Sick at Heart

I have puzzled since yesterday to find something relevant to say regarding the horrific shooting that took place on December 14. I am from Connecticut and have been in Newtown a fair number of times over the years. This is meaningless, but somehow brings it a little closer to home. As a parent, as a teacher and administrator, and as a human being, I am sick at heart. Nothing I can say or do can possibly make sense of this or make it better in any way.

What I can do is to focus awareness on my own reactions and thoughts as a person and as a Buddhist.  

My first and continuing reaction has been one of pain, my own (I have been in tears at various times since the news first broke) and that of the many, many people directly affected by this tragedy. I have practiced Tonglen during my meditation, breathing in the pain of all these fellow humans and breathing out loving-kindness. I have no illusion that this will benefit any of them in any way, but empathy is all I can offer at the moment.

As a Buddhist, a particularly vexing part of this is how to react to the young man who did this. I want to be angry with him, to hate him, to call him monster and evil as many have done, and put as much distance between him and me as members of our species as I can. But if I truly espouse the philosophy of loving-kindness that I try to live by, then I cannot deny our shared humanity and must find whatever compassion I can. I am struck by the fact that the horrendous pain he has caused can only have come from some terrible pain of his own. Whether as a result of mental illness or his warped interpretation of experiences he has had, the need to cause such needless pain to others, particularly children who could have in no way wronged him, can only have come from a place of unremitting pain within him. This in no way excuses or even explains the terrible choice he made that we will never fully understand. But it is the shared experience of the pain all of us as humans have known that makes it impossible for me not to feel compassion for that part of him. As I have stated before, as human beings, we share the greatest accomplishments of our species, showing us our almost unlimited potential, as well as the most heinous acts of depravity committed by our kind, showing us the depths to which it is possible to descend. Both ends of the spectrum, and everything in between, are encompassed in our humanness. It is only in accepting this reality that we can truly find compassion for ourselves and for our fellow beings. I abhor the actions the young man chose to take in his madness, but if I am able to deny his humanness and attempt to relegate him to some sub-human strata, then I myself am lost, and my philosophy of loving-compassion is utterly without meaning.

I would be remiss in not also sharing my belief that we, as a society, have contributed to the creation of the milieu in which violence has come to be not a last resort, but a viable option for expressing our displeasure with how believe the world has treated us.  Our young people, particularly our young men, have been reared on terribly violent video games in which aggression and violence are the path to "victory", but also in which we are able to create mayhem and murder against our "opponents" in a virtual world with no real-world consequences to befall us. In the virtual world we do not hear the pitiful cries of our victims (except in disembodied, artificially produced voices) nor do we see or smell their blood, nor need to consider the anguish of their loved ones. We (and I do not hold my self above this, being a James Bond fan all my life) seek out the rush of adrenaline provided by violent clashes in which the good guy vanquishes the bad, as opposed to the warmer rush of endorphins provided by a peaceful loving encounter with another person. We watch (and again, I am an addict) television shows in which the most gruesome of scenes are laid out before us as the FBI or police struggle to stop a killer not unlike the man in Newtown. This is not to say such things should not exist....as humans we have enjoyed such violent spectacle for centuries (Titus Andronicus springs to mind). Rather, it is to say that we do not take into account the possible reactions of those people for whom the violence becomes the stuff of their fantasies, fantasies in which they are somehow vindicated for the wrongs they believe the world has done them. We turn away from the strange people around us, leaving them ever more isolated to wrestle with their inner demons.

In the end, we will never have the answer to why this happened...and realistically, it doesn't matter. What matters, as my youngest son said, is that it could happen. The political maneuvering around Second Amendment issues has already begun. I understand that many people are fearful and need the sense (however illusory) of protection that gun ownership affords them. I understand that some people enjoy the sport of hunting, and I know many good people who fall in this category. However, all of this aside, NO ONE NEEDS TO OWN AN ASSAULT RIFLE CAPABLE OF FIRING MULTIPLE ROUNDS PER SECOND except a member of a SWAT team or a soldier in a combat zone opposed by soldiers similarly armed. Yet, in our headlong rush to preserve our "second amendment rights", rather than make laws based on reason, we have made it possible for ordinary citizens to possess these instruments of death (for in fact they have no other purpose whatsoever), something almost every other industrialized nation has chosen to prohibit.

Banning such weapons will not, of course, guarantee that such horrific acts will never be repeated, but it will make it a great deal more difficult to cause the level of destruction we have seen far too many times.

When all is said and done, the only thing we can do is to live each day well, try not to harm any living being, and offer peace and compassion to everyone whose paths cross ours. It seems not to amount to much in the greater scheme of things but it is far more significant than one might think. If each of us made the choice to do this, the level of violence we all must endure cannot help but to decrease.

This is the Moment...

There is a simple truth, often alluded to in Buddhist articles and teachings, that states the past is only memories of things already gone by; the future is only dreams and illusions of things that may never happen and that the present moment is all we can ever really possess. What always follows from that is the dictum that we should “live in the moment.” Meditating on this concept, it has occurred to me that far from being a an aphorism posted on Facebook, written in flowery script superimposed over a field of flowers, this simple statement can be an important key to living a full and compassionate life.

Living in the moment is really about awareness, about being truly present during each experience, as that experience is occurring. When we are able to do this, we are fully involved in our lives, fully able to appreciate the extraordinariness of being alive, with all of the joy and, yes, pain, that entails. On a very practical basis, living in the moment enables us to reveal who we have become or are becoming in each decision we make and every time we speak. It erases the need for excuses; we can’t fall back on, “I didn’t know what I was doing” or “ I didn’t mean to say that.” What we choose to do and what we choose to say is a decision that we are aware of making. Of course, since we are human, and therefore flawed, we will both say and do things that we may think better of later. We may end up regretting the consequences of a particular decision, but we can’t regret the decision itself; we knew what we were doing.

Now, what I just said seems to lay a lot of weight on us. Why would we want this? The positive side of this equation is that awareness of the present moment allows us to make the compassionate decision each time the opportunity presents itself. It allows us to act or speak when we need to, in the moment it is needed, to bring good karma into the world. It allows us, nay, forces us, to stop to appreciate the beauty of a sunset or a cloud-filled sky, or a piece of music, or the joy of being with a loved one, because awareness of the moment also means awareness that the moment passes. When we are aware of the impermanence of each moment, we appreciate being present for the experience.

Living in the moment allows us to realize those times when someone needs our support and to make it a priority. We realize that a particular conversation we are having, or time we are spending may be important or necessary to someone and lets us put aside other matters of lesser consequence. It helps us to realize that simply greeting those people who are often invisible (store clerks, fast food workers, mail carriers, disabled people, etc.) takes only the moment of contact and yet can have a positive effect on them (and us) for the rest of the day.

Finally, it allows us to attend to those things, big and little, that need to be taken care of at the time they need to be handled. Rather than putting things off, and sometimes forgetting them, dealing with them in the moment confers an order on our lives that helps things to run more smoothly and lessens stress from day to day.

So as you go through each day, take a moment…it’s what your life is made up of…and it’s all you really have anyway.

Namaste.

Thanksgiving Musings

I haven’t posted in a while because my wife and I were travelling and then, after we returned home, adopted a new puppy named Abby whose training and settling-in has happily occupied a lot of my time.

Since we are in the Thanksgiving season, I sat back to consider what people and things I am thankful for. In no particular order, they are:

~ The joy of loving and living each day with René, the love of my life

~My three children, all of whom have grown into caring, compassionate adults whose presence in the world is an endless source of good karma

~ The Dharma

~The joy of again having a dog in my life to love and the good fortune to have had Gatsby and Duffy to love for the time we shared life together.

~ All of my family and the fact there is no rancor among its members and that we all truly care for one another

~Awareness and the opportunities it provides for me to grow and view the world from the perspective of loving-kindness

~The opportunity to show compassion to all living beings in each moment

~Life and each moment of experience of which it is comprised

~Intelligence, Education, Experience and the capacity to develop wisdom by combining them

~The love and companionship of many friends, past and present

~The opportunity to have had a positive effect on the lives of the students whose life-paths crossed mine, however briefly

Namaste

The Chirping of Crickets

When we strive to be aware, many lessons come to us unbidden if we are willing to be open to them. In an earlier blog,  I wrote of the lessons I had been taught by my dog, Duffy. In the past two months, lessons and reminders of the presence of the life force in all beings have come to me from...wait for it...crickets. Three separate crickets, in three separate places, found their way into rooms in which I happened to be. Now please understand, in no way do I believe that the crickets were somehow "sent" to instruct me.    Rather, the repetition of the occurrence caused me to begin thinking about how my embracing of Buddhist principles has led me to show compassion for all living beings, even the seemingly insignificant. When I was an assistant principal, I was known (and occasionally teased) by the students for scooping ants who wandered into the hall onto a piece of paper and bringing them outside, while telling the students not to step on them. Any time this occurred, the students asked me why I did this, since "they're just ants!" I pointed out that the ants always attempted to escape, indicating an instinct to protect their life force, and that we had no right to take that from them since they posed no danger to us whatsoever. I was reminded of this when I began to think about the crickets, since the last two instances again occurred in the presence of students with whom I was working during an anti-bias training.

The first of the cricket sightings occurred a couple of months ago during a meditation class I was taking at a local Buddhist meditation center. What immediately struck me was that, without anyone saying anything to each other, the class stopped as the priority shifted to gently capturing the cricket and returning him to the outside. There was no question that this was what needed to happen. This simple experience was a perfect example of the efficacy and power of embracing a Buddhist philosophy.

The second and third occurrences took place at two separate high schools where I was co-facilitating peer training workshops in which we train students to do anti-bias activities with freshman classes in their respective schools. In both cases, the students' first reactions were to try to step on the crickets (who, fortunately, in both cases, were very good hoppers). I immediately told them, "Do not kill it, there is no need."  I told them that I am a Buddhist and explained why I did not want the cricket harmed, and they didn't question it. Even though we couldn't catch them, the students refrained from trying to hurt them, even as they occasionally jumped onto someone's leg. When, during a second training session at the first high school, the cricket reappeared (apparently it had survived the week), the students themselves said to each other, "Don't kill it...don't kill it." It may have been that students who had volunteered to train to work against bias and hatred were predisposed to behave compassionately, but it could not be denied that in both cases they heard what I said to them and decided to act accordingly. I honestly believe the next time they encounter an insect that cannot harm them, they will stop and think about how they should respond, and in so doing, possibly save a life.

A philosophy of loving-kindness means means treating all living creatures with compassion and respect, even ants and crickets. Just ask Jiminy....

It Is What It Is...How Our Opinions Blind Us To Reality

Let me begin with a quick primer on the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. They are: Life means suffering; The origin of suffering is attachment; Cessation of suffering is possible; There is a path to the cessation of suffering (The Eightfold Path). I have been taking a course in the concept of non-duality and no-self from a Buddhist teacher here in Mesa. It is very interesting, but a real challenge to wrap one’s mind around. However, there is one concept that I have been contemplating during meditation, that I think I’m beginning to understand, and that I’d like to share with all of you.

I came across a quote last week that states this concept pretty clearly: “It’s not our preferences that cause problems but our attachment to them.” In the Four Noble Truths, the key word seems to be suffering. However, I have come to understand that the suffering is not the acute kinds of suffering that we might bring to mind upon hearing the word, but rather a state of being we allow ourselves to remain in. One of the primary ways in which we do that is by clinging to our preferences and opinions about the way we think things or people ought to be, and believing that perspective to be the reality of that which we experiencing.

Almost reflexively, we tend to categorize our experiences into things we like or don’t like; things never seem to be just as we want them and that is a big part of constant suffering. Certainly this is quite easy to see  in the polarization occurring during the acrimonious election season in which we currently find ourselves, but it pervades how we see almost everything we experience and everyone we meet. Rather than accepting things or people as they are, we immediately make a judgment about them. It is important to understand that it doesn’t make a difference whether that judgment is positive or negative, but rather that we are making one at all. Now, right at the outset, let me say that I know that we are conditioned to do this from the time we are infants. We are taught what (and who) we should (or shouldn’t) like according to our parents’ preferences and biases, and are also often asked what we would like in any given situation.  That said, actually suspending judgment and giving up our attachment to our preferences is a very difficult thing to accomplish, and one that most of us (including me) will probably never attain. So what’s the point?

The point is that our preferences and opinions are something we ourselves impose on our experiences from our own minds, and in so doing are unable to see the truth of them that is being distorted by our biases and prejudices (also known as preferences and opinions). If we are able to look at each person and thing we experience without wanting them to conform to our notion of what they should be, we are then able to see them as they are. You may say, “Okay, how is this related to the suffering you mentioned earlier?” The fact that the world of experience does not conform to our ideas of how it should be is our suffering. Many of us are pretty anxious about how the upcoming election will come out. Regardless of which party or candidate we prefer, we are all suffering because we want it to come out a certain way and can in no way be sure it will. If we were truly able to view it with no preference as to how it should come out, and were able to accept the outcome as it is, with no judgment as to its rightness or wrongness, our suffering in this instance would disappear.

 So it is with everything we experience. Whether it is as simple as the way our spouse puts the roll of toilet paper on the holder or as momentous as not wanting a loved one to have died, our attachment to our preferences keeps us in a constant state of discontent, and that unremitting discontent is the nature our suffering. An important thing to understand is that trying to erase our attachment to our preferences does not mean that we stop caring about things or that we stop trying to improve our world, only that we wish to experience the truth of everything just as it exists. When we do that, then the actions we take in response to that truth will be appropriate and in harmony with reality. The goal each time is to be able to say, “It is what it is”, and more importantly, to accept it.

The last line of the poem “Hsin Hsin Ming”, by the ancient Zen patriarch Sosan, expresses what I have trying to say quite succinctly. It reads:

       

                          “Do not search for the truth; only cease to cherish opinions.”