October, 2009

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I wonder if practicing Buddhists ever notice how much energy it takes to be deluded, to be unenlightened. Talk about blood, sweat and tears! Grasping, holding, attaching, rejecting, saving, regretting, improving, separating, unifying ... really, it's Herculean, isn't it?

Any Saturday-afternoon couch potato seems to have a better bead on things: Get the beer and chips, find the remote, kick back, and pretty soon it's time for the kick-off.

Maybe practicing Buddhists should relax as well. After all that hard deluded work, don't they deserve it?

Relax ... it's just enlightenment after all.
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Funny how we all get the teachers we need. It just never seems to fail. Ever.

This morning, before going to the peace picket, I got a call out of the blue from Brian, a fellow I had never met. He had done Zen practice in the past and was looking for a little re-start encouragement. So we talked on the phone for a while. Brian had returned to cocaine after kicking the habit. He was currently hospitalized after having fallen off the wagon. From what he said, it sounded as if he were in the psych ward at a local hospital. I said what I could to encourage him to focus on the cocaine problem and, if he had any leftover energy and felt inclined, to do just a little zazen every day.

Then, on the picket line, a nice woman with a mouthful of apple walked up to me and began a conversation, saying it had been a while since she had seen a rakusu. Catherine (sp?) had spent eight years at San Francisco Zen Center and now had been off the Zen circuit for about three years. She was getting back into formal practice, but was not much interested in a formal setting. We had a smile-filled chat about mutual Zen acquaintances and tales.

Nice to run into people who are making whatever effort they are making and are not too obscure when talking about those efforts. Nice serendipities.
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A short time ago, Marguerite from the blog Mind Deep left the following thoughtful take on my post of yesterday:

May I share a different take on your story? How about accepting the yoga teacher with all his imperfections, "wrongs" and all? It's interesting I did not get same feeling from your story about him. I saw him more as a man concerned with helping his students attain correct posture, which in yoga is important for maximal benefits. Maybe his tone was wrong, maybe not, given the job at stake. I have heard similar stories about Mr. Iyengar. And also reputed zen teachers. Most important is to discern person's intentions. Lots of your friends' reactions seemed to come from an 'I', wounded place.

Instead of responding in the comments section, I thought a new post would be more helpful for those who read the initial post.

In terms of my view of the yoga teacher in question, what's interesting is that after the initial emotional "jolt", I didn't really have a clear sense of either accepting the yoga teacher or rejecting him. I honestly didn't know, so I just tried to keep listening. The one comment I made towards the end was that, too often, yoga is reduced to a superficial focus on physical posture and physical benefits. Even if the teacher doesn't intend this, that can be the outcome for many students if there is too heavy a focus on posture "correctness." Since I don't know this teacher's work firsthand, I couldn't say much about him in the original post. If what I said came off as outright rejection, I apologize to him, as I didn't mean to imply a rejection of him and his work.

I do think, however, that we can both accept someone completely and comment on things being done or said which may be causing trouble in the world. It reminds me of Suzuki Roshi's statement "All of you are perfect just as you are and you could use a little improvement." If we just go about accepting people as they are, and never comment on "problem areas," then how will any of us ever learn to live more healthy, integrated lives?

From my own life, a series of people commenting on the anger I was displaying a few years ago led me to closely examine the way anger manifests in my life. It's an examination that continues to go on today, and I feel grateful to everyone who kindly, if sometimes firmly, pointed out these issues to me initially. At the same time, one of the main reasons these comments were such catalysts in the first place was that they came from people who knew me fairly well. Thus, they had enough insight about me to approach the issue of anger in ways that illuminated the problem, and didn't simply shut me down or create defensiveness. Odds are a stranger, or even a teacher who wasn't familiar with my life, wouldn't have had such luck.

There's a very interesting recent podcast from the Buddhist Geeks interviewing Insight Meditation teacher Rodney Smith that is influencing some of my comments in the post. Specifically, Rodney speaks about the ways in which the dharma is presented in North American sanghas, and how some of these ways might actually be hindering people, even if there is no intention to do so. You can check it out here if you're interested.

I'm a strong believer in being intentional, and yet sometimes, the best intentions still bring about messy results. This is definitely a teaching that calls for acceptance on a deep level, and a letting go of thoughts about perfection. And yet, it also requires of us that we see intentions as only one part of our work in the world.

On the other hand, it can also be true that different teaching styles will meet the needs of different groups of people. The fellow practitioner at my center spoke of how he felt the group was connected to this teacher, and thus didn't have an issue with the tone of the teaching. So, I really couldn't simply dismiss the guy's work, given that kind of comment.

As for woundedness, we all have some. It's important for each of us to work through those places, and to not put that work on the plate of anyone else. At the same time, those who are in teaching positions need to do their best to recognize these wounded places in their students and themselves, and incorporate skillful means into their teaching methods. When it comes to powerful, charismatic teachers, I think this is especially important, as they can easily be working the edge between being a liberating agent for people, and being a cause of serious damage.

Harry Houdini, a hero of my childhood died on this day in 1926. Famous for inviting people to give him their most ferocious punch to his stomach, he died after receiving several in rapid succession from a college student. One version of the story says he hadn't "prepared" to take the punch. In any case his appendix ruptured and he died a while later, today, from peritonitis...

As a child I was fascinated with magicians, and of that crowd, I was most enamored of Houdini.

As my interest in magic waned I continued to find him interesting, mostly for his relentless campaign to debunk spiritualists, who had mortally offended him when one purported to convey messages from his dead mother. Over the years he exposed numerous mediums, and was never stumped by one. Ironically, his own ability to replicate their feats of spirit communication led some to believe he really was a medium, himself. These included Arthur Conan Doyle, a fervent believer...

The video clip below contains Houdini's actual voice, if a "stage" version, announcing one of his renowned escapes.

It is followed by his wife Bess speaking of the annual seance that took place on the anniversary of his death. She conducted it herself for ten years. He had promised if it were possible to pass the veil of death, he would. He didn't.



I gather that admirers, mostly professional and high end amateur magicians continue to honor his memory with Houdini seances on this day observed around the world...

The irony alone is rather charming.

And, as life and death are one thing, may they continue to celebrate his absence while recalling his presence...

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For some reason, I woke up wondering why it was that riders mounted from the left side of the horse. Would the horse get cranky if the rider mounted from the right? Are horse and rider so accustomed to this habit that any deviation would be a breaking of some social contract between them ... sort of like saying "shit!" in a nunnery? Is there some inherent usefulness that is not apparent to a person like me who knows little or nothing about horse-handling?

Rules are kind of interesting. Without them, understanding and the experience understanding implies go begging. And yet with them, there is the danger of forgetting that rules are just useful tools, not lock-down laws.

Rules of riding.
Rules of philosophy or religion.
Rules of carpentry.
Rules of marriage.
Rules of driving.
Rules of prejudice.
Rules of wealth.
Rules of conformity.
Rules of non-conformity.
Rules of self.
Rules of other.
Rules of freedom.
Rules of love.

As a means of assuring the satisfaction of understanding, rules are followed. And yet in following those rules, a sense of constriction can weave itself through anyone's life ... as if you were snared by some glue-y spider's web in which every effort to escape only fortified your imprisonment. Things become too narrow, too stale, too desperately disabled.

And yet this sense of being trapped is probably a good thing.

How else would anyone discover the useful nature of rules and the source of them?
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