Tag Archives: Zen

Preparing the way is the Way

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Almost Christmas. I get gifts, especially for the grandboys, put up a tree and a few decorations, send out some cards. There will be a holiday meal, either Christmas Eve or Day. Basically I don’t go as “Christmas crazy” as I used to. That was probably overcompensation on my part. After all those years of unrecognized seasonal depression. I felt like Ebenezer Scrooge, cranky and cynical. I thought that it was all phony–goodwill to men covering up personal and corporate greed. The former stoked by the latter. So I tried to cover up that cynicism. 

I still think Christmas is overdone. But one thing that comes up for me this time of year is the season of Advent. Now Easter seems all about suddenness–Jesus’ march through the city, betrayal, death, and resurrection, all in a matter of days. Christmas, on the other hand, we’re told was long expected.  There was prophecy and preparation for the coming of a messiah. Advent–a week’s long preparation for the Messiah’s coming– was a later addition by the church. In many ways it has become the core in some ways of this season, sure as the fact the sun will stop its northward drift. The days will start to lengthen, and the world again befilled with Light. Whether to kids with their Advent calendars, or adults counting the days down to Christmas.

Advent is interesting to this former comparative religions student, even if I wasn’t a formal one. It is mostly my Christian training and upbringing, then compared against Buddhist teachings as I began to practice Zen. And here’s where I’ll reveal how little I really know about these teachings, especially Christian. But mалу, even most religions, have this belief, this prophecy, of someone or something coming to this fallen world. Not just of a heaven beyond this life, but that this very world will, if not transform, be redeemed. Christ, the future Buddha Maitreya, and others will come. 

The teaching of Christians (and also to Jews as I understand it) is that we must prepare the way for the coming of Christ, the Messiah. People must become ready, and make themselves and the world be in accord with what the world will become at that time. It’s in the secular Christmas themes too, the canon of stories like A Christmas Carol, of an individual or entire world lost, and found, then filled with light. The Zennist in me wants to say that it’s really just finding the light already there in this world. 

But in this season we prepare our homes and our souls–fill our homes with colors, light, the scent of sweets, and the feasts. As to ourselves, we find and cultivate the joy and kindness within everyone so we become ready as the world does, to have this love, this redemption, clarity and peace, this special being enter into it. We perform acts of joy: of gathering together, and singing, laughing, sharing what we have with others. Giving gifts to friends and family, and especially to those we may not even know, who are in need of light, gifts, of the very basic necessities of this life. We make of ourselves, and this world, the best version of both. But if all that wasn’t already present, how can we just manufacture it?

The tragedy, to look at the other side of it, is that we drop it, lose it, put it aside. Perhaps because we buy this idea it was forced, false, something we created. And we were not really preparing the way for Christ or Buddha. It was all playacting, temporary. Because if it were real, it would continue. We’d see it and allow it to do so. The coming of love, of light, of peace, would continue. Having found it (or as I argued, finding what was already there) we’d do our best to nurture it, to keep it alive. 

The lesson we miss is that we were the ones who found it. We brought this to life. In preparing to have this world transformed into the kingdom of God, and to bring heaven to earth, to bring awakening to this world, we have made this earth a heaven. We are the ones who have awakened, who made this very place the kingdom of heaven. It’s as though Christ’s or Buddha’s actual appearance is almost unnecessary, just an afterthought. 

We are Christ, We are Buddha. We are the ones who redeem and transform this world, by seeing it and ourselves differently and most importantly, in acting differently. These acts of giving, of kindness, love and selflessness are the way we accomplish this. Too often then, either in reality or in our minds, we just say, “Ok, I’ve done my work here. The Messiah or Maitreya are here. Now I can relax, sit back. No need to do anything more, the Messiah has got it covered.” We miss what we’ve done, what we found and created. The light of the new world fades, and we return to winter in our hearts.

If only we could continue with this work which, come on, be honest, really isn’t that much work. We only make it so through the craziness we take on when we push to make it comply with an idea we have of how things should be, rather than allowing it to naturally flower. Which is again, at root, a kind of greed.

Remember, at the end of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge says, “I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year.” Or as Zen teacher Hakuin said, “This very place is the Lotus Land.” Or Jesus put it in the Gospel of Thomas, “Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.”

Merry Christmas!

Zen Hair

Sitting out on the patio in the old wobbly highchair, the metal cool against my bare back.  Thinking only, “Don’t move, don’t move.”  The buzz of the clippers the only sound I hear, except when my mom repeats the same command I whisper to myself.  “Don’t move or it will be ruined.”  Six years old, and this is how I got my haircut in those days.  As hard as I tried, I always moved, when a few hairs tickled my nose, or the head on the clippers suddenly loosened and clacked wildly next to my ear.  The result of that moment’s wiggle always visible.  I don’t think I ever got out of that chair without a nick or bald spot somewhere on my head.  “It will grow out,” my mother’s soothing reminder.

This body is a car

Hui-neng, 6th Century Zen teacher, said, “The physical body is a house, but you can’t rely on it.”* And I say, the body is a car, and we all know you can’t depend on a car. 

You find that one aspect of getting older is all the ways this body starts to wear out. “Suffering is old age, sickness, and death,” according to Buddha. And even the healthiest of us can’t avoid it forever. In my more generous moments I can see it’s part of the adventure of living this life in these meat suits, as my friend David puts it. And this wearing out is mostly all the usual and ordinary problems – hair thinning, skin thinning, joints becoming less flexible.

I had an old back injury flare up a year ago after a doctor gave me antibiotics for diverticulitis, which also often is a result of aging. The antibiotic caused serious tendinitis in my Achilles tendon, so that I had difficulty walking. Talking with the physical therapist I worked with on for my recovery, he said there was some “deconditioning due to the tendinitis and lack of movement,” which exacerbated the old injury. He called it “wear and tear.” Which sounds like what your mechanic might tell you about your brakes.

Many years before that my hip was causing me lots of pain, probably due in part to that wear and tear in my back. It turned out there was a great deal of arthritis in my hip, and I finally realized I had to have it replaced with an artificial joint. Beforehand, the doctor showed me what the replacement joint looked like – it was titanium, shiny and new. And looked to me like nothing so much as a chrome car part. 

I don’t always remain under anesthetic long, so at the end of that surgery I came to while I was still on the operating table. The doctor was the only person remaining in the operating room, and I began talking with him. In my woozy state, and out of strange curiosity, I asked if I could see the head of the femur. He took some tongs, and pulled what looked like a softball out of a five gallon bucket. It was smooth as a pearl, and he pointed out how bare it was, with no cartilage left on it. Afterwards, I wondered whether he thought I was asking to see it, like a customer would with his mechanic at the garage. Wanting to see the defective part while the car was still up on the lift, in order to check the wear and tear on the brake pads, to be sure that they really did need replacing. 

My old friend Ted, who was my roommate for a time, and a writing practice partner, was also a mechanic. He worked on my car a few times. It was an old Subaru, and he managed to keep it running a little longer each time. Finally, it broke down on a longer trip, and I had it towed back home. I asked Ted if he could look at it, and he said he would. I came home that night to find he’d left me a note on the kitchen table: For sale–1969 Subaru. No working clutch. Would be a good car to push off the High Bridge into the Mississippi River. A lesson in radical acceptance and letting go. 

Ted’s car was an old Honda Civic which, through the wonder of transferred titles and recalls, had two brand new bright yellow fenders on it to replace those that had disintegrated due to a design flaw, and were recalled. This was on a car where the whole thing was mostly rust more than anything else. He let me borrow it for a few days after my car died. Along with the keys, he handed me 3 pages of numbered instructions for driving it: 

  1. First pull the detent for the clutch knob out to the second detent. Turn the engine over. Then move the clutch to the third detent and try it again. It should start then. If it doesn’t, repeat those steps. 
  2. Don’t follow anyone one too closely, as the brakes are going out. 
  3. Try not to use the heater if you can help it. 
  4. You need to have the defrost on high to get any air to come out. 
  5. (And my favorite:) The head gasket is starting to go, so when you first start it up, there will be a big cloud of smoke, vapor, and exhaust coming out of the tailpipe. It’s nothing to worry about. My suggestion is that you just drive away immediately and as fast as you can, so no one knows it’s coming from you. Drive it for a short distance–the engine will warm up and the smoke will stop.

Some days I feel like I’m working from a similar list as I begin the day. 

  1. Don’t get out of bed and start moving too fast. 
  2. Cataracts have been removed, so vision will be good, but takes a few minutes to get clear. 
  3. The chassis is slightly bent, and will list to one side for a bit. 
  4. Alignment of the jaw is off, so you will hear a clicking sound. It’s nothing to worry about.
  5. Get the hearing aids in quickly, and that should take care of the ringing in the ears. 
  6. Yes, it does have some wear and tear, but after 69 years it is still on the road. My suggestion is that once you get it moving, take off as quickly as possible.  

As Ted might say, leave what’s behind you as quickly as you can and keep moving. A few blocks and it should run fine for the rest of the day.

*Translation by Dosho Port, Roshi

Trump, Zen, and flan; Part 2

I had the chance to see Iris again today. She came to a weekly lunch we have where mental health clients and social workers get together to cook and share a meal. I sat down next to her and we chatted for a big. At one point her eyes brightened and she asked, “Did you see the news today? There were demonstrations against President Trump in Los Angeles and Chicago. They can’t change anything but…”

I could tell that what lay behind that “but…” was the understanding that she was not alone, that not all Americans wanted to see her leave. And I saw as I never had before the power of that sort of witnessing and declaration of support.

On the other hand..a while later I had to drop off a prescription at the drugstore, and an older fellow sidled up next to me at the counter. He looked me up and down a few times, then said to me, “Trump all the way,” as though we were co-conspirators.

Taken aback, I just said, “Well it was sure a surprise.”

“Yeah, but a good surprise.”

Mustering all the open-mindedness I could, all I could say was, “That will remain to be seen.”