Payables and Receivables

They call me the Kid
An I wana make it clear
I dint come here
Jus to drink the beer

I heard bout the Way
When I was a young lad
Now I practice steady
An you know I’m bad

Some boys fall for money
Some boys fall for sex
Some boys fall for drama
Dem boys all be wrecks

I tried the white powder
I tried the dope
I even tried religion
But da all made me mope

Then I heard a Bubba
He said ya gotta know
Theres notin to this trip
So jus let go

The Dharma is a way
An the Way is a road
A road that you travel
To ease the load

It isn’t very long
It isn’t very short
Whenever you doin it
You goin full court

I heard bout the Way
When I was a young lad
Now I practice steady
An you know I’m bad

A Lamentation

Having participated in similar groups, in the Zen tradition, I have seen both their advantages and disadvantages.

One of the great rewards is that it strengthens both the participant’s practice and their commitment to practice, through mutual expectations and shared group activity (meaning you’re more likely to practice diligently when you’re with a bunch of other people who are also trying likewise).

I think the biggest disadvantage is in the discussion session, because without a clear authority, its just a bunch of people giving their opinions (some less informed, others more informed) but all opinions having equal weight. In other words, there is no authority to say Joe Blow is right and Donald is a bit off track – everyone’s opinion is as valid as the next persons within the context of the discussion, (though not in their understanding of the Dharma unfortunately).

Having said that, I agree that the discussion side of the event is sometimes a strong factor in what draws people to the event. They want to not just sit in meditation, but to talk about the Dharma with someone who can answer their questions. You may find that the 15 min quickly becomes 45 min or more.

Having a priest around can be a mixed blessing. The problem in the Zen community is that understanding is integral with direct experience, and unfortunately just because someone is wearing a robe doesn’t mean they have had direct experience, yet they would be looked up to as an authority (qualified or not). This may not be such a problem in the Theravada tradition where the teaching is a bit more structurally organized.

Perhaps instead of you trying to answer peoples questions about the Dharma you could act more as a clearinghouse – directing people with questions to where (on the web or in books, for instance) that they could find the answers they seek. Perhaps they could share with the group during a following meeting what they’ve learned.

I visited a Tibetan School recently and overheard another visitor chatting with the person manning the front desk. The visitor then asked how to do a particular meditation practice. The person at the desk responded without skipping a beat: she merely said that she wasn’t qualified to teach that practice (end of discussion).

On the other hand, one of the most boring groups I ever attended was at a local Zendo, where the Centers Zen student cut off every question with the phrase “again, this is something that you have to talk to the abbot about.”

The Source of Our Heritage

It seems that as part of our community ages, its members begin to confront the inevitable. The days of worrying about jobs and partners are fewer. And as the body grows less agile, the inevitability of death comes into focus.

But for me, I have to say that it’s been a little different. Early in the 1980’s I began to spontaneous have memories of many of my past lives. Not names and dates, but general locations and time periods and fleeting glimpses of moments in those lives and a general remembrances of the shape and content of each particular life. In a few of these remembrances, I have had some of the most vivid memories of the moment of my death in that particular life.

For instance, I can still picture the look on the drunk truck driver’s face as his truck hit me when I stepped off the curb as a little old retired school teacher in my last life. And a few other death memories come back to me in the sharpest detail from other past lives.

Frankly, through realizing so many lives and so many deaths, I am not afraid of death. But what does temper me is the preciousness of my life. All of the time I have invested in it; the work I have done so that I could continue it and experience this moment. The great commitments and the sacrifices that I have made, I would not care to try to do this again.

Therefore, I would not throw this life away lightly, nor thoughtlessly.

Solo Landing

If you look around your area, you are likely to find two different kinds of Zen gatherings: Meditation groups, and Zen Centers. Meditation groups, or sitting groups, are likely to be quite informal – often just a group of people that like to practice meditation and want to do it with others. They may not have a teacher present at the group, or one member may be shouldering the job as the most knowledgeable person.

They might, in all likelihood, be meeting in one of the member’s living rooms. Zen Centers, on the other hand, are more established institutions where you are likely to encounter ordained members and you are able to take vows yourself. They are more likely to have a teacher who is teaching Zen as their livelihood. And the center is funded through community support.

You are probably going to find that there are two different kinds of Zen traditions that have made it to these US shores: Rinzai and Soto. Rinzai tends to take a more strict approach to the methodology of practice. While, in general, us Soto people tend to be a more libertine crowd. Soto schools are in more abundance, so you are more likely to find those kinds of centers than the Rinzai schools.

Zen Centers in the Soto tradition usually have periods for Zazen, meditation, in the early morning and the late afternoon, most days of the week. And these sittings are usually open to the public. Then, one day of the week, they frequently have a more extensive agenda when sitting is followed by a service (some chanting and bows), and then a Dharma talk, followed by a period of socializing where you can meet and talk with the other members.

These Zen Centers will probably have a day of the week when they hold an orientation for newcomers. (And it is often on the day when the Dharma talk is given.) During the orientation they should give you some basic guidelines and they will show you how to practice meditation.

Even if you already know how to practice meditation, it is worthwhile to take the orientation because you will at least know what the others there are doing. Otherwise, just follow along with what others are doing in the Zendo, the meditation hall, and you will be just fine. Remember, everyone will be more than happy to help you, as you would be to a newcomer when it is your turn help. By the way, I would be surprised if you met any Asians at any of the Centers in the US. So don’t worry about the language barrier. But leave your iPod in your backpack. :-)

Guided

Wandering without a home
No place to go to, no place to leave.
In the mementos of my heart I find meaning
Left again, in the emptiness of the moment.

One Volume, Many Vessels

If you’re planning on offing your self, then you really have nothing to lose by sticking around and seeing what happens in your life. That is, if you’ve given up, then you have nothing else to look forward to. And since you have nothing to gain, you have nothing to lose either by going along for the ride and seeing what happens. And you don’t know for sure either, maybe by sticking around you might learn something immensely important to you – through just experiencing the mess of your life.

Frankly, there are times in my life when I could have written the exact same words that you have posted. But hey, I’m still here. Taking it one day at a time.

Sure there is unbearable pain and sorrow, a wealth of despair and hopelessness. But you need to learn to swim through the muck of life with a light in your heart. In Buddhism we do this through practice: Actively aware of the muck of our lives, exhausted of it, eventually we grow weary of it and let it drop from our cares. (We don’t try to solve the muck, or figure a way out of it.) And in that moment’s emptiness we are renewed by the greater perspective we get from the ever-present reality of truth that transcends all of our little cares.

And in this way we learn, albeit sometimes slowly, that all that muck in our lives is not as overwhelming or important to us. We begin to learn about the source of that muck by watching it arise time and time again. And then we begin to be able to question the premise which that muck is based upon, because we can see it more objectively, not caught so overwhelming in the weight of its grasp.

But all this is from a step-by-step practice (one foot in front of the other, one day to the next), slowly realizing the way things are at the speed that the self can learn and absorb information, and transform its patterns through the process of trial and error.

I guess I didn’t explain correctly about the painting that I posted earlier. It was not an escape, a way to take my mind off my troubles. It was a meditation. That is I used painting as a way to actively engage in the awareness of my troubles, a vehicle for realizing them moment-to-moment fully in the present. I painted as I realized my burdens, “objectifying” them in a sense on the canvas, as we do in our lives.

The joy that you long for in your life in not unattainable, but it is not yours to relish now because you have some work to do in setting yourself straight in your life. Remember that the work you do now will make it possible for you to be open enough for love and joy to enter your life, without your holding obsessively onto it.

And when you do realize the higher truth of your existence, then in the joys that you find, you will be able to see that they don’t depend upon the state of such and such a relationship being present. But that they are a natural part of the splendor of the truth as it unfolds within your life.

The Elephant's Graveyard

The journey of the heart may not seem swift or straight, but it is deep and filled with meaning.

In plumbing its depths we are brought face to face with not only our highest aspirations, but with the muddy track of life we tread, as well.

No one else can tell you what is in your heart, at best they can give you some tools for you to look there.

Discovering what lies in your heart is the first step on your journey and it will probably be the last step on your journey as well.

Hope this is helpful.

Dough Mix

First off, I see two things here. One that many people just don’t see is how deeply passionate that we artists can be. We can get a head of emotion brewing in us on an average day that would overwhelm most people. And if we don’t feel this way about our work and what we are doing, our lives, then we feel a big let down. (What’s the point?)

The second thing that I see is that you’re working with the readers digest version of Buddhism. And frankly the simple lessons that you can get from this version will not satisfactorily answer your profound questions. I think that it might be helpful for you to look at it this way: it is not that Buddhism teaches us to have no attachments; it teaches us to not confuse those attachments with our identity, our true self.

The point is that the mercurial stream of life, our thoughts, passions, dreams, and despairs are always coming forth. Revealing the fabric of truth and the presence of our reality. Nirvana is not about ditching our reality for some non-being status, it is about seeing the “source” of all that is. And in that realization, we see the dance of life as it comes forth, knowing it, and in knowing it realize our own truth, our thusness. And in realizing that truth, we live the lives we are here to experience. For this is the truth as it is revealed in the light of this reality. Paint this light, because it is your own profound realization of the truth within you. And then, you not only know yourself, you know the deeper thusness of the greater reality. To have the gift to do this, as you do, is a sacred honor. To live it deeply, and at time without reason, is a great blessing. Honor your troubles for they reveal that which you need to learn.

At times when I am in deep despair and anger, I paint.

Elvis Sightings

It is my impression that the Mahayana forefathers developed the idea of the bodhisattva as a response to a decline of Buddhism. With fewer and fewer people attaining enlightenment (decades after the passing of the Master Teacher), they needed to give practitioners something to shoot for if it seemed to them that it was unlikely that they would attain actual Buddhahood.

With a more easily attainable goal in hand (being a bodhisattva, if you couldn’t become a Buddha, i.e. fully enlightened) it gave practical reasons for people to continue with their practice, and it also gave them a moral framework that they could follow. If they couldn’t live life as a full-fledged Buddha (instinctively knowing what to do), then they could live life with the guidance of the way of the bodhisattva. With a framework of morals filling in where inner guidance lacked.

I don’t think of the eightfold path as being provisional. They are embodiment of the virtues of the Buddha, of the Truth. Rather than being a path to “something”, I see them as a realization of that “something” within the space-time realm.

Ben's Heaven

"At times when I encounter a part of the dominant Western society which clearly goes against the Dharma, I feel a sense of alienation from this society."

Yes, I feel like I’m from another planet sometimes, watching the machinations of some strange civilization. Consider this, however. This society has great faults and also great achievements.

The problems are institutionalized within the society. You can’t point to any one specific thing and say that this is the cause of the problem because everything is so intertwined. Therefore, no one is completely free from quilt. We are all in this together. And we each must do our part to do the right thing as best as we can.

People may be incarnating into this life stream from many different backgrounds and for many different reasons. We don’t come here because this is Heaven; we come here to try to make it a heaven.

Of course because of the wide diversity, everyone has their own view of what heaven is. So we are all learning. Both as individuals and as a whole group. And while I cannot solve another’s problem by giving them my version of heaven (because each person has their own version that they must work with), I can encourage them and perhaps be an example to which they can relate to in their quest for heaven. Thus we proclaim the Dharma.

For me, if I empathize with another’s pain and longing, then I can bring to my view of them compassion and understanding rather than easy condemnation.

And, by the way, the potato and our Constitution are both Native American in origin. And while Native Americans are from the west, I myself, don’t consider them to be classical Western culture.

Which Way to Turn

I think that I understand the dilemma that you are in. It sounds like you want to accept yourself, while at the same time your not sure that you like the self that you see. I can offer these two paths for you to consider.

I think that first you need to ask yourself if you feel that being a big person is how you just feel right. That is, some people feel naturally like themselves carrying more weight than the Vogue fashion magazines depict. Such people would not feel normal if they were skinny.

In my own case, I paint, I make art. I can imagine a world where I don’t make art, where I have a full time high paying career, or where I live the life of a monastic who is dedicated to serving others. But when I imagine myself stopping painting to devote myself entirely to either of these two pursuits, I just can’t see doing it. Making art is very important to me for some reason that I don’t really understand. It’s just part of the way I am, and I respect this.

There are things about us that we can imagine that our lives might be better if things were a different way, but they are really just part of how we are. I have learned this over the years that this is how art is for me. If this is how “being a bit chubby” is for you, than I say embrace yourself, this is just how you are. And don’t worry about acceptance; I have known plenty of big people who have devoted partners who really are very attracted to big people.

If on the other hand that you don’t naturally see yourself as a big person, then you have the other consideration that I have to give to you. Maybe the self that you need to accept is a self that is a little more difficult for you to accept. Maybe you need to accept that you have the type of body that needs to be exercised regularly in order to burn off the calories that it takes in during the course of a normal day.

I read in a great book on fitness by Dr. Bob Arnot that the body must consume more calories each day than it needs in order to get a sufficient amount of the nutrients that it needs. In other words dieting is not a long-term solution to weight loss because your body needs the food that you are trying to deny yourself. Therefore, the only realistic option is to do enough physical activity to burn off those calories. Sometimes we just need to accept that this is how things are: that we have to do some exercise in order to maintain our health.

If this is the case with your body, as it is for me with mine, then I suggest that you find some kind of exercise practice that you enjoy doing. It is surprising that many people don’t know how wonderful exercise can make them feel. Perhaps their only experience with exercise was with some boring high school phys ed. class, so they have no experience with how much fun, exhilarating, refreshing and clearing that a pleasant workout can be.

If you don’t already have an exercise practice that you really enjoy doing, then I have this warning. Before you start doing an exercise program bear this in mind: first find an activity that interests you and that you could see yourself enjoy doing; two, start out slowly (at first only 5 minutes might be all that you can comfortably do – and that’s ok – you’ll do more and more as time goes along); three, find an activity to do that is an aerobic activity (that means it gets your heart and breath rate going), so some things that are slower activities might not be a good choice.

Be wary of borderline activities that are fun but don’t burn calories unless you really push at them (like cycling, swimming, walking). Lot’s of the women that I know either take fitness classes, dance classes (belly dancing), martial arts, rowing, jogging, or enjoying music while on the treadmill at the local gym.

If you’re too embarrassed to go to a fitness class, take the chance anyway, because I think that you will find a lot of support there for what you are doing. Remember you are not trying to be an athlete. You are going out to enjoy yourself, just as you did when you were a child running around the house.

Take that same spirit of freedom and joy and enjoy your body’s life.

A Dozen Ways to Say "I Love You"

When you’re ready to accept that you’re not a perfect person, and realize that you are who you are (with all your faults), then you will not continue this incessant battle with your self-esteem.

You will not have to worry about having high or low self-esteem because you will just be who you are. So grounded, you will meet other people who also have their own “faults” and you will be able to accept them as well, just as they are.

You’re right; no one will be able to give you the acceptance that you deny yourself (although you are never separated from the Highest Truth).

When you accept yourself as you are, then you have nothing to lose (except your time and your heart) in participating with others.

Skullfully

Once, I had been sitting for several hours, outside, over at the nearby university. I was sitting on a low wall, and leaning against the side of the large building. A little bird flew down and landed in front of me. It asked if it could sit upon my shoulder. (Don’t ask me how I knew this – it certainly didn’t speak.) I told it that it could do so. (And in the same manner, I don’t know how I did this – I certainly didn’t speak.)

Then it flew over to land on my shoulder. Unfortunately, I was not used to birds landing on my shoulder, and when its wings got close to the side of my head I became concerned that they might brush against my eyes. So I ducked to the side. The poor birdie fluttered in mid air for a few seconds, its perch (my shoulder) suddenly gone, and then flew to the ground, then flew off. I’m afraid that I wasn’t a very good host.

A couple of years later, I was again sitting for some hours over at the campus. I sat in just the same place as before. This time a dragonfly landed in front of me. Remembering my previous encounter, I invited the dragonfly to sit upon the front of my shirt. (Don’t ask me how I did this – I certainly didn’t speak.) However, it only felt comfortable enough to fly over and sit upon my arm.

We looked at each other amazed. It was iridescent blue, with delicate lacy wings. Its eyes bulged huge above its head. After awhile, I suppose we each were becoming a little bored with our mutual examinations, and I wondered if it might bite me. And then, I sensed that it wondered if I might bite it. Just then he flew away – choosing the more cautious course of action.

These moments truly are precious.

The Seven Winds

I think that it is important to recognize that Zen is not a path to enlightenment, but a path of enlightenment.

To practice Zen is to practice the way, and that way includes realizing enlightenment. It is not some prize that you get only after decades of struggle. Realizing enlightenment occurs just as we are, whenever there is the practice of Zen.

I understand that it is easy to think that more is better. But this is not the way of Zen. It is better to know your true self, just as you are, than to search for some ideal that seems to be appealing, but after all, is not what you really are at one with.

The Emptiness of Zero

Perhaps it might help if you realized that those “other people” are suffering just as much as you are. (Prejudice and intolerance are really just the outward faces of deep fear and insecurity.) Would you not offer them the same kindness, compassion, and understanding that you would want for yourself?

For me, the way of the Buddha is to follow the path of truth. And in the light of truth we see the emptiness of self. And in the emptiness of self, we see the emptiness of anger and fear (not that they don’t still grip you by the balls). But you go on one day at a time, and in practice (of the Buddha way) the ocean of emptiness washes over “you” again. And I find that in the Truth of the moment the way of understanding and compassion is realized.


Many years ago I did a bit of simple arithmetic. If I set out to “get even” with those who wronged me, then considering all the “wrongs” that modern society confronts us with, I would have to spend most of my life getting back at people. Since I could see little joy in a life filled with vindictiveness, I decided it would be better to just move on.