1976 and 2006

AMERICA's Bicentennial Year - 1976
Originally uploaded by Fianna.

Some part of me cries out to see this photo. It could have been me. It should still be me.

In 1976, when the United States celebrated her two-hundredth birthday, I was two years old. Even so, I remember the Bicentennial: it was an idea I worked to grasp; it was flags and stickers, and the dim memory of my parents dancing. The souvenir flags stayed around for years, fuelling recollection. They were child-sized, made of silk, made in America.

My two-year-old self barely knew what America was. My parents had left most of it behind and moved back to the land, to an old farm that sat where the foothills of Oregon’s coastal mountains began to slide into the Willamette Valley. They kept sheep and chickens, planted fruit trees and worked two big gardens. They pulled the ancient mower and hay rake behind the lumbering Massey-Harris tractor. Every year, just before winter became spring, our barn filled with ewes and lambs, and the smells of mucus, milk and—occasionally—death.



My parents had been intellectuals, before. My father had a huge library. He read Castaneda, Jung, and St Augustine, and played classical music on the hi-fi. He was always talking about things I didn’t understand: computers; interest rates; politics. The radio talked about these things too, and worse. Mostly I couldn’t understand, but sometimes my parents switched it off anyway.

Until the Bicentennial came along, nothing newsworthy had touched my memory. I was too small to remember waiting in gas lines during the Arab Oil Embargo. The Carter years, the Tehran hostage crisis, and the Falklands war were all yet to come. My greatest concerns in those days were catching earthworms and snakes, and looking for agates in the gravel of our driveway.

My parents had come to the countryside from huge antiwar protests brutally broken up, with no mention in the newspapers. Their hippie friends tended toward flakiness and excess. But although they escaped to a land of woodstoves and beekeeping, their regard for “America” was unquestioned. What we were doing, after all, was typically American, in the best sense: making a living off the land. I felt a contagious certainty, then and later, that America was a good place, that it stood for something noble, even if it currently appeared to be going down the tubes. Which is why that picture embodies something of the child-me.

It’s funny to think about: the 1970s were a pretty grim time. It was an age of unparalleled disillusionment, but it was new disillusionment. Then, if you loved your country you were infuriated by injustice. People actually made a fuss when something punctured their idealism.

Today, there is so little fury. And to unreservedly love this country—to really believe that America is pure and good—requires isolation from reality, or from sanity. You must rely on some hope that the vice-president knows what he’s doing; that the media are out to fooll us. Or, worse, you accept that the End is at hand, and you turn to welcome the catharsis and cleansing of an accelerating Apocalypse—Christian, New Age, Eco-Terrorist or otherwise—that will deliver us from devastation into purity. It takes effort, delusion and superstition to believe in a bright, smiling future.

I am old enough now to feel nostalgia, to miss that long-ago ideal of America, false as it must have been. Really, very little has changed since 1976. We may have quickened our pace, but the world is headed right where it was headed thirty years ago. What shocked then is commonplace now. And a carefree child with a flag seems a lifetime away.

What I Did Last Week

I went to Olympia. There was an antique prayer rug in a store. I thought hard and then I bought it.



The next day, Rob and I walked down by the sea.

In some dark water, there was a shape, deep down.

I hiked up my dress and pulled to the surface a shark as long as my arm.

It was beautiful. Empty eyes, scratchy skin, a substantial translucent nose.

Sharks don't get cancer. We couldn't see how this one had died. There was goo in its empty eyes.



The next day my mom picked me up and we went to Portland, and she visited me for a few days.

The coffee in Olympia is much stronger than in Portland.

My mom likes what I like: the Chinese Garden; architecture; tea-houses. We took our cameras to the Chinese garden. We were not the only mother-daughter photographic pair!



I cooked all our meals, and my mom washed up. We agreed that food tastes better when someone else has cooked. Or will be washing the dishes. We agreed that I should eat more green vegetables. Food is more expensive here.

I was sad when she left. Meditation on the little silk rug is going very well.

Metta Magnets

The Metta ("Lovingkindness") Sutta is something we can all agree on. There are lots of great translations out there.

Now how does it go? ”May all beings be happy. May they be joyous and live in safety…”? Or is it “peaceful, and live in safety?”

Magnets have been cropping up around Portland that have it thus: “May all beings be happy. May they be safe and free from harm.” Maybe that is right. It doesn’t really matter who you are, or how you remember it: the Metta Sutta is good stuff.

A person I know well, who has recently moved to Portland, instigated this little Dharma outreach project. She was feeling overwhelmed by the newspaper headlines one day. Death and destruction, corruption and shortfall, often have that effect.

Yet Portland is a whimsical and hopeful place, my friend noticed. It gives rise to do-it-yourself arty types who make it their business to tie up toy horses at the hitching rings that dot so many sidewalk curbs. If there can be a Portland Horse Project, my friend thinks, why not a Portland Metta Sutta Project? If it’s good to stroll along, noticing a quirky homage to the days before petroleum-based transit; why not also be treated to something a little more present-and-future-centric?



Why not bring the Metta Sutta, one of the greatest and surest statements of goodwill, to the world? What if it chirruped at you, from news racks, bus stops, utility boxes, the backs of signs? You could call it tagging; you could call it art; you could call it Dharma. Or you could call it a heart cracking open.

My friend got online and found Vistaprint, an online outfit that churns out business cards for free or cheap, and found that they do magnets, too. A few clicks on a spa-style template later, and she had these words:

May All Beings Be Happy
May They Be Safe and Free From Harm.
-metta sutta

She ordered a bunch; the cost including shipping came to 25c apiece. And she set about sticking them in public places.

She was scared at first about sticking the magnets to things. Was this illegal? Would they be taken down and thrown away? It would be nice if people took them home to stick them on the fridge or the car. But who would know, if they vanished, where they had gone? A lot of them might end up in the trash. Would that be a waste, or a sort of blessing-of-the-trash? How many would have to change someone’s life, or make someone think, for it to have all been worthwhile? And would she ever know if it had?

It’s hard not to be attached to outcomes. Even outcomes of acts of lovingkindness-evangelism. And it’s hard not to worry about being caught. What do you tell the cops —“the Dharma made me do it”?

Some things you have to do anyway. Even if you’re shy.

It’s incredible how few things are metal anymore, or ferrous enough to sustain a weak, flat magnet. Bus stops don’t work. And a lot of new cars aren’t magnetic either. Newspaper boxes are good, though. More die in Baghdad blast. Iran defies nuclear test ban. Food aid to be cut in 2007.

May we all be happy. May we be safe and free from harm.

Today I went for a walk along one of her tagging routes. Some of the magnets have vanished. Some are still there. And then there was one, newly-affixed to the rear of an old (thus metal) Mercedes station wagon with Minnesota plates.

Somebody took it and put it somewhere. Somebody liked those words on that little blue magnet. This one Dharma tidbit, at least, has gone to happy home.

May we all find our place, too. And may we all have the guts to get out there and wish the world well. I don’t pretend to know what “should be done,” but I see things that can be done.

This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness,
And who knows the path of peace:
Let them be able and upright,
Straightforward and gentle in speech.
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied.
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.
Peaceful and calm, and wise and skillful,
Not proud and demanding in nature.
Let them not do the slightest thing
That the wise would later reprove.
Wishing: In gladness and in saftey,
May all beings be at ease.
Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,
The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and to-be-born,
May all beings be at ease!
Let none deceive another,
Or despise any being in any state.
Let none through anger or ill-will
Wish harm upon another.
Even as a mother protects with her life
Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings:
Radiating kindness over the entire world
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.
Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down
Free from drowsiness,
One should sustain this recollection.
This is said to be the sublime abiding.
By not holding to fixed views,
The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
Being freed from all sense desires,
Is not born again into this world.

[click here for a teaching on lovingkindness]

Finding "The Way It Is"

This is the text of the essay, mentioned in the preceding post, which I submitted to Buddhadharma. Apparently they like it (yay!). It's somebody's intellectual property, I think, (mine? theirs?) so don't go co-opting what follows for your own nefarious dharma uses. But do enjoy.

I became a scientist because I wanted to understand how the mind works—how an entire consciousness can reside within a modestly-sized gelantinous mass of cells. What I actually learned during my short career as a neurobiologist and geneticist was how little we understand of the human experience. I couldn’t find myself in the convolutions of the cerebral cortex or the mechanisms of signal transduction—and although I wanted to, I couldn’t find a home within the scientific mindset. I didn’t enjoy debating a point; I didn’t think being a professor was the ideal use of my life. And I was devastated by the suspense of actually conducting experiments: years of labor might—or might not, in my case—yield a discovery worthy of publication. I was in a vibrant lab headed by a brilliant investigator, at a world-class research university, but as the days and years wore on, I felt unmotivated, then resentful, and then strangely proud of how bitter and burned-out I’d become. I developed a spectrum of stress-related medical problems: my jaw spasmed; my lungs constricted and my heart pounded; I couldn’t sleep at night or stay awake during the day. My original question about what it meant to be human had somehow lead to becoming inhuman: I had come to study the mind, and I was losing it instead.

What I found in Zen practice was more than pain relief. After years spent within a mechanistic paradigm of human existence, zazen returned me to the original question of what it is to be alive and aware. Perhaps by coincidence, my experiments started to work. I published a paper, received my PhD, and went to live full time in a Zen monastery.

Ajahn Sumedho’s powerful little book The Way It Is found me as I came full circle again: a familiar bitterness and stagnation had settled over me, now in the monastery rather than the laboratory. Poor attitude is no stranger to the monastic life is not unexpected: a certain existential desperation is part of the package. After months of living under others’ authority, following an unrelenting schedule, and having little personal time or space, even the heartiest practitioner may flag. The strategies of a competent adult living in the world no longer apply. In that context, intensive meditation (around a thousand hours per year) dissolves old habits and heightens experience in every way: joy and mystery burn brighter; and exhaustion, resentment and humiliation do, too. The process not always pretty, but the system endures because it does work—because people emerge from this arduous education knowing, and embodying, something of their true nature.

My own response to the inevitable discomforts of the monastic life had been to attack them. As far as I was concerned, my mind was real, the various assaults on my self were real, and the notion that pain could be vanquished by concerted effort was real. I took practice instruction (feeling the feeling rather than feeding the story; cutting off the self, moment by moment) to the point of torment. And it worked well enough, for about a year. Told in this way, it seems obvious that such a strategy would lead to exhaustion and bitterness—what a silly thing to do! But I don’t think I was inordinately confused; I suspect that most of us have tried to practice in this way, or still do.

Faced with this new/old difficulty, I began to suspect that neither academia nor monasticism were any more flawed than my own mind. If I could be miserable in the lab and miserable in the monastery, maybe I needed do something other than critique my surroundings. The Way It Is turned me towards where I needed to look: at the nature of the thoughts and feelings I was taking so seriously.

The book is a compilation of talks given by Ajahn Sumedho, mostly in the 80s, to monastics at Amaravati, a Theravada monastery in England. It is not “inspirational”; it does not offer solace, insight, or the assurance of a deeper meaning to life. Maintaining that those things cannot exist as we hope they do, Ajahn Sumedho tells his audience to forget about finding comfort, or anything else, through practice. “Inspiration,” he says, “is like eating chocolate: it tastes good and it’s very attractive but it’s not going to nourish you; it only energises you momentarily and that’s all it can do.” (p. 57) He says that “the religious experience is one of despair” and likens the “holy life” to a “holocaust, a total burning, a burning up of the self, of ignorance.”(p84) His discourse is plain and conversational, focusing on being present with the reality of life, which is that all things, including feelings and ideas, are anicca, anatta, dukkha (impermanent, without-self, unsatisfying).

These Pali vocabulary words were not entirely new to me, but until I read The Way It Is, I had failed to understand how thoroughly they apply to thoughts and feelings, to the sense of self itself. I had long since given up on reading dharma books, but I read this one, and read it again. Instead of trying to relentlessly cut off insult and pain, when those “opportunities” arose, I attended instead to the impermanence of the feelings, and of the self that feels. Allowing these to arise and cease in their own time—just as breakfast, daylight, breath, and joy also do—immediately provided real freedom within the fire.

There is more to this book: a refutation of any aspiration to greatness you might harbor (bad news of all who secretly hope to be found out as a tulku); a beautiful discourse on dependent origination; simple black-and-white photographs of Theravada monastic life. Anyone who is being consumed by life—as we all are—will find something of value here.

One day late last summer, this of news swept our monastery: Ajahn Sumedho was coming for a very brief, very informal visit! I was thrilled that I might be able to say how much I appreciated The Way It Is, and even have him autograph my copy. It was a nice idea. His party arrived, lunch was served, and Ajahn Sumedho sat down with our abbots to discuss the running dharma centers and guiding others in practice. There was no graceful way to insert myself or my request. And really, it didn’t matter. Ajahn Sumedho went on his way, and later that year, I went on mine.

I still hold the non-memory dear: to have encountered this great teacher without trying to turn the event into something special, feels simple and satisfying—the teaching of The Way It Is at work. Books, meals, careers and ideas all arise; they are as they are; and then they end:. I was a scientist, and now I’m not; I was a monastery resident and now I’m not. This letting everything be, as it is, is something I hope to do until there’s nothing left to be done.

Process and Realization

I haven't been writing here much lately because I've been working on a writing project. I know it must be potent stuff because those 1,000 words have consumed hours of my time!

The article itself is a "Dharma Classics" piece that, editorial opinion permitting, may appear one day in the Buddhist magazine Buddhadharma. These "Dharma Classics" are book reviews with a twist: they present a dharma book in the context of its impact on the reviewer's life.

And, as I am finding, the power of the book I chose to profile, Ajahn Sumedho's The Way It Is, isn't limited to the way it transformed my practice at a time when I was at the end of my resources. Describing my relationship with the book has consumed my recent days, and helped refigure my experiences as a scientist and lay nun. I have felt all the symptoms of transformation: strange periods of anxiety; hours of complete internal silence; dreams and reveries; moments when my voice seems to belong to someone else; sudden bursts of energy.

I had a long, rambling draft in hand a week ago when I drove down to Newport, a quiet Oregon seaside town, and stayed at the Sylvia Beach Hotel. It's a literary-themed hotel, where the rooms are named after writers instead of being numbered. The room rates are reasonable, but the real bargain is the women's dorm, which offers bunk accomodation and full breakfast for only $26 a night--quite a deal. It's a rambling old building several stories high, right on the beach, with a windowed reading room looking out to sea. Books and magazines and literary journals are stacked everywhere, and portraits of authors look out from the walls.

I read and wrote and walked on the beach. The piece I was writing went from seven pages of rant to three pages of taut, sane prose. And I changed too; I am not the same woman who went there a week ago. The whole process of writing has been a process of processing the past, and looking to the future.

Main Entry: pro·cess
Pronunciation: 'prä-"ses, 'prO-, -s&s
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural pro·cess·es /-"se-s&z, -s&-, -"sEz/
Etymology: Middle English proces, from Anglo-French procés, from Latin processus, from procedere
1 a : PROGRESS, ADVANCE b : something going on : PROCEEDING
2 a (1) : a natural phenomenon marked by gradual changes that lead toward a particular result [the process of growth] (2) : a continuing natural or biological activity or function [such life processes as breathing] b : a series of actions or operations conducing to an end; especially : a continuous operation or treatment especially in manufacture

There is something special that happens with this kind of ongoing, focused composition. Blog posts, by contrast, usually take less than an hour--sometimes far less. They have some sort of structure and narrative flow, and when I feel satisfied enough, I post them to the blog. But writing for a magazine involves an extra layer of care and craft. I don't want to sound like an idiot, and I really don't want to sound stuck-up. The progression of ideas has to flow, without being overly impressionistic. The only way to make this work is to hammer all the way through it, until the words start to sing.

I last wrote with this level of intensity in high school English. The feeling of hunkering down is the same. But those essays I wrote half a lifetime ago did not turn me into something new as they came into being. Working on this piece--or even editing someone else's words--wakes up my capacity for language. I express myself more clearly in every way, including speaking to others. My handwriting changes (even though I don't work in longhand). I don't understand it, but I need it. There is something about working language that overturns me and makes me new.

I realize now: this is how it needs to be. I want to change. I have needed to do it this way my whole life, and I need now to attend to the process of writing, seriously.

Main Entry: re·al·ize
Pronunciation: 'rE-&-"lIz
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -ized; -iz·ing
Etymology: French réaliser, from Middle French realiser, from real real
1 a : to bring into concrete existence : ACCOMPLISH [finally realized her goal] b : to cause to seem real : make appear real [a book in which the characters are carefully realized]
2 a : to convert into actual money [realized assets] b : to bring or get by sale, investment, or effort : GAIN [realized a large profit]
3 : to conceive vividly as real : be fully aware of [did not realize the risk she was taking]
(from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)

Indeed.

Publication of "My" Paper in Science Magazine

You can view the abstract of "Mutations That Increase the Life Span of C. elegans Inhibit Tumor Growth" on the Science magazine website, but you need authorization to see the full article. I can email a copy to anyone who is interested.

This paper is the long fruition of research I left behind four years ago. No regrets, and many congratulations to Julie P. and my friends in the Kenyon lab.

For those of you just finding me after I dropped out of sight (Hi!), I encourage you read around the blog, and drop me a comment or email me (dgarigan at that gmail thingy). The very short version is that I am living in Portland, tutoring and copyediting, after a few years living in Zen monasteries.

Current joys are: having control over my diet and my time; living in a beautiful studio apartment in a charming and vibrant city.

Current pains: only in my own mind and memory.

Current view on relationships: trying to "get" something is never helpful, and if you believe in karma, you know things take the course they do, no matter how much cogitating you do.

In fact, what has cogitating done for any of us? But I digress. :-) Send me your copyediting jobs.



Then (January 2, 2002) and Now (May 2006.) (click on any photo to see lots more)

Living With the Relics of the Buddha

My dear friend Michael sent me a trove of Zen gear, which I am charged with sheperding to a good home. One of the goodies was a wearable reliquary filled with sharira. Michael gave me some of these Buddhist relics a couple years ago, which were the inspiration for a post on this very blog.

Turns out I have a few things to add about my personal experience with sharira--for the doubting, derisive and open-minded alike.

I first encountered sharira, relics of departed Buddhist masters, when they came through San Francisco on tour in December of 2003. I was at a crisis point in my life, and needed any and all auspicious aid.

More precisely, m first exposure to the relics was actually riding in the van used to transport them. This was the personal transport of Lama Zopa Rinpoche on his land-based travels in North America, and it was adorned in high Dharma style: every available surface, including the exterior of the vehicle, was covered with prayers, images of bodhisattvas, Buddhist symbols, little statues, and the like. An edition of the Prajna Paramitra Sutra in 2000 Lines sat wrapped in yellow silk on the dashboard. Mantras taped to the roof ensured the favorable rebirth of all insects that smeared the windshield.

The relics were not actually in the van at the time of my ride, but one of the passenger seats was occupied by a human-sized model of the giant Maitreya Buddha statue that Lama Zopa Rinpoche hopes to build in Kushinagar, India. In his full-size form, fifty stories high, a vast collection of relics will be enshrined in rooms at his various chakra centers. Things were pretty cramped in the van, so I sat squished in next to Maitreya. He was outfitted for the road in a natty purple velvet cloak.

As we rode along, my companion and I remarked that we were surprisingly happy and goofy. Acutally, it was no surprise, according to the nun at the wheel. She said that, in all her adventures taking the relics around the country, countless people (including frequently-stressed, suspicious and even sexist hosts at a variety of dharma centers) had dissolved into childlike simplicity, even giggling, once they were in proximity to the relics.

What are these things, anyway? I was told that when a great master is cremated, jewel-like deposits are often found in the ashes. These may vary in color according to the area of the body they came from; there are also blood relics that are not jewel-like at all, but resemble dried strands of saffron. The relic tour has sharira reputedly found in the remains of a number of masters, from Shakyamuni and Ananda on down to twentieth-century lamas. The relics are thought to embody the departed person's spiritual understanding. They may be used for healing, or enshrined on an altar as objects of veneration. Some say they are left intentionally, to inspire faith in the practice.

You can imagine the response of the average educated American to this, Buddhist or otherwise. In fact, you may be thinking right now that this stuff is just way too weird!

But does that make it a load of crap?

My attitude has always been more tolerant. I learned in my life as a scientist that we actually know very little about the world. And that, although science is a discipline grounded in a search for the truth without bias or preconception, scientists often are some of the least curious, leastopenminded people you'll meet. We can only ask questions we can imagine asking, and we are even more limited in the topics we actually have the means to investigate.

The reality of doing research is that you pursue what you have the tools to pursue. You investigate what will get funded. No one would be so suicidally idiotic as to write a grant proposal to investigate something that resembles a stupid woo-woo question (like gems forming in cremains). There are more certain uses for your time, and you're always in a race to publish.

I left that lifestyle; I've never regretted it. And, oddly enough, I left it more mystically-inclined than I entered.

In fact, there are plenty of reasonable people who will tell you that relics do, at least, form. Before the great Korean Zen teacher Master Seung San died last year, he made his disciples promise not to try to collect his relics. He wanted his legacy to be his teaching, to be the living practice he brought to the West. His followers should live the Dharma, not venerate some token. Nevertheless, one nun secretly placed a container of water under his pyre. Apparently this is a technique (perhaps the only one?) for collecting sharira. Later it was found, full of relics.

When I first saw the relics collected by Lama Zopa Rinpoche on tour in San Francisco, I was moved by their beauty. And curious as to what the might "really" be. Although they varied, the standard relic on the tour looked like a tiny, milky moonstone. Some were dark in color. One was still stuck to a fragment of bone. The atmosphere of lightness and joy I'd felt in the van was also present at the viewing, not surprisingly. I circumnambulated the relics, chanted, and felt exhausted. Then I continued with my life, mildly stunned.

A couple years later, when I was in residence at Great Vow Zen Monastery, Michael informed me that he was giving me some sharira. I barely knew what to say; I was flabbergasted that *I* might have custody of such a thing. He assured me that the relics were "real" and said that, in true millenial fashion, he'd found them on eBay.

When the relics arrived, the majority, except for a couple very dark little grains, were clear and bluish in tint. I thought they looked like tourmalines. In spite of a somewhat-dubious reception at the monastery, the relics were enshrined in a little wooden stupa in the founders' room--the spiritual heart of the facility--where incense and bows were offered daily.

At the end of my stay at Great Vow, I retrieved the relics and took them with me to Corvallis. In the process, I opened the stupa. The relics now had an unmistakable pale, milky cast--similar to the ones on the tour--and were no longer transparent at all.

In the course of moving to Portland after a year in Corvallis, I opened the stupa again. The relics were still milky and opaque, but they had taken on a definite peachy-pink cast.

Two days ago, I received the second gift of relics from Michael. These are brilliant orange, semitransparent, with traces of pink fire. They are housed in a clear glass pendant with silver fittings. I lit incense and chanted as I disassembled my altar, looking for a way to enshrine them together with the first batch of relics.

I opened the stupa. The pink relics were still as pink as they were six weeks ago. I gently nudged a couple that had fallen down between the outer wall of the stupa and their little silken "nest." Propelled by the springiness of the silk, a tiny dark one went flying. Shit!

Holding the stupa steady, I listened and watched the tiny dot as it bounced several times. Why O why was I doing this by candlelight? The wayward dot came to a rest and I carefully crouched down to pick it up.

To tell the truth, a funny feeling came over me at this point. Not a chill, but a sense of fullness. My finger found something hard and round on the floor. A relic. But it was not the little dark one; I was touching a typical peachy-pink one about an inch away.

The relics are said to multiply of their own accord. But I would never have expected to witness such a thing. Was I witnessing such a thing? Do relics multiply when you drop them on the floor?

Maybe, I thought, two relics had jumped free in the dim light. But then I considered likelihood of dropping two marbles, having them bounce five or six times, and then finding right next to one another. Not likely. Especially if one marble is five times the size of the other, and neither is perfectly spherical: how could they possibly take the same course?

Maybe I hadn't noticed that the pink relic was already stuck to my finger, and I only felt it when I touched the floor. My fingers were indeed a bit sweaty. I tried to pick up a relic with my sweaty finger. No way; they didn't even begin to stick to my skin.

So I'm out of ideas. As a matter of policy, scientists adopt the most straightforward explanation for phenomena. Maybe in this case that means giving creedence to an ancient and mysterious set of beliefs.

Fortunately, it doesn't matter what anyone thinks, most of all myself. I do zazen with the relics every day; I venerate them as best I can; I live my life and I don't worry too much about metaphysics. I hope the departed masters would approve.

Shugetsu Conquers The World. Sort Of.

self-portrait
Originally uploaded by Goodbye Kitty.

I got my very first check from my very first copyediting gig today. I am thrilled beyond belief.

What's more, the inimitable Mary Jo Matsumoto has profiled me (me!) on her style blog (style blog!), if you can imagine such a thing. She says really nice things, and she made a great montage of some of my flickr images too. I say it's worth a look.

The photo you see here is MJ's self portrait. She's an example of being truly yourself in the world, doing that one thing that only you can do. Ganbatte!

News of John King's Passing

017_9A
Originally uploaded by Yeshe Samten.

Michael called me this morning, and wrote this at my request, because I know some people have found this blog in their search for news of Dharma teacher John King, who died of throat cancer last night.

For a long time, he was unable to eat food, but he continued to teach with a luminous intensity that was truly striking.

Before I turn things over to Michael, I'll say that one thought in my heart has to do with the fact that being ordained and holding the position of a Dharma teacher allows one to be witnessed performing a total service to the world in a way that a hidden life does not.



To my dear Dharma sister Shugetsu,

It is with heavy heart that I write you this morning. Our friend Hogetsu (Max) just called, and passed on word that dear John King died last night. As you know, John had been sick for a while. I feel very fortunate to have been able to not only sit with him at Hartford Street Zen Center, but to work as his kitchen assistant while he was tenzo for a sesshin we led there. John seemed to sense the urgency of practice--sometimes it was almost as if he himself composed the words painted on the han, this practice was so deep within him. Even as he and I stood around the kitchen drinking too much coffee, it was clear to me that he wasn't wasting a single moment at all--he was practicing, practicing, practicing.

I understand that some of the final talks and teachings he gave also focused on this practice of urgency--that in his final illness, he gave teachings that were clearly meaningful and relevant to our day to day lives. I remember a story of a dying zen master (was it Dogen?) who, while in his final moments, wrote the characters for "Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha" around a pillar in his room, and circumambulated the pillar, continually taking refuge in his final moments. John didn't need to write on a pillar- - it was clear to me that he practiced as if the entire world were the Triple Treasure, and he worked, though the example of his own practice, to show us all how to truly take refuge, to truly live the Buddha-Dharma.

Many people in San Francisco loved John. This was clear when I went to the part/"living wake" at his house a month or two ago--the house was overflowing with people, all there because they truly loved this great man, and were inspired by his practice. Others knew John better than I, and I'm sure that they (or his heart students) could write a more fitting tribute than I have done here. This small letter is just the deepest expression of my own heart--in deep sympathy for his departure, and in deep joy for his life. John really inspired me in my practice, and I grew to call him "friend." May his life and his practice only continue to grow--informing, inspiring, and enlightening all beings. I vow to truly undertake this practice of urgency--this practice of refuge as daily life. May I someday come to understand and live this practice as John did.

Blessings,

Michael.

What Do You Leave Behind?

My aim is to die
as sane a person as possible--
and not as rich a person as possible.

This objective has the greatest benefit
to the world,
and to myself.

A Body Brave and Shy

I noticed something after sesshin, when I did not want to practice Aikido with Deston; and I noticed it again yesterday, when my new acquaintance Heather called me to come hear live music in the neighborhood, and she danced while I did not: my body has become shy.

Deston told the story of a great teacher—an Aikido master—who grew old and frail and fell into a coma. Even in that insensible state, he still breathed from the hara. For so many years, he had cultivated that practice that, even when he was no longer fully in this world, his body still held the ingrained habit.

Alison/Yuko works with demented bodies whose minds have flown but who nevertheless walk and fight and cry out among us. She tells a similar kind of story: those whose lives were marked by trauma and drama; those whose bodies are wracked by addictions, are now in the worst shape. When happy, balanced people fall victim to Alzheimer’s, they teeter off the edge of now; their mind rolls back until they are left floating in a haze of childhood reality. They are sweet, befuddled, earnest. But the others, who may have once been able to keep it together, to function in the midst of alcoholism or a terrible marriage, now cannot contain their pain. The barriers against the truth have fallen, and what comes forth is their fear and rage, their inability to peacefully be with what is. It boils forth in an outburst, or oozes slowly in bizarre repetitive behaviors that stretch into eternity. Unmoored from time, you become what you have been cultivating, minus all pretense, minus all hope of dignity.

There will come a time when all that remains is habit and instinct, and a body that continues to live because it is already alive. Long before we grow old and the mind rots away, we will be called to act without thought: accident, calamity, attack and emergency all bring forth responses from a deep, unreasoning place.

You wake up. A man looms over your bed.
You come home. The front door is open.
On the freeway, skidding.
An earthquake that becomes stronger.
A knock at the door.

You don’t decide, in those moments, where your mind goes. If you are wise, and lucky, you may have an instant to choose how to act. But you may not be one who responds in a satisfyingly cool, enlightened manner. You won’t actually know what you do until the situation arises, and you act. To judge what you do then is useless as denouncing or praising the weather, your weight, or the passage of time: it’s all karma, and nothing else.

Fruit. If the plums are small and hard this year, if they fall before they ripen, that’s just how it is; there’s no one to scold.

The only sure choice is not when you face the man with the knife; or the building belching smoke; or the child vomiting blood. It is now: how do I use my mind now? How do I train my body now?

So, last night, this body would not dance. Because Cuban music in a parking lot filled with neighbors was not enough to move me. Because I have ideas about authenticity, and refuse to dance unless I’m truly moved. I have that luxury now that I am no longer engaged in “Zen training” under a qualified master.

With no one to tell me to dance, to play the marimba, to laugh on cue for a minute—I don’t do such things. Perhaps my timidity now is in reaction to those days where I didn’t have such luxuries. I can’t say that turning on a dime, acting on cue, under stress, actually did lay down habits of joy and expansive action. Maybe it only bred a closed and quiescent reaction.

Or maybe this is no reaction at all, just the fruit of sitting so quietly, for so long. For expressing Self in ever-more-subtle ways. Regardless, five years ago, I would have danced. Today, although I can’t say why, my body prefers to hide. To mince, to stand silently.

Five years ago, I would already have an Aikido date with Deston, and be throwing myself into attack, not knowing how he might fly me and guide me to the mat, but trusting his love and great power.

And maybe five years ago, I would have emerged from a walking reverie to enquire after the health of the well-dressed man who lay curled in a pool of light outside an apartment building a few warm evenings ago. At that time, the world was quiet and perfect, and he looked so peaceful. I walked on: that action a cause and a result; simultaneous seed and fruit.

I know about sitting now. So perhaps it is time to fly through the air, to slap the mat, to collide and be thrown without fear; to be guided on the dance floor, spun and lost to myself for a moment. Entrusting that my body will be there in the end, that the body lost in an instant will be found to exist in the next, and the next. Until one day, when the mind is a pitted fruit, lacking in structure, and only the body remains.

Blooming As Yourself

daisy a day
Originally uploaded by jude.

A snippet of a dharma conversation, here reproduced.

...Getting over one's delusions of being a tulku--or a departed zen celebrity--is part of the larger project of becoming free from the background noise of paralyzing mental formations, in order to function wholeheartedly in life, as the precious nothing-special person that you are. That was rant #1.

Rant #2 was about functioning wholeheartedly, expressing your full brilliance as a person, doing that thing that only *you* can do, unfettered by fear of success--or notions of inferiority, vulnerability etc. See? Not contradictory. Same rant.

Evan at the monastery told me the story of the great rabbi who carried a pebble in each pocket. On one little stone was written "I am the pinnacle of G-d's creation"; on the other, "I am dust and dirt." Or something to that effect. Depending on the situation, one pebble or the other would be a necessary reminder.

Maybe a more relevant set of pebbles for the likes of you and me would be one that says, "I will not shrink from destiny and greatness"; and another that says "Just do what's right in front of you."

You know that Mary Oliver poem, "When Death Comes"? She's overexposed in Zen circles, but that's because she's so good. Our life is as common, as wholly unique, and as fleeting, as a flower's....


When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.