Overriding the Desire for Social Acceptance

There is a strong desire running through most of us to both appear happy and healthy to others, and to actually be happy and healthy ourselves. When the latter is absent, often the pressure to put on appearances is heightened. Others worry, and you don't want others to worry. So you try to manage yourself and also others by sweeping all the shit under the rug. Pretty damned screwy.

It's vitally important to explore the rough edges that appear in your life. To not automatically default into a view that says feeling depressed or sad or upset means you're faulty, in need of therapy, or some other such story. It's true that some of us fall too deeply into despair or rage, for example, and need to go for intensive help of some sort. However, I believe in this modern world littered with psychologists and spiritual programs emphasizing psychology, it's really easy to embrace the story that you're in trouble, and need to "do therapy."

One of the symptoms of all of this is over-emphasizing "positive thinking and acting." I found two recent posts addressing this issue, which are worth a look.

The Dalai Grandma has been writing, among other things, about her experience with needing a kidney transplant. One of the reasons I'd recommend her blog is that she presents the whole situation honesty, and in detail. Sometimes, she's living in hopefulness and joy. Other times, she's cloudy and disconnected. And still other times, it's crankiness and frustration. In other words: reality.

I don't like to be told to look on the bright side, though of course there's a reason I undertook this kidney transplant, to live much better, much longer, once we're through this. But as for putting a spin on my experience, there is this experience, what it is, in total, though it's only that - experience. Today it's been unpleasant. Much of the day in bed trying to be warm, cold sweats, blurred vision, inability to concentrate, nose running. Immunosuppressants are very strong. My nurse told me to eat when I take them (3 times a day) and that cut down on stomach pain and belching. At least I'm not nauseated. (I know, that's thinking positive. And at least I haven't come down sick in some other way, and there are many ways. And I'm not "in rejection." In other words, this is working fine. A good recovery.)

It seems to me it's best when whatever one might call "positive" thinking comes out naturally, manifesting through one's experience, and not out of an attempt to please or pacify or avoid. And we don't need to be dangerously ill in order to experience a shift in perspective about something that we've suffered over in the past. But obviously, when such things come, the intensity is hard to ignore.

Emma over at the Chronic Meditator has some similar reflections in her latest post.

Here's what I'm exploring...

If I have a day when I feel miserable, bitter, and very ungrateful about being sick...should I feel a preference that this day not be that way? Should I feel a preference that I feel at ease and peaceful being sick? Or should I have no preferences ?

For me, this exploration is very rich. I'm suddenly allowing all these really difficult feelings to flow through my body - boredom, frustration, anxiety about the future, terror, emptiness, and despair. I know this all sounds really miserable, and not like 'good news' at all, but I have this strong feeling that allowing these feelings to flow is really my path.

I resonate with this sense of flow, and letting go of claiming or privileging one set of experiences over another. One of the challenges I have experienced with allowing this kind of flow, or paying attention to the flow, is that it shows you the instability of "yourself" and your identities. People ask you how you're doing and you aren't quite sure what to say. Who am I? becomes more central of a question, which probably means you're pointed in the right direction, but it also shifts how you interact with others - to the point, where some of the significant people in your life might struggle to relate to you, and you to them.

When faced with this awkward, unstable ground, I often, you often, all of us often choose some sort of bypass. Positive thinking is just one form. But the point is that instead of feeling awkward, unstable, and not terribly in knowing, we opt to do something that plugs us back into the socially accepted field. In other words, we opt to maintain social acceptance over discovering who we truly are.

This shouldn't be something we "get down" about. It's pretty hardwired into humans to do what we can to maintain some level of social acceptance. But I think awakening in this life requires some bucking of that, some willingness to override that collective impulse that drives us to turn away, disown, and even hate part of our experience.

p.s. The image is a nod to my sister, who loves Napoleon Dynamite. I didn't care for it much to be honest.

No Resolution from the Outside

I have been sitting with longing this morning. It's been interesting to watch it shift and change over the past hour. A few minutes of irritation. Followed by a curious uproar of suspicion towards the strangers sitting next to me, which then morphed into a desire to be invisible, and then some bone deep sadness, and finally these words running through my mind "There is no resolution from the outside."

This week has been filled with unfinished conversations. Phone calls missed. E-mails coming and going with questions not answered, or perhaps answered by not answering. I have been on both ends - not responding to a few people, and also not being responded to by a few others. It's gotten me noticing how attached I can get to having human contact, and specifically, to being loved and appreciated by others. There is nothing unique in this. I don't know a person on the planet who doesn't, at some level, long for love and appreciation (even if in sometimes very warped ways). But when you start to pay attention to this longing closely, you'll notice something interesting about it - nothing is ever enough to fulfill it.

When I was younger, I believe I tied my entire "self-worth" or sense of how I was in the world to how others viewed me. Again, this is probably pretty commonplace, but I'm starting to think most of us lie to ourselves as "mature adults" by saying that we outgrew that phase in our lives. Have you? Are you sure?

During our class at the zen center Wednesday evening, a fellow student talked about her excessive checking of e-mail during the day. For her, it was about distracting herself from some larger project or commitment, a way to check out of being present with what was currently on her plate. I also check my e-mail too often, and when I am at home, I also find myself checking the phone for messages, or listening for a ring a bit too often. And sitting here now, I can see that it's all about trying to fill that longing which cannot be filled in such a way.

There is no resolution from the outside. Having a lot of time on your hands, without many obligations, allows for interesting things to happen. Some days, I have found myself cycling through all kinds of energy - from painful loneliness to an amazing sense of connected - all in a matter of hours. It's funny. I can almost see my father now (who is a regular reader), writing me to say he's sorry I'm feeling down. But what I've been experiencing lately is too fluid to label in that way. When I started writing this post, I did feel down. Now, I don't at all. Yesterday evening, I felt discouraged by how many unfinished are alive in my life right now, and then stepped out of my apartment, saw a gorgeous sunset, and all of that disappeared.

Living is an unfinished story. This is something else I'm seeing more and more. An old girlfriend, who lives a block away from me, but who slowly backed out of my life over a period of six month three years ago, suddenly reappeared for a few days in my e-mail in-box. I had figured our particular story was closed at "and now she lives down the street from me in silence." But that didn't turn out to be the case, and even if I now never hear from her again, which is fairly possible, what I thought was an ending turned out not to be.

Past lives. It seems to me that anything past is a past life. And yet, even those who have definitely gone from my life, like the dead, aren't completely past. Yesterday, my father sent me a quote from my grandfather, joking that it would make a good t-shirt slogan. Grandpa used to say "Life's great if you don't weaken!" Given how he went, several years of disappearing from the world through Alzheimers, his words seem pretty damned true. And this little fragment, among others, is still with me as I write this now. He's gone, but also not.

That longing to love and be appreciated also is a longing to love and appreciate others. To be able to. And to keep being able to. When I'm thinking about an old girlfriend, or my dead grandfathers, or a handful of old friends I never see anymore, it seems that more than anything else, I want that mirrored effect to come through us again. To have that person love me and appreciate me in person. Right now. And to be able to love and appreciate them in person. Right now.

Yet, that is living your life from the outside of a locked window. You keep thinking if only such and such happens, if only so and so were here, you would get inside. But it doesn't work. This longing is deeper than anything, or anyone, you can find to try and feed it with. So, stop trying to feed it. Enjoy your friends. Family. Lover. Job. Whatever. But stop believing that any of it will be enough to fill that hole.

I'm saying this to myself, right now, but also to anyone who is interested. Perhaps it sounds a bit depressing, that we all have some hole you might call longing that can't be filled. But I think it sounds depressing because few of us have bothered to study it, to really pay attention to it, and maybe come to some understanding. If you're like I have been much of my life, you hear about a longing that can't be fulfilled, and you run. Or start throwing things in the hole. Anything but stay with it, and see how it shifts all the time.

Buddhist Commodities Through French New Wave Cinema

I've been watching a lot of foreign films lately. One particular period I have been hanging out in is the French New Wave. Given the current upheavals in France over pensions, retirement, immigration, and a whole host of other things, it's fascinating to watch these films from half a century ago that ruminate on many of these issues' beginnings. A pair of Jean-Luc Godard films, Made in the USA and Masculin,Feminin, I have found particularly interesting for their blunt exposure of crash consumerism, and the vapid selfishness that seems to come with those who embrace it.

I stumbled upon the t-shirt above on a recent ID Project post. It almost could have come straight from a Godard scene, framed by some character reading from a Buddhist sutra (Godard often has characters reading from some grand work of fiction or non-fiction.) Part of me loves the boldness of the shirt, it's offering to us a reminder that this isn't going to last. Another part of me sees this thing consumerism does - turning every last word, object, and experience into a product for purchase.

If you filled a city full of people wearing such t-shirts, the radical jolt would disappear almost completely. It would become mostly, just another hip shirt. And eventually, not a "hip" one, but just another shirt. And eventually, no one would produce them anymore, and those wearing them would wear them all out.

What I find so interesting about the 60's Godard films is that the characters are soaked in pop culture, often saying wise things, but you never truly believe that any of them have actually learned to be wise themselves. They are kind of like sprinkler systems, putting out the fires of emptiness and stupidity by dispensing some smart language. But it only lasts a little while, and before long, they need to do it again, because anyone watching has grown bored of them as people, and they are also bored of themselves.

I suppose t-shirts with Buddhisty sayings are helpful at some level. Anything can be a dharma gate. And yet, how easy is it to think that such props are great tools - that certain fancy experiences are required to awaken - that we are each the stars of some movie that will someday be loved by millions.

Whose dreams are you living out anyway? Do you know? It's very true that "this body will be a corpse." Now what? See, already I'm looking for another cookie to eat.

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

Catholic Church Closings, Rational Buddhists, and the Murder of the Imagination

The local Archdiocese just announced the closing of 20 churches, with mergers of others to follow. It's the largest restructuring in the Twin Cities Catholic history, and clearly shows that attendance is lagging at best. The announcement comes just weeks after the release of a controversial DVD that was sent to the homes of over 400,000 Minnesotan Catholics. It's main thrust is an anti-gay, pro-heterosexual marriage message that urges people to vote for candidates that represent those views, and to push for a Marriage Amendment to the Minnesota Constitution. While a certain percentage of Catholics stand right behind the current archbishop and his highly conservative political agenda (he recently denied communion to supporters of gay marriage), it's definitely not a majority. In fact, even some parishioners who are against gay marriage and abortion - the two heaviest planks on the local Archdiosese's docket - aren't happy with decisions to deny communion and marginalize GLBTQ members of the broader church community.

As far as I'm concerned, the out of tuned-ness of the Catholic church hierarchy these days - for God's sake they're trying to bring back the Latin mass - is a major reason for the disappearance of their congregations. Any group that doesn't balance history and tradition, with innovation and modernization, is doomed to fade. I think this is especially true when it comes to groups tapping into core human values.

Which leads me to article taking aim at Stephen Batchelor's approach to Buddhism. Batchelor might be considered a member of the opposite extreme in Buddhism to people like our current local Archbishop. Whereas Bishop Nienstedt represents clinging to tradition (or what's believed to be tradition), Batchelor represents a clinging to innovation (albeit one to an imagined tradition). They are, in my view, doing similar things in opposite ways. Whereas Bishop Nienstadt is suppressing all forms of progressive congregational leadership and message, Batchelor is trying to jettison elements of Buddhism, such as rebirth and the law of karma, that have been present from the beginning. Both use foundational texts - the Bible and the Pali Canon - as platforms for their arguments, another fascinating similarity.

My interest in all of this concerns the point I made above about balancing tradition and innovation. This seems to be something humans struggle with in general, not just in matters of spiritual life. And perhaps it's supposed to be that way. In relative world, everything is impermanent, right? No matter how well we bring the most vital of the past forward, eventually that past will simply be past.

One of the reasons I dislike the Buddhist model presented by Stephen Batchelor is that it is too rational, too heady - and dare I say it, kind of boring. There's little room in it for the wacky, mind blowing irrationality of koans, even if Batchelor doesn't explicitly dismiss them. There's zero tolerance in his model for the wild narratives of the Lotus Sutra, the Jataka Tales, or any number of other spiritual teaching stories. And really, when it comes down to it, I'm not terribly sure where the heart, with all it's difficult to "know" influence on the mind, within Batchelor's framework.

It would be foolish to suggest that Stephen Batchelor is a lone wolf crying out in the wilderness. All across the Global North Buddhist landscape, there are efforts to eliminate or downplay the less rational, practical elements of Buddhism. And I think to some degree this is a mistake, precisely because even in this modern age, humans need vibrant stories to learn by. Perhaps we can use the tools of scientists and secular humanists, for example, to understand these stories in a different way from our ancestors, who might have been prone to believing they were concretely real too much. But to eliminate all traces of the irrational, the fancy, the wild is, in my view, like destroying a rain forest and replacing it with fields of corn and soybeans. Sure, there are practical benefits here. But at what cost? In other words, say we moderns discredit and banish all those mythological tales about the Buddha, and other teachers that follow. What will we have then?

The way I see it, there is a kind of murder of the imagination going on in both the Catholic church hierarchy and in rationally bent Buddhists. For the church leadership, there is a marked failure to imagine how Jesus might actually apply his wisdom to the world we live in today. And for Buddhists like Mr. Batchelor, there is a failure to imagine how stories which may have no basis in reality can lead us straight into reality.

Calm is Not Boring

To some extent, in our culture, we associate calm with a certain relaxed dullness, like lying in a hammock on a summer afternoon after a hard day's work. On the other hand, we are often alert but tense, as when we face danger or financial problems ... We associate alertness with a crisis mode. But this polarization is not intrinsic to human consciousness. What we are gradually learning in this practice is utter calm that is highly alert, like the frog that Suzuki Roshi used to talk about, sitting on a lily pad.

Larry Rosenberg, Breath By Breath: The Liberating Practice of Insight Meditation

I experienced this utter calm during our weekly class at the zen center last night. As people talked about their experiences, or ideas about the teacher's talk, I found myself listening simultaneously to what was being said and what was coming up within. I took in the visuals - the lights outside our zendo, the piles of dirt from the road construction, my dharma brothers and sisters, the jagged crack along the floor. And I sat with the rising and falling of my chest, the entering and fading away of every breath. Until a few lines from Shantideva's Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life arose, I experienced the familiar anxiety that comes before wanting to share, and then I spoke them:

There's nothing that does not grow light
through habit and familiarity,
putting up with little cares,
I'll train myself to bear with great adversity.

I've been working with these lines for about two and a half years now. In order to keep them with me daily, I chant them silently to myself as I brush my teeth every night before bed.

Sitting here now, I can see where this teaching is a gateway into that utter calm I experienced, and Rosenberg and Suzuki were speaking about. Because all of those "little cares" that arrive in our lives have the ability to muck things up greatly, if we can't meet them as they are in the moment. The pain in your back, for example, easily can lead to tension, and then irritation, and then angry acting out of some kind. So it often goes.

Many people come to Buddhism seeking calm and peace, but don't really understand what calm and peace actually are. And since it's easy enough to get to that "relaxed dullness" through things like television, drinking, eating, and other such commonplace activities, some of us fail to notice the presence of actual calm and peace.

I know I used to meditate like mad, associating calm with boredom, and thinking zazen was kind of an endurance contest I had to win somehow. In this, there was no room for the world to fully enter, to be "confirmed by the ten thousand things" as Dogen once said.

Can you be like the frog, taking it all in, ready in a moment's notice to eat the meal that comes?

Yoga Activism and its Discontents

I have been reading and commenting on some fascinating posts about yoga and social action, including this one and this one. It's a fascinating discussion that really, in my opinion, shows the many struggles to merge spiritual practice with social action in the larger world. Please go over and read the posts and the comments that follow each for more details.

The following issues struck me as noteworthy.

1. Many commenters slammed the author of the Tikkun post, Be Scoefield, as having an overly aggressive, shaming, and mean-spirited tone. While I think he makes unsubstantiated generalizations in places, I honestly feel that much of the "tone argument" is really a smokescreen for hurt feelings and bewilderment as to why the author is criticizing the work of the program in question, Off the Mat. Perhaps I'm just missing something here.

2. The responses of one of the program's trainers, Nikki Myers, are troubling, especially given the influence someone in her position would probably have with participants.

Her first response offers some clarification of one of the programs in question.

There seems to be some confusion about the OTM programs that you “investigated”. The 7 week program is designed to help people uncover their passion and how they can turn that into action within there local communities. Many outstanding projects have been created from this work all over the united states. One of which is the blossoming of my project the yoga of 12 step recovery, serving those affected by addiction.

The Seva Challenge is designed to mobilize the yoga community into action. Not sure what you mean by exotic, but that is certainly not what I would call working in a toxic garbage dump in Cambodia or laying bricks in the pouring rain while building a school in Uganda.

This is helpful in terms of showing that Scofield's focus on the international part of the program is only one facet of the work being done. However, Ms. Myers moves on into suggesting that the entire post made by Mr. Scofield is about the author's personal failings and hangups.

Your blog on spiritual activism seemed to focus a lot on activism with little emphasis on spirituality. Spirituality and healingis a huge component of the work in the 5 day intensive. This program takes into consideration the emotional well being and motivation of a person who wants to serve. It recognizes that without the tools to process the shadow aspect, it is their shadow that motivates their action. This leads to reactivity, judgement, shut down, defensiveness and burn out – the tone of which was evident in the blog as well as in the comments where you openly took ownership for your emotional fatigue and the resulting reactions. . This is precisely the work that OTM suggests that those who choose to engage in outreach consider because these are the tools necessary for activism to be done from a place of equanimity, patience and respect. The inner work reflects upon the outer work. This is precisely the environment I recommend you explore for clearly the work you’ve done is a reflection of your own shut down. Unfortunately with your intelligence and incredibly capable skills, you can create more harm than good when what is driving you is unresolved anger.

Scofield responds to this by saying:

Myself and others have been wondering about how and when feminist, cultural awareness and power dynamics factor into the trainings. What texts, articles, ideas, methods, workshops and teachings are presented. Again, I haven’t found it yet.

And he receives the following from Ms. Myers in response to his question:

I can’t help wondering why it is so important for you to examine articles, text, publications, etc. Given your writings, perspective, and history of taking things out of context – why would OTM ever offer to show you anything? Besides that, who made you the sheriff? This occurs to me as arrogance gone wild. Please consider taking the training.

I don't know if there is a history with this particular writer concerning the OTM organization which is playing into the defensiveness of this response. If there is a history, then I would respond quite differently to what I am seeing. But as it stands, it's troubling to see an important member of an organization that portrays itself as dedicated to "seva" (self-less service) responding to criticisms in such an un-reflective, defensive manner. Certainly, there are probably issues with the way Mr. Scoefield portrayed the organization, but it's the job of the organization (in my view) to demonstrate the teachings it claims to live in handling such criticisms. Or to simply ignore such criticisms if they are deemed not worthy of consideration for some reason.

Along these lines, someone else from the OTM organization offers a critique of the post, which I felt brought up a lot of valid concerns, including his mistaken assumption that all of the leadership and participants in the programs are white women. However, towards the end of the response is this, directed towards Mr. Scofield:

Are you aware that your continued assertion (and assumption) of our
race, gender and socio-economic circumstance places you in the same
racist, elitist and unconscious position that you claim us to stand?
Through all these judgments and uninformed opinions, you simply created
an unnecessary division, when you could have chosen to use your
experience and education to inform us on how to proceed with even more
awareness and sensitivity. We could have benefited from your support
and information, and would have appreciated useful suggestions to
improve our work. You could’ve been a great ally, but instead you chose
to perpetuate separation; and ultimately that is the divisive tool that
creates conflict and undermines the connectivity within each other and
the world.

What I find astounding is that the view that the author "could have been an ally," but apparently blew it because his article wasn't the kind of critique they were receptive to. Unless this man has a history of attacking the organization, I don't understand how such a swift dismissal fits into the values and mission OTM claims to represent.

How often does anyone present their criticisms or misgivings well the first time around? How many of us can say we have sorted out all of the personal hangups we have from the valid concerns we want to present before doing so? Maybe this was a case where the author should have sat a little longer on his concerns to make sure he had some clarity. However, sometimes you have to say something as best as you can, and then wade through the mess that follows.

As a yoga practitioner and zen student who is deeply interested in bringing my practice into the world in a socially engaged way, I want to see projects like Off the Mat succeed. It's wonderful to see yoga practitioners like Seane Corn actually attempt to do powerful work, and buck the commercialized, self-focused trend in much of the North American yoga community. Off the Mat is a new organization doing something uncommon in its field, and as such, it's important for anyone offering criticism to also offer patience. Having helped start a service organization from scratch myself, I know how challenging it is in the initial years, especially when it comes to having a clear direction and focus that actually represents the sincere intentions behind its founding. Sometimes, it takes years for a group to figure out how to actually clarify how to manifest their intentions in the world, so I recognize that OTM is probably in such a process.

But this is exactly why it's important now for them to be open to reflections, criticisms, and ideas from others. Being open doesn't mean you have to agree with everything others critique you for or suggest you change, but it does mean that you should do your best to listen to what people have say about your developing programs, and then decide how best to respond. The responses from those who represent the OTM organization on Scofield's post fail, in my opinion, to demonstrate such openness.