The Money was Nothing

Here's a news story that is really hard not to like, especially amongst all the rottenness and conflict we usually are served by the media.

A retired Canadian couple who won $11.3 million in the lottery in July have already given it (almost) all away.

"What you've never had, you never miss," 78-year-old Violet Large explained to a local reporter.

She was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer when the couple realized they'd won the jackpot in July.

"That money that we won was nothing," her tearful husband, Allen, told Patricia Brooks Arenburg of the Nova Scotia Chronicle Herald. "We have each other."

The money was a "headache," they told the paper--mainly, it brought anxiety over the prospect that "crooked people" might take advantage of them. Several people called them out of the blue to ask for money when the news first broke that they'd won the jackpot. So they began an $11 million donation spree to get rid of it and help others, the Chronicle Herald reports:

They took care of family first and then began delivering donations to the two pages' worth of groups they had decided on, including the local fire department, churches, cemeteries, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, hospitals in Truro and Halifax, where Violet underwent her cancer treatment, and organizations that fight cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes. The list goes on and on.

Violet told the Canadian Press that they retained about 2 percent of the money for a rainy day.

"It made us feel good," Violet told the Chronicle Herald. "And there's so much good being done with that money."

There are so many interesting threads to consider in this story. First off, this couple given everyone the simple, but profound message that love and companionship are much more important than material wealth. I also have to say it's kind of wonderful that they chose to distribute the money all over, pointing to a sense of how their lives are interconnected with the community they live in, and the institutions that have benefited them in the past.

On a more macro-level, it's hard not to contrast the care Violet has received for cancer, with the ways in which such care is either out of reach, or financially devastating for many here in the United States. While our government will probably spend the next two years bickering over the details of the decidedly tepid, pro-private health care industry bill that was passed last year, everyday Canadians continue to have a hell of a lot more options, even if there are some problems with their system.

And finally, back to the couple, there's this statement "We're not travelers anyway. We live in the country and we're proud of it. Money can't buy you health or happiness." I think it's just fine to travel when you're older, and I hope to be able to do so myself. But it's also refreshing to hear someone say they are happy right where they are. Even if they decide to go on vacation with the little bit of money they saved, it's clear they are at peace with the place they live in. Such a different attitude from all the "snowbirds" who run south the moment there's a chill in the autumn air every year.

Elections, Tidalwaves, and Buddhism

Arun, over at Angry Asian Buddhist, posted the following about our recent elections here in the U.S.:

The Buddhist blogs indeed have been following the election—but with a special emphasis on white male candidates. Sift back through this season’s articles to see Tricycle reminisce about Jerry Brown, while Shambhala Sun swoons over Eric Schneiderman.

Four years ago, there was some excitement around Representatives Mazie Hirono and Hank Johnson, both of them Democrats who identify as Buddhists. Both held their seats last night. But if you’ve only been following Shambhala Sun and Tricycle, you’ll have missed out on Democrat Colleen Hanabusa, who took back Hawaii’s First congressional district from the Republicans, defeating Charles Djou. Oh, and she’s Buddhist too.

Just take that in for a moment. Next year’s Hawaiian congressional delegation to the House will be a team of Asian American Buddhist women!

It's always interesting to me what happens when you look beyond the major trend of an election, and see things like this going on. Another blogger also mentioned on his Facebook page that over 100 openly gay folks were elected to various positions around the nation. It's a good reminder to not get too fixed on the tidal wave, because there's always more water doing something different all around it.

The Politics of Like, Don't Like, and Neutral

It's election day here in the U.S. I went to vote, and had a short discussion with a couple of friends about some of the candidates. That said, electoral politics here in the United States are in a pretty sorry state, with two corrupted parties that are tossed in and out of office every few election cycles by an increasingly sound-byte influenced public. Yesterday, I thought about writing some scathing stuff about all of this, and end it by calling for more grassroots action that transcends party lines. But I've done that before, and will probably do so again. Today, though, I'm not going there.

Here are three posts about voting from other members of the Buddhoblogsphere. This one I like. This one I don't like. And this one I'm fairly neutral about.

Like. Don't like. Neutral. These are the three base-level feelings we experience about everything in our lives. Peel off the skin of any emotional response and you'll find these at work.

If we learn to let these three just come and go, a lot of trouble can be avoided. A simple example from my own life might help illustrate this. As a lifelong bicyclist in a city, I have had my struggles with cars and traffic. Even when things are well marked for different kinds of vehicles, it's still the case that bicycling in the city isn't terribly easy, and planning and design work almost always privileges motorized vehicles over bikes and pedestrians - at least here in the U.S. For many years, I biked with a deep resentment towards motorized vehicles, regardless of what they were actually doing in any given moment. Someone might offer me a chance to cross ahead of them, and I'd think they were trying to shoo me through quickly, so that they could drive on. All of this stemmed from an initial "don't like" that came up again and again around motorized vehicles, and urban road planning.

About three years ago, I began cutting through the thoughts and emotional reactions that developed in response to this don't like by chanting the Jizo Bodhisattva chant while riding. Jizo is kind of an archetypal Buddhist figure that is said to protect travelers, children, the dead, and vows among other things. Chozen Bays Roshi of Great Vow Monastery wrote a fabulous book about Jizo several years ago that I was fortunate to study soon after it was published. As soon as I learned about it, I knew Jizo would be a companion on my spiritual journey.

Biking with Jizo has become a norm for me. In fact, I've noticed that the practice has become so settled within that anytime a bit of upset comes up while I'm riding, the chant just appears to support me. There's a different tenor to the experience as well. I experience the like, don't like, and neutral more clearly. Stinky alley. Don't like. Fall leaves. Like. Dog in a yard. Neutral. The coming and going of such don't spin out of control as they used to, especially the "don't like" experiences.

Do I still get pissed and reactive towards motorized vehicles at times? Sure. However, such experiences sometimes colored my entire day in the past, and now usually burn off within minutes. And when I think about it, it really comes back to this point of being able to see, and experience, these three base-level feeling tones without getting lost in emotional and thought elaborations.

Seems to me that this teaching is very useful when it comes to electoral politics. Some will like the outcome of today's vote. Some won't like it. And some, including many people outside of the U.S., will probably be neutral.

Can you see your base-level feeling here? The beauty of having a diverse set of practices to draw upon, from sitting meditation to chanting to bowing, just to name a few, is that any of these can be called upon to help cut through intense reactions that stem from the three base-level feeling tones. So, I offer you this story on election day here in the U.S. May all beings be liberated.

Zen and Interpersonal Needs

Several years ago, we had a few workshops at the zen center on the topic of Non-Violent Communication. The leaders of the trainings had studied with Marshall Rosenberg, who has given over his life to exploring ways in which how we speak to each other impacts almost every aspect of our lives. I must admit that I was very skeptical about NVC when I first encountered it. It seemed too touchy-feely to me, a kind of "niceness" that I wanted to shed from my life, not reinforce. However, as the years have gone on, and I have payed closer attention to speech in my life, I have found that Rosenberg's work is pretty damned intelligent, and worth considering as part of my Buddhist practice.

Yet, I still have some reservations about it. Or questions perhaps. Here are some comments about NVC from an interview Zen Teacher Robert Joshin Althouse did with the website Sweeping Zen:

I learned about Nonviolent Communication (NVC) many years ago from my teacher, Jikyo Roshi. I then had the opportunity to study with Marshall Rosenberg. I have always found NVC to be very useful and helpful for many of my students. So I am very comfortable using and applying it in my life and within my Zen teachings as well. NVC is a language that grows out of a “needs” awareness. If people just try to mimic the language they end up sounding like NVC parrots which is not helpful at all. The heart of the matter is shifting to an awareness of needs which includes the needs of others around us as well. I think that is a very difficult teaching in this culture, and actually an important one. We all have some conditioning around this. Growing up many of us have learned that it’s not ok to have needs. I’ve even encountered Zen students that don’t think we should have needs. But to me that is just ridiculous. In NVC needs are defined as anything that supports our life. So as long as we are alive we’re going to have needs. We have physical needs for food, water, clothing and shelter. We have interpersonal needs for understanding, respect, love, and empathy. Being aware of our feelings and needs can help us move away from judgments that often interfere with our ability to connect and communicate with others skillfully.

I've never had a qualm with those basic survival needs Althouse mentions. The Buddha's own experience of trying to deny those needs almost killed him. But when we start diving into the list of interpersonal needs, it starts to get murky to me.

There are, in my view, a few ways to look at this. On the one hand, you can view some of the interpersonal needs as attachments, desires, and possibly hindrances to one's practice. The Center For Non-Violent Communication has a pretty extensive list that isn't even, in their words, exhaustive. It just seems to me like it falls too much in the "You're perfect just the way you are" direction, with not enough "But you need a little improvement" - to use that often quoted Suzuki Roshi saying.

Having a need to be respected, for example, can get you into big trouble if you believe in it too much. I had many political arguments in the past which often boiled down to wanting the other person or people to respect my viewpoint - one that tended to be far outside the mainstream. Now, if you understand NVC process and philosophy, you'd know that the "wanting the other person or people" to respond in a certain way isn't helpful. In fact, that wanting is viewed as a major trouble point. So, in that way, NVC is very much in line with Zen practice, for example.

However, I still have to wonder about speaking about "having a need for respect" is, in itself, beneficial. It seems questionable to me. In fact, it seems like one can easily use that as a way to prop up a sense of self.

On the other hand, if you approach NVC as a process to work with what's present RIGHT NOW, then speaking of interpersonal needs might be very useful. If I come from a place of this is where things are at - I am experiencing a need for respect in this moment - perhaps it might be a place to be able to let go of that, and better meet the person, people, and circumstances you're in dialogue with.

But I think this is somewhat different from saying people have these needs, and that it's fine to continue to come from a place of having these needs, so long as you are honestly working with them. That seems too much like speaking about a solid personality, which I just don't think is very helpful.

One of the things I really admire about Rosenberg and his colleague is the effort they have made to expose the various layers of judgment humans make within their language and thoughts. And they have worked hard to show that NVC is about how you function in the world, not how you want others to function.

So, perhaps some of you out there have even more experience working with NVC than I do. I'm curious to know what people think about "needs" and how they play into Buddhist practice, and expression of the dharma. Any thoughts?

Thoughts on Attachment (and Some Creative Writing Links)

I did something else with the previous post about writing, which you might see at a later time. But for now, I'd just like to offer a few comments and links to my new creative writing blog, as well as a post here about attachment. For those of you who have an interest, I have posted the following over at Creative Writing the Dharma:

*a poem about second language learning

*some haiku
from my early days as a Zen student

*an essay about medieval maps, the painter Vermeer, imagination, and Europe.

* and a short prose poem.


Now, let's take a look at some comments from Dean's current blog post on The Mindful Moment. About his 16 month old son, he writes:

The process of attachment, in seeing him do this, is really quite interesting. If I spot him before he makes his way over to the TV remote and remove it before he arrives he's not too upset. He'll just stand this a little disappointed look on his face and watch you walk away with this prize. If I get to it when he's already hovering over it he'll cry a little that something so close to his grasp was taken away. If I'm too late and he gets hold of it the level of emotional angst he'll experience will be proportional to how long he's had hold of it. If only for a second then not too bad. If he had it for 10 seconds or more then he'll let us know he's upset that we've taken it away.

But isn't this something we all do? I see people craving after their iPad's or iPhones (or whatever it is they desire) and if the deal falls through they are a bit disappointed. If we get our hands on it however and it gets stolen we'll wail and cry much like my son. Even as adults we do the same thing!! Our level of suffering is in proportion to our level of attachment.

This last line is most interesting to me. It gets at the way in which, for example, the habits we have for a long time are the hardest to break. For example, the fact that I sometimes bite my nails in response to stress and/or anxiety. This is an old, old habit of mine, dating back to childhood. And even though it's not as strong as it used to be, it's rare that my finger nails make it a month without being chomped on, at least a little bit.

But habits are just one kind of attachment. Or one way to describe how we might attach to someone or something. Lately, I have experienced a lot of opportunities to pay attention to attachments around identity. Honestly, they seem almost endless. Just when there is a letting go that happens, and some relief seems to come, right behind it another narrative comes flaring up in an effort to fill the gap. This isn't a terrible thing; it's just how it is.

Dean talks in his post about pushing beyond the boundaries you've created in your life. How the attachments to a certain way of living limited him and how he's been making some conscious effort to shift that. Right effort has really been on my mind lately, especially given that I had spent much of the past several years living a busy, sometimes in overdrive life, and now am in a period that's quite the opposite.

Attachment to spiritual teachings, rituals, and methods are pretty common. And I think as such, it's probably a good idea to go against the grain of whatever it is you hold precious once in awhile, to check that attachment. What's this have to do with Right Effort?

Here is a traditional set of teachings from the Maha-cattarisaka Sutta: The Great Forty:

Abandoning the wrong factors of the path

"One tries to abandon wrong view & to enter into right view: This is one's right effort...

"One tries to abandon wrong resolve & to enter into right resolve: This is one's right effort...

"One tries to abandon wrong speech & to enter into right speech: This is one's right effort...

"One tries to abandon wrong action & to enter into right action: This is one's right effort...

"One tries to abandon wrong livelihood & to enter into right livelihood: This is one's right effort."

All good stuff I'd say. And yet how easy it is to get hung up on "right" and "wrong," trying to maintain some sort of purity. If your like me, you probably have had some of that "good Buddhist" story running through your head. It's insidious. And if you have a whole community of people running that narrative, then it's doubly reinforced for each member.

So, what would it be like to deliberately enter into say "wrong speech" or "wrong action," not to be contrary, but to notice attachments to being seen as a good practitioner? For most of the past two years, I have been skipping out on retreat practice. The reasons behind this are a mixed bag, but lately it has occurred to me that doing meditation retreats is something that some Buddhist communities - including my own - view as part of being a dedicated practitioner. Dedicated is really just another word for "good" when you look at it closely. And I've noticed the tension I have experienced around this issue - how I sometimes get hooked on what my fellow dharma brothers and sisters are thinking about my absence from retreat practice. It's kind of silly when I think about it - wanting to be "seen" as a "good student" - because in the end, it's really not about that at all. Being respected and elevated within a community doesn't mean squat when it comes to breaking through greed, hatred, and ignorance. But it's so easy to forget that when you've spent much of your life trying to be liked and cared for by others.

What's Mindfulness Got to Do, Got to Do With it?

A few days ago, Trevor had a post on mindfulness I enjoyed. Mindfulness has become one of those spiritual words that has entered the popular culture, been applied to almost anything, and now is virtually meaningless. It's been really interesting to be studying the Anapanasati Sutra - mindfulness of breathing - under these circumstances. Trevor writes:

I don't practice mindfulness. That is, I don't practice mindfulness in the way we often talk about it. One does the laundry or sweeps the floor, or answers the phone, or types a blog entry, and one says, "I should do this mindfully." This gives you another thing to do, maybe even two more things to do. First, there's the task at hand, and then there is the task of bringing mindfulness to the task, and then there is some ideal state of "doing things mindfully," which - according to some folks - means you're smiling at your breath, or something like that.

I've noticed this adding on experience at times while working with verses from the tetrads of the sutra. This afternoon, I sat with the phrase "gladdening the mind," saying it to myself as I breathed in and out. Basically, I found that I would ride it with the breath for a few rounds, and then go silent, watching what was there. A few minutes would go by, and then I'd say it again a few times and then go silent. What I found was that if I went beyond saying the phrase to myself more than a few times, it felt forced and contrived. Added on. However, I found that once I had done the pattern I just described a few times, then out of the silence, the phrase just started coming now and then. In other words, once I let go of trying to focus on "gladdening the mind," it came up on it's own.

This is where I find a certain rub in formal practice. There seems to be a need at times for a bit of effort to turn yourself in the "right direction." And yet, I'm guessing that a lot of the time, we fail to let go of that efforting, and think that it's all about maintaining such activities.

Trevor continues along similar lines:

This makes me wonder, Is it helpful for us to suggest that someone do something "with mindfulness"? I've often found that to be a confusing instruction. I remember visiting a communal house here in Austin, where a group of young people live and practice together. The gate of their fence had a sign on it that read something like, "Please enter mindfully." And I thought to myself, Well, crap! I was doing OK until you told me to 'enter mindfully'! I was just walking through the gate, and now I'm all self-conscious! Well, that might sound angry when you're reading it, but I wasn't angry, just a little confused. I think that's when I started thinking a little more critically about how we talk about the practice of mindfulness.

I have two reactions to this example he brings up. The first is that it's interesting from a practice standpoint to examine what happens in these kinds of moments. This "enter mindfully" sign triggers a self focus for Trevor. I'd imagine it might for many of us. So, what's that about exactly?

Secondly, though, I think the instruction that's trying to be given by the sign here isn't clear. Just how does one "enter mindfully"? Screw pat answers, and consider it for real the next time you enter a door or gate. Every entry point is different, and thus a single approach isn't going to fly.

I think this, for me, is one of the main troubles with all this talk about "mindfulness." It tends to be pre-packaged. And kind of lifeless in a certain way.

Valley Girl Dharma

Inspired by Daniel's comment about Valley Girls and Buddhist blogs, I decided to write a short, three act play. In case some of you think I'm always a thought, but serious guy, this piece of writing should blow a few holes in that theory. And because I'm not only a blogger, but also a long time reader and writer of various forms of creative writing, I decided to start another blog. I don't know how often I'll update it, but I plan on linking to it from Dangerous Harvests whenever I have new material. It's all set up for you to become a follower as well, so feel free to join thew revolution, lol!

Anyway, here's the play for your viewing pleasure. Like, oh my God! Enjoy!