In Honor of September 31

Many Septembers ago, when my mother was five years old, she took herself to school. She was five years old, and the cutoff date for first grade was October 1. If you weren't six years old by then, you waited another year.

My mother's birthday was October 31st. She would have to wait to start school until she was almost seven.

Even so, when her older brother got on the school bus, she did too.

The principal contacted my grandfather. The cutoff date was October 1; wasn't she too young?

Why no, my grandfather replied. She squeaks in just under the wire; her birthday is September 31.

The principal accepted that answer, and my talented little mother stayed in school. Whether she grew up to be as brazen as her father is another question!


[Little Uncle Fred; Grandma Madeline; Little Ann]

Losing Boris Albinder [Part 2]

The post below, originally from September 23 2006, has been modified from its original form. I wrote it initially as an exploration of my feelings in response to the death of a young man I liked but did not know well, whose death nevertheless affected me quite profoundly.

At the time I considered “anonymizing” the personal information, since what I wrote was, in many ways, not about him as much as it was about me and my inner life. Because his death was publicized, his family was undoubtedly receiving a lot of attention. On the other hand, his death was already a matter of public discourse.

So I wrote a piece, using names, which incorporated what little I knew about the situation. This blog is not a news site; in keeping with that fact, this post is a subjective observation of myself and the world in light of some unfortunate events.

The young man’s mother and stepfather wrote to correct some factual errors I made in the post (looking back, I can see how they happened, but no matter) and also took issue with at least one aspect of my interpretation of the world. I suspect that they disagree with more than they say.

In deference to them I took down the post and, having no other way to contact them, wrote a response on the blog. I haven’t heard back from them. I respect that they would exert their entitlement to “own” some part of their son’s life and legacy. He was clearly an incredible person, and it is because I was touched by him, that I offer what little I can.

I have corrected or elimated the factual mistakes that were pointed out, and I am now posting a corrected version of the original piece. The comments to the original version should still be appended to this post, and my letter in reponse now follows as the next post (for now). I keep these because I think they help explore the point I am getting at.

For all our sakes, I hope that Boris’s nearly twenty years on this earth--and the fleeting news coverage of the end of his life--lead to something other than unmitigated grief and bitterness.

---

Someone I know died a week ago Friday. I wouldn’t presume to call Boris a friend, but I liked him.

Boris’ grandmother, Bella, worked in the research lab where I earned my PhD. She was a technician and I was a graduate student. There were a trio of Russian-speaking ladies who kept the place going; they were actually Jews, not Russians, and Bella was from Moldova.

Bella was on the phone a lot for family matters, and so I heard Boris’ name a thousand times before I ever met him. When I started to work as a tutor, Bella asked me to work with Boris; I don’t remember if it was math or science, but I do remember sitting with a mild-mannered boy in the break room of the lab, fifteen stories in the air. He had clear golden skin and a good sense of humor. He was fifteen or so, and had the makings of a charming and successful man. At that point, I think, his little sister already had died.

The girl, Bella’s other grandchild, was diagnosed with a childhood cancer when she young--maybe four years old. I only saw her once: she was too weak to walk, so she rode awkwardly in a too-small stroller.

It was wrenching to see and hear the little I did: Bella on the phone, a language I didn’t understand; glimpses of the girl; stories from the pediatric oncology unit, which connected through a maze of hallways and elevators to the quiet genetics lab where I sat, studying genes that dictate the lifespan of C. elegans nematodes. Normally, these millimeter-long creatures live for a few weeks, but with genetic and environmental manipulation, one tiny animal in our care lived for over ninety days. Bella’s granddaughter lived for…maybe two thousand days?

How do you lose a child? Fighting, scared, peaceful; they leave, exhausted. And you have to stay, exhausted.

The little girl’s father, Bella’s son, didn’t stay. He committed suicide. This second loss seemed like too much for anyone to bear. We worried about Bella, and about Boris. Everyone in the lab went to the funeral.

It was my first time in a funeral home; and I was struck by the refuge of awkward formality. A Star of David hung over the casket. Down in front, I could see Boris, people shaking his hand. What an awful time this must be for him. He was mobbed with attention; with people’s imaginings of what his life must be like; of what his life would become. Enough projection for one very young man. I left him alone.

I didn’t see Boris again. I left the lab, left science, lived in Zen monasteries, and just this fall moved to Portland, Oregon. I have begun to work as a tutor again.

I got the news about Boris on Monday, right before a session with a golden-skinned, bright and charismatic boy—like Boris—Jewish, athletic and still somewhat innocent to the world. Because I was in the shock that comes immediately after bad news, and the session was unremarkable.

And life contiues unremarkably. Except for these headaches I’ve been having. And the strains of the old antiwar song--written in the wake of the American Civil War—that have been going through my head:

Last night I dreamed the strangest dream
I’d never dreamed before
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war.

I dreamed I saw a mighty room
All filled with women and men
And the papers they were signing said
They’d never fight again.

And when the papers were all signed
And a million copies made
They all joined hands and bowed their heads
And grateful prayers were prayed.

The people in the streets below
Were dancing round and round
While guns and swords and uniforms
Lay scattered on the ground.

Last night I dreamed the strangest dream
I’d never dreamed before
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war.

And there have dreams, too, about war: bombs on the farm where I was raised; bombs that sweep rows of houses away. People in the rubble, looking for food.

I didn’t know exactly how Boris had died, only that he had been killed. As I thought back over the circumstances of his life it occurred to me that he might have fallen in with a bad crowd. I could not imagine Bella’s grief.

So I made inquiries, and today there was an article in the paper. Boris died coming to a friend’s aid in a fight over a parking spot. Seems that he and a friend were driving somewhere, and the friend hopped out to claim a spot by standing in it, while Boris circled around to come at it from the right direction. As the friend stood there, a bunch of guys in a van tried to take the spot; bumped the friend with the vehicle; and then jumped out and started beating the crap out of him.

At this point Boris shows up. What would you do? What would you like to say you had done? There are five of them.

You have to remember, this is San Francisco, where parking is serious business. That aspect of the story gives the senseless violence an absurd twist—propelling it onto the evening news, and selling newspapers. “Youth Dies Over Parking Spot”—but that misses the fact that Boris died, not for the sake of parking, but coming to the aid of his friend.

The man who killed him was a Cambodian refugee, unable at last to get his life together after past scarred by genocide and brutality (How do I know this? If you are Cambodian, and you’re still alive, that’s what the past was.)

Bella herself was a refugee, who escaped anti-Jewish violence in Moldova in the 90s, and nothing could convince her that Israel should make concessions of any kind. I can still hear her, insistently, her accent, saying “Where can we be safe?”



There is a makeshift memorial now, by the parking spot. A blurry photo there, reproduced in the newspaper, shows a body more adult than I recall. Turns out he was a swimmer. He looks well, and healthy, more mature than I recall.

I‘ve been praying and talking to him as I sit, and I know Boris is in a good place now. But there is no place in this world where any of us are truly safe, or insulated from sorrow and harm: not in Israel, Moldova, Portland or San Francisco; not while we destroy others’ lives and our own.

There’s war outside and a war inside, and lives of value and promise are snuffed out by some hijacked notion of entitlement, some forcible version of how the world should be.

Even so, these things come as a shock. Because it is so lovely to sink into a life of plenty and comparative comfort. If I’ve been dwelling on the other side of things lately in my writings and musings, it’s because I want to keep remembering there is a price and a context to my life.



FROM THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

A 19-year-old Pacifica man was stabbed to death in a dispute over a parking space on Geary Boulevard over the weekend, and San Francisco police have arrested his alleged killer, a former Cambodian refugee featured in a documentary about immigrant life in the Tenderloin.

The victim, identified Monday as Boris Albinder, whose parents were Russian immigrants, died Saturday morning of stab wounds he suffered during a brawl just after midnight in front of a club at Geary and Third Avenue.

The fight began when a friend of Albinder's tried to reserve an empty parking space for him as he drove to the Richmond District neighborhood for a private party at the club. A van with several men in it started to pull into the spot, and when Albinder's friend tried to shoo them away, the van nudged him twice, police said.

Albinder drove up to find his friend struggling with as many as five men who had been in the van, investigators said. Albinder got out to join the fight and was stabbed. He died later that morning at San Francisco General Hospital.

Police pulled over a van in the 300 block of Leavenworth Street at 12:38 a.m. that matched the one involved in the clash and arrested Pounloeu Chea, 25, of San Francisco, said Sgt. Steve Mannina, a department spokesman. Chea has been booked on one count of murder and five counts of assault, police said.

Albinder was remembered Monday as a hardworking, dedicated athlete and student who graduated from St. Ignatius College Preparatory High School last year.

"It's awful and devastating, any time you lose someone this young," said Joe Vollert, director of development at the school, who taught Albinder in a math class. "It's a life gone too soon.''

Albinder was on the school's swim team and was ranked among the top competitors in the region in the butterfly stroke during his senior year, said a coach, Greg McCarthy.

"He was a great guy," McCarthy said. "His senior year, he matured quite a bit. He was very respectful. He led his team very well.''

A friend of Albinder's, Joe Hills, said Albinder had been taking classes at Skyline Community College.

"He was a real genuine guy. He always spoke his mind,'' Hills said. "I guess you could say he lived each day,'' he said.
His death, Hills said, was senseless. "All over a parking spot.''

Chea, whose family fled the Khmer Rouge in the 1980s, was featured three years ago in a 20-minute documentary film, "Who I Became," about the life of Asian immigrants in the Tenderloin.

The film portrayed Chea's struggles to escape the street in recent years after first his mother and then his father returned to Cambodia. At one point, Chea was convicted of taking part in a car-theft and smuggling ring, but was allowed to stay in the United States as long as he fulfilled the terms of his probation, said one of the filmmakers, Mike Siv.

Siv said Monday that he had seen Chea a few times in the Tenderloin since the documentary came out in 2003, and that he still appeared to be hanging out on the street.

In the year that Siv worked on the film, Chea completed a construction training program but was told he couldn't get a job unless he had a high school degree, Siv said. A friend got Chea work at a hotel, but he couldn't keep it.

"When I was following him, he wanted to stay away from the street life,'' Siv said. But he added, "I don't think he ever got his GED. All he had to do is get a GED.''

Siv said Chea had a young son and was living with his girlfriend in the Tenderloin.

Siv said he was sad but not surprised that Chea had been arrested. "When you are put at a disadvantage, it's hard to dig yourself out," he said. "He chose his lifestyle. For him to be arrested ... to tell you the truth, it was a matter of time.''
E-mail Jaxon Van Derbeken at jvanderbeken@sfchronicle.com.

Confidential to Helen & Vadim

Dear Friends,

I appreciate your comment on my post about losing Boris Albinder. Because there is no way to respond privately to your post, I will respond publicly here, and hope you will excuse me:

First, please accept my condolences for the loss of Boris. There is no way I can imagine your pain, and perhaps it is better to keep my thoughts to myself rather than to have an opinion about something that is so tragic and so personal. Even a well-intentioned homage may be inappropriate.

Boris was one of my favorite students, and his death has been very difficult for me. I did not know him well, but even a simple acquaintanceship was sufficient to see his goodness and strength of character. That he died coming to a friend's aid is the only bright spot in this grief.

As you noted I made some factual mistakes in the piece I wrote: I must have mistaken the address for Third St and Geary and thought of the Tenderloin--I imagined they might be going to that Indian restaurant there that's so good. But yes, like you I would never have imagined Boris driving around the Tenderloin looking for trouble!

And sorry about the T Shirt; I was thinking of something else, and imagined the connection to the lab.

Finally, about sympathizing with his attacker: I will admit I was surprised that the article in the newspaper gave so much space to a biography of the person who killed Boris. I felt it was insensitive and inappropriate.

Having said that, I think it is naive to imagine that the Cambodian genocide would not have an impact even today. The two Cambodians I have known were defined by it; they grew up in refugee camps. They were kind and peaceful, as people can be, even though they have experienced violent conditions.

However, almost always a vicious person has had a terrible childhood, and the point I was hoping to make was that violence and anger propagate and move in cycles. Stopping those cycles of anger and violence takes place inside each person's heart, first and foremost. This is not to say we should forget, or even forgive. But when our pain and grief is replaced by anger, we do harm to the world, and we harm ourselves.

This has been my personal experience with the deaths and misfortunes of my own life. It is extremely difficult to just feel the pain--anger seems so easy and right. That is what I work on as I think about your son. I cannot express how sorry I am that he has been taken from you, and from the world.


Your Respectfully.

Feeling

I need to feel a little bit every day.

The body slowly opens; it doesn't always want to.

And so often the First Noble Truth is manifest:
There is always something to stretch the heart with grief. Or fear.
Always some new story of greatness or evil (or happily-ever-after-ness).

None of this Truth can be controlled or cut off. I do know though, that if I feel, the energy of thought and emotion flows through rather than becoming trapped in the body.

Trapped energy is tightness and dysfunction: I can say that from my own experience. And I think that reluctance to feel is one of the main impediments to spiritual practice.

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!