to mulling the changes taking shape on the future horizon (life in six months will be beyond all imagining).

Today, a dear friend helped Bun and I move most of our possessions (which are mostly my possessions) into our new condo. We will continue to sleep this week in the old apartment, while the paint dries in the new place. The familiar space, now empty, is spartan and beautiful. Do I really need my stuff? Do I even want my stuff? Not really.

And yet I have stuff, and it has me.

We took a break from all this to go to the ballet. Our cheap seats in the first row were breathtaking. We peeked into the orchestra pit, and watched a toddler being handed over the barrier to visit his musician father while the others tuned their instruments. We could see artists waiting in the stage right wing. We saw the sweat fly as dancers whirled; we heard the thwack as their thighs slammed together. Their athleticism was literally in our faces. The absence of visual input from part of stage left was not missed. It was so much better than sitting in the center, a reasonable number of rows back.

I know these people have made incredible sacrifices to be in their position, briefly lit and costumed. They have forgone much to be so exalted and yet so captive. Bodies bear the marks of it: of discipline and intensity and submersion in a way of life. Do they have time for anything else?

I can feel my mind and my way of being shaped by teaching. I speak differently; I jot down quiz questions obsessively; I am slightly more likely to question bad behavior. My life revolves around those 6.5 hours a week where I am up against the blackboard, up against the clock, up against teenagers' expectations.

Unlike the dancers, I have no chance to rehearse or perfect my actions--nor will I, unless I happen to teach the course again. Yet, in some spark of time, something is briefly illuminated. Chalk dust flies. Minds stretch--or stagnate at the rear of the room. Whatever it is, there's one chance, and it's over.

On Monday we will talk about the Periodic Table. Why do Argon and Potassium fall into the order they do? More to the point, can I find the magic in the ordering of elements--in the art, the leaps, the impossible beauty--in a list? Perhaps not. But that's the creative endeavor these days.