I had a difficult dokusan. It's the first time I've ever had that. I've had awkward dokusans, dokusans where I didn't know what I was doing, dokusans where I was scared, but all of those dokusans were me, being weird, and they always ended up being enlightening later. This dokusan was different, it felt bad from the beginning, and it wasn't just me.
I showed up...late. I was so late that my teacher thought I wasn't coming. But I didn't know that when I got there. All I knew was that the only shoes outside the door were my teacher's, which meant that the person before me had finished and left. But I didn't know how long ago they had left, I didn't know if my teacher had rung his bell for me and I wasn't there, all I knew was that my teacher was now walking out of his office, toward his shoes.
As I approached the door to his office he asked, "And you are?"
I told him my name and asked if I should wait in the waiting area for him to ring the bell or if I should just come on in.
He hesitated, turned to walk back in to his office, then turned back toward me, then turned back to go back in to his office and said, "Come in..."
I stepped in and stood in the corner of his office, with my hands in shashu, attempting to be present to him as he relit the candle on his altar. As I watched him, it all came together for me: he must have met with his first student and finished before I had gotten there. Then he had rung his bell to let me know he was ready, and I hadn't answered. At one point, he must have decided that I wasn't coming, had blown out the candle on his altar, and proceeded on his way down to the ceremony in the courtyard.
Then I had shown up.
And when I showed up, I didn't apologize for being late. I simply told him my name and asked if I should wait in the waiting area or come in.
He must have wanted to say, "Uh, you already missed that opportunity- I already rang for you and you weren't there." But he didn't, he just said, "Come in."
As this occurred to me, I wanted to shrink. I wanted to be as small as possible, I wanted to do everything in my power to make this better, to not make him sit across from me when he wanted to go to the ceremony.
But all he had said was "Come in." He hadn't said I was late, he hadn't said that he was on his way to the ceremony, he had just said come in, and now he was sitting down.
I waited as he sat down and adjusted his robes. As he was adjusting his okesa, he motioned for me to proceed, to approach him and begin my three prostrations.
It was painful. I was trying to be present to him to do the prostrations in good form, but I was also trying to be present to dokusan. For me, the first three prostrations are about giving in, about clearing my mind of thoughts, about being open and receiving of what my teacher has to say instead of trying to hold on to it, to try to insert myself into it. So I was trying to do that, to clear my mind, to give in to dokusan. But at the same time, all I could think about was the fact that he couldn't go to the ceremony because of me, that he probably thought that I knew I was late and hadn't apologized, that I was all clueless and happy while he was sitting there, missing a ceremony, because I was late.
By the third prostration, I made up my mind to just ask him, to just put out there this thing that I felt was between us. I finished the prostrations and sat down on my cushion. I adjusted my posture, put my hands in the mudra position, and took a deep breath. Then I looked up at him and said, "Good morning" (this is the first time that I've actually said it first).
"Good morning," he responded.
I cocked my head to the said and asked, "Can I ask you a question?"
He paused. I imagine it took all of his patience to not say, "This is dokusan. The whole point of it is to ask questions. Are you actually asking me if you can ask me a question?"
Instead, he nodded slightly and said, "Yes."
I pointed my thumb to the window that opened on to the courtyard where the ceremony was taking place.
"Do you want to go to the ceremony? Because I can meet with you another time... I can reschedule..." I stopped short of saying 'Because, pretty much, the last thing I want to do is have a dokusan with you that is keeping you from doing something you want. I would much rather wait two months and have one where I'm not making you miss something.'
He answered, "When I thought you weren't coming, I did. But you're here now, so we might as well..." and I think he swept his hand across his body, gesturing for me to proceed.
"We might as well!" I thought. What kind of a way is that to start dokusan? I'm supposed to talk now? I'm supposed to share with you about what's coming up for me... because you have to? Because I made it before you walked out the door? Because you have no other choice in the matter? I have no interest in this, in talking to you when you don't want to be here. This is, by far, the absolute last thing I want to be doing to you right now.
But I couldn't argue or leave or suggest that we don't meet. I had honestly asked him if he wanted to go to the ceremony. He had honestly answered that he did. And he had also said that we should meet anyway. I couldn't second guess that or tell him what he should do- all I could do was receive what he had just offered to do: have dokusan with me.
And so I started talking, but all I could think about was this idea that he wanted to be somewhere else, that my words and time were a block, keeping him from attending the ceremony. I talked some more, shared what was going on with me, and then... the sound of chanting came up from the courtyard.
"f#@ me!" I thought to myself. "There's the damn ceremony- there's this reminder, of what he is missing, just showing up, sticking its face into your dokusan, just reminding you, and him, that he's NOT there."
And it kept up this way- the sound of the ceremony carried through the window and provided the backdrop for my entire dokusan. At one point, I could hear them asking for poems and I wondered if he was sad about not hearing them, or if maybe he was trying to hear them.
And then the ceremony was over, and I could hear the work meeting, and I could hear them asking for help for the One Day Sit and that's when I had to stop. I just couldn't take it anymore. It was so real, it was so present, it was impossible for me to think about my practice and what was coming up for me with actual people having an actual work meeting, and knowing that neither of us were there for it.
So I stopped talking, looked down, and took a ton of breaths to just get back in touch with what was coming up for me, what was actually coming up for me, right then.
But all that was coming up for me was, "Should I apologize for being late? Should I explain to him why I was late? Is he offended that I didn't apologize?"
And then I thought to myself, "Should I tell him that? Should I tell him how I'm feeling right now?"
But then I thought that was lame. I thought it was lame to bring him into my drama about being late. And I thought about myself. What was it about me that needed him to know that I hadn't been late on purpose? What was it that I wanted him to know about me?
And then I thought, "No, that's not what I want him to know about me. I already know that I'm not late. I already know that I'm not the kind of person who would show up late for dokusan. I don't need him to know that about me- that's something that I'm secure in. If he doesn't know that, there's nothing I can do about that."
And then I thought about just ending it right there- just letting it be over so that he could get on with his day. But at that point, the ceremony was over, so me ending it wasn't going to solve the problem of him missing the ceremony, it was over anyway.
And then I realized that this was my dokusan, that I probably wouldn't see him for another two months, and I felt like I had missed this opportunity, that I hadn't said all the things that I wanted to and how sad I was about that.
But then I thought about not grasping at dokusan, about not trying to make dokusan into a certain thing, and then I got even sadder, because I had come in to dokusan that morning with the intent to just talk about my practice, and how I actually had had things to say but that instead, I had just hobbled along, barely saying those things I had thought of but not really feeling them because all I could think about was the ceremony and whether or not my teacher was mad at me for being late.
After what felt like a long while, I settled enough to look up, at my teacher.
He was smiling.
I was encouraged by this. I wondered if he was proud of me for settling, for taking a breath. And so I started talking, about my practice, still a little feebly, but making it through.
We talked some more, and I still considered telling him how I was feeling right then and there, how difficult this was for me. I also reconsidered telling him about the whole late thing, but finally decided against it.
And then I felt like I was done, and so I stopped talking, and looked at him. And then he started talking, and I listened. And then I thought we were done again, and so I stopped talking, and looked at him, and he talked again. I wondered if he was doing this on purpose, if he knew this was hard for me, if he saw that I wanted to continue but didn't have it in me and so he was talking to keep it going, until I was actually done.
And then at one point, my occupation with explaining about being late changed to feeling of gratitude to him, for meeting with me, when he could have gone to the ceremony instead. And that felt nice. That felt like something I would be fine sharing with him. And then I noticed that too- that I was only willing to share with him what was coming up for me when it made me look good, when it was pleasant and harmonious.
Shortly after that, I think we both knew that it was done, and so we bowed to each other.
And then I bowed again, and said, "Thank you, for meeting with me, when you wanted to go to the ceremony."
"You're welcome," he said. And then he said that it was like we had been at the ceremony anyway.
I joked about it being "satellite participation" and he said that it felt like the ceremony came up to meet us, that we were a part of it.
Of course, I didn't feel this at all. I was haunted by the damn ceremony, taunted by it, it felt like a constant reminder of how much of a burden my dokusan had been. But my teacher seemed fine with it, so maybe he actually did get to attend the ceremony, in a whole new way.
After dokusan, I felt pretty bad. I felt like it was a total bummer of a dokusan. I felt like I hadn't been myself, hadn't been present, hadn't said the things I wanted to and hadn't even been able to express what was coming up in the moment when it actually happened. I analyzed myself in dokusan, tried to pick apart what had worked and what hadn't. I also tried to forget dokusan, to let it go, to let what happened to just be what happened. But every time I tried to do that, it just kept coming up- all day long and into the next morning. And every time it came up, I found myself trying to say things that I hadn't, wishing that I had said things to my teacher, wishing that I had explained myself better. I began to wonder if what had upset me in dokusan was the fact that I had stifled myself, that I hadn't been forthcoming, that I hadn't been willing to just be honest, to be myself with him.
I spoke with a friend about it and they sympathized with me: about being late without meaning to, about keeping my teacher from attending the ceremony, about the awkwardness of the entire situation. That made me feel better, to hear that it really was difficult, that it really is hard when you do that to your teacher, intentionally or not. And then later, she sent me an email, explaining that my dokusan experience was actually pretty common. She said that we all have awkward dokusans, that teachers and students often struggle with having such an intimate interchange in such a short time and under different circumstances. This helped too.
But it wasn't until mid- day the next day that I finally got some clarity around it. I was reliving it again in my mind, saying the things that I wished I had said and I imagined my teacher saying "Oh! Is that what happened? Why didn't you say that?" and then having him smile, and our dokusan being perfect and harmonious, from that point on.
And that's when I realized that all I really wanted, was a pleasant dokusan. It wasn't so much that I needed to express myself, it was more that I didn't like it when there was discomfort between us- when I thought he might be mad at me, or that we didn't get along.
And then I said to myself, "It's okay to have an unpleasant dokusan. You're not always going to get along with your teacher, you're not always going to see eye to eye. Your doksuan can be difficult and awkward. You are two people, trying to meet, and things can happen that set you off. And both of you will respond to them the best you can, and you will continue. That's what happened today. It was awkward, it was difficult, and in the end, you felt grateful to him, for staying. And in the end, he was smiling, and noticing that he attended the ceremony anyway. And that was all- you made it through, you stayed, and so did he."
And that's when I was able to let it go- when I accepted that my dokusan was difficult- it just was. It wasn't me, it wasn't him, it was the things that happened and how we responded to them. And that allowed me to see the other parts of dokusan- that we both had stayed, that he had smiled at me, that I had genuinely felt grateful to him and expressed it, and that we had experienced this, together.
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
Fear of dokusan
I have to say that I was actually fine going to dokusan this time. I had had an unsettling last dokusan, but as a result had finally come to understand that dokusan was actually all about you. Your teacher could only respond to what you offered about yourself and often, it wasn't what they said, it was what you responded to that made dokusan what it was. It was totally up to you to make dokusan what it was and, honestly, it really was all about you- you shared yourself with your teacher and they responded. When I had done that (just shared myself) in my last dokusan, though it had been unsettling, it had been so because I was finally looking at myself.
So I knew that, honestly, all I had to do was show up for dokusan and share with my teacher what was coming up for me. I also knew that, honestly, dokusan was going to be whatever I made it- it had no affect on my teacher, his evaluation of me, his acceptance of me, etc. All of this was just for me. I suppose you could say your teacher is just along for the ride but I think they play a little bigger role than that. Still, I really knew that dokusan was for my benefit, no one else's.
And then it actually was the morning that I was going to dokusan. And then I was in the building and it was 15 minutes away. And then I had to go upstairs...and I got a little scared.
See, I sprained my ankle a week ago so I have to sit in a chair. I had asked my teacher's assistant about this, whether or not I could sit dokusan with my teacher if I were in a chair, and she said it was no problem, I could just grab a chair from the hallway.
I laughed at the nonchalance of this response- just grab a chair- and then worried about how I was going to get a chair into the dokusan office: were there even chairs in the hallway? What if someone was sitting on them? Can you put a chair on the tatami mats? And what's the order of things when you bring a chair into the room- do you do prostrations first? Where does the chair go while you do the prostrations? I finally ended up just acting out the situation in my bedroom at home, and came up with a plan for how to bring the chair into the room. But then I got worried about the dokusan waiting area- what if there wasn't a chair there? I had been told that at my time slot, there were people ahead of me and so I might have to wait and I wondered how long I could tolerate sitting on the floor with my ankle. I figured I'd just sit in a chair if I had to but then I worried about the bell- how would I ring back to my teacher if I weren't sitting next to the bell?
I got into the building, gingerly walked up the steps, bowed to Suzuki Roshi, and peered around the corner. There were fancy shoes outside my teacher's door so I knew someone was in with him. I spied chairs in the hallway and figured I could sit on them to wait but then, as I approached the waiting area I saw... a chair! I wasn't sure if it had been put there for me or not but I was grateful for it anyway.
I sat down, settled in, and as I leaned forward in the chair, I got mad.
"This isn't fair," I thought. "Before I sprained my ankle, I was totally leaning forward. I had actually done what he said in last dokusan and now, he's going to tell me again to tilt my hips forward and stick my chest out but I already know how to do that. It's not fair that it's going to look like I haven't made any progress when I've made total progress. And I worked hard for this progress. I trained myself to lean forward so much that someone actually adjusted me backward so I know I got it right."
And then I took a deep breath, and tried to feel my breath move through my body: belly, abdomen, chest... chest, abdomen, belly. I worried again about my posture but then reminded myself that it was about me, not about posture, it was about breathing, freely.
After a couple of minutes, I started to worry. I wondered if I had been squeezed in to the schedule, if the person before me had just started, if they would finish right before lunch and he'd have to see me during his lunch. I decided that I would be brief, that I would only ask what was necessary, and started to plan what I would say.
"Nope," I stopped myself. "That's not what this is about. You say what comes up for you, not what you think you should say. Let it be, let it happen."
But then I was still sitting there, worrying about being a burden to him, making him see me. I started picturing him, seeing me bring in that chair, being annoyed with me for having a sprained ankle again, thinking I was a woosie for not being able to tolerate sitting on the floor with him for dokusan. I tried to breathe again, to focus on my breath, but noticed how scared I was.
"Wow," I thought. "You're actually scared of dokusan. Are you afraid he's going to ask you questions that will unsettle you again?"
And I thought about that- about how I had handled the questions and that didn't frighten me. I remembered how, even though they were unsettling, I had maintained eye contact, met my teacher, been myself, and hadn't felt afraid. But still, I definitely felt afraid.
"What is this?" I asked myself. "What is it you're afraid of?"
"Rejection," I answered. "You're afraid he's going to reject you. You're afraid he's going to think you haven't worked hard enough or that by just showing up and being present you're not putting in enough effort..."
I started to interrupt myself, "But he isn't rejecting you, he won't do that..."
But then I interrupt myself again, "Don't excuse this, don't explain it, just feel it, actually feel this fear."
And so I did. I said to myself, "This is fear, this is fear of rejection." And it was weird, as soon as I felt it, my shoulders dropped and I felt little and light and safe.
"See," I said. "That's all it was.. fear. It just needed to be seen. You're fine now."
And I went back to breathing but I still felt scared.
And then I rationalized it. "Of course you're scared. You were unsettled last time. You're afraid of what he might say this time. You're just a frightened little student, that's all," and I met myself with compassion. "It's okay to be afraid."
"It's okay to be afraid?" I asked myself, incredulously. "Fear is okay?" I asked, surprised by this notion.
"Fear is an emotion, just like happy is an emotion, they're just emotions. And you are a feeling person, you just are. And right now you are feeling- just feeling, that's all."
And then I pictured myself, going in to dokusan, being frightened like I had been so many times before. But then I remembered how I had been last time, how I had been confident, how I had been myself without question or doubt.
"I don't want to be afraid this time. I don't want to cower or worry in dokusan. I want to just be in dokusan, and I can do that. I've done that. And my teacher isn't judging me or rejecting me- I'm the only one who's making this fear, and I don't have to."
And then someone walked up, and sat down, and I worried that they had been in front of me in the schedule and that they were upset that now they had to wait for me and I wondered who was supposed to go first and so I looked at my watch. It was past the time that I had been scheduled so I knew they weren't supposed to be there before me but still, I felt bad, and decided again what I really needed to ask in dokusan.
"Okay, remember to ask..." but that question was a question of convenience, of technicality, it wasn't actually what I was noticing in my practice. "I know you want to ask that but that's not what's coming up. You can only say what's coming up and you won't know what's coming up until you get there."
Fortunately, about two minutes later, the bell rang, and I rang back. I saw my good friend, who I hadn't seen in a long time, coming out and sitting down on the chair in the hallway. I bowed to her and she smiled huge back at me but I was so focused on getting the chair into the office I just pointed to it and said, "I need the chair..." and she hurriedly got out of it and gave it to me.
I stepped into the room and did the forms that I had practiced for bringing in the chair. Instead of being met with a look of annoyance, I was met by my teacher immediately removing the cushion so that I'd have a place to put the chair. I did three prostrations, put the chair on the zafu, settled into my posture, looked up, and said good morning. He pointed to my ankle and asked, with a with a tone of both curiosity and care, "What happened?"
I told him about it, how frustrated I was with it, what I was going to do about it, and though I shouldn't have been surprised by this, he met me with tenderness and confidence. And then we moved on.
I shared what I had been noticing about myself- in my relationships with my extended and immediate family, in my willingness to let things happen, in my social interactions in the zendo, and in my response to seeing myself. He shared some anecdotes from his own life, some perspectives on life in general and how we often respond to them. I asked some questions for clarification which led to other sharing about what was coming up for me. Some of his answers brought up stuff in me and I let it- I think we both saw the associations of my life with the questions I was asking about others- both saw that I was experiencing that too.
And then, it was weird, I felt like I had been seen. We had only talked about the two things that I had been curious about in my practice, just those two things. They weren't questions, they weren't things I had felt unsettled about, they were just what I had noticed, and shared. But we had looked at them, together I guess, talked about them, and that was all. It wasn't like I was settled around them now or had some new way to be- just that we had seen them, within the lens of this practice, within the joy and beauty of this practice, and we had connected- or, at least, I felt connected- because I had shared. And I felt done. I felt like saying thank you, and bowing, because I was grateful, and feeling met.
But something in the conversation lead me to something else- something I had been meaning to ask and had planned to bring up at his next Q and A but there it was, coming up, so I asked it- and then suggested we could talk about it at length another time. Instead, he offered a brief answer, which was extremely helpful, and gave me the tools that I needed to begin to help my friend.
And then my teacher bowed. Somehow he knew it was over too (or maybe he didn't, maybe it was time for lunch). I stood up and moved the chair so that I could do three full prostrations. He said I could do three standing bows instead, so I did. And then I bowed to the door, opened it, returned the chair to the hallway, and went home.
So I knew that, honestly, all I had to do was show up for dokusan and share with my teacher what was coming up for me. I also knew that, honestly, dokusan was going to be whatever I made it- it had no affect on my teacher, his evaluation of me, his acceptance of me, etc. All of this was just for me. I suppose you could say your teacher is just along for the ride but I think they play a little bigger role than that. Still, I really knew that dokusan was for my benefit, no one else's.
And then it actually was the morning that I was going to dokusan. And then I was in the building and it was 15 minutes away. And then I had to go upstairs...and I got a little scared.
See, I sprained my ankle a week ago so I have to sit in a chair. I had asked my teacher's assistant about this, whether or not I could sit dokusan with my teacher if I were in a chair, and she said it was no problem, I could just grab a chair from the hallway.
I laughed at the nonchalance of this response- just grab a chair- and then worried about how I was going to get a chair into the dokusan office: were there even chairs in the hallway? What if someone was sitting on them? Can you put a chair on the tatami mats? And what's the order of things when you bring a chair into the room- do you do prostrations first? Where does the chair go while you do the prostrations? I finally ended up just acting out the situation in my bedroom at home, and came up with a plan for how to bring the chair into the room. But then I got worried about the dokusan waiting area- what if there wasn't a chair there? I had been told that at my time slot, there were people ahead of me and so I might have to wait and I wondered how long I could tolerate sitting on the floor with my ankle. I figured I'd just sit in a chair if I had to but then I worried about the bell- how would I ring back to my teacher if I weren't sitting next to the bell?
I got into the building, gingerly walked up the steps, bowed to Suzuki Roshi, and peered around the corner. There were fancy shoes outside my teacher's door so I knew someone was in with him. I spied chairs in the hallway and figured I could sit on them to wait but then, as I approached the waiting area I saw... a chair! I wasn't sure if it had been put there for me or not but I was grateful for it anyway.
I sat down, settled in, and as I leaned forward in the chair, I got mad.
"This isn't fair," I thought. "Before I sprained my ankle, I was totally leaning forward. I had actually done what he said in last dokusan and now, he's going to tell me again to tilt my hips forward and stick my chest out but I already know how to do that. It's not fair that it's going to look like I haven't made any progress when I've made total progress. And I worked hard for this progress. I trained myself to lean forward so much that someone actually adjusted me backward so I know I got it right."
And then I took a deep breath, and tried to feel my breath move through my body: belly, abdomen, chest... chest, abdomen, belly. I worried again about my posture but then reminded myself that it was about me, not about posture, it was about breathing, freely.
After a couple of minutes, I started to worry. I wondered if I had been squeezed in to the schedule, if the person before me had just started, if they would finish right before lunch and he'd have to see me during his lunch. I decided that I would be brief, that I would only ask what was necessary, and started to plan what I would say.
"Nope," I stopped myself. "That's not what this is about. You say what comes up for you, not what you think you should say. Let it be, let it happen."
But then I was still sitting there, worrying about being a burden to him, making him see me. I started picturing him, seeing me bring in that chair, being annoyed with me for having a sprained ankle again, thinking I was a woosie for not being able to tolerate sitting on the floor with him for dokusan. I tried to breathe again, to focus on my breath, but noticed how scared I was.
"Wow," I thought. "You're actually scared of dokusan. Are you afraid he's going to ask you questions that will unsettle you again?"
And I thought about that- about how I had handled the questions and that didn't frighten me. I remembered how, even though they were unsettling, I had maintained eye contact, met my teacher, been myself, and hadn't felt afraid. But still, I definitely felt afraid.
"What is this?" I asked myself. "What is it you're afraid of?"
"Rejection," I answered. "You're afraid he's going to reject you. You're afraid he's going to think you haven't worked hard enough or that by just showing up and being present you're not putting in enough effort..."
I started to interrupt myself, "But he isn't rejecting you, he won't do that..."
But then I interrupt myself again, "Don't excuse this, don't explain it, just feel it, actually feel this fear."
And so I did. I said to myself, "This is fear, this is fear of rejection." And it was weird, as soon as I felt it, my shoulders dropped and I felt little and light and safe.
"See," I said. "That's all it was.. fear. It just needed to be seen. You're fine now."
And I went back to breathing but I still felt scared.
And then I rationalized it. "Of course you're scared. You were unsettled last time. You're afraid of what he might say this time. You're just a frightened little student, that's all," and I met myself with compassion. "It's okay to be afraid."
"It's okay to be afraid?" I asked myself, incredulously. "Fear is okay?" I asked, surprised by this notion.
"Fear is an emotion, just like happy is an emotion, they're just emotions. And you are a feeling person, you just are. And right now you are feeling- just feeling, that's all."
And then I pictured myself, going in to dokusan, being frightened like I had been so many times before. But then I remembered how I had been last time, how I had been confident, how I had been myself without question or doubt.
"I don't want to be afraid this time. I don't want to cower or worry in dokusan. I want to just be in dokusan, and I can do that. I've done that. And my teacher isn't judging me or rejecting me- I'm the only one who's making this fear, and I don't have to."
And then someone walked up, and sat down, and I worried that they had been in front of me in the schedule and that they were upset that now they had to wait for me and I wondered who was supposed to go first and so I looked at my watch. It was past the time that I had been scheduled so I knew they weren't supposed to be there before me but still, I felt bad, and decided again what I really needed to ask in dokusan.
"Okay, remember to ask..." but that question was a question of convenience, of technicality, it wasn't actually what I was noticing in my practice. "I know you want to ask that but that's not what's coming up. You can only say what's coming up and you won't know what's coming up until you get there."
Fortunately, about two minutes later, the bell rang, and I rang back. I saw my good friend, who I hadn't seen in a long time, coming out and sitting down on the chair in the hallway. I bowed to her and she smiled huge back at me but I was so focused on getting the chair into the office I just pointed to it and said, "I need the chair..." and she hurriedly got out of it and gave it to me.
I stepped into the room and did the forms that I had practiced for bringing in the chair. Instead of being met with a look of annoyance, I was met by my teacher immediately removing the cushion so that I'd have a place to put the chair. I did three prostrations, put the chair on the zafu, settled into my posture, looked up, and said good morning. He pointed to my ankle and asked, with a with a tone of both curiosity and care, "What happened?"
I told him about it, how frustrated I was with it, what I was going to do about it, and though I shouldn't have been surprised by this, he met me with tenderness and confidence. And then we moved on.
I shared what I had been noticing about myself- in my relationships with my extended and immediate family, in my willingness to let things happen, in my social interactions in the zendo, and in my response to seeing myself. He shared some anecdotes from his own life, some perspectives on life in general and how we often respond to them. I asked some questions for clarification which led to other sharing about what was coming up for me. Some of his answers brought up stuff in me and I let it- I think we both saw the associations of my life with the questions I was asking about others- both saw that I was experiencing that too.
And then, it was weird, I felt like I had been seen. We had only talked about the two things that I had been curious about in my practice, just those two things. They weren't questions, they weren't things I had felt unsettled about, they were just what I had noticed, and shared. But we had looked at them, together I guess, talked about them, and that was all. It wasn't like I was settled around them now or had some new way to be- just that we had seen them, within the lens of this practice, within the joy and beauty of this practice, and we had connected- or, at least, I felt connected- because I had shared. And I felt done. I felt like saying thank you, and bowing, because I was grateful, and feeling met.
But something in the conversation lead me to something else- something I had been meaning to ask and had planned to bring up at his next Q and A but there it was, coming up, so I asked it- and then suggested we could talk about it at length another time. Instead, he offered a brief answer, which was extremely helpful, and gave me the tools that I needed to begin to help my friend.
And then my teacher bowed. Somehow he knew it was over too (or maybe he didn't, maybe it was time for lunch). I stood up and moved the chair so that I could do three full prostrations. He said I could do three standing bows instead, so I did. And then I bowed to the door, opened it, returned the chair to the hallway, and went home.
Part 2- The truth of your teacher
I was doing dishes in my kitchen, trying to decide what to
do next, and then heard myself ask myself to make the decision based on love:
which action would involve meeting my relatives with love?
“Darnit!” I thought. “I’m doing it!”
See, a couple of nights before, I had been listening to a
dharma talk on line in which my teacher had asked the people in the audience to
think about what had brought them to practice. He asked them to think of the
simple answer, the one that came to mind first, not necessarily the right
answer or the one that sounded good. My answer was love, which I was okay
with, which actually sounded quite accurate to my experience with practice.
But then he asked us to consider what it would be like if we
based our actions on this intention- if we acted in a way that met this
intention, that this intention guided or motivated our every act throughout our
daily lives (or something to that effect).
When I heard that part, I kind of freaked out. “No way,” I
thought. “That’s too scary. I can’t always act out of love. I’ll be too
vulnerable. I’ll be in uncharted territory. I’ll be helped by others, involved
with others, I can’t base all of my interactions on love- that’s a little too
much.”
And then, of course, the very next day, I heard myself
asking myself, when in a place of decision, Are you responding to this person
with love? If so, then do it, if not, then don’t. And for the
most part, I was okay with that too.
But then this morning, when I heard myself doing it, I got
kind of pissed off.
“How does he do
that?” I asked myself. “How does my teacher say these things that I hear but refuse to do and then, later, end up doing without even meaning to?
How come what he says, I do, even when I don’t want to do them? Why am I doing
this?”
And then I answered myself, “Because it’s the truth. It’s
coming up and you’re acting it not because it’s right or it’s wrong but because
it’s you. He says things and the things that resonate with you show up- not because of anything he says or the way
that he says them but because they’re you, showing up. You can’t help it- you
want to, your conscious mind is fighting it and freaking out because that’s
kind of what humans do when faced with the truth but your subconscious, your
actual you, hears it and is encouraged by this acknowledgement so it decides to
assert it self a bit, nudge you a bit, and you respond because it’s you. It’s not him, it’s you- it isn’t the way that
he says it, it’s your response to it. It’s true, without his offering of these
things, your self wouldn’t have these things to respond to, but the response is
from you, the action is from you and other people are responding to different
things and taking action on different things because they have different
selves.
And so maybe that’s why zen tends to be so vague, so that it
can cast a broad enough net to offer something that lots of different selves
can respond to, that lots of different selves can feel seen by.
Part 1-The truth of your teacher (which, BTW, is you)
I was waiting to have lunch with a friend at the zen center when my teacher walked in to the building. I saw him from the corner of my eye and wasn't sure what to do. He came in the door, which was at the end of the hallway, and I was sitting on a bench, right next to the kitchen. So I could see him, but he was far away, and I never know what to do in that situation. Do you wave as soon as you see them? Because if you do, there's that awkward time when you've waved, and they're still walking toward you and what do you do, just keep staring at them? So, I just looked down and decided I would wait to wave hello until he came closer. As he approached, I looked up at him, smiled, and waved a silent wave of hello. He did nothing, just kept walking, until he was directly in front of me.
"Have they started serving lunch?" he asked, looking at me sitting on the bench, outside the kitchen, not actually in the kitchen, eating.
"Yes," I answered.
And then he paused.
And I think we looked at each other for a moment, and then he continued in to the kitchen.
I laughed at myself at this exchange- this simple answering of his question with absolutely no explanation for why I wasn't going in to the kitchen even though lunch was ready. My perception that there was a second question to his first: "Why are you sitting outside if lunch is ready?" yet my refusal to acknowledge this, to enter into any conversation beyond a direct answer to his question.
"Well," I thought to myself. "All he asked was if lunch was ready, all I did was answer, what's wrong with that?"
And then I thought about the fact that he hadn't waved back at me when I waved at him.
"Hmm," I wondered. "Was I supposed to bow to him? Did he not respond because I wasn't being formal enough for him? Was I being disrespectful to him by just smiling and waving hello?"
And then I thought, "Well, sorry, but all I'm doing is waiting for lunch with a friend and all I'm doing is waving hello to you. This is an improvement from what I've done in the past (which is an attempt to busy myself with something so that I don't have to make eye contact). It's true that I didn't say hello to you, but I was myself: I was kind of nervous but I was able to smile and wave. I'm kind of a smile and wave kind of person, so, accept that."
And then my friend showed up and we went and had lunch together.
But this interchange, between my teacher and me, kept popping in to my head. I kept hearing myself justifying my behavior, explaining it, making it acceptable. And I kept seeing myself, sitting on that bench with a sweet smile on my face and that quiet wave. Yet for all my justification of my behavior, something about it seemed in question to me. I just kept wondering why my teacher didn't wave back at me. At one point, when I was picturing myself on that bench, I saw myself as a little girl, smiling, and waving.
"Oh!" I thought. "I was being a little girl when I smiled and waved at him. I was being charming and innocent and cute. I wasn't being the same person who was able to look my teacher straight in the eye for all of my last dokusan with him, who stayed in the conversation when questions were asked, maintained eye contact, and gave answers without fear or apology."
"Oh!" I thought. "He didn't wave back because he wasn't accepting the little girl that I was showing him. He knew I was capable of being the confident 42 year old who sat dokusan with him last week. He knows I'm capable of saying hello to him, entering in to conversation with him, being a grownup with him. That's why he didn't wave back- he knew you could do better than that."
And I thought about how this incident had lingered in me, that it hadn't gone away. And I thought that the reason it had lingered there was because I hadn't seen the truth of it. It had kept coming up because I wasn't seeing it; but that my teacher's refusal to wave at me had created this question in me and in questioning it, I was able to finally see the truth of the matter: I am capable of an equal grownup social interchange with my teacher. I don't have to be a six year old anymore.
And I thought how skilled my teacher was, how he had paid such close attention to me and was really helping me to come out of my hiding and be myself. But then I thought about what he had said, and what he had done, and I gave myself a reality check:
Your teacher was walking to the kitchen for lunch. You were sitting outside the kitchen, not going in. He asked you if lunch was ready and you answered yes. Your teacher paused and then went to lunch. That's all, that's all that happened.
Who knows? Maybe he really did intend to not respond to your wave, maybe he really was encouraging you out of your shell; but probably, he was just going to lunch. You however, learned a lot about yourself in this interchange, you saw the truth of yourself in this interchange. Maybe it was him that pointed it out, maybe not, but you're the one who saw the truth- you're kind of the only one who can actually see you.
And so I think that your teacher really is just a mirror for you. When they're walking around, being themselves, you can see your reflection in them in the way that you interact with them. And, for me at least, in dokusan, my teacher asks questions or restates what I have shared with him in ways that make me later see things that I was unaware of or didn't want to see. I know my teacher is skilled at this. I can feel it in how what he says to me in dokusan pushes me to see things I wouldn't have seen on my own. But I also know that he's not inside my head after dokusan. The things that linger, the things that come up, those are my truths about me, they're me experiencing these truths and, when I'm willing, staying curious about them, letting them show themselves to me, and accepting them as part of who I am.
"Have they started serving lunch?" he asked, looking at me sitting on the bench, outside the kitchen, not actually in the kitchen, eating.
"Yes," I answered.
And then he paused.
And I think we looked at each other for a moment, and then he continued in to the kitchen.
I laughed at myself at this exchange- this simple answering of his question with absolutely no explanation for why I wasn't going in to the kitchen even though lunch was ready. My perception that there was a second question to his first: "Why are you sitting outside if lunch is ready?" yet my refusal to acknowledge this, to enter into any conversation beyond a direct answer to his question.
"Well," I thought to myself. "All he asked was if lunch was ready, all I did was answer, what's wrong with that?"
And then I thought about the fact that he hadn't waved back at me when I waved at him.
"Hmm," I wondered. "Was I supposed to bow to him? Did he not respond because I wasn't being formal enough for him? Was I being disrespectful to him by just smiling and waving hello?"
And then I thought, "Well, sorry, but all I'm doing is waiting for lunch with a friend and all I'm doing is waving hello to you. This is an improvement from what I've done in the past (which is an attempt to busy myself with something so that I don't have to make eye contact). It's true that I didn't say hello to you, but I was myself: I was kind of nervous but I was able to smile and wave. I'm kind of a smile and wave kind of person, so, accept that."
And then my friend showed up and we went and had lunch together.
But this interchange, between my teacher and me, kept popping in to my head. I kept hearing myself justifying my behavior, explaining it, making it acceptable. And I kept seeing myself, sitting on that bench with a sweet smile on my face and that quiet wave. Yet for all my justification of my behavior, something about it seemed in question to me. I just kept wondering why my teacher didn't wave back at me. At one point, when I was picturing myself on that bench, I saw myself as a little girl, smiling, and waving.
"Oh!" I thought. "I was being a little girl when I smiled and waved at him. I was being charming and innocent and cute. I wasn't being the same person who was able to look my teacher straight in the eye for all of my last dokusan with him, who stayed in the conversation when questions were asked, maintained eye contact, and gave answers without fear or apology."
"Oh!" I thought. "He didn't wave back because he wasn't accepting the little girl that I was showing him. He knew I was capable of being the confident 42 year old who sat dokusan with him last week. He knows I'm capable of saying hello to him, entering in to conversation with him, being a grownup with him. That's why he didn't wave back- he knew you could do better than that."
And I thought about how this incident had lingered in me, that it hadn't gone away. And I thought that the reason it had lingered there was because I hadn't seen the truth of it. It had kept coming up because I wasn't seeing it; but that my teacher's refusal to wave at me had created this question in me and in questioning it, I was able to finally see the truth of the matter: I am capable of an equal grownup social interchange with my teacher. I don't have to be a six year old anymore.
And I thought how skilled my teacher was, how he had paid such close attention to me and was really helping me to come out of my hiding and be myself. But then I thought about what he had said, and what he had done, and I gave myself a reality check:
Your teacher was walking to the kitchen for lunch. You were sitting outside the kitchen, not going in. He asked you if lunch was ready and you answered yes. Your teacher paused and then went to lunch. That's all, that's all that happened.
Who knows? Maybe he really did intend to not respond to your wave, maybe he really was encouraging you out of your shell; but probably, he was just going to lunch. You however, learned a lot about yourself in this interchange, you saw the truth of yourself in this interchange. Maybe it was him that pointed it out, maybe not, but you're the one who saw the truth- you're kind of the only one who can actually see you.
And so I think that your teacher really is just a mirror for you. When they're walking around, being themselves, you can see your reflection in them in the way that you interact with them. And, for me at least, in dokusan, my teacher asks questions or restates what I have shared with him in ways that make me later see things that I was unaware of or didn't want to see. I know my teacher is skilled at this. I can feel it in how what he says to me in dokusan pushes me to see things I wouldn't have seen on my own. But I also know that he's not inside my head after dokusan. The things that linger, the things that come up, those are my truths about me, they're me experiencing these truths and, when I'm willing, staying curious about them, letting them show themselves to me, and accepting them as part of who I am.
Post dokusan regrets and giddiness
As soon as I walked out of the building after meeting with Paul I literally said to myself, "Holy s@#! what have you just done?"
You just asked the former abbot of the zen center to be your teacher. I get why you did it. It seemed like a really good idea when he said that you would discuss your practice and how it plays out in your life. 'Yay you' for being in the moment and doing what you thought was a good idea at the time. But now you're in this moment. You are his student and he is your teacher... from now on.
"I don't think this was a very good idea," I thought to myself.
Then I reassured myself. I knew that if I really wanted to, I could always say, "This isn't working for me. I don't think I want to be a student anymore." And I was pretty sure that Paul would just say "Okay," and that would be the end of it. But I was also really terrified because I thought that I was a "student" now. I didn't know what that meant but it scared me.
As I turned the corner and walked past the front steps of the building, I had to laugh at myself.
"Remember when you were afraid to even come in to the building? Remember how much you wanted to be a part of the community but you couldn't seem to let yourself be a part of it because you were so afraid of what that meant?
This morning, you asked to be a student. That's really funny."
As I rode home I thought about writing a blogpost about what had happened: how I had made a decision in the moment that I ended up having to live in forever after. I also pictured myself telling people about it after the dharma talk that afternoon: how I went in to dokusan with absolutely no intention of being a student and walked out with a bunch of lessons and even some homework. I really thought that this was a decision that I had made in the moment and that I was going to regret because I thought I was stuck, that I was now at the mercy of whatever Paul had in mind for me as his student. I thought that I might end up doing all the things that I didn't think I needed to do: reading, studying, being a "student" at the zen center.
But I have to tell you that as soon as I got home, I told my room mate all about it, and with a big smile. I was giddy with the experience. When I got to the dharma talk that morning, I eagerly grabbed a zafu so that I could sit zazen during the talk, just so I could practice the posture and breathing that Paul and I had talked about that morning. And after the dharma talk, the first thing I said to anyone I knew was: I asked Paul to be my teacher this morning!
I have no idea why I wanted to tell everyone. No one was as giddy about it as I was and this surprised me. I thought that other people who had a teacher would say things like, "I remember when I first asked my teacher to be my teacher," but no one offered this. Honestly, it doesn't make sense that I'm so giddy about it, I'm not looking forward to my next dokusan, I don't feel like there's some change in my practice or anything but I'm also not feeling regret. I'm just feeling happy.
You just asked the former abbot of the zen center to be your teacher. I get why you did it. It seemed like a really good idea when he said that you would discuss your practice and how it plays out in your life. 'Yay you' for being in the moment and doing what you thought was a good idea at the time. But now you're in this moment. You are his student and he is your teacher... from now on.
"I don't think this was a very good idea," I thought to myself.
Then I reassured myself. I knew that if I really wanted to, I could always say, "This isn't working for me. I don't think I want to be a student anymore." And I was pretty sure that Paul would just say "Okay," and that would be the end of it. But I was also really terrified because I thought that I was a "student" now. I didn't know what that meant but it scared me.
As I turned the corner and walked past the front steps of the building, I had to laugh at myself.
"Remember when you were afraid to even come in to the building? Remember how much you wanted to be a part of the community but you couldn't seem to let yourself be a part of it because you were so afraid of what that meant?
This morning, you asked to be a student. That's really funny."
As I rode home I thought about writing a blogpost about what had happened: how I had made a decision in the moment that I ended up having to live in forever after. I also pictured myself telling people about it after the dharma talk that afternoon: how I went in to dokusan with absolutely no intention of being a student and walked out with a bunch of lessons and even some homework. I really thought that this was a decision that I had made in the moment and that I was going to regret because I thought I was stuck, that I was now at the mercy of whatever Paul had in mind for me as his student. I thought that I might end up doing all the things that I didn't think I needed to do: reading, studying, being a "student" at the zen center.
But I have to tell you that as soon as I got home, I told my room mate all about it, and with a big smile. I was giddy with the experience. When I got to the dharma talk that morning, I eagerly grabbed a zafu so that I could sit zazen during the talk, just so I could practice the posture and breathing that Paul and I had talked about that morning. And after the dharma talk, the first thing I said to anyone I knew was: I asked Paul to be my teacher this morning!
I have no idea why I wanted to tell everyone. No one was as giddy about it as I was and this surprised me. I thought that other people who had a teacher would say things like, "I remember when I first asked my teacher to be my teacher," but no one offered this. Honestly, it doesn't make sense that I'm so giddy about it, I'm not looking forward to my next dokusan, I don't feel like there's some change in my practice or anything but I'm also not feeling regret. I'm just feeling happy.
Requesting a teacher
Earlier this summer I had a BIG LIFE QUESTION that I just couldn't seem to answer on my own. So, I requested dokusan with Paul. Unfortunately, it was right before he left on a trip, so his assistant let me know that I probably wouldn't be able to meet with him for a while and that she would let me know when he would be available.
In the meantime, I came up with my own ideas about the big life question and felt like I didn't need to ask it anymore. So I was a little worried about what I would ask Paul when I finally met with him. But then, a couple of weeks later, I realized that I had a question for Paul: I wanted to ask him what it would mean to be a student.
I had considered asking Paul to be my teacher for quite some time but was never really firm in this request. There were times where it felt really appropriate to ask him to be my teacher, but I couldn't find a chance to ask him. And then there were other times where I had a chance to ask him, but it didn't feel right at that moment. So I hadn't asked him and wasn't really sure if I wanted to. I knew that if I did ask him to be my teacher, I wanted to know what I was getting in to. I felt like I was entering in to a relationship with him, one that he would be present and committed to. I wanted to know what my responsibilities would be, so that I would know whether or not I could uphold them. The last thing I wanted to do was to ask for something that I didn't want or couldn't do, especially if it involved someone else willingly doing it with me.
By the time I was scheduled to have dokusan with Paul, I had come up with my own ideas about what it would mean to be a student. I had decided that when I asked him, he would say that I would be reading texts and that he would be giving me koans. So then I decided that I would ask him a second question: Why would you do that? Why would you read books and think about stuff when really, it was more about sitting zazen and putting practice in your every day life?
Before I even got to dokusan with Paul, I had kind of decided that I didn't really want to be a student. I concluded that it wasn't where I was in my practice right now. I felt like I didn't need to read books or live in monastery, I just needed to sit zazen more and attend service. I was feeling like I was different from what I perceived the residents and practitioners at the zen center were. I felt like they studying Buddhism in order to become Buddhists or monks or practitioners. I felt like I was just sitting zazen to become a better teacher, to learn about myself, to untangle the knots in my core that had been tied so long ago.
As I sat in the dokusan waiting area, I imagined myself explaining this to Paul and having him agree with me: a student path isn't the one that you're on. You have your own path and you should come to the zen center to get what you need to sustain your journey on that path. As I was imagining this, Paul actually rang the bell that meant, "I'm free to meet with you." So I rang back, and entered the dokusan room. I did my prostrations, sat in front of him, and asked: "What does it mean to be a student? What would that involve?"
He asked for clarification, "What would it mean to be a student in general or what would it mean to be my student?"
I looked away and thought about this: What did I want to know?
I realized that what I really wanted to know was what it would mean to be his student, not just a student in general, so I looked back at him and said that.
I can't recall his exact words but what I remember was something like: "It would mean that we would talk about your practice and how it plays out in your life. We may talk about your posture, we may talk about your practice, we may talk about how it manifests in your everyday life..."
I looked away again.
"Oh!" I thought. "That would be really helpful. It would be really nice to have someone to talk to about what I'm doing in the classroom and how I can be more present to the kids. It would be really beneficial to everyone involved if Paul were included in this equation, if I had the support of his life experience and the wisdom of his teachings. That seems like a really appropriate thing for me to be doing with my time."
So I looked back at him and I said, "Can I ask you to be my teacher?"
"Yes," he said.
And then I realized that I didn't really ask him to be my teacher, I just asked him if I could ask him to be my teacher so I asked, "Will you be my teacher?"
And he answered, "Yes."
In the meantime, I came up with my own ideas about the big life question and felt like I didn't need to ask it anymore. So I was a little worried about what I would ask Paul when I finally met with him. But then, a couple of weeks later, I realized that I had a question for Paul: I wanted to ask him what it would mean to be a student.
I had considered asking Paul to be my teacher for quite some time but was never really firm in this request. There were times where it felt really appropriate to ask him to be my teacher, but I couldn't find a chance to ask him. And then there were other times where I had a chance to ask him, but it didn't feel right at that moment. So I hadn't asked him and wasn't really sure if I wanted to. I knew that if I did ask him to be my teacher, I wanted to know what I was getting in to. I felt like I was entering in to a relationship with him, one that he would be present and committed to. I wanted to know what my responsibilities would be, so that I would know whether or not I could uphold them. The last thing I wanted to do was to ask for something that I didn't want or couldn't do, especially if it involved someone else willingly doing it with me.
By the time I was scheduled to have dokusan with Paul, I had come up with my own ideas about what it would mean to be a student. I had decided that when I asked him, he would say that I would be reading texts and that he would be giving me koans. So then I decided that I would ask him a second question: Why would you do that? Why would you read books and think about stuff when really, it was more about sitting zazen and putting practice in your every day life?
Before I even got to dokusan with Paul, I had kind of decided that I didn't really want to be a student. I concluded that it wasn't where I was in my practice right now. I felt like I didn't need to read books or live in monastery, I just needed to sit zazen more and attend service. I was feeling like I was different from what I perceived the residents and practitioners at the zen center were. I felt like they studying Buddhism in order to become Buddhists or monks or practitioners. I felt like I was just sitting zazen to become a better teacher, to learn about myself, to untangle the knots in my core that had been tied so long ago.
As I sat in the dokusan waiting area, I imagined myself explaining this to Paul and having him agree with me: a student path isn't the one that you're on. You have your own path and you should come to the zen center to get what you need to sustain your journey on that path. As I was imagining this, Paul actually rang the bell that meant, "I'm free to meet with you." So I rang back, and entered the dokusan room. I did my prostrations, sat in front of him, and asked: "What does it mean to be a student? What would that involve?"
He asked for clarification, "What would it mean to be a student in general or what would it mean to be my student?"
I looked away and thought about this: What did I want to know?
I realized that what I really wanted to know was what it would mean to be his student, not just a student in general, so I looked back at him and said that.
I can't recall his exact words but what I remember was something like: "It would mean that we would talk about your practice and how it plays out in your life. We may talk about your posture, we may talk about your practice, we may talk about how it manifests in your everyday life..."
I looked away again.
"Oh!" I thought. "That would be really helpful. It would be really nice to have someone to talk to about what I'm doing in the classroom and how I can be more present to the kids. It would be really beneficial to everyone involved if Paul were included in this equation, if I had the support of his life experience and the wisdom of his teachings. That seems like a really appropriate thing for me to be doing with my time."
So I looked back at him and I said, "Can I ask you to be my teacher?"
"Yes," he said.
And then I realized that I didn't really ask him to be my teacher, I just asked him if I could ask him to be my teacher so I asked, "Will you be my teacher?"
And he answered, "Yes."
Sunday, October 7, 2018
DT renunciation
I'd like to talk about renunciation: giving stuff up, removing oneself from one's worldly possessions... that apparently moral high ground in which someone gives up all their worldly possessions and lives a life of austerity/ poverty but is somehow happy about it.
I'd like you to know that it's not what it seems.
And I'd like to demonstrate this... with a sweatshirt.
When I was in college, I dated a guy who had rowed for the U.C. Berkeley crew team. I was rowing for the U.C. Davis crew team at the time and one Saturday, he gave me his old sweatshirt.
I'm sure that for him it was just a sweatshirt but for me it was like getting your boyfriend's varsity letterman's jacket in high school. I slept with that sweatshirt, refused to wash it for as long as I could so that his smell would stay on it, and kept it neatly folded beneath my pillow during the day so that I could be certain it would be there when I returned at night. That sweatshirt was proof that someone cared about me, loved me, that I was cherished.
Then we broke up.
The breakup wasn't exactly harmonious but since I was the one who initiated it I couldn't really complain.
The sweatshirt, however, was banished. I threw it into the darkest corner of my closet, hoping that I would never have to deal with it again. That sweatshirt was proof that I had broken someone's heart, that I was incapable of love, that even when I thought I had found a life partner I had been wrong and it was me who had done it.
I wanted nothing to do with that sweatshirt. The only reason I kept it was because I didn't have the heart to mail it back to him and couldn't bear the thought of contacting him to return it.
Same sweatshirt, same grey cotton fabric, same navy blue letters...
different story.
And for me, this is what renunciation is about: same object, different story.
If you had asked me to give up that sweatshirt when we first started dating I would have refused. I would have clung it to my chest and told you that I couldn't live without it- it was mine and he had given it to me and there was no way I was giving it up.
If you had asked me to give up that sweatshirt after we broke up I would have giddily pointed out its hiding spot in the corner of my closet and skipped along as I walked you to to the door to take it away. Giving up that sweatshirt would have given me pure joy.
Now, I'm not saying that giving up your worldly possessions is going to give you pure joy but I am saying that once you start seeing your stories about things, giving stuff up is a walk in the park.
For this demonstration I will be using cars- a Tesla to be exact.
When I say the word Tesla, many of you will have a story about it. Here are some of mine:
eighty-two thousand dollars
environmentally conscious
Something I will never have
If your story of owning a Tesla is a sign of your financial success, giving it up could be difficult.
If your story of owning a Tesla is proof that you are environmentally conscious, you probably wouldn't want to trade it in for some other vehicle.
If your story of owning a Tesla is that you finally have something you never thought you could and someone asked you to give it up you might not want to do that.
But I think we are all in agreement that a Tesla is, in all truth, steel, rubber, leather (if you paid for it), and chemicals in the form of a battery. That's really all it is.
It's true, it may be the way you get to work, pick up your kids, get around town, but you can do that in other ways and the Tesla is made of the same materials as those other forms of transportation. So when you look at the Tesla for what it really is, you could probably give it up for some other form of transportation. You don't have to but it's definitely easier when you look at it that way.
And now I am going to push you a little more. I am going to ask you to consider a house.
If you are lucky, you live somewhere. Hopefully it is a place that you can come home to, reliably, each night.
Perhaps it is an apartment, a house, a condo, a mansion- more rooms than you need, just enough, or never enough at all.
Imagine I asked you to give that up. That would be crazy- it would be stupid, everyone needs a home. And it's true, everyone does need a home.
But most homes are made of wood, or brick, or some kind of other natural element. These elements are susceptible to things like fire, earthquakes, and floods. They can be ruined in an instant. We don't like to admit this. We want to believe that they are permanent, that they are safe, that they will always be there. But in truth, they are not. Homes offer us the promise of security but we know that this will not always be fulfilled.
You don't want to give up your home but when a disaster occurs and you are forced to give up your home you find that what you really need is a place of shelter, a place of safety, and what it looks like, what amenities it has are not as important as its basic offer of a place to call home.
In my experience, zen practice is about noticing yourself- what stories you bring to situations, how you approach life, how your stories have brought you to see the world in certain ways, and how they continue to shape how you see things. As you notice these stories you begin to see that they are stories, that you made them up, that though they often define how you see things they are actually just stories and you have a choice to see them as just that and, if you want, let them go and see things as they are instead.
I think that when monks start giving up their worldly possessions they're doing this because they've given up their stories about them.
Giving up the cool t-shirt they got at that amazing concert in the middle of the summer with their first love isn't what they're doing. They're giving up a piece of cotton in the shape of the letter T.
They're not giving up the BMW or Porsche or Prius that guaranteed the perception of them as capable members of society. They're walking away from a large object made of steel and rubber that burns gasoline.
In packing up their sunny apartment with their own room and that window they aren't leaving behind a home. They're simply moving from one place of shelter to another.
I say this not to make it look easy because it isn't.
I say this to point out that when people do this, when they "renounce" material possessions they are doing just that: they are RE announcing them for what they are: fabric, metal, wood. They aren't giving anything up at that point, what they had no longer has meaning so walking away from it is a whole different story.
I'm not saying you should start renouncing your material possessions but it you find that you really need something, that you are clinging to its meaning the way I was clinging to that sweatshirt and you find that this is causing you sorrow or pain, maybe look at the stories you have around it, maybe see it for what it is- it might actually free you from it (or him or her), enough to begin to walk away.
I'd like you to know that it's not what it seems.
And I'd like to demonstrate this... with a sweatshirt.
When I was in college, I dated a guy who had rowed for the U.C. Berkeley crew team. I was rowing for the U.C. Davis crew team at the time and one Saturday, he gave me his old sweatshirt.
I'm sure that for him it was just a sweatshirt but for me it was like getting your boyfriend's varsity letterman's jacket in high school. I slept with that sweatshirt, refused to wash it for as long as I could so that his smell would stay on it, and kept it neatly folded beneath my pillow during the day so that I could be certain it would be there when I returned at night. That sweatshirt was proof that someone cared about me, loved me, that I was cherished.
Then we broke up.
The breakup wasn't exactly harmonious but since I was the one who initiated it I couldn't really complain.
The sweatshirt, however, was banished. I threw it into the darkest corner of my closet, hoping that I would never have to deal with it again. That sweatshirt was proof that I had broken someone's heart, that I was incapable of love, that even when I thought I had found a life partner I had been wrong and it was me who had done it.
I wanted nothing to do with that sweatshirt. The only reason I kept it was because I didn't have the heart to mail it back to him and couldn't bear the thought of contacting him to return it.
Same sweatshirt, same grey cotton fabric, same navy blue letters...
different story.
And for me, this is what renunciation is about: same object, different story.
If you had asked me to give up that sweatshirt when we first started dating I would have refused. I would have clung it to my chest and told you that I couldn't live without it- it was mine and he had given it to me and there was no way I was giving it up.
If you had asked me to give up that sweatshirt after we broke up I would have giddily pointed out its hiding spot in the corner of my closet and skipped along as I walked you to to the door to take it away. Giving up that sweatshirt would have given me pure joy.
Now, I'm not saying that giving up your worldly possessions is going to give you pure joy but I am saying that once you start seeing your stories about things, giving stuff up is a walk in the park.
For this demonstration I will be using cars- a Tesla to be exact.
When I say the word Tesla, many of you will have a story about it. Here are some of mine:
eighty-two thousand dollars
environmentally conscious
Something I will never have
If your story of owning a Tesla is a sign of your financial success, giving it up could be difficult.
If your story of owning a Tesla is proof that you are environmentally conscious, you probably wouldn't want to trade it in for some other vehicle.
If your story of owning a Tesla is that you finally have something you never thought you could and someone asked you to give it up you might not want to do that.
But I think we are all in agreement that a Tesla is, in all truth, steel, rubber, leather (if you paid for it), and chemicals in the form of a battery. That's really all it is.
It's true, it may be the way you get to work, pick up your kids, get around town, but you can do that in other ways and the Tesla is made of the same materials as those other forms of transportation. So when you look at the Tesla for what it really is, you could probably give it up for some other form of transportation. You don't have to but it's definitely easier when you look at it that way.
And now I am going to push you a little more. I am going to ask you to consider a house.
If you are lucky, you live somewhere. Hopefully it is a place that you can come home to, reliably, each night.
Perhaps it is an apartment, a house, a condo, a mansion- more rooms than you need, just enough, or never enough at all.
Imagine I asked you to give that up. That would be crazy- it would be stupid, everyone needs a home. And it's true, everyone does need a home.
But most homes are made of wood, or brick, or some kind of other natural element. These elements are susceptible to things like fire, earthquakes, and floods. They can be ruined in an instant. We don't like to admit this. We want to believe that they are permanent, that they are safe, that they will always be there. But in truth, they are not. Homes offer us the promise of security but we know that this will not always be fulfilled.
You don't want to give up your home but when a disaster occurs and you are forced to give up your home you find that what you really need is a place of shelter, a place of safety, and what it looks like, what amenities it has are not as important as its basic offer of a place to call home.
In my experience, zen practice is about noticing yourself- what stories you bring to situations, how you approach life, how your stories have brought you to see the world in certain ways, and how they continue to shape how you see things. As you notice these stories you begin to see that they are stories, that you made them up, that though they often define how you see things they are actually just stories and you have a choice to see them as just that and, if you want, let them go and see things as they are instead.
I think that when monks start giving up their worldly possessions they're doing this because they've given up their stories about them.
Giving up the cool t-shirt they got at that amazing concert in the middle of the summer with their first love isn't what they're doing. They're giving up a piece of cotton in the shape of the letter T.
They're not giving up the BMW or Porsche or Prius that guaranteed the perception of them as capable members of society. They're walking away from a large object made of steel and rubber that burns gasoline.
In packing up their sunny apartment with their own room and that window they aren't leaving behind a home. They're simply moving from one place of shelter to another.
I say this not to make it look easy because it isn't.
I say this to point out that when people do this, when they "renounce" material possessions they are doing just that: they are RE announcing them for what they are: fabric, metal, wood. They aren't giving anything up at that point, what they had no longer has meaning so walking away from it is a whole different story.
I'm not saying you should start renouncing your material possessions but it you find that you really need something, that you are clinging to its meaning the way I was clinging to that sweatshirt and you find that this is causing you sorrow or pain, maybe look at the stories you have around it, maybe see it for what it is- it might actually free you from it (or him or her), enough to begin to walk away.
Sunday, December 13, 2015
Forgiving the universe
Tonight
I forgave
the universe
It's not your fault
You didn't take her
It wasn't you
it just happened
And I think
in forgiving the universe
I am forgiving myself
You don't have to save her
You don't have to change things
It's over
It happened
it's done.
I forgave
the universe
It's not your fault
You didn't take her
It wasn't you
it just happened
And I think
in forgiving the universe
I am forgiving myself
You don't have to save her
You don't have to change things
It's over
It happened
it's done.
Monday, January 12, 2015
Something that is her
When I was home over Christmas break, I came across a ring that belonged to my mother. It wasn't a fancy ring, it was actually a rock (literally a pebble) that had been painted with a smiling yellow sun and hot-glued to a cheap metal adjustable ring.
My brother and sister had offered this ring to me a couple of years ago when we were cleaning out the attic. At the time I took it simply because it was kind of cute but I had no intention of wearing it and left it on the shelf in my childhood bedroom.
I came across it again this Winter break and when I picked it up I noticed pencil thin writing at the bottom of the pebble. When I looked closer to see what it said I saw the word "Patty." My mom had actually signed the ring.
Suddenly, the ring became sentimental. For me it was evidence of a time when she was making crafts. The smiling yellow sun now became an expression of my mother's personality (she had painted it after all). I picked up the ring and placed it on my ring finger. It fit well and I decided to wear it, to keep my mother with me, something I had never done before.
I felt a little self conscious about the ring because it is on my wedding ring finger and because, well, it really is a pebble stuck on top of a ring so I thought it would draw a lot of attention. So far, no one has noticed it or said anything about it. I have to admit that part of me was hoping that people would so that I could talk about it, show it off. But it hasn't happened yet.
I originally thought that this was what the ring was going to be about: people pointing it out to me, suggesting that I not wear it on my ring finger, or suggest that the 70's pebble might be best worn by a little girl, not a grown woman. Yet I've been watching myself interact with this ring; how closely I keep tabs on it, how I try to wear it all the time, and how afraid I have been of losing it. At first I thought this was sweet. I thought it was nice that I was wearing something of my mother's, that I was keeping her with me. But then, this weekend, I found myself disappointed in the ring. I wondered what this disappointment was about and this is what came up:
She didn't come back.
You're wearing the ring and she is not with it.
It has her signature, it has her drawing, it is her ring but it is not her.
It turns out I'm still expecting her to return. In the same way that I thought that acknowledging that I was a writer, that I was like her by being a writer, it would somehow make her appear, show back up in my life, I think I thought that by wearing her ring it would make her come back.
It didn't.
I'm not quite sure what it is that I am supposed to accept:
she's not coming back
she's dead
I'll never see her again
I can't quite figure out what it is that I want.
I think I really just something that is her. I just don't know what that something is.
My brother and sister had offered this ring to me a couple of years ago when we were cleaning out the attic. At the time I took it simply because it was kind of cute but I had no intention of wearing it and left it on the shelf in my childhood bedroom.
I came across it again this Winter break and when I picked it up I noticed pencil thin writing at the bottom of the pebble. When I looked closer to see what it said I saw the word "Patty." My mom had actually signed the ring.
Suddenly, the ring became sentimental. For me it was evidence of a time when she was making crafts. The smiling yellow sun now became an expression of my mother's personality (she had painted it after all). I picked up the ring and placed it on my ring finger. It fit well and I decided to wear it, to keep my mother with me, something I had never done before.
I felt a little self conscious about the ring because it is on my wedding ring finger and because, well, it really is a pebble stuck on top of a ring so I thought it would draw a lot of attention. So far, no one has noticed it or said anything about it. I have to admit that part of me was hoping that people would so that I could talk about it, show it off. But it hasn't happened yet.
I originally thought that this was what the ring was going to be about: people pointing it out to me, suggesting that I not wear it on my ring finger, or suggest that the 70's pebble might be best worn by a little girl, not a grown woman. Yet I've been watching myself interact with this ring; how closely I keep tabs on it, how I try to wear it all the time, and how afraid I have been of losing it. At first I thought this was sweet. I thought it was nice that I was wearing something of my mother's, that I was keeping her with me. But then, this weekend, I found myself disappointed in the ring. I wondered what this disappointment was about and this is what came up:
She didn't come back.
You're wearing the ring and she is not with it.
It has her signature, it has her drawing, it is her ring but it is not her.
It turns out I'm still expecting her to return. In the same way that I thought that acknowledging that I was a writer, that I was like her by being a writer, it would somehow make her appear, show back up in my life, I think I thought that by wearing her ring it would make her come back.
It didn't.
I'm not quite sure what it is that I am supposed to accept:
she's not coming back
she's dead
I'll never see her again
I can't quite figure out what it is that I want.
I think I really just something that is her. I just don't know what that something is.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Both
Is she alive or is she dead
She is both.
In the photograph
on my mantel
she is alive.
Smiling at me,
freckled
tanned
happy
young
younger than I am now.
And she is alive in my thoughts
in my feelings
in my longing
and sadness
in my desire to connect with her.
She is electric
pulsing through me
able to double me over
in sadness
and loss.
And so she is very much alive,
very much a part of me.
And she is dead.
She died 37 years ago.
She went to the hospital.
She fell into a coma.
She was visited by friends and family.
She watched,
unable to speak.
And then she died
in the night
in her sleep.
So she is dead
she is not here
she is gone.
I don't know how these two things can exist.
I don't understand
how she can be so alive in me
when I haven't seen her in 37 years,
and will never
see her
again,
will never
meet her.
But she is alive
very much alive
in me,
in my longing
in my sadness
in my pain.
Unfair
it seems
that this is how she exists,
this is what remains.
But it is true.
I wonder
if I let go
of my sadness
and loss
that I will let go of her too,
that she will no longer exist
that she will finally be dead.
Impossible
She is too much alive
too much love passed between us
for her to no longer
exist.
So she is both
alive
dead
her
me
unsynchronized
yet true
Both.
She is both.
In the photograph
on my mantel
she is alive.
Smiling at me,
freckled
tanned
happy
young
younger than I am now.
And she is alive in my thoughts
in my feelings
in my longing
and sadness
in my desire to connect with her.
She is electric
pulsing through me
able to double me over
in sadness
and loss.
And so she is very much alive,
very much a part of me.
And she is dead.
She died 37 years ago.
She went to the hospital.
She fell into a coma.
She was visited by friends and family.
She watched,
unable to speak.
And then she died
in the night
in her sleep.
So she is dead
she is not here
she is gone.
I don't know how these two things can exist.
I don't understand
how she can be so alive in me
when I haven't seen her in 37 years,
and will never
see her
again,
will never
meet her.
But she is alive
very much alive
in me,
in my longing
in my sadness
in my pain.
Unfair
it seems
that this is how she exists,
this is what remains.
But it is true.
I wonder
if I let go
of my sadness
and loss
that I will let go of her too,
that she will no longer exist
that she will finally be dead.
Impossible
She is too much alive
too much love passed between us
for her to no longer
exist.
So she is both
alive
dead
her
me
unsynchronized
yet true
Both.
Death Day
I know, it's not the best term but it's the truth. We all have death days for people: we remember the day they died. We don't enjoy it, but we mark it just the same. Because it happened; on a certain day, that person died and we kept living.
My mother's death day is tomorrow.
I have confirmation on this date because I found out this summer that her death day is the day after my aunt's birthday. I'm sure my mom wasn't happy about that, but at least she didn't die on my aunt's birthday, she definitely would have felt horrible if that had happened.
Last year on the anniversary of my mother's death, I think I had dinner with my dad. I can't totally remember but I'm pretty sure that's what I did. And I did it, because it felt appropriate.
This year, I wasn't sure what to do.
I knew for sure I was going to send flowers to my aunt. I wanted to make sure that we celebrated her birthday, let her know that her birthday has nothing to do with my mom's death day.
But I have to admit that part of me was sad about this. I was happy to be sending flowers to her but I also wished that my mom and I were sending her flowers together, that the three of us were celebrating her birthday, that the three of us were alive together. But we are not. I am sending flowers to my aunt because my mom can't.
And so I wondered what I should do to accept that Sunday is her death day- that she really did die on this day. And she did- I have to acknowledge that about her- she went through the process of death- it's just a truth- it's not fair to deny that.
I considered doing things that she would have done- to celebrate her. But that seemed really untruthful, that felt like keeping her alive.
So then I considered having some memorial for her- some acknowledgement of her death. But that seemed superfluous- it seemed like all I've been doing this month is grappling with the fact that she is dead- that she has a headstone, that her death day is the day after my aunt's birthday- that my aunt and her family are celebrating and that the next day my family and I are acknowledging something else.
And that's when I realized that this year, this day isn't about her. She isn't here anymore and I am. This day needed to be about me- me being a 43 year old woman living on, living past her mother and growing up- sending flowers to her aunt in her mother's honor, and then having the next day be the truth: the anniversary of the day that my mother died after a year long battle with breast cancer.
So I thought about what I would do for myself, what would help me on that day.
For some reason, I felt like walking- walking all the way to the ocean. But then I pictured myself walking down the N Judah line and I realized that would be a really long walk and not all that pleasant. I suppose I could have walked through the park but something about me felt like I needed to be walking toward the ocean, in solitude.
And then solitude, in nature, was what came up for me. Being along on top of some great mountain or by the ocean- someplace where being alone felt like being connected.
I considered Big Sur, Esalen, Mendocino- but that required a rental car. And then I thought Mt. Tam, and the Mountain Home Inn, and at 10:30 at night, the day after I wrote the post about my mother having a grave, I found one room available on a Sunday night.
I booked it.
And then I booked myself into a writing class. Because I am writing a book- a memoir about all of this- this is what I am doing, I am writing, I am a writer.
So tomorrow, I'm riding my bike to the Mountain Home Inn (with the help of the bus).
I'm bringing my laptop so that I can write.
I'm hoping to watch the sunset from the deck after I've eaten the prix fixe dinner that I will be ravenous for after my long bike ride.
And I will be alone.
I will be by myself in that room, writing if I feel like it, crying if I feel like it, hiking to the top of Mt. Tam if I feel like it.
And then it will be the next day.
It will be September first,
and I will be living.
My mother's death day is tomorrow.
I have confirmation on this date because I found out this summer that her death day is the day after my aunt's birthday. I'm sure my mom wasn't happy about that, but at least she didn't die on my aunt's birthday, she definitely would have felt horrible if that had happened.
Last year on the anniversary of my mother's death, I think I had dinner with my dad. I can't totally remember but I'm pretty sure that's what I did. And I did it, because it felt appropriate.
This year, I wasn't sure what to do.
I knew for sure I was going to send flowers to my aunt. I wanted to make sure that we celebrated her birthday, let her know that her birthday has nothing to do with my mom's death day.
But I have to admit that part of me was sad about this. I was happy to be sending flowers to her but I also wished that my mom and I were sending her flowers together, that the three of us were celebrating her birthday, that the three of us were alive together. But we are not. I am sending flowers to my aunt because my mom can't.
And so I wondered what I should do to accept that Sunday is her death day- that she really did die on this day. And she did- I have to acknowledge that about her- she went through the process of death- it's just a truth- it's not fair to deny that.
I considered doing things that she would have done- to celebrate her. But that seemed really untruthful, that felt like keeping her alive.
So then I considered having some memorial for her- some acknowledgement of her death. But that seemed superfluous- it seemed like all I've been doing this month is grappling with the fact that she is dead- that she has a headstone, that her death day is the day after my aunt's birthday- that my aunt and her family are celebrating and that the next day my family and I are acknowledging something else.
And that's when I realized that this year, this day isn't about her. She isn't here anymore and I am. This day needed to be about me- me being a 43 year old woman living on, living past her mother and growing up- sending flowers to her aunt in her mother's honor, and then having the next day be the truth: the anniversary of the day that my mother died after a year long battle with breast cancer.
So I thought about what I would do for myself, what would help me on that day.
For some reason, I felt like walking- walking all the way to the ocean. But then I pictured myself walking down the N Judah line and I realized that would be a really long walk and not all that pleasant. I suppose I could have walked through the park but something about me felt like I needed to be walking toward the ocean, in solitude.
And then solitude, in nature, was what came up for me. Being along on top of some great mountain or by the ocean- someplace where being alone felt like being connected.
I considered Big Sur, Esalen, Mendocino- but that required a rental car. And then I thought Mt. Tam, and the Mountain Home Inn, and at 10:30 at night, the day after I wrote the post about my mother having a grave, I found one room available on a Sunday night.
I booked it.
And then I booked myself into a writing class. Because I am writing a book- a memoir about all of this- this is what I am doing, I am writing, I am a writer.
So tomorrow, I'm riding my bike to the Mountain Home Inn (with the help of the bus).
I'm bringing my laptop so that I can write.
I'm hoping to watch the sunset from the deck after I've eaten the prix fixe dinner that I will be ravenous for after my long bike ride.
And I will be alone.
I will be by myself in that room, writing if I feel like it, crying if I feel like it, hiking to the top of Mt. Tam if I feel like it.
And then it will be the next day.
It will be September first,
and I will be living.
Keeping the dead alive
After I wrote my last post- about the fact that if my mother had a grave she had to be dead- I added to the end of it that I would probably forget this, that I would think she was alive again, that I would hold on to the belief that I would see her again.
I wondered about this- why I seemed to come to these huge realizations in which I accepted that my mother was dead but then found myself having that same realization again- almost as if I had never accepted it in the first place. It was like I totally accepted it at the time and then had to accept it all over again.
"When am I actually going to accept this?" I thought. "When will this be fully true for me?" because it sure felt true each time I had to face it, painfully true. Why did it keep coming up for me when I seemed to fully feel it when it happened?
A couple of days later, I saw my mom's picture on my mantel. I keep it there for a reason- mostly to keep her image in my mind because she is, kind of, what I'm working on. Having her image there keeps her in my head so that whatever comes up for me, comes up for me, whenever it does- not when I feel ready or want to- just whenever and as it comes up.
When I saw her picture, I smiled. She looked happy and I thought of her with affection and love. I pictured her happy with me sitting on her lap- feeling great about having this kid and having a happy life.
And then I got angry.
"She's alive again!" I thought. "Yesterday I accepted that she was dead. Yesterday I accepted that she had a grave and that she wasn't at her own funeral and that I was."
"This is why she keeps coming back," I explained to myself. "You're keeping her alive by having her photo there- by remembering her- by thinking of her. You have to accept it- she's dead."
But I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to accept that she was dead. I wanted her to be the happy person in the photograph, the one who loved me, the one I was with.
At the same time I knew that I wasn't supposed to deny the feelings I had for her, or the fact that I saw her as a person. I knew those feelings were true and I knew I had been working hard to allow them to come up.
"What am I supposed to do?" I thought. "How can I accept her death and her love and our existence all at the same time? I know I'm not supposed to trade one for the other but keeping her alive seems to keep me from accepting her death."
And so I turned away. I turned away from her photograph and told myself that she was dead- that that was just a photograph and I was a 43 year old woman, in her bedroom, at night, trying to process all of this.
I glanced at the photo again, as I was climbing in to bed. It seemed a little farther away but it also seemed that I was on that path again- that path to try to find my mother somewhere, believing that she still exists, hoping I can see her again.
I wondered about this- why I seemed to come to these huge realizations in which I accepted that my mother was dead but then found myself having that same realization again- almost as if I had never accepted it in the first place. It was like I totally accepted it at the time and then had to accept it all over again.
"When am I actually going to accept this?" I thought. "When will this be fully true for me?" because it sure felt true each time I had to face it, painfully true. Why did it keep coming up for me when I seemed to fully feel it when it happened?
A couple of days later, I saw my mom's picture on my mantel. I keep it there for a reason- mostly to keep her image in my mind because she is, kind of, what I'm working on. Having her image there keeps her in my head so that whatever comes up for me, comes up for me, whenever it does- not when I feel ready or want to- just whenever and as it comes up.
When I saw her picture, I smiled. She looked happy and I thought of her with affection and love. I pictured her happy with me sitting on her lap- feeling great about having this kid and having a happy life.
And then I got angry.
"She's alive again!" I thought. "Yesterday I accepted that she was dead. Yesterday I accepted that she had a grave and that she wasn't at her own funeral and that I was."
"This is why she keeps coming back," I explained to myself. "You're keeping her alive by having her photo there- by remembering her- by thinking of her. You have to accept it- she's dead."
But I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to accept that she was dead. I wanted her to be the happy person in the photograph, the one who loved me, the one I was with.
At the same time I knew that I wasn't supposed to deny the feelings I had for her, or the fact that I saw her as a person. I knew those feelings were true and I knew I had been working hard to allow them to come up.
"What am I supposed to do?" I thought. "How can I accept her death and her love and our existence all at the same time? I know I'm not supposed to trade one for the other but keeping her alive seems to keep me from accepting her death."
And so I turned away. I turned away from her photograph and told myself that she was dead- that that was just a photograph and I was a 43 year old woman, in her bedroom, at night, trying to process all of this.
I glanced at the photo again, as I was climbing in to bed. It seemed a little farther away but it also seemed that I was on that path again- that path to try to find my mother somewhere, believing that she still exists, hoping I can see her again.
Flowers
The following few posts were written in August, about a month after I had returned from a visit to the town where my mom grew up and where my aunts and uncles (her brothers) still live. While I was visiting there, I visited her grave and talked with my aunts and uncles about her. I didn't get around to publishing these posts until now (late October).
This is a longer story than I'd like it to be. And it keeps going. Ironically, it probably started just three weeks after I wrote my last post (way back in May) but it's taken until now to hit me enough to write about it. It's not pleasant and I'd rather be writing about something else but, it is. I am living it.
This week I wrote a thank you card to my aunt- for putting flowers on my mother's grave.
I had been putting off writing this note for the longest time and I couldn't figure out why. I was genuinely grateful to her for putting the flowers on my mom's headstone. Seeing them there had been a literal bloom of happiness in an otherwise desperate and sad situation. And I had plans of sending this thank you card to her long before her birthday so that it wouldn't be confused with the flowers I was going to send her on her birthday. My plan was to send her flowers that looked just like the ones she had put on my mother's grave- a way of returning the favor she had done for me (or maybe it was for my mom). I wanted to associate the two but not totally- wanted the thank you card far enough away so that she wouldn't feel like her birthday flowers were connected with my mother's death.
See, the thing you need to know about my aunt's birthday is that it is the day before the day my mother died. I never knew this until my aunt told me this summer. It was in the context of an afternoon in which she was talking about my mom- retelling stories of her life, the things they did together, and about the time leading up to her death. She said that my mother had hoped that she wouldn't die on my aunt's birthday. And from the look on my aunt's face as she was telling me this, I think it was always a little hard for her to have the days so close together: a celebration one day, a loss the next. And I imagine it was like that the year that my mom died- a cautionary tone to my aunt's birthday that year, knowing that my mother was in the hospital and we all were just waiting. But I also know that my mother would never have wanted that- would never have wanted my aunt's birthday to be anything other than a celebration and fun.
So I wanted to send flowers to my aunt on her birthday this year- let her know that her birthday was cause for celebration and life and that if my mom were still alive, she would send her beautiful yellow roses like the ones my aunt had given her.
Only...
The ones my aunt gave her were plastic.
And they were plastic because they needed to be outside, in a metal vase, attached to my mother's headstone, in a cemetery.
And I suppose that's where this story started.
This summer I went to visit Indiana- my mom's home. All of her brothers (my uncles) still live there- she's the only one who left. We used to go there in the summers when she was alive- presumably so that she could visit with her mom and catch up with old friends. We always went there in the summers after she died. We would usually spend three weeks there- my brother, my sister, and I- and we would stay at my grandma's lake house- the California cousins fully doted on by their aunts and loving Grandma.
I had a pretty clear intention when I went to visit this year. I knew I was going to visit my mother's grave. I had been coming to terms with the reality that my mother had died 37 years ago- that she no longer existed, that my interactions with her were completely made up, by me. I thought that visiting her grave would be a difficult but necessary act that would help me say goodbye to her- accept that she had died. It felt both poetic and real at the same time. On the one hand, I could actually say goodbye to her- her actual physical grave. On the other hand, it would be a good reality check for me- to visit the place where she was actually buried.
I only told one of my aunts that I was going to visit her. And mostly I only told her because her house was the first one I was visiting and so she would need to know why I was taking so long to drive from the airport in Chicago to her house on Lake Michigan. She was kind about it, asked if I wanted company, and checked in on me several times before the day to make sure that I wanted to do it alone. I assured her that, in fact, that was exactly what I wanted to do. (I wanted this to be on my own- to be private. I was scared of sharing it with anyone else. I had no idea what it was going to be and was afraid of what I would have to say if anyone else was involved. I pictured myself kneeling at her grave, pulling away the overgrown weeds the way my grandma used to do- taking care of her headstone after years of neglect since my grandmother died.)
So I followed my aunt's directions and drove my little Chevy Spark all the way to South Bend Indiana, past the shopping mall, in to the iron gates of the cemetery where my mother was buried. I was familiar with this cemetery. We passed it every time we went to the mall (which was often) and every time we drove from my grandma's house in town to her house on the lake. We also actually visited it- whenever my grandma got the chance. She never asked us if we wanted to go- just turned left instead of right, and then we were there, at my mother's grave, watching my grandma kneel and say prayers at her first born and only daughter's grave.
So I knew where to go when I got there- or so I thought. I thought that when I got there, I would remember which path to turn down, which section she was in. I also thought that if I forgot, there would be directory of graves or at least someone I could ask. But it turned out that there was not. The building that I thought was a directory turned out to be a mausoleum and the only people working there were groundskeepers who had no idea where anyone was buried and told me to come back on Tuesday. So I was left to memory.
I backed up the car and re entered the cemetery as if I were in my grandma's Chevy Horizon: straight ahead, veer to the right, stop when you get to the spigot, then cross the street to your mother's grave. But the spigot wasn't there. I drove a little farther but could tell that it was the wrong section so I drove back in again and stopped where the spigot would have been and parked the car. I crossed the street to where my mother's grave should have been but it wasn't there. I searched the headstones near the path for any headstones of my family (my mother's grandparents and my grandma are all buried adjacent to my mom) but none were familiar. I considered calling my aunt to ask her if she knew where it was but I knew she hadn't visited often enough to know. Then I considered calling my brother but thought that he would direct me the same way that I had followed: it's across from the spigot. I started to walk away but saw a small black sign that said 'Catholic section' so I knew I had to be in the right place.
As I walked deeper in, I finally saw our family name: the double headstone of my great grandparents who had died together in an auto accident. I felt relief and began walking slowly among the sunken headstones and came across my grandmother's. But as I continued, the next headstone was foreign, someone else's family plot. I turned around, looked for my mom's, but couldn't find it anywhere. I doubled back, circled around, wondered if my memory had served me incorrectly- thought that maybe my mom had been buried in a separate section. But then I recalled how my great aunt (my godmother) was the one who got buried in a separate section- that they had given her plot to my mom when she died.
"She has to be here," I thought to myself, and I started to panic. How could I not find my mom's headstone? And how would I find it if it weren't here? I pictured myself methodically walking the entire Catholic section but knew that was futile: she had always been here, right near the double grave. I began walking the other direction, away from the double grave, but it felt wrong, desperate, her grave had always been straight across from the spigot.
And then I saw it out of the corner of my eye: Patricia Anne Brasseur- the bronze letters all in caps.
But above her name was a vase of yellow flowers. That made no sense. No one had visited her. My grandma had died over twenty years ago and none of my mother's friends lived close enough to visit her and tend to her grave. And no one knew I was coming except....
I smiled. It must have been my aunt. She must have known that I was coming and put fresh flowers on my mother's grave for me. I reached for them then noticed they were plastic.
"Plastic?" I thought. "Not that aunt. She would never put plastic flowers on the grave of my mother- it just would never happen."
I wondered who put them there and laughed at myself for my panic in not finding my mom right in front of me- so sure I was that her grave would be overgrown and unkempt.
And then I sat down in front of it, cross legged, and traced the letters of her name with my fingertips. I wanted to be caressing my mom's name the same way I would be stroking her arm or her cheek. But my fingers met metal, they traced bold block letters, my eyes saw numbers and dates.
"This is a piece of metal," I noticed. "This is grass." "This is a headstone."
I cried.
"She's not here either," I heard myself say.
And that's when I realized that I was still looking for her. Even though I thought I was being all grown up, even when I thought I was doing the right thing by visiting her actual grave, by finally saying goodbye to her at the right place, by finally accepting that she was gone... I wasn't. I wasn't accepting her death, I was expecting her to be here. I was expecting that we would meet here and I could say goodbye to her as if she still existed.
"She's not here either," I told myself, and got up in disappointment and walked away.
I got back in the Chevy Spark, made a U-turn, and then turned right, toward the mall, to meet my aunt for lunch.
As we sat down, I thanked her for putting flowers on my mom's grave.
"That wasn't me honey," she explained. "It must have been your Aunt Dawn, bless her heart."
And then we talked about other things and I followed her in my car up to her lake house in Michigan.
Later that week I got a chance to visit with my other aunt, the wife of my oldest uncle- the one who was closest in age to my mom.
"Did you put flowers on my mom's grave?" I asked her.
She smiled.
"How did you know I was going to visit her?" I asked.
"Oh no," she explained. "I didn't know you were going to visit. I just put them there a while ago. I visit when I can, but not that often," she said in apology.
"Well it meant a lot to me to see them there," I said. "It was like someone was taking care of her. Thank you," I said, and she smiled.
We talked quite a bit during my visit. I had shared with her that I didn't really know my mom that well- we just didn't talk about her much when I was growing up and I think she took this as a cue. She started telling me everything she could remember: how they had dropped my uncle off at the train when he was drafted. How she had first met my mom when they drove to the grocery store with my grandma. How my mom liked to dress well, how she was a healthy eater long before anyone was in to nutrition, how involved and interested she had been in my aunt's daughter's life. And she talked about how angry my mom was that she had to die- why it had to be her, how she had done nothing wrong to get breast cancer, and how she had to leave the three of us behind.
And that was when she mentioned about her birthday being the day before my mom died- and how much no one wanted it to be the same day, and how grateful everyone was that it wasn't. She said she felt that my mom knew that she was going to die when she had visited that last summer. She felt like she was saying goodbye when she told my aunt, "You were a good friend."
It was hard to hear this- hard to hear that she had to go through this, that she was sad, that she had to accept her death, that she had to say goodbye. But it was also touching- to hear my aunt talk about these memories, to feel connected t o my mom as an actual person, to begin to know who she was. I finally understood why my aunt had taken me shopping every summer and why she always wanted me to have an "outfit"- my mom had been stylish, had been in to clothes, it would have made her cringe to see the way I dressed like a tom-boy with absolutely no care for how I looked. My aunt had been trying to keep my mother alive for me- do the things my mom would have been had she been here.
So when I finally got back from my trip to Indiana, I decided to write my aunt a letter. I wanted to let her know how much it meant to me to be met with a vase of bright yellow flowers when I was feeling lost and desperate in a cemetery, looking for my mother's grave, so that I could finally say goodbye to her, accept her death.
I knew I wasn't going to include all those other parts- the parts about accepting her death- mostly that I was thankful to her for taking care of my mother's grave and for trying to keep her spirit around for me in our summer shopping and in the stories that she had shared with me.
And then it was August, almost an entire month after I had gotten home and I still hadn't written the letter. I put it on my to do list- and it just kept moving farther and farther up the list without getting crossed out. I picked out the card I was going to write it on. I felt what was going on with me and accepted that I would write it when I felt like writing it. But then it was coming closer to my aunt's birthday. I knew I had to write it far enough before her birthday to not associate the two. Yet still, something in me didn't want to write it.
And then, on Sunday afternoon, I sat down to write it. I wrote it on my computer first- something about me felt like I needed to compose it first, before sending it- that I might need to write what I felt and then edit down what I actually sent to her.
As soon as I typed the first sentence, it hit me in the gut.
I wanted to thank you for putting flowers on my mother's grave.
My mother's grave.
My mother has a grave.
You only have a grave if you are dead.
And she has a grave.
I know because I visited it.
I know because I was there when she was lowered in to it.
She was lowered in to it.
She was put in the ground and I was there.
I don't remember it but it must have happened because this summer I visited my mother's grave.
And my mother must have a grave because I am thanking my aunt for putting flowers on it.
My mother has a grave.
My mother died.
She said goodbye to her friends. She said goodbye to her children. She went to the hospital, everyone waited, she died, and then they had funerals and I attended them.
My mother has a grave.
She is dead.
And if experience tells me anything, I will not accept it this way either. I will likely continue to hold out for her existence, will still want to see her again, will still believe that someday we will be together.
Probably because I was six, sometimes still am six, or maybe it's just because I really loved her- maybe it's just really hard to say goodbye to your mom.
This is a longer story than I'd like it to be. And it keeps going. Ironically, it probably started just three weeks after I wrote my last post (way back in May) but it's taken until now to hit me enough to write about it. It's not pleasant and I'd rather be writing about something else but, it is. I am living it.
This week I wrote a thank you card to my aunt- for putting flowers on my mother's grave.
I had been putting off writing this note for the longest time and I couldn't figure out why. I was genuinely grateful to her for putting the flowers on my mom's headstone. Seeing them there had been a literal bloom of happiness in an otherwise desperate and sad situation. And I had plans of sending this thank you card to her long before her birthday so that it wouldn't be confused with the flowers I was going to send her on her birthday. My plan was to send her flowers that looked just like the ones she had put on my mother's grave- a way of returning the favor she had done for me (or maybe it was for my mom). I wanted to associate the two but not totally- wanted the thank you card far enough away so that she wouldn't feel like her birthday flowers were connected with my mother's death.
See, the thing you need to know about my aunt's birthday is that it is the day before the day my mother died. I never knew this until my aunt told me this summer. It was in the context of an afternoon in which she was talking about my mom- retelling stories of her life, the things they did together, and about the time leading up to her death. She said that my mother had hoped that she wouldn't die on my aunt's birthday. And from the look on my aunt's face as she was telling me this, I think it was always a little hard for her to have the days so close together: a celebration one day, a loss the next. And I imagine it was like that the year that my mom died- a cautionary tone to my aunt's birthday that year, knowing that my mother was in the hospital and we all were just waiting. But I also know that my mother would never have wanted that- would never have wanted my aunt's birthday to be anything other than a celebration and fun.
So I wanted to send flowers to my aunt on her birthday this year- let her know that her birthday was cause for celebration and life and that if my mom were still alive, she would send her beautiful yellow roses like the ones my aunt had given her.
Only...
The ones my aunt gave her were plastic.
And they were plastic because they needed to be outside, in a metal vase, attached to my mother's headstone, in a cemetery.
And I suppose that's where this story started.
This summer I went to visit Indiana- my mom's home. All of her brothers (my uncles) still live there- she's the only one who left. We used to go there in the summers when she was alive- presumably so that she could visit with her mom and catch up with old friends. We always went there in the summers after she died. We would usually spend three weeks there- my brother, my sister, and I- and we would stay at my grandma's lake house- the California cousins fully doted on by their aunts and loving Grandma.
I had a pretty clear intention when I went to visit this year. I knew I was going to visit my mother's grave. I had been coming to terms with the reality that my mother had died 37 years ago- that she no longer existed, that my interactions with her were completely made up, by me. I thought that visiting her grave would be a difficult but necessary act that would help me say goodbye to her- accept that she had died. It felt both poetic and real at the same time. On the one hand, I could actually say goodbye to her- her actual physical grave. On the other hand, it would be a good reality check for me- to visit the place where she was actually buried.
I only told one of my aunts that I was going to visit her. And mostly I only told her because her house was the first one I was visiting and so she would need to know why I was taking so long to drive from the airport in Chicago to her house on Lake Michigan. She was kind about it, asked if I wanted company, and checked in on me several times before the day to make sure that I wanted to do it alone. I assured her that, in fact, that was exactly what I wanted to do. (I wanted this to be on my own- to be private. I was scared of sharing it with anyone else. I had no idea what it was going to be and was afraid of what I would have to say if anyone else was involved. I pictured myself kneeling at her grave, pulling away the overgrown weeds the way my grandma used to do- taking care of her headstone after years of neglect since my grandmother died.)
So I followed my aunt's directions and drove my little Chevy Spark all the way to South Bend Indiana, past the shopping mall, in to the iron gates of the cemetery where my mother was buried. I was familiar with this cemetery. We passed it every time we went to the mall (which was often) and every time we drove from my grandma's house in town to her house on the lake. We also actually visited it- whenever my grandma got the chance. She never asked us if we wanted to go- just turned left instead of right, and then we were there, at my mother's grave, watching my grandma kneel and say prayers at her first born and only daughter's grave.
So I knew where to go when I got there- or so I thought. I thought that when I got there, I would remember which path to turn down, which section she was in. I also thought that if I forgot, there would be directory of graves or at least someone I could ask. But it turned out that there was not. The building that I thought was a directory turned out to be a mausoleum and the only people working there were groundskeepers who had no idea where anyone was buried and told me to come back on Tuesday. So I was left to memory.
I backed up the car and re entered the cemetery as if I were in my grandma's Chevy Horizon: straight ahead, veer to the right, stop when you get to the spigot, then cross the street to your mother's grave. But the spigot wasn't there. I drove a little farther but could tell that it was the wrong section so I drove back in again and stopped where the spigot would have been and parked the car. I crossed the street to where my mother's grave should have been but it wasn't there. I searched the headstones near the path for any headstones of my family (my mother's grandparents and my grandma are all buried adjacent to my mom) but none were familiar. I considered calling my aunt to ask her if she knew where it was but I knew she hadn't visited often enough to know. Then I considered calling my brother but thought that he would direct me the same way that I had followed: it's across from the spigot. I started to walk away but saw a small black sign that said 'Catholic section' so I knew I had to be in the right place.
As I walked deeper in, I finally saw our family name: the double headstone of my great grandparents who had died together in an auto accident. I felt relief and began walking slowly among the sunken headstones and came across my grandmother's. But as I continued, the next headstone was foreign, someone else's family plot. I turned around, looked for my mom's, but couldn't find it anywhere. I doubled back, circled around, wondered if my memory had served me incorrectly- thought that maybe my mom had been buried in a separate section. But then I recalled how my great aunt (my godmother) was the one who got buried in a separate section- that they had given her plot to my mom when she died.
"She has to be here," I thought to myself, and I started to panic. How could I not find my mom's headstone? And how would I find it if it weren't here? I pictured myself methodically walking the entire Catholic section but knew that was futile: she had always been here, right near the double grave. I began walking the other direction, away from the double grave, but it felt wrong, desperate, her grave had always been straight across from the spigot.
And then I saw it out of the corner of my eye: Patricia Anne Brasseur- the bronze letters all in caps.
But above her name was a vase of yellow flowers. That made no sense. No one had visited her. My grandma had died over twenty years ago and none of my mother's friends lived close enough to visit her and tend to her grave. And no one knew I was coming except....
I smiled. It must have been my aunt. She must have known that I was coming and put fresh flowers on my mother's grave for me. I reached for them then noticed they were plastic.
"Plastic?" I thought. "Not that aunt. She would never put plastic flowers on the grave of my mother- it just would never happen."
I wondered who put them there and laughed at myself for my panic in not finding my mom right in front of me- so sure I was that her grave would be overgrown and unkempt.
And then I sat down in front of it, cross legged, and traced the letters of her name with my fingertips. I wanted to be caressing my mom's name the same way I would be stroking her arm or her cheek. But my fingers met metal, they traced bold block letters, my eyes saw numbers and dates.
"This is a piece of metal," I noticed. "This is grass." "This is a headstone."
I cried.
"She's not here either," I heard myself say.
And that's when I realized that I was still looking for her. Even though I thought I was being all grown up, even when I thought I was doing the right thing by visiting her actual grave, by finally saying goodbye to her at the right place, by finally accepting that she was gone... I wasn't. I wasn't accepting her death, I was expecting her to be here. I was expecting that we would meet here and I could say goodbye to her as if she still existed.
"She's not here either," I told myself, and got up in disappointment and walked away.
I got back in the Chevy Spark, made a U-turn, and then turned right, toward the mall, to meet my aunt for lunch.
As we sat down, I thanked her for putting flowers on my mom's grave.
"That wasn't me honey," she explained. "It must have been your Aunt Dawn, bless her heart."
And then we talked about other things and I followed her in my car up to her lake house in Michigan.
Later that week I got a chance to visit with my other aunt, the wife of my oldest uncle- the one who was closest in age to my mom.
"Did you put flowers on my mom's grave?" I asked her.
She smiled.
"How did you know I was going to visit her?" I asked.
"Oh no," she explained. "I didn't know you were going to visit. I just put them there a while ago. I visit when I can, but not that often," she said in apology.
"Well it meant a lot to me to see them there," I said. "It was like someone was taking care of her. Thank you," I said, and she smiled.
We talked quite a bit during my visit. I had shared with her that I didn't really know my mom that well- we just didn't talk about her much when I was growing up and I think she took this as a cue. She started telling me everything she could remember: how they had dropped my uncle off at the train when he was drafted. How she had first met my mom when they drove to the grocery store with my grandma. How my mom liked to dress well, how she was a healthy eater long before anyone was in to nutrition, how involved and interested she had been in my aunt's daughter's life. And she talked about how angry my mom was that she had to die- why it had to be her, how she had done nothing wrong to get breast cancer, and how she had to leave the three of us behind.
And that was when she mentioned about her birthday being the day before my mom died- and how much no one wanted it to be the same day, and how grateful everyone was that it wasn't. She said she felt that my mom knew that she was going to die when she had visited that last summer. She felt like she was saying goodbye when she told my aunt, "You were a good friend."
It was hard to hear this- hard to hear that she had to go through this, that she was sad, that she had to accept her death, that she had to say goodbye. But it was also touching- to hear my aunt talk about these memories, to feel connected t o my mom as an actual person, to begin to know who she was. I finally understood why my aunt had taken me shopping every summer and why she always wanted me to have an "outfit"- my mom had been stylish, had been in to clothes, it would have made her cringe to see the way I dressed like a tom-boy with absolutely no care for how I looked. My aunt had been trying to keep my mother alive for me- do the things my mom would have been had she been here.
So when I finally got back from my trip to Indiana, I decided to write my aunt a letter. I wanted to let her know how much it meant to me to be met with a vase of bright yellow flowers when I was feeling lost and desperate in a cemetery, looking for my mother's grave, so that I could finally say goodbye to her, accept her death.
I knew I wasn't going to include all those other parts- the parts about accepting her death- mostly that I was thankful to her for taking care of my mother's grave and for trying to keep her spirit around for me in our summer shopping and in the stories that she had shared with me.
And then it was August, almost an entire month after I had gotten home and I still hadn't written the letter. I put it on my to do list- and it just kept moving farther and farther up the list without getting crossed out. I picked out the card I was going to write it on. I felt what was going on with me and accepted that I would write it when I felt like writing it. But then it was coming closer to my aunt's birthday. I knew I had to write it far enough before her birthday to not associate the two. Yet still, something in me didn't want to write it.
And then, on Sunday afternoon, I sat down to write it. I wrote it on my computer first- something about me felt like I needed to compose it first, before sending it- that I might need to write what I felt and then edit down what I actually sent to her.
As soon as I typed the first sentence, it hit me in the gut.
I wanted to thank you for putting flowers on my mother's grave.
My mother's grave.
My mother has a grave.
You only have a grave if you are dead.
And she has a grave.
I know because I visited it.
I know because I was there when she was lowered in to it.
She was lowered in to it.
She was put in the ground and I was there.
I don't remember it but it must have happened because this summer I visited my mother's grave.
And my mother must have a grave because I am thanking my aunt for putting flowers on it.
My mother has a grave.
My mother died.
She said goodbye to her friends. She said goodbye to her children. She went to the hospital, everyone waited, she died, and then they had funerals and I attended them.
My mother has a grave.
She is dead.
And if experience tells me anything, I will not accept it this way either. I will likely continue to hold out for her existence, will still want to see her again, will still believe that someday we will be together.
Probably because I was six, sometimes still am six, or maybe it's just because I really loved her- maybe it's just really hard to say goodbye to your mom.
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Who is Buddha?
It's you.
I'm not happy about this, but it's true- it's you.
I figured this out during the last full moon ceremony.
We were chanting the refuges or the precepts or something like that and I said the line: "Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it."
"F*#@" I thought to myself.
Buddha's way is unsurpassable.... that's referring to you. It's not the "way" some guy (Buddha) lived eons ago that is so "right" that it's unsurpassable, it's that YOU- who you are, your thoughts, your actions, all that stuff that you do that you have no control over- THAT is what is unsurpassable. You can't pass on your life, you can't go around it, you can't decide what crap you're going to say or do next, it's just gonna happen, you're gonna be you, whether you like you or not.
And then I heard myself say the next part of the line: I vow to become it.
"Double crap!" I thought to myself.
That's how I'm supposed to respond to this truth that who-I-am-is-inevitable: I have to become it.
I have to spend my time being who I am, regardless of who that is. I have to be in alignment with myself, stop trying to be someone else, actually become who I am.
Dude, this sucks.
I mean, I know that it's true. It makes perfect sense. If I want to live with less "suffering," then I need to stop going "against" things and instead try to be in accord or agreement with them. So vowing to become yourself, to give in to the fact that who you are is inevitable, allows you to live more in alignment with who you are- puts your effort into being you instead of fighting you. And this whole practice of "studying" the self is what supports you to see yourself so that you can actually become the self, become you.
So this vow- acceptance that who you are is unsurpassable so you might as well just become it- is about giving in, being true to yourself, trusting that who you are might be okay and that its kind of your responsibility to be it.
I'm not happy about this, but it's true- it's you.
I figured this out during the last full moon ceremony.
We were chanting the refuges or the precepts or something like that and I said the line: "Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it."
"F*#@" I thought to myself.
Buddha's way is unsurpassable.... that's referring to you. It's not the "way" some guy (Buddha) lived eons ago that is so "right" that it's unsurpassable, it's that YOU- who you are, your thoughts, your actions, all that stuff that you do that you have no control over- THAT is what is unsurpassable. You can't pass on your life, you can't go around it, you can't decide what crap you're going to say or do next, it's just gonna happen, you're gonna be you, whether you like you or not.
And then I heard myself say the next part of the line: I vow to become it.
"Double crap!" I thought to myself.
That's how I'm supposed to respond to this truth that who-I-am-is-inevitable: I have to become it.
I have to spend my time being who I am, regardless of who that is. I have to be in alignment with myself, stop trying to be someone else, actually become who I am.
Dude, this sucks.
I mean, I know that it's true. It makes perfect sense. If I want to live with less "suffering," then I need to stop going "against" things and instead try to be in accord or agreement with them. So vowing to become yourself, to give in to the fact that who you are is inevitable, allows you to live more in alignment with who you are- puts your effort into being you instead of fighting you. And this whole practice of "studying" the self is what supports you to see yourself so that you can actually become the self, become you.
So this vow- acceptance that who you are is unsurpassable so you might as well just become it- is about giving in, being true to yourself, trusting that who you are might be okay and that its kind of your responsibility to be it.
Sunday, May 11, 2014
A friend's death
It is difficult to deny
your friend's death
when you are trying to decide what to wear
to her memorial ceremony.
When you are aware that on this day
Mother's Day
her husband and son
are doing something
and you wonder
what that something may be.
When last week
on her son's seventh birthday
you considered that it would be his first birthday
without her.
You wondered
if he asked
Where is she? Why isn't she here?
And you cried at the bravery
the tenderness
the absolute vulnerability
of his father's response.
Yet
Nothing has changed.
Her email is still in your inbox,
Her address pops up when you type the letter J.
The last time you saw her
is still the last time you saw her
and she was walking
and you were talking
about things like this
about how it would be
without her.
You knew it was coming
just not when it would come.
Tomorrow should be interesting.
She will not be there.
The first of your encounters
without her
her own memorial ceremony
without her
the celebration of her life
your first acknowledgement
of her death.
your friend's death
when you are trying to decide what to wear
to her memorial ceremony.
When you are aware that on this day
Mother's Day
her husband and son
are doing something
and you wonder
what that something may be.
When last week
on her son's seventh birthday
you considered that it would be his first birthday
without her.
You wondered
if he asked
Where is she? Why isn't she here?
And you cried at the bravery
the tenderness
the absolute vulnerability
of his father's response.
Yet
Nothing has changed.
Her email is still in your inbox,
Her address pops up when you type the letter J.
The last time you saw her
is still the last time you saw her
and she was walking
and you were talking
about things like this
about how it would be
without her.
You knew it was coming
just not when it would come.
Tomorrow should be interesting.
She will not be there.
The first of your encounters
without her
her own memorial ceremony
without her
the celebration of her life
your first acknowledgement
of her death.
Sunday, May 4, 2014
My mother is me
It turns out that my mother... is a fantasy.
This makes sense because my mother died, in late August, of 1977.
People die.
She is one of them.
She actually died.
She has not existed since that day, so she can't possibly be anything other than a fantasy.
Still, she has existed in my head, ever since.
I thought that existence was real.
I think I knew that the mother that I imagined as a six year old, the one in heaven, the one who hung out with the Easter Bunny and God, was made up. I think I figured that out the same way you figure out Santa Claus and all those other kid things. But figuring that out didn't stop me from thinking she existed. I'm not quite sure where I thought she was, but I know I thought she still existed.
So when this other one showed up, the mother I've been connecting with over the past three years, I really thought that she was real. I thought I was connecting with her. I thought I was actually feeling her. I thought I was finally getting to know her as an adult, as my mother, as someone like me.
But I was not.
How could I have?
She's dead.
It's all in my head.
It was all in my head.
About three weeks ago I got that she was dead. It wasn't a big 'aha' moment, not some earth shattering epiphany, more of a statement: she's dead. It was brief, I think it happened as I passed the photograph of her on my mantel but it felt like what it was: a fact. This is a wood floor. That person is dead.
I'm assuming that this acknowledgement on my part is what brought me to the conclusion I made this week: everything I experience with my mother has to be a fantasy. It can't be anything else except things in my head. She's dead. We can't actually interact, haven't been able to interact, meet, talk, touch, feel... for 37 years. We will never be able to do that, any of that. Everything with her is a fantasy.
All of this was fantasy.
And I am sad.
It was all in my head.
And I am alone.
I am a grown woman. I am experiencing this alone. There isn't anything else to do about it but be alone in it. I'm the only one who can be this: alive and without her. Grown up, older than her, continuing to live, without any shadow or trace or feeling or connection. She's gone, has been physically gone, since that day in my house when she said goodbye. I have not seen her since and will never see her again.
I'm sure I will continue to feel her- that part about no trace, no feeling, no connection- that's not true. It's just that all of those feelings, those connections, they really are fantasy. They may be here and they may be now, but they are not her- they are me.
She is not here. She is not now. She is gone, has been gone, this whole time.
This makes sense because my mother died, in late August, of 1977.
People die.
She is one of them.
She actually died.
She has not existed since that day, so she can't possibly be anything other than a fantasy.
Still, she has existed in my head, ever since.
I thought that existence was real.
I think I knew that the mother that I imagined as a six year old, the one in heaven, the one who hung out with the Easter Bunny and God, was made up. I think I figured that out the same way you figure out Santa Claus and all those other kid things. But figuring that out didn't stop me from thinking she existed. I'm not quite sure where I thought she was, but I know I thought she still existed.
So when this other one showed up, the mother I've been connecting with over the past three years, I really thought that she was real. I thought I was connecting with her. I thought I was actually feeling her. I thought I was finally getting to know her as an adult, as my mother, as someone like me.
But I was not.
How could I have?
She's dead.
It's all in my head.
It was all in my head.
About three weeks ago I got that she was dead. It wasn't a big 'aha' moment, not some earth shattering epiphany, more of a statement: she's dead. It was brief, I think it happened as I passed the photograph of her on my mantel but it felt like what it was: a fact. This is a wood floor. That person is dead.
I'm assuming that this acknowledgement on my part is what brought me to the conclusion I made this week: everything I experience with my mother has to be a fantasy. It can't be anything else except things in my head. She's dead. We can't actually interact, haven't been able to interact, meet, talk, touch, feel... for 37 years. We will never be able to do that, any of that. Everything with her is a fantasy.
All of this was fantasy.
And I am sad.
It was all in my head.
And I am alone.
I am a grown woman. I am experiencing this alone. There isn't anything else to do about it but be alone in it. I'm the only one who can be this: alive and without her. Grown up, older than her, continuing to live, without any shadow or trace or feeling or connection. She's gone, has been physically gone, since that day in my house when she said goodbye. I have not seen her since and will never see her again.
I'm sure I will continue to feel her- that part about no trace, no feeling, no connection- that's not true. It's just that all of those feelings, those connections, they really are fantasy. They may be here and they may be now, but they are not her- they are me.
She is not here. She is not now. She is gone, has been gone, this whole time.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Unconditional Love
It occurred to me tonight, during zazen, that if I want unconditional love- and I do- I'm the only one who can give it to me and...that I am capable of it.
For the longest time, I have wanted unconditional love. I originally wanted it in a romantic partner- thought that I would find someone who would love me despite- no, actually, not even despite, because of, all my faults. I thought that I would find someone who would look on the things that weren't so great about me with affection and fondness. I wanted them to be someone who I could come home to, after a long day at work, and just melt into, just be loved by, be fully accepted, safe, and immediately freed from all that went wrong that day.
I remember sharing this with a friend once and having him say to me, "I wish I could be that for you but I can't." And I remember thinking in that interchange that probably, no one could- that that's not what romantic partners were for, and that what I really was looking for, was a mother.
And over time I have come to discover that, in fact, that is what I have wanted: a mother. I have wanted to go back in time, be a little girl, be loved, unconditionally by her mother, her whole life. I have wanted to relive my childhood with my mom in it- have her there for all those times when I was sad, lonely, feeling down- wanting to be able to just give in and be held.
But tonight I realized that I am the only one capable of doing this: of seeing me, all of me, and accepting me. It isn't going to come from my mom- she is dead. It isn't going to come from another person- they can't possibly know me enough to actually see me, just as I am. It has to come from me, and... I am capable of doing it.
I am actually capable of seeing myself without judgment. I can actually look upon my actions as "just this" and "look at you now," I can do that, I have done it, both for myself and for others. And honestly, I really am the only one who can do this. Anyone else's love for me is going to come through my doubt, my disbelief that someone would find value in me, my fear that it won't last. But unconditional love of myself, by myself, is totally dependent upon me. I can regulate it, be aware of it, cultivate it, because it's coming from me.
Part of me is annoyed by this- that it is so simple, that it has been here all along, that the love that I so desperately wanted was right there, in me. Part of me is also sad and angry- sad that I don't get to be loved unconditionally by another and angry that I'm the one that has to do it.
But mostly I see that this is possible.
I was beginning to wonder if I would "find love." I was beginning to wonder if I would die alone, if I would be that person who "found love" in her practice, in the children in her classroom, in her passion for teaching, in her love for the children of her friends and family.
I didn't want to be that person. I wanted to be like everyone else- have a life partner, have someone to grow old and die with. And I was beginning to feel like I needed to get cracking on this, that I needed to make this a priority in my life, afraid that if I didn't, I would die alone without ever having loved and that would be my life's regret.
But now I see that it's right here. The unconditional love that I long for is right here, in me, I just have to do it. I can totally accept myself. I can see my failures as heroic attempts to help others. I can see my annoying traits as annoying traits. I can see my aversions and propensities as aversions and propensities. I can experience this- this freedom from judgment, this acceptance, these arms of compassion and love- by my own actions, thoughts, and response to myself. I can actually experience unconditional love of myself, by myself, by simply seeing myself just as I am.
I'm not saying it's going to be easy or that it will be fixed. I'm not saying it's going to replace having a life partner. All I'm saying is that the only person who actually can love me unconditionally is me. So it's here, right here, I can experience that love every moment that I choose to and, honestly, it is the only way that I actually will experience it.
For the longest time, I have wanted unconditional love. I originally wanted it in a romantic partner- thought that I would find someone who would love me despite- no, actually, not even despite, because of, all my faults. I thought that I would find someone who would look on the things that weren't so great about me with affection and fondness. I wanted them to be someone who I could come home to, after a long day at work, and just melt into, just be loved by, be fully accepted, safe, and immediately freed from all that went wrong that day.
I remember sharing this with a friend once and having him say to me, "I wish I could be that for you but I can't." And I remember thinking in that interchange that probably, no one could- that that's not what romantic partners were for, and that what I really was looking for, was a mother.
And over time I have come to discover that, in fact, that is what I have wanted: a mother. I have wanted to go back in time, be a little girl, be loved, unconditionally by her mother, her whole life. I have wanted to relive my childhood with my mom in it- have her there for all those times when I was sad, lonely, feeling down- wanting to be able to just give in and be held.
But tonight I realized that I am the only one capable of doing this: of seeing me, all of me, and accepting me. It isn't going to come from my mom- she is dead. It isn't going to come from another person- they can't possibly know me enough to actually see me, just as I am. It has to come from me, and... I am capable of doing it.
I am actually capable of seeing myself without judgment. I can actually look upon my actions as "just this" and "look at you now," I can do that, I have done it, both for myself and for others. And honestly, I really am the only one who can do this. Anyone else's love for me is going to come through my doubt, my disbelief that someone would find value in me, my fear that it won't last. But unconditional love of myself, by myself, is totally dependent upon me. I can regulate it, be aware of it, cultivate it, because it's coming from me.
Part of me is annoyed by this- that it is so simple, that it has been here all along, that the love that I so desperately wanted was right there, in me. Part of me is also sad and angry- sad that I don't get to be loved unconditionally by another and angry that I'm the one that has to do it.
But mostly I see that this is possible.
I was beginning to wonder if I would "find love." I was beginning to wonder if I would die alone, if I would be that person who "found love" in her practice, in the children in her classroom, in her passion for teaching, in her love for the children of her friends and family.
I didn't want to be that person. I wanted to be like everyone else- have a life partner, have someone to grow old and die with. And I was beginning to feel like I needed to get cracking on this, that I needed to make this a priority in my life, afraid that if I didn't, I would die alone without ever having loved and that would be my life's regret.
But now I see that it's right here. The unconditional love that I long for is right here, in me, I just have to do it. I can totally accept myself. I can see my failures as heroic attempts to help others. I can see my annoying traits as annoying traits. I can see my aversions and propensities as aversions and propensities. I can experience this- this freedom from judgment, this acceptance, these arms of compassion and love- by my own actions, thoughts, and response to myself. I can actually experience unconditional love of myself, by myself, by simply seeing myself just as I am.
I'm not saying it's going to be easy or that it will be fixed. I'm not saying it's going to replace having a life partner. All I'm saying is that the only person who actually can love me unconditionally is me. So it's here, right here, I can experience that love every moment that I choose to and, honestly, it is the only way that I actually will experience it.
Friday, March 14, 2014
Maybe it's just suffering
Maybe it's just suffering
Is it loneliness?
I asked.
This feeling.
Am I just
lonely,
in need of a friend,
of company?
Or am I just tired,
it's been a long week.
I've stayed up late
eaten things I shouldn't have
enjoyed them then
and am experiencing their ramifications now.
But that isn't it.
It isn't one thing.
I can't pinpoint
this quilt
of sadness
loss of place
lack of belonging.
There isn't something
that brought it on.
It isn't something
I need to face
it isn't caused.
And I fear
it isn't
fixable
or even
something I can experience
embrace
work through.
I am scared
that this just is
this is experiencing life
life is
this.
unknowable
unconditioned
not a cause effect relationship,
not an
if I do this
that will happen,
or this is
because.
just
is
now.
uncertain
yet
with no future
what is it
I am uncertain of?
now
I suppose now
is where
I can look
for peace?
choosing to let go the avoidance
accept the experience
that now
is this
and this now
is suffering
and this
is life.
Is it loneliness?
I asked.
This feeling.
Am I just
lonely,
in need of a friend,
of company?
Or am I just tired,
it's been a long week.
I've stayed up late
eaten things I shouldn't have
enjoyed them then
and am experiencing their ramifications now.
But that isn't it.
It isn't one thing.
I can't pinpoint
this quilt
of sadness
loss of place
lack of belonging.
There isn't something
that brought it on.
It isn't something
I need to face
it isn't caused.
And I fear
it isn't
fixable
or even
something I can experience
embrace
work through.
I am scared
that this just is
this is experiencing life
life is
this.
unknowable
unconditioned
not a cause effect relationship,
not an
if I do this
that will happen,
or this is
because.
just
is
now.
uncertain
yet
with no future
what is it
I am uncertain of?
now
I suppose now
is where
I can look
for peace?
choosing to let go the avoidance
accept the experience
that now
is this
and this now
is suffering
and this
is life.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Be still for love
Love
is quiet
it enters from around a corner
where you least expected it to be.
Waits
stands
steadfast in its truth,
surprises you
with its beauty.
Love
for all its fanfare
of enduring affection
guaranteed companionship
never alone again
takes many forms more than that.
It is ferocious
and tender
mistaken
and confused
misguided
well intended
and often
lost
in translation.
So you must be quiet
you must be open
you must be willing
to see
it is there
it is always
there
is quiet
it enters from around a corner
where you least expected it to be.
Waits
stands
steadfast in its truth,
surprises you
with its beauty.
Love
for all its fanfare
of enduring affection
guaranteed companionship
never alone again
takes many forms more than that.
It is ferocious
and tender
mistaken
and confused
misguided
well intended
and often
lost
in translation.
So you must be quiet
you must be open
you must be willing
to see
it is there
it is always
there
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Seeing yourself
This post is old. I wrote it in the fall, shortly before school started up again.
I wanted to be tanto.
(Tanto is head of practice, head of students, available to all the students whenever they need it and for whatever they need).
It was true, it was what I felt, and it was what I had said to myself when I first came to a dharma talk given by Blanche: "I could be her someday." Not so much because I was like Blanche or because she was tanto, (she wasn't at the time), but that I could see myself, sitting there, on that box, talking.
But I was uncomfortable with the idea of myself being tanto.
For me, being tanto meant that I would live at the zen center. It meant that I would be a zen priest. It meant that I would be a monk. It meant that I would no longer be an elementary school teacher. It meant that I would no longer have my monthly income. It meant that I would no longer have my lovely apartment where I could cook whatever I wanted. It meant giving up all the normalcy I had in my life and becoming something that I had all kinds of stories about- unpleasant stories, fearful stories, stories in which I did not want to be the main character.
But still, I knew that I actually wanted to be tanto, so I was kind of stuck. I couldn't deny what I wanted, but it wasn't what I actually wanted.
At first, I was kind of okay with it because when I saw myself as tanto, I pictured myself being it when I was much older. I saw myself as a 60 year old woman being tanto, and that felt okay. I felt like I could retire into being tanto- that being a zen priest would be a second career for me, that I would do it after I retired and so moving in there wouldn't be giving up my life or income or anything- it would just be like volunteering or having a second career. I could do it as long as I was financially stable and had finished my career as a teacher. It would be cool and acceptable to retire into a zen monastery- I might even be respected and revered for it. So I was okay with my feelings about it because I thought they were feelings that I could act on later, when it was convenient for me and when I didn't have to choose between them and my current self.
But then, those feelings of wanting to be tanto kept coming up for me: in zazen, in my fantasies, in my imaginary conversations. Usually, when things come up for me, it's because I'm not seeing them. So I knew that if I wanted them to go away, I had to see, and accept, that I wanted to be tanto at the zen center.
Meanwhile, I was also noticing how happy I was when I was doing things at the zen center. I noticed how much I liked helping new people when I was doorwatch. I noticed how often I would learn things in class and immediately want to write about them on the blog so that others could understand them too. I also noticed that when I was in the "audience" at events and people would ask questions, I would want to answer them. I found that what I really wanted was to be the person on stage, not the person in the audience.
"Darnit!" I thought. "This is who I am. This is who I want to be. I can't really wait until I'm 60. This is who I am now."
And that freaked me out. How could who I want, not be who I want? How could who I am not be under my control? How could this persistent assertion of myself be something I hadn't chosen? It didn't make sense and the power of it frightened me.
In the past, I had chosen my career path based on what made me happy: kids. I had made choices about where I taught, what kind of schools I would teach in, what my role would be, all based on what I thought was best for me. It had all been under my command but this, this had nothing to do with me. It had nothing to do with my interests or my career choices or what was best for me. I didn't understand how my self could be at odds with my self. And yet, it had this volition, this power, this thing I had to listen to. I knew I had no choice but to listen to it but I was terrified of how it sounded. I was also terrified that if I did listen to it, I would have no choice in the matter, I actually would have to be tanto: give up teaching, move into the zen center, leave behind my income and retirement....
First, I went to my teacher. I told him how uncomfortable I was about all this. I told him about how happy it made me to be of service at the zen center but I also explained to him that the more natural it felt to do this, the more it felt like it was really me, the more uncomfortable it made me.
He said he totally understood and talked with me about different aspects of practice and about our concepts of normalcy. He also told me to trust my own process.
Part of me wanted to say, "Easy for you to say! You trusted your own process and it got you here. If I follow your advice, I'm going to end up here too- and that's not what I want!"
But of course, I didn't say that. Instead, I listened to his advice and saw that this really was my own process, it wasn't anyone else's. I also saw that on the one hand, I needed to listen to what was coming up for me but on the other hand, it didn't have to be this huge decision. It could come as it came, I could let it unfold and maybe have some say in the matter.
Next, I talked to my therapist. She pointed out a bunch of things to me. Teaching in the classroom and teaching at the zen center were both aspects of teaching. It made sense that I would be drawn to the teaching aspect of this practice; me being tanto was me wanting to be a teacher, not necessarily me wanting to be a monk or a priest or all the stories I had tied up into being tanto at the zen center. It actually wasn't all that different from who I already am. This wanting to be tanto wasn't all that at odds with myself at all. I didn't have to choose between the two of them, they were different manifestations of the same desire: to teach.
She also pointed out that in both positions, I am doing a service and getting paid for it. When I teach in the elementary school, I get a paycheck. If I moved in to the zen center, I would be paid in room and board. They are both services, they are both compensated- they are just different ways of teaching and different ways of getting paid.
This made me feel better and worse at the same time. The way she was putting it, becoming tanto was just shifting from teaching third graders to teaching adults. It seemed so easy, so normal, so natural- why wouldn't I want to do that? But then that meant that I should be tanto- that I really should listen to the things that kept coming up for me, that I really should follow this path, and I really didn't want to follow this path.
So then we talked some more and realized that a big part of it was giving up my income and retirement, that that was a big fear for me. And so we considered me not being tanto at the zen center, me just staying teaching third graders. And, surprisingly, it turned out that I actually didn't want that. I didn't want to "only" teach third graders. Something in me actually wanted to teach this, to teach zen practice, to others.
And I think that's when I finally settled- when I finally saw that this is something that I want to do. It's not that I want to move in to the zen center. It's not that I want to be tanto. It's that I want to teach this to others- that's all. I want to teach this to others. How I do that.. is inconsequential. The point is that I want this, that I am happy when I do this, that it brings me ease. The point isn't to come up with ways for me to manifest this self, ways to allow it to be, the point is that I see it, accept it, realize that this is me too.
I wanted to be tanto.
(Tanto is head of practice, head of students, available to all the students whenever they need it and for whatever they need).
It was true, it was what I felt, and it was what I had said to myself when I first came to a dharma talk given by Blanche: "I could be her someday." Not so much because I was like Blanche or because she was tanto, (she wasn't at the time), but that I could see myself, sitting there, on that box, talking.
But I was uncomfortable with the idea of myself being tanto.
For me, being tanto meant that I would live at the zen center. It meant that I would be a zen priest. It meant that I would be a monk. It meant that I would no longer be an elementary school teacher. It meant that I would no longer have my monthly income. It meant that I would no longer have my lovely apartment where I could cook whatever I wanted. It meant giving up all the normalcy I had in my life and becoming something that I had all kinds of stories about- unpleasant stories, fearful stories, stories in which I did not want to be the main character.
But still, I knew that I actually wanted to be tanto, so I was kind of stuck. I couldn't deny what I wanted, but it wasn't what I actually wanted.
At first, I was kind of okay with it because when I saw myself as tanto, I pictured myself being it when I was much older. I saw myself as a 60 year old woman being tanto, and that felt okay. I felt like I could retire into being tanto- that being a zen priest would be a second career for me, that I would do it after I retired and so moving in there wouldn't be giving up my life or income or anything- it would just be like volunteering or having a second career. I could do it as long as I was financially stable and had finished my career as a teacher. It would be cool and acceptable to retire into a zen monastery- I might even be respected and revered for it. So I was okay with my feelings about it because I thought they were feelings that I could act on later, when it was convenient for me and when I didn't have to choose between them and my current self.
But then, those feelings of wanting to be tanto kept coming up for me: in zazen, in my fantasies, in my imaginary conversations. Usually, when things come up for me, it's because I'm not seeing them. So I knew that if I wanted them to go away, I had to see, and accept, that I wanted to be tanto at the zen center.
Meanwhile, I was also noticing how happy I was when I was doing things at the zen center. I noticed how much I liked helping new people when I was doorwatch. I noticed how often I would learn things in class and immediately want to write about them on the blog so that others could understand them too. I also noticed that when I was in the "audience" at events and people would ask questions, I would want to answer them. I found that what I really wanted was to be the person on stage, not the person in the audience.
"Darnit!" I thought. "This is who I am. This is who I want to be. I can't really wait until I'm 60. This is who I am now."
And that freaked me out. How could who I want, not be who I want? How could who I am not be under my control? How could this persistent assertion of myself be something I hadn't chosen? It didn't make sense and the power of it frightened me.
In the past, I had chosen my career path based on what made me happy: kids. I had made choices about where I taught, what kind of schools I would teach in, what my role would be, all based on what I thought was best for me. It had all been under my command but this, this had nothing to do with me. It had nothing to do with my interests or my career choices or what was best for me. I didn't understand how my self could be at odds with my self. And yet, it had this volition, this power, this thing I had to listen to. I knew I had no choice but to listen to it but I was terrified of how it sounded. I was also terrified that if I did listen to it, I would have no choice in the matter, I actually would have to be tanto: give up teaching, move into the zen center, leave behind my income and retirement....
First, I went to my teacher. I told him how uncomfortable I was about all this. I told him about how happy it made me to be of service at the zen center but I also explained to him that the more natural it felt to do this, the more it felt like it was really me, the more uncomfortable it made me.
He said he totally understood and talked with me about different aspects of practice and about our concepts of normalcy. He also told me to trust my own process.
Part of me wanted to say, "Easy for you to say! You trusted your own process and it got you here. If I follow your advice, I'm going to end up here too- and that's not what I want!"
But of course, I didn't say that. Instead, I listened to his advice and saw that this really was my own process, it wasn't anyone else's. I also saw that on the one hand, I needed to listen to what was coming up for me but on the other hand, it didn't have to be this huge decision. It could come as it came, I could let it unfold and maybe have some say in the matter.
Next, I talked to my therapist. She pointed out a bunch of things to me. Teaching in the classroom and teaching at the zen center were both aspects of teaching. It made sense that I would be drawn to the teaching aspect of this practice; me being tanto was me wanting to be a teacher, not necessarily me wanting to be a monk or a priest or all the stories I had tied up into being tanto at the zen center. It actually wasn't all that different from who I already am. This wanting to be tanto wasn't all that at odds with myself at all. I didn't have to choose between the two of them, they were different manifestations of the same desire: to teach.
She also pointed out that in both positions, I am doing a service and getting paid for it. When I teach in the elementary school, I get a paycheck. If I moved in to the zen center, I would be paid in room and board. They are both services, they are both compensated- they are just different ways of teaching and different ways of getting paid.
This made me feel better and worse at the same time. The way she was putting it, becoming tanto was just shifting from teaching third graders to teaching adults. It seemed so easy, so normal, so natural- why wouldn't I want to do that? But then that meant that I should be tanto- that I really should listen to the things that kept coming up for me, that I really should follow this path, and I really didn't want to follow this path.
So then we talked some more and realized that a big part of it was giving up my income and retirement, that that was a big fear for me. And so we considered me not being tanto at the zen center, me just staying teaching third graders. And, surprisingly, it turned out that I actually didn't want that. I didn't want to "only" teach third graders. Something in me actually wanted to teach this, to teach zen practice, to others.
And I think that's when I finally settled- when I finally saw that this is something that I want to do. It's not that I want to move in to the zen center. It's not that I want to be tanto. It's that I want to teach this to others- that's all. I want to teach this to others. How I do that.. is inconsequential. The point is that I want this, that I am happy when I do this, that it brings me ease. The point isn't to come up with ways for me to manifest this self, ways to allow it to be, the point is that I see it, accept it, realize that this is me too.
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