A Blazing Fire

Anger brought me here.

There are some particular things that are certain to set me off.  Bullies set me off.  Injustice sets me off.  Republican politics (being honest, right?) set me off.

My sons fighting physically really sets me off.

Tonight I showed a remarkable lack of skill.  I could hear them upstairs fighting and hitting each other.  This was a full-blown.  My 11-year-old came down holding his stomach and crying.  I lost it.

I didn’t yell at my 14-year-old.  I screamed at him.  In his face.  I was like a drill sergeant.  A 14-year-old might find reasons to cry, but it shouldn’t be his father making it happen.

I cooled down and talked about what I did wrong, and I apologized to him, as well as to my other son.

He’s forgiven me, and I him for getting physically violent with his brother, but I’m having trouble forgiving me.  I’m still so young in practice, and in learning to be awake and aware, but I’d let myself be caught up in a poor mood all day long, and rather than skillfully address it, I just let it simmer, so that when something challenging came up, my mind wasn’t prepared for it.  I was sleeping.

I don’t think you can behave like that without leaving scars, even little ones.  My mother was verbally violent on occasion.  Even though she was a great, dedicated mom, those things stick with you.  Not so much the damage to the psyche as the picking up of habits.  I’m so much like her in that way.  I have the chance and the power to break the patterns – to replace anger and violence with gentleness and compassion.

But I didn’t do that today.  And I can’t go back.  There is only now.  Some time on the cushion is needed.

Off to spend some time with my sons first, though.  They need me to spend some time with them gently, not hole up by myself.

And I need it too.

Choices

I was driving in Ventura the other night.  While I was stopped at a light, a ragged man, apparently homeless, rode his rickety bike across the intersection in front of me.  A jumble of personal possessions was secured under plastic in a basket on his handlebars.

My initial thought was “There but for the grace of god…”

But that’s not really accurate, and not just because I no longer believe in a personal Christian god.  It’s not the grace of god that leads to a homeless, nomadic life on a bicycle.  What are the right questions to ask?

What does lead to such a life?  Is such a life bad, or is it only bad through the filters of my experience?  Or is it bad through the filter of my desires?  Is the man on the bicycle unhappy?  Is he happy, but less happy than I am?  Is he more happy than I am?  Is he right where he wants to be, or does he dream of something better?  Does he dream of something just out of reach?  Does he dream of the impossible?  What are his thoughts as he crosses the intersection?  Is he suffering?  If he’s suffering, is he suffering for the reasons I think he is, or is there some other aspect I can’t even see?  What is it that leads me to think that the quality of life I lead is an ideal for this man?  Do I really think I’ve got it right and he’s got it wrong?

I can’t actually answer those questions, but I can explore where the question comes from.

The quality of life I lead is an outgrowth of my desires.  These desires both inspire me to meet my goals and create suffering when I miss the mark or don’t achieve that which I desire.  The choices I make in the pursuit of those desires can be skillful or unskillful.

I think the first step is to remember that the idea of Quality of Life is an artificial construct.   The one true quality is enlightenment, right?  To be truly present and awake.  The creature comforts we enjoy are part of the impermanent landscape.  Not to be pursued, but still to be enjoyed, I would think.

I have a loving wife of nearly 24 years to whom I’m very close.  We are deeply devoted to each other.  We are best friends as well as beloved.  The comforts and security I do pursue I intend to give her the space to be herself, and to find contentment and enlightenment for herself without the constant worry of our own sustenance.   We have three beautiful children who are getting to the age of being launched out on their own.  Part of what I pursue I intend to provide them opportunities to find their niche in life, to find what fulfills them as members of society and of this world.

I do try to recognize the impermanence of it all.

But is that enough?  Is it wrong to focus on those temporal means of comfort?  Should I not rather be encouraging them on the dharma path?  Encouraging them to find the raft?

Thinking about it now, still so young in the practice, I think it’s alright to pursue the good of my loved ones in a temporal sense.  But true practice is to pursue as skillfully as you can without being attached to a particular outcome.  If I desire outcome A and instead get outcome B, and I accept that B is the present, then I am awake.

If I pursue A and instead get outcome B, and I don’t accept that, I suffer – with worry, anger, denial, and whatever else I lose trying to change B back into A.

I’ve made the best choices I can.  I still try to live skillfully – in light of the practice.  Awake to the possibilities of the present.  I have a pretty comfortable life.

So when I see the man on the bicycle, perhaps it’s not so much that I’m grateful that I’m not him, but rather that I didn’t make choices that would have me out riding a bicycle in the middle of the night.

In that manner I don’t impose any disapproval on a manner of living that, while I would consider it suffering, may be very simple and peaceful for that man.  Instead, he chooses what is peace and presence for him, and I choose the same for me.

Mad Skillz…

I’m not a big fan of lingo.  I don’t care for buzzwords.  Yet spiritual traditions are full of proprietary lingo.  Come out of a Christian tradition, like I have, and you’ll have a small dictionary full of them.  Even more disliked is a word I already understand in one context that has a completely different meaning in a particular religious context, so that one must immerse oneself in the dogma to get it.

On the other hand, I do love an apt word.  A word or phrase that takes a fuzzy concept and brings clarity is like the fresh smell of the first rain of spring.

So as I’ve steadily moved deeper into my understanding of Buddhism and its concepts, and as I’ve pursued my practice, a particular word has come up that, at first, raised my alarm bells.  I’ve seen several authors regularly use the word “skillful.”

Some people might not be so struck by this word, but I’ll refer again to my background.  As a Christian, my whole perception of spirituality was focused on faith, devotion, worship, sin, and dependency.  It was a doctrine of inadequacy.  Christians are taught that our personal efforts are empty unless they are powered by the Holy Spirit.  Works in our own power, for our own purposes, are empty.  They are  like dirty rags.  The emphasis isn’t on our own skill and ability.  It’s on trust in god and Jesus.  The quality is not in our effort, its in god’s faithfulness.

So when I encountered the word skillful, I first suspected a redefinition.  Keep in mind I was just trying to get my arms around the basics of meditation and mindfulness.  What am I saying?  I’m still just trying, but I am a few more steps along the journey.  But I was still laboring under a mindset of inadequacy.  I thought that humility meant that I was not going to respond correctly to difficult moments by default.  I still had the idea that I had to admit my inability and get out of the way.  But I’m learning that practicing the dharma is not the same.  I suppose if it was I never would have changed my tune in the first place.

The truth is that we each have the Buddha nature within us.  We have within us everything we need to find happiness and peace, to love, to end suffering, to live mindfully, and to be compassion to everyone around us.

To live skillfully.

As we get up off the cushion and interact with an impermanent world full of suffering people, we have choices at every turn.  Every intersection with another human being gives us the responsibility to respond.  Every situation, every conflict, every opportunity, every moment opens the door for us to either respond in a manner that increases our suffering or that of others, or decreases it.  It is a moment to give or to take.  Each moment has its own challenge, but it’s down to our response.  To act skillfully is to be awake to the impact of our response on ourselves any other party involved.  To act skillfully is to thoughtfully consider our attachments, to gently let go, and to respond to the situation as it is, not through the filters of our past.  To act skillfully is to do our best to choose the most compassionate response, the one that acts out lovingkindness, with as much awareness as we can muster.

It is not a measure of perfection.  It is a measure of mindfulness, a measure of maturity, a measure of our willingness to return to the breath and choose love over ego.

May we all learn to live skillfully during our brief journey on the river.

Geographical Challenges

I live in a small town.  It’s where people stop for gas between San Francisco and Los Angeles.  We like our small town, of course.  It’s our speed, and we’re acquainted with just about everyone.

There isn’t much here, though.  No shopping to speak of, no real night life… typical small town.  What is here is what the few of us here make ourselves as a community.  As long as you don’t want to get rich doing it, you’ll gather enough people to have a go.  I formed a community choir two years ago.  We have about 25 people in it each season.  Perfect.  We have a small cultural arts center, a community theater group, service clubs, a dance troupe, scouting, and of course sports.

Becoming a Buddhist in a small (somewhat conservative) town presents its own challenges.

No sangha.

Well, not really anyway.  I’ve found a few other people who practice meditation of a sort.  I think we all approach it a little differently.  I think that’s okay, too.  The raft is not the shore, right?  Whatever gets you there?

Still, I do wish we had a little more organized sangha nearby (i.e.: less than 65 miles away) with a qualified teacher.  Then again, isn’t that wishing for something that isn’t part of the issue to begin with?

When you walk away from Christianity, as I have, you still have emotional reactions and attachments that are probably not very conscious, lying just below the surface.  One of these, for me, is that I still crave the security of authority.  Evangelical Christians depend on the authority of the bible, which to them is the direct Word (capital W) of God (capital G), and on the authority of those who teach them every week what that bible means to them.  They depend on pastors to guide them, to counsel them, to make them feel safely and clearly led by the Holy Spirit.  It is a leadership that is sure not only because it’s based on the Word, but because Christians know those teachers are going to help strictly accountable for the manner in which they lead.  Furthermore, they know that those leaders didn’t show up by accident.  They were called by God to be there.  It is His (capital H) will that those men (and they’re nearly always men) be there at that time to teach what they teach.  It is all providence, all predestined, and none of it is by accident.

What a contrast to what we believe.  Life is random.  It is what we make it.  There is no predestined future.  Future is imagination, the past is memory.  There is only now.  Versions of this may vary, but this isn’t far off the mark for most Buddhists.

So, we’re cobbling together a little raft.  We’re forming a little meditation group that will meet weekly on Sunday mornings to meditate and either study a book or discuss topics, maybe even have teachers in from time to time.  We’ll let it develop as we go, with no expectations, just our own skillful effort, as best we can.

Sometimes in a small town you just have to put it together for yourself.  There’s nobody else around to make it happen, nobody else to bring our thoughts to life.

Airport Dharma

I’m on a plane right now, somewhere over the Midwest. It was supposed to be yesterday, but yesterday’s plane broke.

Being stuck in an airport, yearning for home, in a throng of thoroughly dissatisfied people is a perfect place to practice. I knew that the gate would be full of very frustrated people expressing their angst in various ways, many of them tangible. I thought this might be an opportunity to be the difference to the gate agent and the others around me. I thought it might be an opportunity to pursue my practice in a way that would help others and not just myself.

I suppose living the dharma does that anyway, in an existential sense, but this would be more practical, even tangible.

So I did.

After an hour delay they had boarded us. We sat at the gate while they rebooted the plane. I know, right? Nobody was really saying it, but if you need to push ctrl-alt-delete, confidence is going to run pretty low.

Sure enough, 15 minutes later we were deplaning and lining up at the gate. Being near the front of the plane I was about 15th in line (out of about 40.) So I just smiled and waited. I stayed in the moment and practiced mindfulness. I breathed in the dark and gave out light. I kept my thoughts gentle. As I chatted casually with the people around me I was upbeat. I mentioned to someone that it was out of my control – I could fight it and fume, but the plane would still be broken and I’d still be at the airport, only now I’d be angry and miserable. Best to just accept it and peacefully work it out. My line mate thought about that, smiled and said, “That’s true,” and visibly relaxed as we chatted on about other things.

Well, this practice stuff is pretty cool!

The line moved slowly, but soon it was my turn at the gate. At the time the flight was still only delayed, but my connection was shot. Having spent the time cultivating an attitude of compassion, I was able to be gentle and peaceful while I double checked my rebooking. I may not have made her day better, but I didn’t make it worse, which is half the battle, right?

That done, I went to the very back of the line to chat with a customer of mine on he same flight who had been hanging back trying to make his changes over the phone. During the time we were slowly moving up, the flight was cancelled. My customer got his flight sorted by phone for the next morning, and his company got a set of rooms at a nearby hotel. Meanwhile, I now had to stay in line and rebook again, as only my connection had been rebooked.

As I waited a few more people had gotten in line behind me. Directly behind me was a rather terse middle-aged woman who was trying to rebook by phone. Her conversation with the phone agent was long, convoluted and tense. She finally balked at giving the agent her birthdate and was apparently put on eternal hold. She gave up.

Behind her was a middle-aged couple. Traveling in pairs has its advantages. One, someone can watch your bags while you go off in search of various forms of relief, usually related to some point in the eating/drinking process. Two, when your plane breaks and you’re stuck in a looooong line, one of you can go in search of a shorter one.

So the wife portion of the couple heads off to another gate. A short while later the husband portion gets a call and also leaves the line. Soon they are back, and they tell the terse woman behind me that there’s an agent at gate 15 who got them set up in minutes. The terse woman heads off.

The rest of us stay. The line slowly moves.

Some 10-15 minutes later the terse woman returns and says, “I’m back. There was nobody there,” and retakes her place in line. The line slowly moves.

We come to a point in time now – I’m second in line. The terse woman is behind me. The couple is gone, so behind her is slim, 40-something man with a ruddy tan. Behind him are two other people. Otherwise the gate is empty. It has been nearly 3 hours since they pulled us off the plane.

Out of the blue the ruddy man speaks to the terse woman. The conversation goes like this:

Ruddy: Don’t you think since you got out of line you should go to the back of the line?

Terse: Are you saying you think I should?

Ruddy: Yes, I think you should.

Terse: Alright, thank you.

Ruddy: Thank you.

Needless to say, it wasn’t very friendly. The terse woman was very put out. She got on the phone and stood close by while loudly telling the other party about the nice man who told her to go to the back of the line. I admit I just ducked.

Okay, I did more than duck. I judged. I mean, the woman was presumptuous. She did leave the line in order to improve her lot over the rest of us.

On the other hand there were so few of us left, with two agents working, that it didn’t seem to be a big deal.

I tried to figure out what practice would look like right now. Well, I didn’t try that hard. After all, it had been horribly long day, and it was almost my turn. I had to focus, right?

I got rebooked, got my vouchers, got my bag, and headed to the hotel to get some sleep and give it another go in the morning. I couldn’t get that confrontation out of my head. They had both been aggressive in their own way. They both suffered due to the other’s response. Was there anything I could have done to make it better?

It made me think about how I had practiced earlier. While it felt good, and probably didn’t contribute to the suffering at the gate, it didn’t cost me much either.

What if I had offered to the man to go to the back of the line myself and give my space to the terse woman? Would he have been happy? Would he have cared *who* was actually in front of him? Would he have lightened up and let it be? Would he have been angry at me because he wanted to teach her a lesson?

What about her? Would she have been happy? Would she have lightened up and realized the line wasn’t that long and the back wouldn’t have been so bad? Would she have been angry that I had made her seem petty?

What about me? Would I have gotten a worse arrangement? The flight I’m on is very full. Would I have really been acting holier than thou, showing them up somehow? Would that have been rubber-to-the-road practice, giving out whatever compassion I could muster, trying to decrease the bit of suffering of these two weary travelers?

I don’t know.  In hindsight, I start asking questions about the questions.  Is practice more valuable when it *costs* the practice-er something?  Is there something specifically holy in small sacrifice?  Is there something egotistical in taking their suffering on myself at all, when my presence was immaterial to either of their experience except for the obvious fact I was in line in front of them?

I was weary, so much so that I wept a little when I got to my hotel room, homesick and exhausted. In the end I went to sleep with my questions and the thought that it might have to be okay that they won’t ever be answered in full.

Welcome to Gentle Dharma

Welcome to Gentle Dharma.

I’m new to the Middle Way.  I’m stumbling between awareness and oblivion every day.  Little by little I awaken to one small thing after another.  As I see them, I would like to share them, and I hope through this journal of my path that we can encourage and support each other in compassion and lovingkindness.

Thanks for visiting.