Zen Seemlessness

I want to offer a few links to you all today.

First off, I just finished this post on my other blog and thought it would be of interest to readers here. It's a post about mindfulness and relationships, and has definitely been influenced by my spiritual practices.

Next, a few weeks ago, I gave the Sunday morning dharma talk at zen center. Given all the work our board of directors has been doing on the community's long term vision, it was a good opportunity for me to share how I've make that work into a discipline and practice.

And finally, the webzine I have a regular column for - Life as a Human - just turned three years old. My writings have been hosted there from the beginning, and I'm pleased to be part of their ongoing team of writers from around the world. Here's my latest postover there.

*The above is a photograph I took last summer on a bike ride through St. Paul.

Real Zen Practice

I seriously love this post by long time reader and blogger Jeanne of the Dalai Grandma blog. Among other things, it speaks to American Zen's obsession with form and "real" practice, and to our collective failure to live compassionately.

Special-endurance Zen is a masculinist tradition whose paramilitary rituals play to testoserone. It is fed in this culture by the failures of the nuclear family, by the American craving to succeed, to be special. It is supported by teachers who write and talk about how important it is for you to have a special understanding born of mystical insight. They don't talk nearly as much about simple everyday kindness. They chant hymns to Kanzeon (Kuan Yin), but are not trained in compassion. Koan study throws fuel on the flame of striving. Robes, hitting with sticks, still worse.

I don't know whether the man who sat next to me so briefly the other night had ever attended that group before, or ever will again, or where he went when he left. I hope it wasn't to a bar. In the discussion of generosity afterward, no one talked about the generosity of heart that should mean you set up plenty of chairs so that every visitor can find a comfortable seat. The compassion that should mean you welcome every person who comes in the door.

In that other Zen group, whose karma lingers on, I overheard one of the regulars tell another about his visit to one of the big East Coast Zen Centers. I've visited there. There were a lot of Lexuses and BMWs in the parking lot. This guy, who was married with children, said, "Wouldn't it be wonderful to go there for a three-month retreat and "really practice?" I kept walking, thinking They don't get it.

Yesterday, I was in a meeting with one of our senior teachers, talking about vision for the Zen Center. As board president, I've been doing this kind of stuff for multiple years now, reflecting together with my dharma brothers and sisters upon what our sangha's values are, and how we might go about implementing those values into functions and structures in the future.

What is it that we are doing well, and what is it that we could improve or change completely? I asked those questions to this particular senior teacher yesterday, amongst several others. His responses were interesting. A blend of we're perfect just as we are, and we could use a little improvement, to echo Suzuki Roshi.

One thing I noticed though - and I've long admired this teacher's calm, wise, and reflective presence - is how there was a current of this "real practice" thing that Jeanne mentions in her post above. Namely, that what constitutes real Zen is found in retreats, periods of sutra study, and lots and lots of upright seated zazen. Now, the chair vs. cushion bit isn't an issue here. The teacher in question moved to sitting in a chair several years ago in response to his aging body. He, in fact, has even given time during dharma talks to speak about this move, and others. Like I said, I've long respected how he carries himself, and so it's important that I offer a more complete picture here.

When I read posts like Jeanne's, and consider my own, twisted and evolving practice, what I think we're getting at is the failure to really practice the relational. That Americans especially, steeped in individualism as we are, don't tend to do community well. Struggle sometimes with basic kindness. And sharing. Working together without lots of conflict. Feeling gratitude for each other. Embodying the relational qualities of Buddha's teachings, in other words.

For those of us who aren't living in monasteries, there's a lot of forgetting - or never knowing really - of all the ways in which Buddha's teachings were born of, and enhanced by, being in sangha together over the long haul. In a much different way than we lay folks are "in sangha." And yet, at the same time, Buddha's teachings were not exclusive to monks and nuns, and didn't emphasize one way of practice to awaken. He offered different forms and focuses for different folks. Those who came along later were the ones that decided certain forms and focuses were "the best" or "only true" ways to wake up in this life.

Even though I have rarely done formal retreat practice at zen center in recent years, I continue to have a love for its ability to support people to let go and see deeply. I wouldn't be the person I am today without the hours and hours of zazen and bowing and chanting and fumbling through oryoki I have done at zen center over the past decade. Nor do I think to myself "I'm done with all that." Not at all. It's more that I'm listening to the rhythm of my life and trying to be the reed for the current sound to come through. Which of late, has meant some unright zazen. And things like walking meditation with silent lovingkindness chanting in the skyways downtown during lunchtime. Or yoga nidra practice lying on my back. Or studying Dogen with dharma friends in their homes. Or simply offering a kind word, sense of gratitude, or a bit of humor for whomever I see when I'm at zen center.

What is real practice? How do you know?

Wild and Liberated

I have a new post about the Occupy movement up on one of my other blogs that might interest some of the readers here. It could have been originally posted here, but I want to revive that blog to offer poetry and other writings which might not fit what's been happening at Dangerous Harvests.

Buddhist Relationships - A Few Comments on Attachment

I received an interesting question from a reader, and thought I'd share my answer here.

How does one enter into and maintain a relationship without forming attachments? It's just one of the concepts of Buddhism that just don't seem to fit for me personally, either because I consider attachments to be very important for me, or it could just be that I misunderstand that particular concept. What are your thoughts?

This is the answer I wrote back to her.

I think there are a few ways to look at attachment when it comes to Buddhism. Part of the challenge is that many of the teachers and teachings that were brought to the U.S. were from monastic-based Buddhist practice, where renunciation and celibacy are centralized. Which causes some trouble for most of us who are living "regular" lives "in the world."

The Buddha, though, actually taught different teachings and practices geared towards monastics, and others toward lay folks. And since the Buddha's time, plenty of additional teachings and even entire schools of Buddhism have been focused on supporting lay folks.

When it comes to relationships, the way I understand it is that loving yhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifour partner, or children, or parents, etc. is intimately tied to letting go of your stories about who that person is or isn't, and learning how to be completely with them everyday as they are. I also believe it's learning how to loosen up the grip you might have around any expectations - about your partner, yourself, and the relationship itself.

Now, that doesn't mean that anything goes, but more that you do your best to drop off any behaviors or thought patterns that are overly needy or controlling, and learn to do or say what you need to without attachment to specific results.
__________

In addition to this, I wrote a post in May about sexual desire that takes up attachment from a different angle.

If anyone has any additional thoughts, or if you have a completely different view, feel free to leave a comment.

Samsara of Intimate Relationships

A few months ago, I started writing another blog - one about dating and relationships. I know some of you took a look at it when I first started, and a few are probably even following it, which is cool. Thank you. I really enjoy writing both Dangerous Harvests and the relationship blog, and so far, I've done well keeping them both going, but also allowing a day or two to skip by if I'm not feeling the urge to write anything. In fact, having two active blogs has actually, in some odd way, helped lessen the internal "need" to post all the time. Perhaps that's because on any given day, I have two different options to do my writing for instead of always trying to fit my thoughts into a single thematic basket.

Anyway, what's been on my mind today is all the ways in which people can be shallow, unkind, unrealistic, stingy, and downright crazy when it comes to dating and relationships. It shouldn't be that much of a surprise, given how intimacy - and the desire for intimacy - tend to unearth all the muck beneath our "calm, cool, and collected" surfaces. Besides deeply diving into one's spiritual life, finding a partner and being with a partner might easily be the most challenging and thus potentially enlightening experiences a person can go through.

After reading and participating in some discussions about dating and relationships today, I can palpably feel the immense levels of pain and suffering many people have. Bitter single folks. Bitter married folks. People who have been burned by others in the past. People who have been in, or currently are, in abusive relationships. People who are deeply afraid of rejection. People who have such a sense of entitlement that they can't even see why others get so angry with them. People living in fantasies that can never be reality. People lost and confused and lonely.

Each of us has experienced a little piece of this in our lives, even those who are the most awakened, and have had the most wonderful of relationships. And some of us have had more than our share of misery around dating and relationships. But in the end, in some form or another, the samsara of intimate romantic relationships touches us all, even those who choose to renounce such relationships entirely. I'll never forget some of the conversations I had with one of the Catholic nuns I used to work with. She was always interested in how my dating life was. And she'd tell me stories about men she had met in the past, and how she occasionally wondered "what if." I never once got the sense that she regretted her decision to join the sisters, but that didn't mean she wasn't touched by the power and challenges of intimate relationships.

As you go about your day, especially if you're encountering someone whose ideas or behavior really rubs you the wrong, remember that he or she, too, has been touched by deep suffering. Perhaps that remembering might soften your response or judgement a little bit. Be well.

Transcending the Past

Moving on from the awards discussion, which has gotten too ridiculous for my taste, here's a story that brought me to tears this morning.

In 1993, Mary Johnson's only child, Laramuin Byrd, was shot to death during a dispute at a house party in Minneapolis. His daughter, Rosalynda, now 17, was born five months later.

Byrd's killer was Marlon Green, then a 16-year-old kid juggling a chaotic life as a reputed street gang member as well as a respected conflict-resolution peer at his high school. Green, who had no previous criminal record, was convicted as an adult of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Though a woman of deep faith, Johnson long thought of her 20-year-old son's killer as a cold-blooded animal. She exchanged harsh words with his mother, Carole Green, during the trial.

But tonight, Johnson will spend Christmas Eve and share a meal with the man who killed her son — a 34-year-old man now known as Oshea Israel and whom she regards as her "spiritual son."

Johnson also befriended Carole Green, 54, who came by bus this week from her home in a Chicago suburb.

I tend to be one that grows tired of all the sappy, feel good stories that appear this time of year, but this story transcends it all.

It's really easy to condemn people for their past, suggesting that because of something they did, or the ways they thought, they are now not worthy to be called humans anymore. The "cold blooded animal" view of those who seriously harm or kill others is very common, even amongst Buddhists I know. It's not so much having such a view in response to trauma and tragedy; it's that people often hold it for situations where they weren't even directly affected. And while it's one thing to go through the kind of rage that brings up such hatred when something happens, it's quite another to justify maintaining that outlook, often for years on end.

Carol, Mary, and Oshea are role models for all of us. Their ability to transcend the past, build relationships in the present, and work towards a better tomorrow is inspiring, and a great reminder that our lives need not be condemned and trapped by the mistakes of the past.

Buddhist Lay Practice in History

The Eighth Century Chinese Chan (Zen) Master Layman Pang understood that Buddhist practice does not have a fixed form to be followed by all. But while he is remembered amongst the famous teachers of the past, in my opinion, it was the synergy of the family as a whole that led to such great understanding.

Here is a snippet of their story:

Originally from Hengyang in the southern Chinese province of Hunan, Pang was a successful merchant with a wife, son, and daughter. The family's wealth allowed them to devote their time to study of the Buddhist sūtras, in which they all became well-versed. Pang's daughter Ling Zhao was particularly adept, and at one point even seems to be have been more advanced and wise than her father, as the following story illustrates:

“ The Layman was sitting in his thatched cottage one day [studying the sūtras]. "Difficult, difficult," he said; "like trying to scatter ten measures of sesame seed all over a tree." "Easy, easy," Mrs. Pang said; "like touching your feet to the ground when you get out of bed." "Neither difficult nor easy," Ling Zhao said; "on the hundred grass tips, the great Masters' meaning."[1] ”

After Pang had retired from his profession, he is said to have begun to worry about the spiritual dangers of his material wealth, and so he placed all of his possessions in a boat which he then sunk in a river.

There are so many learnings to be gleaned from this tiny bit of narrative about them. Notice the way material possessions are dealt with. They clearly benefited from having some wealth, given the freed time for Buddhist study it allowed them. In fact, you can take from this that if what you have materially gives you more time to study and practice, then it's beneficial in your life. Yet, at a certain point, there was also a realization that attachment to possessions is commonplace, and a great hindrance, and thus needs to be abandoned. The dramatic sinking of the family's valuables puts one hell of an exclamation point on that teaching, but I do wonder if it might have been more powerful to hear that the Pangs gave their wealth to another family or individual desiring to have time for study and practice. This is one of the challenges I have always had with the heavy emphasis on poverty and material renunciation in the old stories. That works fine for monastics and wandering individuals, but it's unrealistic for most lay practitioners. With that, I still think theirs is an example for all of us today, who struggle with views about both wealth and poverty.

The second learning from this story is the relational quality of practice. This simple story of a father studying the sutras, and a mother and daughter responding to his comments with their own insights is an important reminder to those of us who have been steeped a bit too much in "just sitting" practice. Chan/Zen is relational. Awakening is relational. Whatever wisdom Layman Pang developed over his lifetime and infused into his poems and sayings came together through studies and practice with his family, interactions with his customers (as a merchant), and practice with other Chan teachers of the day. Even if we each must break through the veil covering the truth on our own, it's our relationships (both with humans and with the entire universe of beings) that provide the ground for awakening.

A third learning, which maybe is less apparent, is that if you look closely enough at the old stories, you'll discover brilliance that hasn't been elevated into the traditional canon. We know very little about Ling Zhao, yet her appearance as a young woman of wisdom is just one of many examples throughout old Buddhist stories. And you can bet that for every Layman Pang and Ling Zhao, there were plenty more who lived unrecorded lives, perhaps completely unrecognized outside of the small community they came from.

It tended to be the monastics who were educated, who wrote down the stories, and who passed along what was considered to be the teachings of the day. So, we're left with a partial record of events, persons, and practices - one that privileged monastics, privileged men, and privileged those who had wealth in their lives at some point.

Even so, this doesn't mean we can't uncover some of the wisdom of great lay practitioners of the past. We can. This little story offers a lot, and it's just one of many. Instead of relying solely on the teachings of modern and current practitioners, I think it's wise to dig into the past - to glean what we can from those who came long before us.

Relational Zen

I found myself quite moved by this post from the blog On the Precipice. In particular, I'd like to look at the following two paragraphs:

If this practice isn’t about relationship, fundamentally, then I’d question what awakening means to the person who claims as much. Whether it’s realizing the no-self, the Self, or the nature of mind–whatever you want to call it, waking up has something to do with seeing the illusion of separation. Embedded in that is relationship. Relationship of observer to observed, of mind to object, of self to other. Buddhist practice and meditation are then not about disengaging with the world but rather engaging with it fully. But this daily life practice, practice in relationship (which is really all of practice, since the body and mind are always relating to experience), can be difficult to do with no support system, with no conditions ripe for cultivating stillness and solitude. Why? Because of deeply embedded habit patterns, grooves of behavior, conditioning. Because, from Reggie Ray: “Relationships stir up the toxins in us, to the surface.” Particularly those where physical intimacy is added to the equation, and much for that reason, I assume Joshu Sasaki says: “The best monastery for Americans might in fact be marriage.”

What’s so complicated is, while relationship itself is the default experience of life, we can’t entirely choose to be in romantic relationship. By far, more than any time in my life, there is real contentment in being alone. I have no interest in dating or casual encounters, certainly. And the prospect of having to make life decisions with only myself to consider is not as daunting as it once was. I credit intensive retreat practice and deep solitude with allowing this acceptance of what is, this clear seeing into our fundamental aloneness. Thanks to a couple of good friends for making me admit it, the undercurrent of my expectation post, however, was that I would like to have more intimacy in my life – namely because I see the mirror of relationship to be an important, if not the most important, element of this practice. And in order to spiritually evolve and grow as a human being, I think it’s essential to be in relationship; and those that trigger the difficult emotions which help us the most can be that much more valuable as a result. But how to want this without attaching to any particular expectation

Although romantic relationships are emphasized in this section, Katherine points out later that living with her parents as a mid-30's adult, and experiencing the old entanglements that come with those parent/children relationships, has been quite valuable as well.

This makes me think of Peter Hershock's dense, but quite interesting book Liberating Intimacy. A PhD philosophy thesis about Ch'an Buddhism, this text can be quite daunting upon first glance, but I think it's worth it. Amongst the major points Hershock makes is the following: both suffering and the liberation from suffering are social, and that Ch'an practice is about being dynamically creative in how we "relate" in the world. He reminds readers again and again that since suffering isn't owned a by person, and since there isn't any fixed self to own it in the first place, that all we experience is profoundly relational, even if we each experience life in a unique manner.

Hermit monks and nuns aside - although even they are in relationships to the places they live, the air they breath, and whomever they came in contact before going off into the mountains and valleys. But leaving them aside, it's fairly easy to see how Buddhist practice is very much about relationships. Monastics have their fellow monastics, and anyone that they might care for or be supporting outside of the monastic community. Householders have parents, friends, lovers, co-workers, neighbors - the lists go on and on.

We "Western" Buddhists are fond of saying practice is about zazen, retreats, bowing, chanting, and whatnot. And it is - to some degree. But what about this "mirror of relationship" Katherine speaks about? In some ways, the influx of psychology into Buddhist circles has elevated relational life, and brought it into consideration. However, I also believe the same thing has also created a veil of language through which people hide themselves from truly experiencing the relational quality of life.

Instead of opening to a moment with a loved one, for example, how often do we - you and I - end up trying diagnose some problem or troubling emotion another person is experiencing, and then shift our attention towards "fixing" it somehow? Or even worse, how often do we reduce spiritual practice to some kind of working with difficult emotions process?

The "toxins" Reggie Ray speaks of in the quote above are much more than emotions, and even though emotions are a familiar gateway to deeper understanding, the relational quality of life is far too vast to limit to something like we all experience anger, therefore we are interconnected.

I remember as a child being fascinated by a large cottonwood tree that was in a yard across the alley from my grandparent's house. Every year, it's huge branches released enough seeds covered in white hairs to blanket most of my grandparent's back yard. A snowfall in late spring is how I saw it. This particular tree had to be near 100 years old, and I remember wondering how it had gotten so big, and lived so long. One time, we took a tape measure and measured around the tree's trunk. I only remember it was "really big" - ah, the clarity of an eight year old mind. Anyway, stepping around the tree meant leaping over the large, exposed sections of the tree's roots - almost like snakes to my kid mind.

It's said that the natural habitat of these trees is near rivers or other muddy places, but that human soil cultivation has expanded the growing range - hence this large cottonwood in the middle of city neighborhood, no where near a river or lake. When I think of that tree and the soil, the rain and the soil, and the soil and the people tended the soil, it's all relational. Try to separate it out, to describe the difference facets of these relationships and you get some nice sounding chemistry and biology - but ultimately a limited story.

Life is relational, and liberation comes through it, but we can't pin "it" down. There often seems to be discussions and debates online about dharma transmission, enlightenment "experiences," and the pitfalls of teachers who don't seem to handle relationships with students or even other teachers well. Lots of talk about all of this - but think about it, whatever is being talked about in these arenas, a lot of it really boils down to the relational quality of practice life. Sure, there are solitary figures throughout Buddhist history who have been considered enlightened without the need of a teacher or sangha, but it's other people who speak of this enlightenment, and in a way, confirm it.

But there's something troubling, I think, about over emphasizing the more solitary aspects of Buddhist practice, including our cherished zazen practice. How do we function as social beings embedded in neighborhoods, communities, nations? How committed are we to being with the people in our lives, no matter how much they are struggling? How willing are we to get close to others, and in doing so, be exposed to the mirrors they each will hold up to us?

Buddha's story is often cut in half in our collective memories. The drama of his leaping over the palace wall and leaving his family behind - that sticks with us. The near death experience he had after starving himself sticks with us. The enlightenment under the bodhi tree sticks with us. In other words, the more solitary parts.

But what about the development of the sangha? The encounters with kings, thieves, and everyday householders? How about the reappearance of several family members, who became part of the new community? The forty plus years of teaching, entirely done with others present?

Less dramatic than the lone seeker part of the story, but no less valuable. In fact, probably much more important because without it, what we have today as practice and teachings wouldn't be here in the way it is. Maybe not at all. Had Buddha gone off into the mountains to live off the grid for the rest of his days, the way Buddhists view suffering and liberation would be - in my opinion - quite different. And frankly, much less beneficial to both lay practitioners and monastics living in communities. Which is nearly all of us.

And thus the very act of a single man 2600 years ago to not disappear illuminates, itself, the relational quality of life.

Maybe Impermanence isn't what You Think

Melody over at This is Me had an interesting post about relationships yesterday. Here are the first two paragraphs:

From time to time I've had patients tell me that everyone who comes into their lives eventually leaves them. Upon discussion, they are usually able to identify at least one person who has consistently been there for them (thereby acknowledging that not everyone leaves them). Still, they feel abandoned and unlovable.

I've given this some thought and have reached the conclusion that it is the rule - and not the exception - for most people who come into our lives to eventually leave. Sometimes there are reasons - someone moves away or you have an argument - and sometimes there really isn't any reason. You simply "lose touch" with one another.

This coming and going has been on my mind a lot lately. There has been plenty of it happening for me over the past few months, more intensely it seems than at many other times in my life. Old friends going. New friends coming. Old girlfriends peeking out again from behind the tress. Others not sure if they are coming or going. A new family member coming. Maybe there will also be one going soon as well. Hard to tell for sure.

On one level, no one stay with you all the way. Whether it's through breakup, growing apart, or death - everyone eventually "goes" from your life. On another level, even the people we are the closest to are coming and going in every moment, eluding our grasp even as we hold them closely. And on still another level, this coming and going of people in our lives is just what we see, feel, and experience as such. It isn't happening in the way we think it is at all.

Like Melody's patients, I sometimes feel abandoned. It's easy in this fleeting world of ours to sometimes feel that you're being left behind by others, tossed away for someone or something else. In fact, you can feel this even when someone or a group of someones is right in the room with you, talking to you and spending time with you. So it's not really about them in some senses. It's about something nagging at you from within, hoping that another person will come and rub a balm all over you.

It's been many years since I felt "unlovable" as some of Melody's patients do, but I remember that one as well. For me, it was always tied with making mistakes, and not being "perfect" whatever that meant at the time.

But even if those of us who feel like we are loved, and lovable, can still get mired in abandonment. The wondering why someone has gone. Or why they have returned to muck around at the edges, but not really to fully come back into your life. It's not easy in a world full of impermanent people, places, and things to be truly ok with all the coming and going that goes on.

So, maybe it's best to let yourself not be ok sometimes. To not try and be stoic, hard-nosed, and faux enlightened about the ways in which you struggle with relationship comings and goings.

Because, think about it, most of the time, it's difficult to know if someone is coming or going for sure. Part of the struggle, much of the struggle perhaps is in wanting to have things defined, finalized, boxed away as past or present. And life just isn't like that. My long dead grandfather still "comes into my life" at times. And I have had a friend for well over a decade who seems to be long gone, even though he pops up in my life from time to time.

Maybe all of this is pointing to the fact that impermanence itself isn't exactly what people tend to think of it.

*Image - Picasso, Girl Before Mirror

The Challenges of Ending Relationships

Relationship endings aren't often what we would like them to be.
I found this post on the Elephant Journal. What I liked about it was that the author is writing about trying to shift a longstanding pattern of guilt and enabling when it comes to her friendships. This isn't something I experience in many of my friendships, but I do think it has colored a few of them over the years, and it certainly has colored a couple of romantic relationships I have been in.

Of one friendship in particular, she writes:

I started to notice that “Shelby,” the girl I had called my best friend for the last several years, kind of wasn’t anymore. I saw that our relationship revolved almost entirely around me either accommodating or assisting her in troubleshooting her various crises… often crises of her own making. After years of patience, and telling myself that Shelby was just going through a tough spell, it slowly dawned on me that Shelby was addicted to drama, and determined to keep me embroiled in it. I began to feel like an accomplice every time I humored her through a conversation about how untrustworthy her husband was and how justified she felt in hacking into his email to see whether or not he was doing anything fishy. I started to view her as the untrustworthy, fishy one.

But when I tried to step away from the crazier aspects of our relationship, or express my real opinion about her behavior, her resistance was palpable. It was all downhill from there. After months of painful pull-aways and one teary but pointless confrontation, I eventually resigned myself to being one of her many “ex friends.”

If you have had a strong connection with someone for a long time, it's hard to let go. And I think those of us steeped in discussions about compassion, kindness, and being ethical can easily get trapped into trying to find "the perfect" way to end things. The desire to live up to the values you believe in can get really intense when a long-standing relationship is involved, precisely because most of those values tend to be tied to how you interact with others and the world around you.

I had a good friend for many years who became increasingly destructive and abusive. We used to have wonderful discussions about philosophy, politics, religion, and writing. We'd go to concerts together. Hang out at coffee shops and pubs together. I consider him one of the people who helped me break out of my social shell and connect more with others. So, there was a lot to like about our friendship, and I'm glad it happened.

However, as the years went on, he got increasingly rigid in his views, and also paranoid about how others related with him. The bosses at his jobs were always conspiring to get rid of him, and never listened to anything he had to say. Other friends were turning against him, as had his mother, step father, and sometimes his sister as well. I went along with these conversations for too long. I wanted to be supportive, but mostly I ended up just aiding his paranoia and sense of persecution. Then, I found myself having to stand up against a decision he made that negatively impacted others, and I, too, started being viewed as an enemy. Things unraveled slowly. We'd fight about the same things we used to freely discuss. I would call him on his drinking and driving, and he'd get pissed. I started to stop calling him, and ignore his calls. And finally, there was an ugly incident where old arguments flared up while out at the bar, and he decided to respond by pouring a pitcher of beer on me.

He tried contacting me, first directly, and then through a mutual friend for several months afterward. But I had no interest. It was done. And I felt there was nothing I could say to him that would make the ending any better, nor do I think I could now. This came in the early years of my practice life, and probably the only difference is that this friendship most likely wouldn't happen now. Our interests and ways of living just wouldn't match up the way they had when we first met.

Over the years, I have watched myself longing for "good endings." It's an impossible place to be because it requires you to try and control what you can't control. No matter how "Buddhist" I act (whatever that means), the relationship is going to end however it ends.

What is your experience with relationship endings? What have your learned?

Making Peace With Instability

The Right Rev. Danny Fisher (lol, I love playing with titles) has an excellent post on practicing with a broken heart that, in my opinion, is a must read. Over the past month, I have had my own experiences with all of this, as a relationship went from daily discussions of buying a house together and perhaps opening a business together, to a land of great uncertainty about the whole thing at best. It may be over. It may be on hold. I honestly don't know.

Danny writes about a relationship that ended two years ago, and it's lasting effects on him.

I may be a peace-loving Buddhist, but clearly I’m still as big and as vain a moron as any other guy. Yes, she was knowingly careless with my love; indeed, she rode roughshod over this heart that was never as happy as it was in the short time it belonged to her. But I also know that life has not always been kind to her. Actually, I would say that it has often been aggressively the opposite of kind: no one should have to go through any of things that she has had to endure. I’m not sure that this necessarily means she should get a pass on everything vis-à-vis me, but it does put things into some kind of perspective; it engenders some important measures of compassion in a situation that is otherwise charged with strong emotions.

“Matters of the heart are the hardest,” as the old platitude goes. It’s hard to sit with all these feelings and act skillfully: I adored her like no other and was completely devastated when she ended the relationship. It’s hard to come to the realization that much of my suffering could have been avoided had I paid attention to what was actually happening and not let myself get carried away by my hopes for and fears about that relationship. It’s hard to see that the outcome would have been the same no matter what I did or didn’t do. What she really wanted was just to not be alone—and who could blame anyone for that?—but I wouldn’t see the truth. I simply saw the green light, inviting me to at last let out all the love for her that was in my heart.

I have certainly experienced my share of getting carried away with hopes and fears, not only this time around, but every time around. I can also see how this is true of anything I love, or have loved, in my life. Hopes and fears around career. Hopes and fears around friendships. Hopes and fears around family. Hopes and fears around Buddhist practice. Hopes and fears around living and dying itself.

These hopes and fears are all opportunities to come face to face with yourself, to become a liberating agent. They also are vast caverns we can loose our lives to, winding our way along the ragged edges, trying to force the map to conform to our desires. It's very much like those old European cartographers, who drew beautiful maps of worlds that never existed, and then handed them to explorers, who landed in places they thought were somewhere else entirely.

When I hear “you’re a failure,” that’s my ego talking. It’s a cop-out—a way I try to let myself off the hook in terms of the hard work of being a Buddhist practitioner. The tradition expects me to show up in all circumstances and learn from my mistakes, otherwise there’s no waking up. I must recognize the opportunities here. This situation and my increasing awareness of the places where I am still very stuck, like anything else—like everything else—are opportunities, invitations, to go deeper in my practice.

As I strive to remember this, the words of one of my teachers, Frank Berliner, come back to me again and again: “It’s called the noble truth of suffering, not the shitty truth of suffering.” In other words, as long as I insist on shrinking from suffering—instead of recognizing it as something that might teach me if I’m brave enough to look at it—progress on the path simply isn’t possible. Difficult as it can be, letting the world “tickle my heart,” as Frank’s teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche would say, is imperative to real spiritual development. If I can really experience suffering, let my heart be tickled, I can understand—I can grow.

I think part of our problem as modern people is that we believe that everything in the world is completely understandable, explainable, reduce-able to human-sized bites. The "noble" truth of suffering reminds us both that we can discover the roots of our misery and work to liberate ourselves, but also that the world's functioning is pretty mysterious still, despite all the inroads we have made as a species. The Buddha's first words in the Bringer of Light Sutra are:

"I considered: ‘This Dhamma that I have attained is profound, hard to see and hard to understand, peaceful and sublime, unattainable by mere reasoning, subtle, to be experienced by the wise.

We 21st century digital boys and girls could use a little less confidence in our basic understanding of how the world works and a little more bowing to mystery. Maybe mystery isn't the perfect word here, but I'm sticking with it none the less. Why do things happen exactly the way they do? What makes you think that you can know for sure? Or even that good, old Shakyamuni was so clairvoyant that he could see and understand everything that occurred in the world?

Romantic relationships, with all their intensity, twists and turns, really defy explanations most of the time. And if they last awhile, they are bound to stir up a lot of shit, and create sometimes profound levels of instability. I'm not talking about psychological disorders (although this can happen too), when I say instability I mean a shaking, sometimes to the core, of what one's identity is. All the attachments to a certain image of one's self come to the forefront, get poked at, and/or directly challenged. This is part of the reason why humans struggle so much with these kind of relationships.

Humans don't like instability, even though it's really what the relative world is all about.

Making peace with instability itself seems like a path worth walking.

Danny's trying, I'm trying, we all are in our own ways, trying to make peace with instability. How it happens exactly, though, I really don't know.