Involuntary Ascetism Ends

My last post marked a local low point in the experience of motherhood. I asked my husband to come home from work early that day; I was so fatigued that I feared dropping the baby. I would look down at him and not really "see" him properly.

My very wise husband suggested I go to bed with the baby that night. Normally, after the little guy goes to sleep, I stay up for a couple hours and do yoga, or enjoy some grown-up company with my husband. The baby sometimes sleeps for 5 or 6 hours, but during that time I'm awake, trying to be an adult. Bedtime is at 7pm so I can have some time to relate to the man I married. But I wasn't much fun to be around anyway. And so I went to bed that night at 8pm.

The baby slept for six hours, and I did too. I awoke restored in every possible way.

My lips were red again. The world was once again full of promise and a hint of magic. My child was beautiful and adorable, my husband interesting and kind.

I heard once, second hand, about a prominent Buddhist teacher and monk who didn't lie down to sleep for a year, or maybe three years. When asked what it was like, he said, "I was just really grumpy during that time." It's hard to be graceful, or happy, or to meditate comfortably, when you are sleep deprived.

I realized, after my rest: it had been ten weeks since I'd slept more than three hours at a stretch. Of course I was miserable.

Last night, I slept again. For a five hour stretch. I felt so good when I woke up that I went to the hospital to take care of a long-delayed blood draw. Two weeks ago, I could not have imagined fasting for twelve hours, breastfeeding, and then hiking over to have blood drained out of me, all before 9 a.m. This morning, I did it and I was fine.

And so the sun shines, the trees blow in the wind, the road crew cuts into the pavement outside our apartment. Indoors, classical music plays, the baby grunts and babbles and reaches a developmental milestone: grasping and waving an object around. It's a good day. Gotta sleep more often!

The Locus for Going Crazy

Sometimes silence on a blog means that the writer's life is so full of high adventure there's no time to stop and write it down.

And sometimes it means life is kicking your butt, you have nothing useful to say, and you're taking your mother's advice in such situations and keeping your mouth shut.

Excuse me. There is a yelling child on my lap.

That's better. Now we have a only mildly fidgety baby swinging in a mechanical swing nearby. You know, the sort of contraption you looked upon with a combination of suspicion and disdain before you came to rely on its mysterious powers? He calms down the minute his butt hits the seat.

My last post was written in haste, and the comment that was posted to it was better thought-out than the original post. Or so it seems to me. For days, I have contemplated thoughts to add. Did you know that London cabdrivers have enlarged hippocampi? The better to remember their ways around the warren of city streets? Perhaps the human mind is nothing more than the imagined self that arises from the fleshly computing of a billion neurons.

Perhaps we use the term "mind" too loosely, and miss having a discussion entirely because we talk past each other.

Perhaps the same is true of "God". Do we mean the divine mystery that emerges from a silent mind and open heart? Or a parental arbiter that rules our lives? Spend your time discussing one while your friend discusses the other, and you have no discussion at all.

Noticing that perception of the divine happens in a particular locus in the brain, does that make it "only" a neural phenomenon, and not real? Would we say that the streets of London are not real because the experience of them can be measured as a particular pattern of neural activity? If seeing my grandmother correlates with one pattern of neural activity, and having a spiritual experience correlates with another, am I allowed to diagnose one phenomenon as a genuine experience, and the other as some sort of artifact?

Do people really think it's an artifact? Or do I imagine "scientists" to be close-minded because it makes me feel better for not being one? Do I set up a conflict between science and Buddhism where, for the most part, there really isn't one?

I had these thoughts, and I also happened to have a major attack of the Inner Critic--that voice in the head (show me the locus...) that notices what is lacking, what is not quite right, what is hopelessly muddled. For who am I to discuss "brain" or "mind" or "holiness"? Having tried--and you might say, failed, if you were in a judgmental mood-- at being a scientist; having tried my darnedest at being a Zen monk, having tried to live outside the monastery and meditate a lot, where am I now? I have a baby, all the time in the world to not meditate in, and only a marginal idea of which way is up.

My mind, what's left of it, is the most unclear and conflicted it's been in years. I have some inkling that something called "hormones" is involved. That and a really stunning life change that has to do with the baby who currently lies asleep in a sling against my chest, after another half hour of loud complaining.

It takes me weeks to recognize simple things: that the songs playing in my head are an attempt to avoid feeling intensely vulnerable; that I need to have contact with other people, because as absorbing as this little person is, talking to no one but him and my husband will lead only to depression; that perhaps instead of really wanting to have a career, instead of fighting against fate for some way to provide for my little family, I should gracefully accept this very important job I'm actually doing right now.

It's time to ask for help. To get a massage, to get a babysitter, to think about therapy. I've weathered a lot of good fortune this past year, and now I've found the point of resistance. Thinking doesn't help, and feeling bad about it doesn't help.

I don't want to be doing anything other than what I'm doing now. I just want to feel peaceful doing it.

Thoughts of a "Neural Buddhist"

On a years-old to-do list is the following item: "launch applied neuro-religion blog".

I have not done so, and yesterday's article by David Brooks in the NY Times makes me sorry I haven't.

I have read with dismay the overly-simplistic "arguments" against religion in the scientific press. Richard Dawkins has disproved the literal existence of the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible. So what? Human spiritual undertakings are therefore bunk? It doesn't follow. Defining your adversary in ridiculously narrow terms, the better to pulverize him, isn't convincing.

It's encouraging to have a NY Times columnist point out that strict scientific materialism is beside the point. We are talking here about what it means to be human.

Starting from the point of view that the mind is a computer leads only to conclusions consistent with that assumption. As in, "The things that give meaning to human existence are actually meaningless, because consciousness is nothing more than a bunch of microprocessors clicking away."

My favorite book for exploring this topic is HHDL's The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality. My own copy is peppered with metal Book Darts marking key passages.

Perhaps the greatest "scientific discovery" of recent years went unmentioned in Brooks' column. Meditation changes your brain in measurable ways. By training oneself and conciously undertaking a transformation of mind, tangible physical and mental alterations result. Cerebral cortex thickens. People are truly less distractable. These come as no suprise to meditators, who have seen dramatic changes in themselves and their fellows.

But those working from a scientific mindset need measurable data, and here is data that suggests that, far from being delusional, spiritual practice can magnify and improve the human creature.

If we had data like this ten years ago, perhaps I would still be a neuroscientist.

Dharma of the NY Times

Train the mind, knowing transformatiion is within reach

Restrain yourself, knowing the power of temptation

Hold reason and the divine together in a heart without conflict

Sweet and Tender Baby Mind

Getting to know a baby is like getting to know some fundamental and universal aspect of the Self, the foundation that a human is built upon. As we grow, successive layers of personality are superimposed upon the Babyself. That first consciousness remains recognizable to us though--that's why people find babies interesting. In them, we recognize something buried, but still present in our own psychic makeup.

The two most striking things about babies--or this baby at any rate, and I don't imagine he's so unique in this--is the sweetness, and the vulnerability they embody.

All the arguments about humans being fundamentally open-hearted now make sense and are no longer theoretical. This baby is easily swayed to joy, eager to relate, eager to love and be loved. He is spontaneously sweet, and without guile.

And he is vulnerable. He displays some understanding of his own complete neediness. He does not mind if he gets dirty, and he doesn't mind physical discomfort as much as I would expect. You can drip saline drops in his nose, or let milk crust form in his armpits, and he hardly complains at all. (How milk crust gets into a baby's armpits in the first place has me stumped, but that doesn't concern him either.) But take his mama away and give him a bottle, and he is not happy. Fail to feed him when he cries in the middle of the night, and he becomes indignant. Even when there is no blood-sugar emergency, when the boy is tired he clings to my chest and looks into my face with large eyes as if he were asking for something or regarding some great wonder.

This baby mind is precious. To turn it to nastiness would require pain coupled with insult--plus a processing ability he does not yet have. In my own experience, I have been very uncomfortable when my own infantile vulnerablity arises. You could argue that it's hardly relevant in an able-bodied person for whom food and shelter are normally in steady supply. But it persists; perhaps its arising is a sign of some mild pathology, but nevertheless it is as much a part of the human psyche as the delight that comes from watching light and shapes, or the innate satisfaction of sharing a smile and laughter with another person.

From our earliest weeks of life, we are helpless, and we are joyful. It's a privilege to care for someone who is wholly in that phase of life.

Baby's First Blog

Baby Kieran has his own blog. You are invited to visit!

http://babyktg.blogspot.com/

Birth

Mementos of Birth
Originally uploaded by Shugetsu.

The baby came on Friday morning.

Labor was longer and harder than anything I've ever done. The result is more precious than anything I've ever known.

We are both doing well.

Click on the flickr photo badge to see lots of baby photos.

Past Due

This moment is all there is. Every other day or so, there is a rush of hormones: muscles contract in involuntary readiness; a great love rises and runs high; an inner ache banishes sleep. The cliff's edge is approached.

And then something draws back. It is not yet time. Mundane matters fill the day.

There is only one way for this to end, however. One day the boundary will not hold.

Perhaps this slow approach is good. The gate is opening slowly and gradually over days, so that when birth comes, it will be more gentle.

Over the past couple of weeks, something has happened. Some very specific regrets and fears have melted away. Old shame has dissolved. A gentle death of some attachments to a past time; a gentle death 0f some old life.

In this in-between time, there are many lasts. The last time I will have dinner and a long conversation with K. The last tutoring with M while still unencumbered by maternal concerns. The last weekend, and then really the last weekend, of quiet togetherness with my husband.

Some old life--once mine--is already dying. And some new life is actually already here. The baby becomes a person only when it emerges. But already it relates and fidgets, sleeps and gets excited. It likes eating, especially after a while without food. At the first mouthful, the baby wiggles with great energy. I don't know who this person is behind the skin veil, but I have no doubt that they are wholly there, dreaming their way toward the day when their genuine personhood is officially recognized by the US government. For today, this little one has no papers and no number. But he (or she) is more real than the remembered self that once lived my life.

I look at all the little clothes, at the baby bed, and the birthing pool, and my own roiling belly, and I am so excited. So worried, so happy, and so calm. Karma comes due. Waiting to dive over the cliff's edge is like this.

Little to Know

I cried the other day hearing Liam Clancy remember a departed friend, encountered in "that brief window of consciousness that is given to us between the two great mysteries."

What can you say, as you wait for the window to open for a child?

I thought when I started pregnancy that I would gain some insight from the experience. I would learn something and be able to report it to the world. Some profound understanding about this mystery would reveal itself. I would be able to say that growing a baby is “like” this or that.

Maybe it’s no surprise: I don’t understand anything. In my body, something tremendous has transpired, with no particular effort on my part. I have become extremely large, and I have had feelings about that. But when your body is co-opted for reproductive purposes, there’s not much you can do. The challenge is to feel, and to keep feeling. To note the physical and emotional landscape, all the wonder and trepidation and uncomprehending responsibility. This is a person we have here! the mind isn’t made to wrap around that truth. Only a soft and stable heart can hold it.

---

Last night I dreamed I was holding a very new Native American Indian baby named Donald against my chest. He curled against my tummy like a little frog, and tried to suck on my sweater. He had a full shock of blackblack hair. I took him down some stairs and gave him to his mother. She was wearing a beautiful white puffy jacket and a matching white baby carrier.

My pregnancy dreams are like that: taking care of babies and little children. None of these dreams horrible or traumatic or even psychedelic in the way that pregnancy dreams often are. Just tenderness and a bit of joy. This dream-baby was the youngest yet.

Birth Vigil

We are on birth vigil.

Yesterday I lay on the exam table as the midwife, a veteran of thousands of births, made ready to examine me. Instead, I asked a question about death, and she told me about the deaths she has attended.

Yes, she said, it's the same feeling of great transition.

I asked if she thought people dying go to the same place that people being born come from. She thought so.

There's a real physical effort to dying, she said, as if someone is pushing their way across something. Bit by bit, with enormous effort, they stop and rest, and then they carry on, gradually making their way. To the other shore, she said.

She is not, to my knowledge, a Buddhist.

You attend a dying person like you attend a birthing woman. You cannot do the work for them, but you can coach them and help them remember their intention. In both cases, they must open, and they must let go.

Breathing is so automatic, she said. It takes great will for a person to stop.

It takes great will to be born, too. The twelve-linked chain of causation culminates there--at birth, the apex of successive waves of desire and becoming--before it dives again into the next cycle of drives and wants.

Why are we born? Some basic desire draws us forth. It is all terrifying. And beautiful. Not entirely positive, in this world of dwindling resources. And yet, it’s just exactly As It Is.

The midwife turns at last to my body, and feels around. Things are in good shape, she says. Pelvic instability, which prevented me from walking earlier, is a predictor of easy labor: the bones are able to move apart. The baby-gate is nicely thinned and barely cracked open. The child’s head is low, ready to go. If everything were like this in a week, when the pregnancy is officially at term, the midwife would be pleased.

So we are ready. The baby is a good size. Some of the little clothes in the newborn lineup will never fit. The diapers are stacked; the cosleeper nestles next to our bed. Nothing to do but wait and invite the miracle.

Waiting for Baby

Mostly what is left is the waiting.

I can walk now, and I enjoy it greatly. I fly up and down stairs, carefully but full of joy. I rest and do not carry things. Other than time and ice and kindness, nothing helped my hip to heal more than the midwife/naturopath's recommendation of great quantities of turmeric, a known anti inflammatory.

So I can do things again. I can move around the kitchen and cook. I can remember that following the recipe gives better results, sometimes, than complete improvisation. The freezer is filling up.

Pictures now hang on some walls. We have diapers stowed in large stacks in the antique dresser that will be the baby's changing table. The birthing pool is partway inflated, in readiness. The gaudy cartoon-fishies on the side really clash with our decor.

I fill the waiting with naps, with zazen, and with socializing. Soon it will be harder to connect with people. So many good folks are no longer in orbit; from a few, the silence is deafening. But it does not matter. The world is opening, the trees are in bud, flowers rise up, and we are never really separated from the people we care about.

Still, it is good to talk to my cousin M, to share chilaquiles with R and J, to know that A is coming over later to tell me about her kids and her job.

I am "due" in a week, but I secretly believe the baby will come before that.

Sitting, Walking, and Trying to Stand It

The pyriformus is a muscle that holds the head of the femur in the hip joint. The gluteusminumus is another muscle that does this. They anchor the leg onto the sacrum, the perforated shield-like bone that solidifies late in life. Until age 20 or so, you have a tailbone down there. After age 25, you have a sacrum.

These left-side muscles have never had an easy time binding the femur's head to the sacrum. Now that an extra 50 pounds of pregnancy weight has settled about my bones, they are in distress. There is inflammation, there is immobility in the SI joint, there is the apparent shortening of one leg.

There is ordeal of going down stairs. There is the bus driver making the bus kneel. There is the assurance that this is temporary; and there is the admonition that in three weeks or so, I'm going to need every conceivable millimeter of pelvic flexibility I can muster.

I'm not sure how much improvement is possible. Someone's head is sitting on my pubic bone, after all. Someone rides so low that I am spared the classic pregnant-lady dashes to the restroom because my bladder nestles in the space afforded by this person's neck. How can a pelvis hope to equilibrate in such a situation?

Today I did two things differently. I got out the book I should have looked at a week ago, the tremendous Trigger Point Therapy Workbook, and I figured out which muscles are struggling.

I also considered that perhaps this pain means something other than "I walked around too much, carrying too many things, two weeks ago." Perhaps there is some holding, some distress, some unreadiness, something unresolved. Perhaps I am fighting something. Perhaps I am scared. One clue to this is that my mind has been resolutely singing to me for weeks. I wake up with a song in my head. I sit. And then the song comes back. Finally, I instituted a practice of non-thinking for three breaths, just in the middle of daily activity. Did it several times an hour. Wondered, felt, listened only to breath. Sang some more.

Is this what it will be like when I face death? Will the profundity of what is coming be masked by the banal chatter of the mind? Do I want to be like that? Do I dare be otherwise?

This life as I know it is coming to an end, and something else will be born. A baby--and a mother--will come into the world. I don't know that I will even remember this time of waiting, but I want what comes next to be felt truly and deeply. That means feeling truly and deeply now.

This is the time to sit, and to sit more than ever. The pyriformus doesn't mind, and the heart and mind need it. I'll be aiming for 3 hrs a day, I think. Ask me how it's going.