That Music Again

I can never hear this music too many times.  It saw this version posted at The Dish along with some interesting commentary.  It gets off to a slow start but definitely picks up.

Freedom

From the First Unitarian of South Bend’s Facebook page:  “Freedom from debt is one form of liberation I seek. What about you?”  My answer, I’d like to be free of the urge to complain.  I even want to stop complaining about people who complain a lot.

A few minutes later, there is this from Tricycle: The Buddhist Review:

Whenever we find fault with others, whether through anger, contemptuous certainty, self-righteousness, or gossip, it is often based in fear. We may not be aware of our fears, but when we look deeply, we may discover the fear of rejection, loss of control, of unworthiness, or the fear of disconnection. But refraining alone is not enough—by itself it is just behavior modification—and it is neither healing nor transformative. Only through uncovering and consciously entering into the deep hole inside, welcoming the fear with curiosity and compassion, can we ultimately reconnect with the basic wholeness of our true nature. —Ezra BaydaDefault

Patterns of Intimacy

Pilar Jennings writes of the patterns found in creating intimacy:

As skillful therapists from all schools of thought know, our ability to find and sustain healthy interpersonal experience does not depend on a history of perfect attunement. There is no such thing as two people—whether baby and mother, two lovers, or teacher and student—being perfectly in sync with each other’s needs and wishes. Real intimacy arises from an ongoing process of connection that at some point is disrupted and then, ideally, repaired. I think of this as an interpersonal crochet stitch: connection, disruption, repair, over and over again, until a fabric is created with enough strength and flexibility to endure the wear of any two people attempting to know one another.

Rather lovely I think.  Possible?

What do we know?

On Sunday, I took my son to see two movies at a French film festival that was in town. The local train was out. We walked over to Amsterdam to flag down a cab. The cab rolled right past us and picked up two young-ish white women. It's sort of amazing how often that happens. It's sort of amazing how often you think you are going to be permitted to act as Americans do and instead receive the reminder—"Oh that's right, we are just some niggers. I almost forgot." 

This is how Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blog post begins this morning.  It’s an angry but thoughtful take on being black and male in America in 2014.

I was inspired to look up this song with Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins after seeing Million Dollar Quartet last Friday night.  The most poignant line in the play was when the owner of Sun Records said something like this:  I just wish those boys could have been happier.

Andrew Solomon writes a heart-breaking and compassionate account of an interview with Peter Lanza, father of the Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza.  One of the frustrating pieces of this story is there appears to be no one to blame.  Even in hind-sight, there are almost no signs that Adam would commit such violence.  It is a story that requires us to live with no answers.  Solomon describes Peter Lanza’s dilemma:

Interview subjects usually have a story they want to tell, but Peter Lanza came to these conversations as much to ask questions as to answer them. It’s strange to live in a state of sustained incomprehension about what has become the most important fact about you. 

Solomon seems to say, sometimes things just go bad. I hate that, but there is something reassuring about Solomon and Lanza's search the the facts.

Beyond Default

Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it's so socially repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default-setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent,real -- you get the idea…. People who can adjust their natural default-setting…are often described as being "well adjusted," which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.

The above is from s speech given by David Foster Wallace to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College.  The whole speech used to be found online.  Since then, it has been published as a short book called This Is Water, and now only pieces of it are online.  More exerts are here plus some audio.  This site calls Wallace's speech "one of the most timeless graduation speeches of all time." I think it's a very good speech, and I thought of it this week as I noticed myself falling needlessly into default mode.

I’ve been spending the week in Florida walking along some beaches that have touched my heart.  Then this morning there was a lovely poem by e. e. cummings on Andrew Sullivan’s blog that intensified the feelings of beauty.  The conclusion of the poem is below, and the whole poem is here.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)

it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.

Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?” 

― D.T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture

We Are the World

I have obviously failed to galvanize and prod, if not shame enough Americans to be ever vigilant not to let a Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel like the ACORN community organizer gangster Barack Hussein Obama to weasel his way into the top office of authority in the United States of America.”  (Ted Nugent)

These harsh words have been rolling around in my mind this week.  On my initial reading of them, I felt shocked, even assaulted.  These words seem to symbolize the ways Americans are divided from one another.  As I read a little more about Nugent, I decided he may be too extreme in his speech to symbolize the divisions between us, but still, few Republicans have strongly repudiated his words.  But the real question in my mind isn’t just these particular words.  Rather it is, how do people deal with a difference in opinion especially an important opinion that may determine how a country is governed?  Probably most of us have, at some time, made rude comments about not only politicians but also about acquaintances, people in our circle of friends, maybe even family members.  Is that good for us?

There is a certain satisfaction in a clever putdown.  But it adds to a wall of separation between us and others.  Theoretically, we know that isn’t good.  It is discouraged by most religions and ethical systems.  But on a practical level, it can feel very good. One antidote is to see ourselves as one, one of the group called Americans (or whatever your country) or even the group called people of the world.  Can we imagine ourselves as one?  Can we imagine ourselves as Ted Nugent?  Or Barack Obama?  Sometimes I can.

…I have a responsibility to God to walk the path He's laid. In spite of my anger, and my fear that we won’t get the verdict that we want, I am still called by the God I serve to walk this out.

Ta-Nehisi Coates interviewed Lucia McBath, mother of Jordan Davies, the Arican-American teenager shot by Michael Dunn.  I pray her path gets easier, but as a mother, I know the pain will never disappear.  

Home Movies

Below Ken Wilber gives a good introduction as to what beginning meditation is like.  Personally, I still find it difficult to go beyond this stage.

When you practice meditation, one of the first things you realize is that your mind—and your life, for that matter—is dominated by largely subconscious verbal chatter. You are always talking to yourself. And so, as they start to meditate, many people are stunned by how much junk starts running through their awareness. They find that thoughts, images, fantasies, notions, ideas, concepts virtually dominate their awareness. They realize that these notions have had a much more profound influence on their lives than they ever thought.

A Love Story, the Driving Part

I’m posting this story partly because I like it, and partly because now it will be easy to find if I want to refer to the driving tips.  In this USA Today story, Michael Gartner describes his parents’ relationship, particularly how they drove their car.

 After he retired, my father [who didn’t drive] almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along….As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a long life?" "I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.
"No left turns," he said.

"What?" I asked.

All You Need, cont'd

"...one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is the means by which we arrive at that goal..."  Martin Luther King Jr.

All You Need...

"Mock sappy, sentimental expressions of romance even as you carry out futuristic experiments in radically slaphappy love." Rob Brezsney

Don't Go Blindly

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.  Immauel Kant 

I have posted a similar quotation before.  I thought of it this morning when I sat down for meditation.  I can’t imagine meditation having any meaning without a theory of practice behind it.  I try to continue studying meditation theory.  It helps keep the practice fresh.

I’m guessing that most areas of our lives are supported by theory of some kind though that theory may be unconscious and dictated by the culture around us.  This Valentine’s Day, I want to remind myself that there are theories that can support my desire to be a loving compassionate person.  There's always time to see more clearly.

Quotation for Today

Meditation, simply defined, is a way of being aware. It is the happy marriage of doing and being. It lifts the fog of our ordinary lives to reveal what is hidden; it loosens the knot of self-centeredness and opens the heart; it moves us beyond mere concepts to allow for a direct experience of reality.

- Lama Surya Das, The Heart-Essence of Buddhist Meditation

I Practice

I practice meditation. The people in my meditation group (sangha) call it sitting practice or just sitting. I don't talk about it much, but sometimes I'll mention to a friend that I met with my meditation group.  I’m often kind of surprised that they don’t ask questions about it, but I’m relieved too.  I'm not sure what to say about a decision to sit in silence just trying to focus on my breath.

Media reports talk of how meditation improves blood pressure, stress, and health in general.  I always find these reports alarming.  They seem to imply that without meditation, I would be even sicker and crazier than I am now.

Last week I attended a meditation retreat from Wednesday evening until Sunday noon.  Most of that time, I did not speak.  There were a lot of scheduling difficulties involved in going away for these days, so I talked about my plans more than usual, and people did comment.  It sounded like they pictured me spending that time in a peaceful trance.  Actually some of the time was wonderfully peaceful.  But sometimes, it was boring—so boring.  And tiring too.  I’m not used to sitting so much and for the last meditation after dinner, I could hardly get comfortable.  I did find it interesting how well I slept—I thought this an indication of what hard work meditation is.

So, why do I do it?  One of the basics in the introduction to meditation is, we meditate to discover our true nature and to learn that we are not separate from anything.  Does that happen?  Did it happened last week?  Yes and no.  I was in touch with great feelings of tenderness toward the people in the meditation room, tenderness toward the house we stayed in and the beautiful snowy grounds. But I knew I would go home and struggle to hold onto that tenderness.  As I expected, it doesn’t come as easily in the "real world," but it hasn’t gone away either.  And the memory of the retreat’s intense tenderness speaks to me of a reassuring truth about my connectedness to the world.  I am very moved and nourished by that.

Do I recommend meditation practice?  Yes, if it speaks to you, check it out.  If you think it should speak to you, but it doesn’t quite, you might read about it to help you make your decision.  I probably read about meditation and the philosophy that goes with it for three or four years before I actually seriously tried it.  I personally think it’s not the cure-all touted in popular media with claims of relaxation and pain relief.  Paradoxically, I think it’s better than those claims.  It has given me a sense of belongingness to this life, both to the “good” and “bad.”  I think this will get stronger. That's good.

This video "The Fruits of Zen Practice" explains it in a more organized fashion than I do.

               

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."  That's a good quotation from Camus that seems appropriate for our South Bend weather. I stumbled across it today, but I don't know the context.  I assume he was being hopeful.

At the New Yorker site, Sasha Weiss discusses the counter claims of Dylan Farrow and Woody Allen.  In her discussion she says,

These things are difficult to talk about, which is why they are worth talking about. 

What a useful idea.  It could apply to so many things we don't want to talk about.

Living with Fiction

I finished the novel The Signature of All Things a couple of weeks ago, and ever since, Elizabeth Gilbert’s story has been floating in and out of my mind and inspiring once again, the question, what is the relationship between fiction and reality?  Beyond entertainment, what are the possibilities with a novel like Signature? 

The novel’s main character, Alma Whittaker, is a 19^th century naturalist whose specialty is studying and writing about moss.  She develops both a great curiosity and appreciation for mosses and the ways they grow and adapt.  You might say she develops a tenderness for moss; you might say, her tenderness takes her into a mysticism that leads her to feel connected to all of nature.

I suppose this novel allows me to feel this tenderness as well, not necessarily toward moss, but toward the beauty and mystery of nature.  I too can feel the love exper- ienced by this fictional woman for the natural world.  That’s all I can make of it.  I think it’s enough.

"I Am Fortunate..."

Here’s another short passage from The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert spoken by the main character, Alma Whittaker:

I do truly believe I am fortunate.  I am fortunate because I have been able to spend my life in study of the world.  As such, I have never felt insignificant.  This life is a mystery, yes, and it is often a trial, but if one can find some facts within it, one should always do so—for knowledge is the most precious of all commodities.

From Pope Francis

“A religion without mystics is a philosophy.”

What We Need to Know about Poverty

Do you live in poverty?  Do you know anyone who does?  Does poverty exist in another world from the one you live in?

Last week I attended a workshop called “Building a Sustainable Community:  Why Poverty Matters.”  I attended because it was sponsored by the Bridges Out of Poverty organization (Bridges), and I have been intrigued by their work. I learned that “4 out of 5 adult Americans will experience economic uncertainty during their lifetimes.”  And I learned how different that experience can be, depending on a variety of factors.  Bridges has a “dynamic” definition of poverty: “The extent to which an individual does without resources.”

There was a period in my life where my financial resources were low, but my educational and family resources have always been high.  People in generation poverty are usually “under resourced” in many areas.

Some facts from the day...

I have just finished reading The Signature of All Things, a novel by Elizabeth Gilbert.  Here is one of my favorite sentences:

 A person cannot marvel in dumbstruck amazement forever…