Fixing the Fixed View

I am so skilled when it comes to thinking I'm right. And I am so darn surprised every time I'm surprised--"surprise" being a fancy name for "notions vaporized by reality."

I have made some big, beautiful mistakes in this first year of parenting, all of which can be traced back to arrogance. If you were to ask around, very few people would tell you that they’re arrogant. Everybody thinks of themselves as a balanced and reasonable individual. Some might admit to being "opinionated." But almost everyone secretly believes themselves better, or at least more correct than others.

This certainly applies, maybe particularly so, to those of us who attempt to cultivate Beginner's Mind. What could be more radical? What could mark us more clearly as Special, as Wise, as embodying an Alternative to the closed minds all around?

Am I right in all this generalizing about "people" and "those of us"? Or do I only describe my conceited little self? Maybe so.

When the Little Warrior was born, I didn’t think of myself as having any particular social agenda, and I wasn’t feeling particularly rebellious. Like every new parent, I wanted to do a good job. The little bit of individual character I brought to that was, I wasn’t willing to accept received wisdom without question. This wasn’t a conscious decision to be subversive or buck a trend, but more of an implicit assumption that the many conventions of childrearing might be devoid of any inherent value.

A new baby can’t even go home from the hospital without a car seat, the first piece of gear, and in our auto-obsessed society, possibly the foremost one as well. When she gets home, she is typically greeted by a world of specialized furniture: crib, high chair, and bouncy recliner, at a minimum.

Determined not to make the same assumptions as the majority, I made my own very personal ones instead. Since I saw no reason to blindly follow where others led, I would do things differently. Why should my baby need a crib? He can sleep in the bed with us. It seemed cozy; in keeping with my husband’s Chinese heritage; and just edgily politically-correct enough to be gratifying yet unthreatening. I liked everything I read about co-sleeping, so I decided ahead of time we would do it. Little did I suspect the mercilessly efficient lesson that lay in store.

You could say that sleeping with my baby--or trying to--taught me a wee lesson about the value of convention. It's there for a reason, and so forth. But--beyond being wrong-wrong-wrong about what was going to work out for us--there is another lesson: something about being tied to unconventionality for its own sake; something about the avoidance of Fixed View becoming its own Fixed View.

On the mundane level, then: cribs exist for a reason! Maybe some babies sleep fine with their parents, and maybe some parents sleep fine with their babies. We did not. After my son was six months old, he spent the entire night kicking, rotating his body around, flailing, pressing his feet into my husband’s face, and grappling for the nipple. Things deteriorated until the baby failed to sleep more than 90 minutes at a stretch. I would wake up to find myself ravished by a passionately-sucking son. Any attempt to separate him from the from nipple was met with loud protests. If I tried to sleep apart from him, the little guy would come find me and have his way with me while I slept.

I was torn, and I was also really, really sleep deprived. I did all the research I could, talked to other moms, read books, and tried to reason my way through it. The situation could not continue. But what to do?

Finally, after reading Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, I did two things I thought I’d never do: we put the baby in a crib, and we let him cry it out. I had visions beforehand of extreme suffering, because my son is the most stubborn person I know. But two nights later, he was sleeping 8-9 hours at a stretch, and I was too! Months later, this highly gratifying behavior continues.





Why, oh why, didn't I use a crib sooner?

The answer is that I was unable to see clearly because I was opinionated. Or you could call it arrogant. I put principles above reality. I made my mind up before I had a chance to be curious about some of the possible very good reasons for crib use.

I suspect that Master Dogen had something else in mind when he described his life as "one continuous mistake," but maybe he didn't. Maybe he meant this experience of having your own shortcomings constantly reflected back to you by a dispassionate Reality that cares nothing for reasons or ideas. The more we hold to those notions, the more suffering is sown, by our own hand.

How fortunate that the Little Warrior stepped in to disillusion me. Better to be reminded by the little things that don't go as planned; better to practice now with relinquishing the grand agenda for My Perfect Life. The big stuff will come in time, as it must.

It's easy to quote the Dharma, and talk about opening to What Is. The reality is much stickier: I am slow, reluctant, and apt to reversal when it comes to actually cultivating that quality. Trying to talk it one thing: manifesting a practice in one's bones is another. I never thought parenting would be this way!-- this wonderful, this exhausting, this brimming with love, this demanding of my every internal resource.

If I were less fettered, my gratitude would not be so rueful as it is.

A Bold Undertaking

I have been reading Thomas Lynch and realizing that all writing is poetry—all writing of mine is, at least. Or it wants to be. Words want to sound right; they want to flow past one another. They want to find meaning in a clear unambiguous fashion, but they want to do it with flair, with an awareness of their own sounds and history. Each word wants to be properly placed in the matrix of history, meaning, and personal significance.

I want to write like Lynch. I want it so badly, I am romanticizing his profession. The man is a writer and poet by avocation, but an undertaker by trade. Casting the poet’s life as a worthy one is no great leap; making a funeral director’s existence sound worthy of envy is a greater accomplishment.

Lynch says that poetry is appreciated by many and avoided by most. But we should write it anyway. Be like him: write poetry for twenty years in order to develop in your bones a feel for language. After that long marinating in poetry, the prose you produce will be the sort that people want to read.

His insights into death are similarly practical and profound. Listen to the stillness of the body, says Lynch. Find the space where consciousness resides, and notice the quality of its departure. Contemplate what it means to be alive, to have a life, to be alive and relating to children and lovers and family and coworkers. Marvel that time will proceed apace in your absence, after your own personal world is snuffed out.

There are Zen stories that pivot on just such admonitions.

I could never write like Lynch. For one thing he is a better writer: more practiced, more disciplined, more experienced, more possessed of an entertaining personal history to use as fodder. More importantly, though, is the fact that we can only write as our selves. I cannot write like someone else. Suitably experienced, practiced, disciplined, suitably wise and rueful in retrospect, I would be a terrific teller of my own story, a masterful sharer of my own mind.

I could follow that advice: I could write poetry for twenty years. The wisdom and life experience and regrets will all take care of themselves. There is always something to write about. The challenge is finding the words to capture the truth.

what Zen is all about
Originally uploaded by sujathafan

Related Links:

Frontline: The Undertaking

Bodies In Motion and At Rest

Koans

A Baby Babbles--Is Anything Said Or Not?

When he woke up from his nap today, the baby stayed on the bed and looked at his French book. Then he lay his head down on the picture of the playroom ("La Salle de Jeu") and said very clearly:

Aihavows

I tried to ask him about this, but he wasn't responding.

All day this has stayed with me, less for what it means about him than for what it means about me, hearing it as I did.



What are my vows for this life? And with what resolutions does a tiny person enter, and re-enter, this realm?

Failure to Connect

Water, Laptop, Phone
Originally uploaded by earthdog

I am faced with the possibility that I am not interesting. Possibly a little desperate. Possibly even socially obnoxious.

When you spend time with a baby this age, you live in a world of big and sudden emotions. Joy is all-encompassing. Fear and overwhelm abruptly appear and disappear. A cuddle against the bosoms solves almost everything. We might spend long minutes trying to stand, or picking at a piece of floor dirt, or we might refuse to be put down and demand to ride around on mama all day. Although we are in a happy groove of togetherness and rapport, the instinctual physicality of this life doesn’t translate so well to the outside world of adult society.

Plus, I’m just lonely. Obviously, thanks to the baby, I have plenty of company all day long. But it’s been a while since I had the luxury of connecting—really connecting—with another adult. Too long since I faced someone and felt as if we understood one another, without hurry, without a baby inserting itself into the conversation.

Walking down the street, I called out a greeting to a mother and her son. She had stopped me on the street a week ago to chat about the baby carrier we were both using. Today, my baby rode on my back, playing with my scarf. You couldn’t see him. And so my too-friendly “Hi there!” fell flat. I got the ‘You’re Insane’ look as they went past.

Vowing to lighten up on the social enthusiasm, I made my way to the bank. By the time I left, I’d charmed the teller to pieces, or else frightened him entirely. He and his colleague were treated to a fascinating narrative of the baby’s habits and behavior, the reasons for my visit, my plans for the money in my account, and so forth.

I didn’t like what I was seeing of myself. The resolution to lighten up was renewed.

The little guy and I ducked into a swanky neighborhood bar (“My First Drinking Establishment”?) to say hi to someone. My excited conversation with my friend caused the only other person at the bar to move several seats farther away.

Finally we came home. The baby gave me a broad smile, like we shared some special secret. I let him play on the floor diaperless, while I checked my email. Incredibly enough, there were no new messages, for the fifteenth time just that day!

Strangely, those friends I wrote to—and those people I put off writing to for a week but got back to eventually—still hadn’t responded. Perhaps because they have jobs and things to do. Perhaps I used an outdated e-mail address. Perhaps our game of has gone on so long they’ve forgotten they’re “it.” Or quite possibly they have other things to think about besides me and my baby-development monologues. And perhaps they just aren’t feeling the spark of relationship, the energy that makes us interesting staying in contact.

No messages either on the phone I so carefully carry with me, in case one of my out-of-touch buddies should call. They don’t. Although calls do come in. The optometrist’s office wants to inform me that they can’t confirm my insurance coverage. Someone is looking for Dave. The baby grins whenever he sees the phone, and makes a lunge for it. He says it tastes good. And he’s in love with the camera part. I could just cancel my plan with Sprint and let him have it as a fancy toy.

Maybe it’s time to accept life, just as it is. I’m supposed to know all about this—it’s a classic theme in Zen circles. Probably for a reason: accepting life just as it is poses a real challenge! Put here is my life: I have a baby. I am a baby-plus-woman. Every conscious moment is infused with awareness of my son. Even in the formlessness of meditation, breath and body sit expanded by love.

When socializing does happen, and people ask how I am, I say “we’re fine.” The conversation will turn to the baby sooner if not later, because for me that’s what matters. How interesting is our conversation really going to be? If you’re not mad about babies, you will eventually tire of talking to someone who is.

So perhaps I should make friends with other mothers. Unfortunately, if another woman and I both have babies, chances are that’s about the only point of common reference. Having given birth within a year of another person doesn’t actually provide much of a connection once you’ve compared your babies’ weights, physical skills, eating habits, and sleeping patterns. Soon we come to the unorthodox details that have so naturally filled out my life: home birth, breast feeding, co-sleeping, few toys, mostly wood, fewer vaccinations, no baby “gear” to speak of, afternoons spent exploring the closet or smiling at strangers rather than engaging with toys or videos.

Perhaps it’s time to really believe what I already know: the deepest connection does not come from social-stroke-and-return-stroke. Obsessing about whether or not my friends are as in need of me as I think they should be—that’s just silliness. In time, the ties that are not supported will dissolve, and new ones will gradually form. That’s not being a good friend, or a bad one; it’s just the way of the world, the way things naturally grow, strengthen, and fall away.

Perhaps I should be enjoying the rare luxury of staying home with the baby, giving him attention, and having time to write and to sit zazen. The life I have affords a better opportunity than most for turning my focus to exploring that Deepest Connection, the one that doesn’t come from social superficialities, the one no one else can give you.