Anger as Entertainment

I wrote this a few years back, but it seems like a good thing to re-post right now for some reason. The frantic holiday season? Too many Zen scandals? Anyway, here you go.

I have had one of those days where, for whatever reason, the longer the days goes, the less I want to interact with others. In fact, the past three or four hours, I've had waves of crankiness that haven't been so pleasant. Crossing a busy street, and getting cut off by cars in both crosswalks when the light was green didn't help. Nor the struggles I'm having with my second ESL class, which recently became a combined level class due to a colleague resigning. The old "leave the position empty" and "reallocate" game.

What's interesting about all this is that I work up early and did a longer period of zazen than I have been recently. Most mornings, I'm lucking to get 10 minutes and/or chant the refuges and bodhisattva vows before going out the door for the bus. Not only did I sit a half an hour, but also did a longer chanting service. I've always been more of a evening/night meditator, so whenever I can start a weekday morning doing both a morning sit and chanting service, it's always a plus.

Given this, the emotional contrast between this morning and this evening is vast.
Pema Chodron, writing about karmic momentum, has some interesting commentary to consider. She writes:

We entertain ourselves with anger, with fear, with grief —All kinds of thoughts are better than nothing— is our motto. The bodhichitta practices, and actually all meditation practices, are about learning to stay still and going through what I always refer to as the detox period of finally connecting. Sometimes it feels like stillness and peace, but if that happens it will also alternate with this restlessness and this unease.

Curious. I didn't feel like I was "entertaining" myself. However, if we broaden the definition a bit, it actually fits. With the class, the anger was really a diversion from experiencing disappointment, loss of my old, higher level class, and also just exhaustion with the seemingly endless rounds of change in the student body. In term of the cars in the crosswalk, the anger was a response to pedestrian unfriendly city planning, as well as a quick leap from the fear of getting hit.

I'm not one of those people who considers anger always an inappropriate response. The three poisons are greed, hatred, and ignorance - but many translations have it as "anger' instead of "ignorance." There are times when a flash of anger might be the appropriate response, but it's far less than what most of us express on a daily basis.

The thing is that it's hard to stay with what's coming up when the world seems to be calling for some kind of action from you. In fact, even in situations like the street crossing, where you need to get to the other side, afterward it's terribly easy to get lost in stories about "those assholes" blocking the crosswalk. The opportunity to hang with what's coming up is there, and yet it gets lost pretty fast if you allow yourself to get hooked.

Loneliness During the Holidays

This time of year tends to be challenging for me. I would guess the same is true for many others out there. And what's interesting to me is that although the level of activity with others is often ramped up, so, too, can the feelings of loneliness. Seems like a contradiction, doesn't it? Maybe, and maybe not.

The frantic pace of the holidays, coupled with the darkness and unheeded calls to turn inward and reflect on our lives, make one ripe for loneliness.

Pema Chodron writes: "Usually we regard loneliness as an enemy. Heartache is not something we choose to invite in. It's restless and pregnant and hot with the desire to escape and find something or someone to keep us company."

How often I have felt that, and then done that, in so many ways. I bet you, too, have a fairly long list if you take a little time to reflect on it.

Yet, what is interesting is that, there have been times where I have simply sat with it, breathed into that ghost inside me and watched as it inevitably changed. Not that it always went away completely, but there nearly always has been a softening of the energy when I have given it some space through breathing and meditation.

Given the increased focus on slowing down and paying attention while I've been with people in the past few weeks, I'm finding that there's been less loneliness floating around these parts. Furthermore, when it comes, I'm letting go of identifying myself with it. Just like any other experience, loneliness doesn't define who I am.

How about you? Do you experience loneliness this time of year?

Hauntings

I've sometimes wondered if a pregnant ghost has come to haunt my body, it's bony shoulders poking at mine, as it's fat stomach presses hard against my own. Every autumn, as the sun's rays slowly fade away earlier and earlier by the day, that acute haunting returns. An old friend - or enemy - depending upon my mindset in the moment, sometimes I call it "loneliness," but that's just an easy label, one that serves a purpose, but really doesn't hit the mark fully.

The well known Buddhist author and teacher Pema Chodron writes: "Usually we regard loneliness as an enemy. Heartache is not something we choose to invite in. It's restless and pregnant and hot with the desire to escape and find something or someone to keep us company."

I was walking around the plaza where our OccupyMN group is located yesterday, feeling just that. That there were plenty of people around didn't matter. That I had had a few good conversations already didn't matter. That I had felt great most of the previous day or so didn't really matter.

A cold wind swirled, and a few errant squirrels scampered across the bricked ground, scared by the movement of too many feet. I watched an argument about food between a half a dozen fellow "occupiers" slowly descend into agreement. Finally, the two men at the center of the conflict, a younger African-American man and an older white man, hugged. It way touching. I've witnessed scenes like this again and again over the past three and half weeks, something the myriad of armchair critics have no idea about, or dismiss as mere "camaraderie."

Still, that restless ghost thumped away within me. Nothing unbearable, and something certainly spurred on by the change in seasons, but definitely not a mere "psychological issue" like seasonal affect disorder. That might be there as well, but I have felt this other "thing" in all sorts of places, under all sorts of conditions, even during and after love-making.

Today, what comes to mind is this: "We fail to trust our hauntings." Fail to trust that this, too, is our life - and yet, it does not define us, does not need to be fought off madly or given into desperately.

The story of Buddha's enlightenment is riddled with ghosts. Various hauntings that come to test him as he sits through the night. Mara is said to be the bringer of these, an almost Satan-like being that continually presses in on Buddha until he doesn't flinch anymore in any direction.

I still flinch a fair amount. I can imagine many of you do as well. That flinching goes beyond any individual "you" or "I."

Just as liberation goes beyond any individual "you" or "I."

What is haunting?

Just this breath, flowing in and back out.

Hope is Lazy

Over at Zendotstudio, Carole has a good post on hope and Buddhist practice. She writes:

The Oxford dictionary defines hope as "expectation combined with desire." Hmm, from a Buddhist point of view, we're not starting with the best recipe ingredients, are we? Hope implies something we want in the future. It may be something perfectly wonderful, like world peace or a new subaru station wagon. And baked into that hope are the seeds of suffering, if we don't get what we want.

Pema Chodron says something like, "we bounce back and forth between hope and fear", this is the common human state. When we hope we may also feel afraid that we won't get what we hope for. And then there is the disappointment when we don't get what we hope for, which inevitably happens if we're filling our shopping backs with a list of hopes. And after a while we feel the bruise of all this bouncing back and forth. In fact we may feel like a human bruise.

Lately, I've been noticing that hoping seems to come out of a kind of laziness. When I'm lost in hope, I actually am trying to conjure up a future reality, and the hang on to that picture, regardless of what's actually happening. I'm not willing to put in some work, take some risks, and let go of results. It's just "I hope this will happen or that won't happen" and then, usually, some perseveration on possible outcomes I don't want to happen.

In fact, what I have also noticed is that when I'm actively putting in some effort towards something, and/or living without attachment to a particular outcome, hope doesn't really enter into the equation. It's entrance into such a place would be just extra, like adding sugar to already naturally sweet enough apple juice.

Relaxing in All Conditions

Another early post for you, from April 13th, 2009. Enjoy!


Patience is, it seems, a buzzword in many spiritual communities. People sincerely want to cultivate it, and are very much aware of how our speed addicted, multitasking society fails to support it. And yet, how many of us know what patience looks like, or how it manifests in our lives? How often do we simply believe that patience means putting up with something we don't like until it changes or until our mind changes around it?

Pema Chodron speaks of patience as being able to relax in any conditions. You can see this when you're able to step back from your thoughts and reactions to a particular situation and are able to see it for what it is. And yet, I'd like to also add that patience is not only an in the moment quality, but also a long term process which manifests moment by moment. During yoga, in down dog, the ease of it tonight came out of a several month commitment to daily (or almost daily practice) without knowing what the results would be. A year ago, every time into down dog was a trip into stiffness and some pain, even though I didn't push beyond my limits. So, patience is a quality of practice that manifests in the moment, but is birthed moment by moment in practice. In other words, you aren't going to just wake up one day and "have it;" you have to cultivate it.

Overall, it's in the ability to be ok with not knowing for sure, both in our practice and in the rest of our lives, that we learn how patience will manifest in just the right way, moment after moment. In a way, patience is loving what is, exactly as it is. It's a simple, and complex, as that.

Get Moving You Lazy Ass!

Here are some lines from an old Pema Chodron article from the blog Awakening the Buddha in Us:

Traditionally, laziness is taught as one of the obstacles to awakening. There are different kinds of laziness. First, there’s the laziness of comfort orientation, we just try to stay comfortable and cozy. Then there’s the laziness of loss of heart, a kind of deep discouragement, a feeling of giving up on ourselves, of hopelessness. There’s also the laziness of couldn’t care less. That’s when we harden into resignation and bitterness and just close down.

You know, I have to say the hard part for me about confronting my own laziness is that I often have the idea that it means I must work harder, get my ass more in gear so to speak. However, Pema suggests in the next paragraph of her article that this attitude might actually be just another form of laziness. Instead of sitting with the muck and confusion coming up, and making whatever decisions and doing whatever work is being called for now, there's just rushing around, doing things for the sake of doing things.

It has only been over the past year or so, as I have forced myself to slow down at my job, in my volunteer efforts, and in life in general, that I have been able to see how all that running around and doing, doing, doing was both laziness and a way to avoid feelings of not being good enough.

It's tough in a speed-addicted, overworking orientated culture to slow down. Even harder to do so with balance, and not just become a sloth.

Built into the human predicament seems to be the assumption that we should eliminate our failings; as adequate and worthy people, we should be able simply to leap over our weaknesses. So perhaps the grown-up thing to do would be to blow up laziness with a bomb, or drop it into the Atlantic Ocean with a huge weight so it would never reappear, or send it off into space so that it would float out into infinity and we’d never have to relate to it again.

I have put myself into work situations that require a lot of energy, attention, and well, work. Other than a short stint as a low level postal worker, and a year or so as a museum security guard, I have had jobs that have been all about serving others. So, manifesting laziness in the workplace in any of the forms Pema mentions has often had a quick turn around - in other words, it's caught by someone pretty quickly, put back in my face, leaving me to address or avoid it.

Beyond work, I have volunteered my time over the years in positions demanding a similar kind of attention and energy, and with their own rapid laziness feedback loops.

And even as a kid, I was plugged in sometimes as a faux parent for my sister, master housekeeper, and generally laden with responsibilities earlier than most children.

So, that feedback loop has often been with me, along with the social admonishments against laziness that seem to drive people to overwork and then crash again and again. The feedback loop is probably a benefit, you know, because I have had enough opportunities to face these forms of laziness that now I can actually see them some of the time. I can even hang with them more than in the past.

However, there's still that narrative right behind my ears, saying "I'm tired. I don't want to work any harder. Enough already." And maybe there's some truth to that story, but I think it's also true that it is a story coming from believing that all effort feels the same, has the same impact on the body/mind.

Yet, when you face your laziness, or anything else coming up really, there's actually a shifting that goes on with your effort. It might be difficult for awhile, but eventually that difficulty burns away.

We join our loss of heart with honesty and kindness. Instead of pulling back from the pain of laziness, we move closer. We lean into the wave. We swim into the wave.

Somewhere in the process of staying with the moment, it might occur to us that there are a lot of unhappy brothers and sisters out there, suffering as we are suffering. In becoming intimate with our own pain, with our own laziness, we are touching in with all of them, understanding them, knowing our kinship with all of them.

In my own experience, it really has been the moments of awareness that each of us going through variations of the same things. That it isn't just my laziness, but the laziness that appears within all of us from time to time. I still am challenged at times by thinking that I'm not doing enough in life, and that I have to work harder to be a "better person." It's easy to know this is a false narrative intellectually, but not so easy to let go of when you have believed and acted out of it for a long time, and a lot of people around you also believe it and are acting out of it.

We reinforce each other, for better or worse. It's foolish to say otherwise. So, breaking free of these kinds of stories, which are pretty common in our society, means standing out and perhaps being viewed in a negative light. This is where I think having a deep sense of one's balance points, coupled with the courage to do what's necessary to maintain that balance, is so utterly important. Because it's so much harder to face laziness, or anything else, when you're out of balance.

Anger as Entertainment

I have had one of those days where, for whatever reason, the longer the days goes, the less I want to interact with others. In fact, the past three or four hours, I've had waves of crankiness that haven't been so pleasant. Crossing a busy street, and getting cut off by cars in both crosswalks when the light was green didn't help. Nor the struggles I'm having with my second ESL class, which recently became a combined level class due to a colleague resigning. The old "leave the position empty" and "reallocate" game.

What's interesting about all this is that I work up early and did a longer period of zazen than I have been recently. Most mornings, I'm lucking to get 10 minutes and/or chant the refuges and bodhisattva vows before going out the door for the bus. Not only did I sit a half an hour, but also did a longer chanting service. I've always been more of a evening/night meditator, so whenever I can start a weekday morning doing both a morning sit and chanting service, it's always a plus.

Given this, the emotional contrast between this morning and this evening is vast.
Pema Chodron, writing about karmic momentum, has some interesting commentary to consider. She writes:

We entertain ourselves with anger, with fear, with grief —All kinds of thoughts are better than nothing— is our motto. The bodhichitta practices, and actually all meditation practices, are about learning to stay still and going through what I always refer to as the detox period of finally connecting. Sometimes it feels like stillness and peace, but if that happens it will also alternate with this restlessness and this unease.

Curious. I didn't feel like I was "entertaining" myself. However, if we broaden the definition a bit, it actually fits. With the class, the anger was really a diversion from experiencing disappointment, loss of my old, higher level class, and also just exhaustion with the seemingly endless rounds of change in the student body. In term of the cars in the crosswalk, the anger was a response to pedestrian unfriendly city planning, as well as a quick leap from the fear of getting hit.

I'm not one of those people who considers anger always an inappropriate response. The three poisons are greed, hatred, and ignorance - but many translations have it as "anger' instead of "ignorance." There are times when a flash of anger might be the appropriate response, but it's far less than what most of us express on a daily basis.

The thing is that it's hard to stay with what's coming up when the world seems to be calling for some kind of action from you. In fact, even in situations like the street crossing, where you need to get to the other side, afterward it's terribly easy to get lost in stories about "those assholes" blocking the crosswalk. The opportunity to hang with what's coming up is there, and yet it gets lost pretty fast if you allow yourself to get hooked.