Little Zen Teachers Part III

Children and Koans

(youngzine.org)

My 3 year-old daughter asked me the other day:

Mom, what do memories look like and where do they come from?

At the time she was standing in front of the open refrigerator in our kitchen looking for a snack, and I was sitting in the dining room.  It seemed that her questions were so mundane, that they did not even require a look away from the refrigerator when she asked them.

In the moment I tried my best to answer her question- trying to find words that were informational and satisfying.

Yet I must admit, I felt pleasantly stumped by her question.  I almost wanted to linger in the question rather than fumble my way to an answer, and it felt reminiscent of a Koan.

In traditional Zen Practice a Koan is a story, dialogue, question or statement that is offered by a Zen Master to their student as a method of teaching.  The purpose of the Koan is to challenge and test the student.

Classical examples of traditional Zen Koans include:

o   What is the sound of one hand clapping, and

o   What did you look like before you were born.

Just for fun, I have asked my 7 year-old son the 2 Koans that I just listed.

What was interesting to me was that he readily answered each Koan as if it was the most ordinary of questions. 

No pausing. No questioning. No confused expression on his face. 

It was as if I had just asked him the most commonplace of questions like: Is it raining outside?

Observing my son’s considerable comfort with the philosophical and my daughter’s casual inquiry about the unknown (to her) struck me poignant. 

It seems we adults get very quickly befuddled when we are facing a puzzle that we cannot solve (possibly why a Koan is sometimes referred to as a “Great Doubt”), when maybe it is our reaction to the Koan that creates the struggle, rather than the conundrum itself.

In other words, if we adults, like children, could have less emphasis on our own perception, our own sense of effort, our own OMG reactions when facing a riddle or perplex problem, what would be different?

What could be different?

Compassion Toward Others: Including Trees?

In my yard I have a small Japanese Maple Tree that may be on its last leg.

The roots do not look super hearty at this point, and each year fewer and fewer leaves sprout from the braches.

My daughter has taken a liking to this little tree though, and each time we are playing in the yard, she will walk right up to the reddish brown shrub and talk to it.

“Are you thirsty?” she will ask. “Are you tired?”

Yesterday, my daughter asked me if I had a Kleenex in my pocket.  I did, and I handed it to her.  She took the tissue and walked over to the tree, and put the paper up against the branches.

When I asked my daughter what she was doing, she said very matter-of-factly: “She’s sick. She has a runny nose.”  “She” in this case was the tree.

She, my daughter, then proceeded to get water for the tree and poured it over the roots that half-heartedly stuck out of the ground, while proclaiming that the sick tree was quite thirsty and tired.

As I stood by watching this display of compassion toward another living organism, I was moved to wonder what this level of compassion for all living organisms might look like on a world-wide platform?

In that moment, I remembered once hearing an interview on NPR with a professor and author of environmental biology at the State University of New York named Robin Wall Kimmerer. In the interview, I recalled her statement:

I can’t think of a single scientific study in the last few decades that has demonstrated that plants or animals are dumber than we think. It’s always the opposite, right? What we’re revealing is the fact that they have a capacity to learn, to have memory, and we’re at the edge of a wonderful revolution in really understanding the sentience of other beings.

How interesting that children already intuitively know what we adults continue to question- thereby requiring more hard-won scientific research and studies to “prove” what is already here.

Compassion Toward Self

Last summer my family and I went for a long hike in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. 

It was  glorious day, one that I will remember always, but at the very end there was an unfortunate accident: my then 2 year-old daughter fell flat-out, face first, onto the pavement.

My husband, son and I all saw it happen, and we collectively drew in our breath when we saw the “splat.” 

I think we were all waiting for the initial scream, followed by the tears, and then the all-out total meltdown.

Strangely though, it never came…

We all rushed over to my daughter’s side to help her back up onto her feet.

Of course she looked upset and distressed, but also oddly contained, which led us to decide to just keep walking as if nothing had happened.

To this, however, my daughter, forcefully objected. 

“Wait!” she asserted. 

We all stopped.

She then proceeded to sit down on the ground, exactly where she had fallen, and kiss all the different areas of her body that had been scuffed and bruised in the fall.

Of course it is very common for most kids, including my daughter, to ask for a kiss on the “boo boo” after a fall or an accident, but in this case, my daughter was taking care of herself.

As if it was the most natural thing in the world, she began kissing her left and right knee, right elbow and left elbow; methodically moving through each area of her injured body.

When all of the necessary kisses had been given, without fanfare, she stood back up, and resumed the hike.  It was as if the need had been identified, met, and now she was ready to proceed.

Watching my daughter, I secretly wished I could be as nurturing and compassionate toward myself as she had been toward herself.

Maybe I will try.

Another Glimpse of Interbeing

Have you ever had one of those moments when your linear sense of time as past, present and future collapses into one? 

I have.

Similar to the new television show on NBC called “This Is Us” in which the past is seamlessly moving in and out of the present (or maybe it is the future that is seamlessly moving in and out of the present?), I have these moments in which time feels more fluid than fixed, more dynamic than static, more cyclical than linear.

The beauty and mystery of which can be an intersecting mosaic of causes and conditions that is constantly shuffling--and then reshuffling again—of what we know to be “true.”

Lately, I’m wondering if this experience is another glimpse of Interbeing, a term coined by Vietnamese Buddhist teacher and author Thich Nhat Hanh regarding the exquisitely interdependent nature of all phenomena.

Like this past Sunday for example.

It was the day before Martin Luther King Day (which in the United States is celebrated on the 3^rd Monday of January every year), and I was at church with my 7 year-old son.

In the service, the ministers reminded our Unitarian Universalist (UU) congregation about a moment in history in which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King spoke at a Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly in Hollywood, Florida.

The year was 1966, two years before Dr. King’s assassination, and the already famous Reverend and Civil Rights Leader was invited to speak at the annual gathering of Unitarian Universalists. 

The title of his speech was: Don’t Sleep Through the Revolution.

He framed the talk around a little known fact about the story of Rip Van Winkle.

For those of you who don’t know, Rip Van Winkle is a character in a story of same name, and in the story the character sleeps for twenty years.

However, the fact that Dr. King drew out to his undoubtedly primarily white UU audience, was that ol’ Rip slept through the entire American Revolution.  Yup, he missed the whole thing! 

Dr. King then drew the parallel possibility that the UU church might “sleep” through the entire Civil Rights revolution; of course to which he offered the alternative solution that the UU church “wake up” and participate in the revolution instead.

He said:

One of the great misfortunes of history is that all too many individuals and institutions find themselves in a great period of change and yet fail to achieve the new attitudes and outlooks that the new situation demands. There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution.

He then added:

Victor Hugo once said that there is nothing more powerful in all the world than an idea whose time has come. The idea whose time has come today is the idea of freedom and human dignity, and so all over the world we see something of freedom explosion, and this reveals to us that we are in the midst of revolutionary times. An older order is passing away and a new order is coming into being.

Now I ask you, my dear sister or brother who is reading these words 51 years later, is Dr. King’s message any less relevant today than it was over half a century ago? Is it any less urgent than Mahatma Ghandi’s Indian Independence movement some 87 years ago upon which Dr. King modeled his non-violent liberation methodology?

When we find ourselves in a moment in history in which dozens of Congress men and women are boycotting the U.S. Presidential Inauguration on Friday and over 200,000 protesters are expected to rally on Saturday in the Women’s March on Washington with the mission statement:

We stand together, recognizing that defending the most marginalized among us is defending all of us,

one cannot but marvel at the truth of Dr. King’s moral vision for our world which he also stated in that 1966 speech:

we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man, into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.

Sitting there in the pew last Sunday, with my arm wrapped around my next generation son, listening to this story of intersection between my UU faith and Dr. King on the eve of a historical transition of political power, I felt a deep sense of kinship with Dr. King’s message of “waking up” that felt nearly palpable.  And for me, time collapsed into one.

I think the reality of interbeing, is what allows for awareness of such moments.

In the same speech delivered to the UUA General Assembly, Dr. King commented on this very topic:

All I'm saying is this: that all life is inter-related, and somehow we are all tied together. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the inter-related structure of all reality…This realization is absolutely necessary if we are to remain awake in this revolution.

Hearing this message again in 2017, I can’t help but wonder: could this profound truth actually be transcendent of time itself creating further evidence for the need to not just accept but rather embrace interbeing? 

I believe so.

If we can allow past, present and future to collapse into one by internalizing this seed of inter-being that was planted (again) some 51 years ago on a spring day in 1966, while we swear in the 45^th President of the United States, what would that mean for our intricately interdependent state of union?

Think about it.

I will.

Spiritual Archetypes vs. Spiritual People

Lately I’ve had a series of reminders why I need both spiritual archetypes and spiritual people in my spiritual journey.

This is something new for me because I didn’t always know how to discern an archetype from a person. 

Of course I knew that they were not the same, but it took a painful sequence of eye-opening personal experiences (as most of our hard-won wisdom does) to become more skillful in how I engage with an archetype versus a person, and to know which would be more helpful or harmful to me in any given moment.

I am also more skillful now in noting when someone else is interacting or projecting an archetype onto a human being or vice versa.

It has helped that as a parent of a 7 and 3 year-old I have gotten to read an endless supply of fairy tales and Disney movies nearly every day because if you are at all unclear about what is an archetype, just open up any number of children’s books or sit down and watch 20 minutes of an animated movie, and the archetypes of Jung, Campbell and Estes will jump right out at you.

Here is an image I found that artistically names a few of the major archetypes:

 I was recently re-watching the 2006 movie version of E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, and I was struck by the flawless representation of the mother archetype in the character of the spider, Charlotte, played by actress Julia Roberts.  It was perfect.

But here's the catch.

An archetype is one, maybe two, dimensional. It is consistent and predictable—which is of course part of the appeal—but it is not, and I believe not meant to be, human.

I have to say, I am very grateful to have fine-tuned this skill because in these transitioning political times it has allowed me to interact with people up close and at a distance (including those government folks in Washington D.C.) with more equanimity internally- which translates into greater openness and generosity externally during those moments of human fragility, brokenness and imperfect contradictions.

Political figures aside, I think individuals who are spiritual leaders, writers, speakers, and figure-heads are also particularly vulnerable to being cast as an archetype (e.g. hero, villain, mother, father, sage, caretaker, what have you), as opposed to a person, and I believe this is a dangerous predicament.

In psychotherapy, my day job, it’s similar to when a patient puts their therapist way up on a pedestal due to their feelings of gratitude or admiration for the credible counsel they feel they have received. 

But then, when the therapist forgets the name of the patient’s dog or schedules another patient at the same appointment time, there is only one direction that the therapist—who had at one time been way up in the clouds—can go: down, down, crashing down.

Undeniably I think it’s good practice to hold people accountable for their actions. 

But when does that decision to hold someone accountable stop you from seeing the forest for the trees.

 

For instance, I remember the first time I heard that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. plagiarized a part of his doctoral dissertation at Boston University.  (See article in The New York Times called “Plagiarism Seen by Scholars In King's Ph.D. Dissertation” from 11/10/90).  I recall asking myself the following questions:

1.)Does this change the way I feel about him?

2.)Will this information change the way others feel about him?

3.)Does this make his public persona as a model for justice, equality and fairness obsolete?

4.)If the public sees Dr. King as more human and less archetype will it help his universal and eternal message, or hurt it?

 

Or, in 2007 when Mother Teresa’s journals were published publically, and the world began to read about her extensive periods of doubt that she had kept very private during her many years of public life as an exemplar of faith. (See article in the New York Times called “A Saint’s Dark Night” from 8/29/07).

What is one to do with these apparent contradictions? 

Or are they contradictions at all?

I once heard this quote by a 20^th Century Jewish-American writer and literary critic named Alfred Kazin that I found very useful:

 

Man’s life is full of contradiction and he must be; we see through a glass darkly- we want more than we can have; we see more than we can understand. But a contradiction that is faced leads to true knowledge.

For me, the latter quotation is a Middle Path in this balancing act of accountability versus blind faith of wise people (or contempt toward the villains) who by all biological authority, are still oh-so-human.

Once I’ve clarified that individuals like Dr. King, Mother Teresa and other great spiritual figures were people (not one-dimensional archetypes), then I can view their lives as a series of unfolding moments (and mistakes), that they had a choice to grow from and awaken or remain stagnant.

On a much smaller scale, last year I read a comments section on an NPR radio show website regarding an interview with author Elizabeth Gilbert about her newest book Big Magic. 

As you recall, this is the same author of the very famous 2006 book Eat, Pray, Love.

 

On the website, among many other reflections of a different opinion, one person wrote:

I was disappointed to see that On Being interviewed Elizabeth Gilbert. Her behavior struck me as extremely narcissistic when I was only a couple chapters in to Eat Pray Love, and Gilbert's disturbing article about being a serial cheater only confirmed that impression: She has repeatedly ‘chosen curiosity over fear’  for her own benefit at the expense of others, which goes against the whole spirit of On Being.

The article this listener was referring too was also in The New York Times, and it was called “Confessions of a Seduction Addict” (6/24/15).

The interesting thing is, Ms. Gilbert’s article in The Times ended with this sentence:

I walked away alone but calm. And that’s when I realized that the better part of my life had already begun.

It would seem, after a period of engaging in a conditioned habit, Ms. Gilbert then came to a cross- roads where she chose a different path.

Haven’t we all done that at some point?

I think as long as we hold Ms. Gilbert, or any other person in our private or public lives, as a person, not an archetype (e.g. victim or villain, sage or caretaker), then we may actually find narratives about someone’s rocky awakening to be not only compelling, but also hopeful.

Because if we expect ourselves or others to be perfect in this spiritual journey, then we might as well give up right now; that is just not realistic. 

But, if we can let humans be humans (including our U.S. President-Elect) with an expectation of accountability and growing wisdom over time, then perhaps our need for archetypes (both heroes and villains) can be left to the likes of those mythical stories and G-rated Disney movies.

A Winter Mindfulness Walk with Hafez

Not long ago we had one of those freakishly warm days in the middle of a New England winter.

Climate change explanations aside, I set out to enjoy the unusual spring-like temperatures with a 4 hour silent mindful walk in the woods.

What makes a walk mindful you might ask?

For me, the difference between a mindful walk versus any other is the conscious decision, followed by the effort, to place my attention on the experiences of my body as opposed to my constantly thinking mind.

It's not because I believe thinking, or my thinking in particular, is bad or wrong.

No, I think the mind can be a creative miracle that allows me to process a sometimes confusing and chaotic world in insightful ways that allows me to participate more fully in my life and community.

Except when it doesn't.

Perhaps you have these stuck-in-the-mud-mind moments too: when you are caught on a hamster wheel of thinking that can prompt a sense of helplessness.

In those moments, if time and temperature permits, my favorite perscription for myself is to head out into the woods (preferably by myself) to recalibrate my mind by directing my attention toward my body.

I purposefully notice the contact of my feet on the earth, the sensation of my body temperature going up and down, the fluctuating intensity of my breathing as my chest rises and falls, and of course all of the gorgeous sensory experiences in the woods that I can take in through my eyes, ears, nose, and fingertips (no taste on this one!).

Then, as if to punctuate the present moment with an exclamation point, I pause every once in a while.

This is a method I picked up while on a Day of Mindfulness Retreat at one of Thich Nhat Hanh's monasteries in New York state.

In those moments, without fanfare or talking, I stop walking and stand tall in stillness while taking in 3 long intentional breaths.  Then, I resume my walk.

From  time to time my mind will drift over to my thoughts, which in this case was an intense worry about a loved one. 

In those moments, I honor those thoughts with a nod of recognition, but then I turn my mind back to my feet on the earth, my lungs breathing the warm air, the sound of the wind moving through the pine trees.

Sometimes this is several times in a minute. Sometimes only once in a half an hour- frequency neither here no there.

I also take photographs.

Contradictions included, this is where the hardcore, mindful purists may need to plug their ears and do the "Na Na Na" thing, because for some, taking photos on a mindful walk is a "No, No" of sorts.

For me though, photographing nature has always been a deep love of mine.

Something about the awe that I encounter when I feel right up close with the earth and all of her majesty.

My photography then becomes a kind of worship of sorts to that which is most holy or Beloved.

14th Century Persian poet Hafez (or Hafiz) often uses the word Beloved for god, and Beloved is the best word I can think of for my description of all of creation which, in my belief, is both in and of god.

So as I now lead you on this pictorial mindfulness walk through the New England woods on an unusually warm day at the start of this new year, I thought (see there is much beauty in thought too!) I'd accompany the photographs with some of the poetry of Hafez taken from Daniel Ladinsky's book "I Heard God Laughing: Renderings of Hafiz."

I find the mystics throughout the ages seem to share a wisdom about the intersection of humanity and the cosmos that I am just beginning to scratch the surface of.

Enjoy.

Manic Screaming

We should make all spiritual talk
Simple today:
God is trying to sell you something,
But you don't want to buy.

That is what your suffering is:
Your fantastic haggling,
Your manic screaming over the price!

My Brilliant Image

One day the sun admitted,

I am just a shadow.
I wish I could show you
The Infinite Incandescence (Tej)

That has cast my brilliant image!

I wish I could show you,
When you are lonely or in darkness,

The Astonishing Light

Of your own Being!

What Happens

What happens when your soul
Begins to awaken
Your eyes
And your heart
And the cells of your body
To the great Journey of Love?

First there is wonderful laughter
And probably precious tears

And a hundred sweet promises
And those heroic vows
No one can ever keep.

But still God is delighted and amused
You once tried to be a saint.

What happens when your soul
Begins to awake in this world

To our deep need to love
And serve the Friend?

O the Beloved
Will Send you
Once of His wonderful, wild companions-

Like Hafiz.

Silence

A day of Silence
Can be a pilgrimage in itself.

A day of Silence
Can help you listen
To the Soul play
Its marvelous lute and drum.

Is not most talking
A crazed defense of a crumbling fort?

I thought we came here
To surrender in Silence,

To yield to Light and Happiness,

To Dance within
In celebration of Love's Victory!

Skinning Your Knees on God

Little by little,
You will turn into stars.

Even then, my dear,
You will only be
A crawling infant,
Still skinning your knees on God.

Little by little,
You will turn into
The whole sweet, amorous Universe
In heat
On a wild spring night,

And become so free
In a wonderful, secret
And pure Love
That flows
From a conscious,
One-pointed,
Infinite need for Light.

Even then, my dear,
The Beloved will have fulfilled
Just a fraction,
Just a fraction,
Just a fraction!
Of a promise
He wrote upon your heart.

When your soul begins
To Ever bloom and laugh
And spin in Eternal Ecstasy-

O little by little,
You will turn into God.

Would You Think It Odd?

Would you think it odd if Hafiz said,

'I am in love with every church
And mosque
And temple
And any kind of shrine

Because I know it is there
That people say the different names
Of the One God.'

Would you tell your friends
I was a bit strange if I admitted

I am indeed in love with every mind
And heart and body.

O I am sincerely
Plumb crazy
About your every thought and yearning
And limb

Because, my dear,
I know
That it is through these

That you search for Him.

The Gifts of Darkness

This morning I watched the full moon set in the western horizon.

As a sun-worshiper, I don’t normally do this- share my loyalty and attention with the moon I mean.

But I was inspired by a story told by Episcopal Priest Barbara Brown Taylor in her book Learning to Walk in the Dark in which she and her husband, Ed, intentionally sat outside on their land in rural Georgia to watch the full moon rise just as others might witness a sun rise.

Like Reverand Taylor, I like the idea of challenging myself in what I think I know and believe about the dark.

As a psychotherapist by day, who primarily helps individuals try to embrace and accept the dualistic nature of emotions (e.g. joy & suffering, calm & restless, love & hate), I’ve noticed I am remarkably close-minded to the possibilities of the dark.

This awareness came to a head for me last year on November 8^th, the day I learned Donald Trump was going to be the next president of the United States.

The insight did not come in the election result itself.  No, it came after listening to a meditation teacher say on that very same day in a soft and almost dreamy voice, “what a wonderful day to practice.”

Words to which I promptly (internally) responded with a version of “WTF!”

Since then though, I have been purposefully exploring the potential gifts of darkness and the night- particularly as I reckon with these transitioning political times.

This process has been an enlightening one, to say the least, and it has been followed closely by a quotation by 20^th Century American PoetTheodore Huebner Roethke (1908-1963) 

that serendipitously keeps appearing before me:

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see.”

As a lemonade-out-of-lemons kind of girl and a psychotherapist, I love the possibility of insight and wisdom being drawn from a time of sorrow, and at first read of this quotation, I thought that was all it was about- as if it could only be interpreted one way.

But this morning, as I watched that gorgeous full moon set over the winter New England hills where I live, a whole new meaning of Mr. Roethke’s words occurred to me that has more to do with a reflection on faith, evolution and progress.

Hear me out.

As a mother with 2 children under the age of 8, I watch a lot of Disney, Pixar, you name it, animated movies.

One favorite in our household is the 2013 movie: The Croods.

This film tells the tale of how the unforeseen cataclysmic shifts in the earth’s contruct propels one very stuck individual, in this case the caveman father, into a dark night of the soul in which he must confront his own faith, evolution and dare I say progress, as a matter of life and death survival. 

I found this image on a website called PaeloPam.com that captures this theme perfectly:

Watching this movie again (for the 100^th time per my children’s delight!), I began to wonder, might this possibility of faith, evolution and progress be available to us too, when (for some of us) this particular moment in history feels like a nightfall?

I believe it is.

But first, we will be required to look and reflect deeply into the shadows of our humanity; areas of ourselves that we have been unwilling to investigate and repair for centuries.

For some people, this idea can be terrifying. 

Lifting up all those old rugs and opening up all those closet doors that have been pratically cemented shut to start to sort through our, at times, painful and cruel history.

In The Croods, the character of the caveman father (played by the voice of actor Nicolas Cage) has a famous line he keeps repeating until the very end of the film which is “Never Not Be Afraid!” that I think has been the sentiment of  many individuals who cannot imagaine what an inclusive, just, democracy would even look like.

But like the reflective full moon in the night sky, a gift of the darkness may be our own deep, compassionate contemplation of ourselves, our communities and our history that may be a catalyst for the type of generative human growth that has been unprecedanted thus far. 

May it be so.