Reflections: Compassion and Wisdom

Since the Winter Intensive I've read a few books and listened to several of Ajahn Brahm's dharma talks, which are easy to listen to in the background at work. My aim was to return to what I learned when I started sitting years ago because of a sense of uncertainty about what compassion and loving kindness actually are. The source of the uneasiness was, and still is, an internal conflict between what rings most true in what the Buddha taught and effectively responding to circumstances as they arise.

Speaking for myself, what rings most true in what the Buddha taught is that compassion, harmony and peace are more important than being right. I'm reminded of Rumi's lines: Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. 

Compassion, harmony and peace are more important than any agenda. It's a difficult lesson, but compassion -- being present for the suffering of others -- is different from compassionate action. It's difficult to determine what truly compassionate action is without wisdom, and wisdom is only possible to the extent that I have an accurate view of circumstances and let go of preconceptions and judgements. Not only my own judgements, but also my reactions to the judgements and attempts at compassionate action of other people.

What happened almost a year ago? I began listening to my own internal dialogue as well as several voices around that said something was wrong with the way I was living my life and the choices I was making (or not making). I'm reminded of one of Ajahn Brahm's stories in which someone offers him a small amount of money out of gratitude. After a frustrating night making a list of all the things he might spend the money on, Ajahn Brahm returns to say along the lines of: Please don't do that again. I'm happy with the way things are. At the same time, I'm sure Ajahn Brahm realized it was a wonderful learning experience.

Shunryu Suzuki once said: “Each of you is perfect the way you are ... and you can use a little improvement.” That's true for each of us. Part of what makes us perfect is our ability to recognize, accept and attempt to learn from our own imperfections. 

In that vein, this is my apology to Sweeping Zen, Brad Warner and especially Mike Cross for being a part of this phase of my learning. 

This is also my thanks to numerous unnamed individuals whose voices I've tried to listen to in these intervening months. 

A Poem: Resolve To Begin

Not knowing.
Not knowing what
To make of what she sees.
Not knowing what to think.
She wanders beaches
Of a thousand universes
Lost to the ghosts
Of ten thousand stories
And their untold histories,
Pausing to build shrines
To fears conquered by love.
Time will wash them away —
The ghosts, the stories,
The histories and the shrines
...Including her own.

The Happiness Project ...or How to Save the Human Race (IV)

When I first thought of the title "The Happiness Project ...or How to Save the Human Race," it was prompted by seeing a poster of a person covered in scars. It wasn't pretty. That's basically how each of us are on the inside to varying degrees though, as a result of conditioning and accumulated disappointments.

The trouble with those scars is they change how we react and respond to others. Our speech, behaviors and even goals change to compensate as we become more wary, less trusting and more defensive, changes that are caused by anger, hurt and fear. The process happens gradually. It seems like it's the only acceptable way to be, especially when surrounded by people behaving similarly.

So I started writing a science fiction-type story in which people were genetically engineered to scar on the outside as an indicator of internal emotional distress. The aim was to see if people's behavior could be modified to be more kind, the underlying assumption being that people don't actually want to hurt each other. Then I thought of all the instances in which that assumption might not hold true. In the second version, the person hurting others was the person who was externally scarred and the only way the scars could be healed was with compensatory positive behavior...

In ordinary daily interactions are hurtful speech and behavior ever justified? Are they justified in the name of truth or karmic retribution? In the name of teaching? In self-defense to get the attention of people who don't appear to get the message using kinder methods? And what about those instances when we react to something different than what the person intended due to our own conditioning? Or what about when individual perceptions of a situation or expectations are different?

In response to thoughts like these I've been feeling that even the first line of the Universal Precept of the Seven Buddhas "Not doing wrongs" is as impossible as saving all sentient beings. I can say for sure that I don't want to add scars to anyone and yet I'm sure I have. I'll be working on developing some compassion for myself to cope with that, compassion hopefully not too tainted by sentimentality or self-righteousness.

These are some of the questions and thoughts I'll be taking into sesshin this weekend. Last Sunday we celebrated the conclusion of the Winter Practice Intensive. We chanted the Prajña Paramita Hridaya and Emmei Jikku Kannon Gyo and one by one lit incense at the altar.

Serious Fun versus Having Fun Being Serious

A question that's been in the back of my mind in recent months concerns the difference between serious fun and having fun being serious. I think the difference between the two can help determine whether the way each of us lives life is via 'will power' (asceticism) or 'wisdom power' (the way that the Buddha taught).

By suggesting we have small desires I don't think Buddha meant that people shouldn't have fun. Rather I think he meant we should live in such a way that desires don't get so big that they're unattainable. Desires and goals never end up being what they're cracked up to be anyway, even if we attain them. It's better to do what we can to appreciate the present moment.

From what I've observed, when people approach life from an ascetic perspective, 'fun' runs the risk of being of the binge variety and risks causing headaches and other damage. In other words, it's not fun. Unless bragging rights, ego aggrandizement, and following in other people's footsteps is what qualifies as fun. For myself, I can say it's not.

Speaking for myself, even though I believe in wisdom power and would prefer to live my life that way, I think I've spent much of my life living from an ascetic perspective. It's what I was taught. Plus, since my intelligence is less of the classical variety and rather something else that is less readily measured I've had to work harder than most to get to where I was in life. When combined with the fact that I tend to drop off my own views and be overly patient with people, I think I've lost my sense of what 'fun' is, which is a strange feeling. These days I even have a difficult time determining whether people are kidding around or being serious.

Which approach is more beneficial and easier to learn from? Whether in the elementary school classroom or in college, teachers know that students learn more readily when having fun in the process. Comedians of today and court jesters of ancient times are and were able to point to partial, if exaggerated, truths that others could not. (As an aside, I wonder how many court jesters of ancient times lost their heads?)

What is fun? For myself, I can say that these days sitting and staring at a wall or going for a walk are as much fun as anything else. Although I will say that too much of anything is liable not to be fun -- which is another way of looking at what Buddha may have intended with 'small desire'.

One way or another, life goes on.

A Poem: For Grace

I've published this one before...

She knew heaven.
           It touched and moved her,

Air around her arms,

                         earth beneath her feet.

Years passed as days might pass.

                    Clouds drifted across skies,

Sometimes cirrus wisps,

sometimes, after the great storms of summer,

Pillars of cumulus, colored in the pinks and yellows

       Of sunrise and sunset.

Some days fog wrapped her in warm humidity

And there were times of pure heat from days of sun.

There was night and the waxing and waning of moons.

She watched sparks flicker in the air and earth,

Listened to the humming movements

               of insects

                       and creatures

That chattered in unknown languages.

Leaves rustled in whispers

        that traced movements under brittle cover
     and further

Delved into the decaying detritus.

She knew these,

not by their names,

But by their innocence. There was beauty.

                     There was suffering.

Not being separate from either,

             she knew neither

In it's separate forms.

The distinctions we might hew and tender

were absent,

And her eyes tendered a calm

          no vision or wind could ripple.

She grew from the ground in a reversal of eons

   that weighted tedious.

An accumulation of sand and pebble

      and ragged shards of rock

Burned and molted back into wholeness -

              the fragments of our exiles

Reunited in cosmic glistening.

What was it that bore and birthed her

          from everlastingness?

Of us, for us, her longing

     that she could not sing the rightness of it,

The way the birds could sing,

                   picking up where they left off

After each passing storm.

So slowly, in years or moments,

she lifted that weight

and constricted her abdomen,

Breathing in and directing the shape that she was up,

first whispering,

then a hum,

And then deepening the vibration

until the hum became a note, a lullaby,

a blessing.

To rise and rising,

       first buffeted, then carried

on that great wind, ever towards us, that rose,

no longer becalmed, but at peace.

Reflections: Angels of History

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness
Have lain too long
Facedown in ignorance,
Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.

 - Maya Angelou

Language must have evolved because of a longing to decrease our sense of separation from the rest of the Universe. When did words cease to function as what they were intended for?

Each one of us is ignorant in our own unique way. If we weren't, we wouldn't be human beings. It's good to remember even as I wish it weren't true.

Photo credit: Isolde Ohlbaum

"This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward." - Walter Benjamin 

* In honor of Martin Luther King Jr Day. It's a sunny 5oF with the wind out of the WNW at 13 mph. The photo and quote are from Carolyn Forche's book of poems: The Angel of History.

An Early Poem and Some Thoughts

A poem I wrote sometime in the '80s:

The Illusion of Ice

report:
Life as a lake bridging shorelines STOP
Fresh frozen notions we skate across STOP
We are on the apparent surface of August STOP

warning:
Whole cities have crumbled like this STOP

rescue:
MAYDAY, MAYDAY The chopper blades can't cut it.

(Under the Pepsi-Cola sunbrella a margarita sloshes: That shaft of light is going too far, I tell you. Nothing runs that deep.)


***

Emptiness does run that deep as I think most folks reading this know. And that emptiness is part of reality is something I think few of us would disagree on as well.

What is reality? One possible answer is very simple: Reality is experience.

Each person's experience is different and unique. That's one reason each person's mind is the universe. Each person's perceptions of reality is going to be different.

For each of us our consciousness of our own individual reality is right. Even if that perception is deluded. Delusion is a consequence of how the mind works. It's when we try to convince others that there is a collective reality we all have to agree on that each of us becomes wrong. If people try to argue that I didn't experience what I know I did, I'm likely to disagree. The same is true for each of us.

We each bring a unique past, personality, aspirations and emotional tendencies to anything we encounter. Each of us is deluded in our own unique way. It's as true in real life as it is on the internet.


We've seen several recent tragedies in this country and around the world. These tragedies represent some of our worst nightmares and I am thankful that I have never personally experienced any of them. I can't help but feel for those who have.

Each of us is torn between wanting to help and our responsibilities to ourselves and those close to us.

Emptiness is undefined and unconditional. Unfortunately, we can neither correct our delusions or help others by solely relying on and retreating to emptiness. Delusion and the effect it has on all of our lives is not something we can cure by working only on ourselves.


I'm still planning on Internet silence on workdays for the Winter Intensive. It's about time I started working on my notes for Bussho, the next Chapter in the Shobogenzo, as well.