Student teacher sandwich

There are days when I go to my class at the zen center straight from school. This creates an interesting scenario in which I go from being the teacher to being the student in a matter of hours. It's interesting to be in this sandwich where I watch the kids being taught by me, and then watch myself being taught by a teacher. There are a lot of similarities between me and my students and it's really quite instructive to see the same behaviors from the point of view of a teacher and of a student.
Case in point: "This is too hard! I can't do it! I won't do it! I give up..."
Last week, during our lesson on reading diagrams, Girl 1 shouted out, "This is too hard! I can't do it!" and started scribbling on her paper and tearing it.
What we were doing was actually not hard. Girl 1 was totally keeping up with us for the first 20 minutes and then suddenly, she started proclaiming that it was too hard. My guess is that that she's not used to being so focused for so long or maybe she lost interest but for whatever reason, she just gave up.
I was kind of annoyed by this, completely unsympathetic, and basically said, "Yes, it's hard, but you can do hard things.This is something that you can do, so, do it."
She did. She kept complaining about it, but she finished the work.
Later that day, I went to class. I started class by asking the teacher for help and he started giving me koans. I was annoyed by this because I wanted him to give me answers, not koans. But, like Girl 1, I stuck with it for a while. But as the koans got more challenging and asked more of me, I started protesting too.
"You want me to embrace my suffering? That's too hard!"
"You want me to give up my history? My self? I can't do that!"
"You want me to accept that everything that I've relied upon and take comfort and security in is just a mental construct? I won't do it."
"I give up."
And I left class that night ready to give up.
I thought about this, about how Girl 1 and I both felt like things were too hard, that our teachers were asking too much of us, that what they wanted us to do was something we were unfamiliar with and, honestly, not all that interested in.
And then I thought about why I didn't give up, why I'm still coming to class this week, and why instead of resenting koans, I'm writing about them in blogposts.
After that night when I was ready to give up, I thought about my practice and how much it has helped me as a teacher. The fact that it is useful in my life, that it makes things better for me, makes me willing to keep trying, to not give up.
The koans that the teacher gave, ended up being helpful, and I realized that he gave them to help, not just because that's what zen teachers do.
And finally, what felt like it was too hard was difficult, but not impossible. Once I started to do it, it turned out to be not as bad as I had thought.
Normally when Girl 1 shouts out, "This is too hard!" during a task that I know she can do, I take it as a sign of avoidance or laziness. After my own experience with struggling in class, I'm now willing to see it as a cry for help. She, like me, may feel betrayed by my asking her to do the work instead of doing it for her. Work that seems doable and normal from my point of view as a teacher may seem foreign and useless to her. Me pushing her to be focused and a sustained student may feel to her like I'm asking too much.
I know that she can do this work, but maybe she needs to know that too. Maybe I need to assure her that I do have a reason for doing this, that I won't ask her to do things unless I know that she can do them. I also realize that "being a student" is pretty new to her and might not feel all that useful in her life. I need to make this meaningful for her, give her a reason to stick with it when it's hard. 

Cold is desire

On Sunday morning, I woke up because I was cold. As I was pulling the extra blanket over me, I remembered our homework and the koan from class about letting the cold be so cold that it kills you.
"Darn it!" I thought. "I'm not supposed to get warm, I'm supposed to feel the cold, experience it as the mental construct that it is."
Then I thought, "Meh, I don't want to do that. I want to be warm. But hey,  I can still feel the cold as I'm warming up..."
So I did, I felt what it felt like to be cold. And this is what it felt like:
"I want to be warm. I can't wait until my body heats up the space between me and the blanket. Oh how nice it's going to be as the blanket drapes over me and the warmth fills in all those spaces. It will be so nice when I'm not cold anymore. Oh warm, come to me..."
And I realized that cold isn't really about being cold, it's about wanting to be warm. Yes, I'm uncomfortable, I'm experiencing displeasure, but mostly what I'm feeling is a longing for warmth.
Cold? It's actually a desire for warmth.
Once I got all cozy under my blanket, I started to feel tired.
"Oh," I thought. "Now I really can do the homework that Paul asked us to do. I can feel the tired that he insists is a mental construct and I insist is inherently negative."
So I felt what it felt like to be tired: "I want to be asleep. I want my muscles to relax. I want this feeling of tension, of in between, of exhaustion to drift away. I want to be carried away by unconsciousness."
Apparently, tired is desire too.
I don't know if these are mental constructs. I don't know if I'm experiencing them with a full mind. I don't actually know what I'm supposed to do with this information, but it's kind of cool that cold is desire.

She's come undone... (part 2)

After the koan thing, I went home and took a shower. I imagined having dokusan with Paul and in it, instead of saying “See ya!” I asked for help. I realized that I needed him to lend me a hand, to help me see why I should do this, to help me over this rough spot. But in this dokusan he pointed out that he couldn’t help me, I had to do it myself.

I cried.

I went to school the next day and watched myself with the kids. I saw myself read into their behaviors through my own fears. I watched myself talk to them in ways that made them do what I wanted but didn’t make them feel good about themselves. I watched myself react to them instead of respond to them. I felt myself feel irritated, frustrated, and annoyed with them.

Then I remembered the times when I had really focused on being present for them, being aware of myself and my interactions with them. I remembered the times when I let things go, when I focused on things that gave me mental energy and gave up things that brought me mental fatigue. I remembered really seeing the kids for who they were, not for who I wanted them to be or from past history with kids.  

I knew that the past few weeks had been difficult for me. I knew that part of this was because of my involvement in the practice period, because of my intense focus on trying to make this work. So part of me thought, “See? This isn’t helping the kids. This isn’t what I want.”

But I also knew that what did help the kids was my practice. I knew that my meditation, my awareness of my self, my presence with them really was what helped me to make the classroom that I was proud of, where the kids were starting to see each other too, where even they were responding to each other with compassion.

And I realized that it wasn’t the practice that was causing the problems, it was me trying so hard to put the practice into practice that was causing me suffering. It is true that there are times that this practice does cause me suffering, I definitely get agitated and sleep deprived in thinking about all this, but when I let go, when I just practice the practice, that’s when things go well and I feel good about what I’m doing.

On my run this afternoon, I thought about those lame koans again and how they fit in with all this. That middle one, about every day is a good day? It was true. On Friday afternoon, after a crappy day with the kids, I felt fine. I surprisingly had time to do some cleaning and organizing. I noticed how I attributed pleasant feelings to organizing things and realized that I might be disappointed later but, oh well, I know this about myself. And the last one, about jumping off the 150 foot pole, and the fact that really, there is no pole? That’s true too. I don’t have to jump off a 150 foot pole. I just have to proceed from here. It’s not some big thing, it’s little things and all the time. I don’t have to make some big decision or change my life, just practice and watch what happens.  

She's come undone... (part 1)

Part of Paul’s homework for class last week was to think about one of the five faculties that were discussed in the article and try to put it into practice. On Thursday morning, I tried to put mindfulness into practice. As I was walking to school that morning, I thought to myself, “I’m tired.” And then I tried to put mindfulness into practice by stepping back and trying to just observe tired, not judge it as positive or negative. I observed it: eyes at half mast, muscles hanging, body heavy to carry.

“Wait,” I thought. “How can this be observed as anything but negative? I mean, c’mon, tired is tired is tired.” So then I thought, “Okay, at least be aware of tired. Acknowledge that you are tired and try to respond to it instead of reacting to it.” So I thought about how I might be shorter with the kids today and that I should be aware of that and try to be more patient. But then I thought, “Wait, now it sounds like I really am judging ‘tired.’ Who knows? Maybe being sleep deprived will mean that I’m more mellow with the kids, less worried. I should just see how the day goes instead of deciding what’s going to happen just because I’m tired.”

In class that night, I asked Paul about this: “How can I observe tired without judgment? It’s inherently negative.”

“Is it?” he asked (or suggested something to that effect). Then he asked me to describe what I was feeling, which I did. Then he suggested that “tired” was a mental construct that I had created.  Then he said he had some koans.

“Koans?!” I thought. “I did your homework. I struggled with it and am asking for help and you are giving me koans? And you expect me to accept that tired is a mental construct? This is ridiculous. What kind of teacher are you?  Why aren’t you helping me with this? You know the answer yet you’re giving me koans?”

In hindsight I realize that, pretty much, when you ask the ABBOT of the ZEN center for help, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get a koan. At the time, though, I was feeling kind of hurt and ignored by this response so I just sat back, and listened to the darn koans.

Forgive my paraphrasing…

The first koan was about hot and cold. A monk basically says, “Hot is so hot! Cold is so cold! How do we avoid these things?” The other monk says, “Go where there is no hot and no cold.” The first monk asks, “Where’s that?” The other monk says, “When cold, let it be so cold that it kills you; when hot, let it be so hot that it kills you.”

“Great,” I thought. “So I’m supposed to embrace my suffering again. I’m supposed to be so tired that it kills me.” Earlier that night, I had been feeling rejected and felt pretty alone and isolated so then I thought, “And I’m supposed to feel this too- really feel rejection and isolation. Thanks for the advice Paul.”

He went on the next koan: Every Day is a Good Day. This one is harder for me to paraphrase but if I remember correctly, it was about not focusing on what has happened before, but just to proceed forward, from this very point.

I wasn’t too happy about this one either. I’m supposed to just ignore all that’s brought me here? I’m just going to deny all the stuff that I’ve been given and learned to cope with, just let that all go? Just move right on forward, yeah right!

And then the third one took the cake. It was called Proceed On from the Top of the Pole. It was similar to the second one in that it asked you to go forward from where you are but it also was suggesting that it’s not enough to just be on the top of that pole, you had to get off that pole.

“Great,” I thought. “Now you want me to jump off a 150 foot pole into nothingness,” and I freaked out, like I had before with the whole fence post thing. I thought, “How can you ask me to give up everything that supports me? How can you ask me to give up stability and constancy and my self, the one thing that never leaves me, that, for good or for bad, I can at least rely on to be there.

And then Paul talked about climbing the stairs to an Emerald tower, only to realize when you got there that there was no emerald tower. And I thought, “Damn! There is no pole. Even these things that I’m afraid to let go of, that I think give me stability, even they aren’t real. I don’t have to jump off that pole, I’m not even on that pole.”

And that’s when I came undone. “Forget it,” I said. “I don’t need to do this. I only came here because I wanted to help my students. I’m only doing this so I don’t yell at them and so that I can learn about what goes on here that makes me feel good so that I can make them feel good. I didn’t come here to reconceptualize the universe. This is too much and I’m done.”

I gleefully imagined dropping out. I pictured myself shopping. I pictured myself daydreaming, fantasizing, walking down the street with absolutely no awareness of my breath, totally distracted by my thoughts and impulses. How lovely it would be to be part of the world again…

A monk on my shoulder

One morning last Spring, as I was walking to school, I had this feeling that someone was with me. It was a good feeling, like someone was sitting on my shoulder, encouraging me, whispering in my ear, “We’re here. We know you can do this.”

It wasn’t a special day for me, I didn’t have any big challenge coming up, but it was nice having someone with me. It was kind of the opposite of feeling alone in a crowd of people. I was alone, but I felt like I had a crowd of people with me, supporting me, helping me to be my best.  I thought, “This, this is what I want for my kids. That even when they leave the classroom they feel like I’m with them, that they can do anything, that our whole class is behind them, supporting them in whatever they do.”

It turned out that the person who was with me was Jordan Thorn (the former tanto at the zen center and current treasurer). Obviously, he wasn’t actually with me (and if you know Jordan you know he certainly wasn’t perched on my shoulder!) but since that day, I’ve tried to figure out what it was that made me feel like he was with me. The only thing I could think was that I had been taking a class with Jordan.  I don’t think I had even had dokusan with him yet so I still don’t know what it was.

But the same thing happened again after I had dokusan with Paul at the one day sit. The very next day, as I was planning my lessons for the week, there he was, standing right next to me, watching me organize my papers, a smile of approval on his face. It made things easier. I was struggling with “letting go” and having him next to me, as I put away my plan book and focused on eating dinner instead, gave me the willingness to actually do the hard thing: let go.

This last week I spent some extra time with Boy 1 after school. We worked together for about a half hour, me trying to convince him to just follow the muscle movement for writing the letter r in cursive, instead of doing what he normally does, which is to draw the r in cursive. It took a really long time but I noticed, that by the end, he was saying to himself a version of what I was saying to him: “Okay, focus, just do the letter.”

Honestly, I don’t know if this is the beginning of him feeling like I’m there with him when I’m not. I don’t know if he feels like he can do anything because I believe in him. But I think he’s beginning to trust that it’s okay to learn from me, that he doesn’t have to do everything himself, that he really can learn.

I still don’t know what Paul and Jordan did that made me feel like they were with me.  I’m guessing that it comes from time and from trust. I’ll bet too that it’s not something that I can do for Boy 1, that it can only happen and I probably can’t control it or even make it happen. But for now, I’m going to try to at least sustain what seems to be happening with Boy1, and maybe try to pay attention to what Paul does that might be making me feel like he’s with me too.

If you give a mouse a cookie...

You would think that if someone steals your back tire, you could just go buy a new back tire. That’s not how it works, especially if your bike is 20 years old. Here’s how it works instead:

If you buy a new tire, you need a new chain (because your old one is so stretched out it won’t actually grab on to the teeth of the sprocket on the new tire).

If you buy a new chain, you need a new front chain ring (because the old one is shaped to your old chain which is too old to hold on to the new chain ring).

If you buy a new tire and a new chain and a new front chain ring, you need four HUNDRED and fifty dollars…

I tried to avoid my suffering:

I asked the guy, “So, if I just bought the new back tire, the bike would still work, it just wouldn’t work well, right?”

“No, it wouldn’t actually grab the teeth. It would just spin.”

“Okay, but if I bought a new tire and a new chain, it might be loose on the front chain ring but it would still work. I’m not, like, putting a ton of stress on the bike, just riding to the zen center in the morning.”

“No,” he said. “The front part is shaped to your old chain so it wouldn’t hold the new chain either.”

“Oh,” I said. “So, it’s $450 or nothing.”

“Well, you know, a new hybrid would probably cost you about $450. But I can see that you’re attached to your bike so we could still do the work, but it will cost the same as a new bike.”

“It’s not so much the bike that I’m attached to,” I thought. “It’s the 450 dollars.”

 I was sad. I was ready to cry because not only did I not have $450, I didn’t have a bike either.

“Well,” I said, “I’m going to have to walk my bike home and see if I can find a used bike on Craig’s list. I was only expecting to spend $150. Thank you for your help.”

I left the store and a block later saw the bike store that I had originally planned to go to (when I walked past it that morning, I thought it was pandering to tourists so I decided to go the farther bike store instead). “Maybe they sell used bikes,” I thought.

I walked in and told the guy that my back wheel was stolen. He walked to the back and started looking at wheels. “70, 65, 59… I think that’s the best you’re going to get,” his friend said to him as they pulled out the wheels.

“I’m not sure how much you were expecting to pay or whether you were hoping to have it fixed today. We do carry a cheaper wheel in your size but it’s out of stock right now,” he explained to me.

This was my kind of guy!

“Well, I was hoping to pay 150 max but if it’s more than that, I understand. I just want my bike fixed.”

“Oh no, not at all. It’ll be 120 max!”

As he started grabbing all the parts I thought to myself, “Should I tell him about my chain? He hasn’t even measured the stretch the way the other guy did.”

I thought about the price and what the other guy said. But then I thought about all the work this guy would put into my bike only to discover that it was going to slip anyway and that seemed unfair.

“Um, my chain is super stretched out. Do you think that will be a problem?”

“No, I don’t think so. But if you were going to buy a new chain, now would be the time to do it, so that it shapes with the new wheel.”

“But then I’d have to get a new front chain ring to match the new chain, right?”

“No, yours isn’t that stretched out. I think it’ll be fine.”

He took my number. I went to Cole Hardware to buy pretty icicle lights. I went to Goodwill to find fleece pants to wear to the zendo in the morning. As I was walking to Whole Foods to buy oranges, bananas, and edamame he called me.

“Just wanted to let you know that your bike is ready.”

I walked in, they brought me my bike, they charged me $148, I rode home. They are Avenue Cyclery. I am back on my bike. I am going to ALWAYS lock my BACK tire with the REAL lock and use the cable for my front tire. Back tires are so much more complicated than front ones.

Day 39: MindFULLness

Part of our homework in Paul's class last week was to reflect on an article about the five spiritual faculties: "qualities that bring power and balance to our minds..." They are: faith, effort, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom.
I was struck by the author's description of mindfulness as "fullness of mind." I tend to think of mindfulness as being alert or present to your experience. But the author described it in a way that was more like what I've often heard of as "big mind." Being mindful, as I understand it from this article, is having a mind that is open and broad enough to not only see every aspect of one's experience but to accept all of this experience equally, without judgment of good or bad, desirable or undesirable, pleasant or unpleasant. And what I found really cool about this article, was its explanation of how this "big mind" actually helps to reduce your suffering by keeping you from clinging to what you find pleasant and avoiding what you find unpleasant.
Here's the deal (or, at least, my understanding of it):
I think it's pretty much safe to say that when you enjoy something, you want more of it. You might try to get more by clinging to the memory of something pleasant, changing things so that you can have more experiences like that pleasant one, or repeating the pleasant experience over and over in your mind. You do what you can to keep it around.
When you experience something that's not so pleasant, you try to get out of there as fast as you can. Then, you do everything you can to avoid having that experience again. Maybe you analyze what caused that experience, or you avoid the situation that lead to that experience, or you try to control the people or the environment of that experience in an attempt to prevent it from happening again.
But now imagine that you stop labeling your experience as good or bad. Imagine that when you have an experience, you just experience it, without judgment as pleasant or unpleasant.  What would your brain do? It wouldn't know whether to avoid the experience or cling to it. It would kind of be stuck there with no choice but to simply experience it, and let it pass.
Kind of weird, huh? I don't know if that's what the author was trying to say but I thought it was pretty cool if it actually works. Though, I have to say, I still kind of like clinging to my pleasant experiences and avoiding my suffering. But then I imagined actually experiencing the kids "obnoxious" behaviors as just behaviors, and not getting all wound up or angered by them and that seemed like a pretty great thing to be able to do (and would probably reduce my suffering way more effectively than my current method: attempting to control the behaviors of 20 eight year olds).