The robin and the roaring engine

Why don't my kids need naps? Once they are up for the day they stay up until they are forced/coerced/bribed to go to bed. Not me. I love a good Saturday afternoon nap. Today, I slept so deeply in my big brown chair, that I woke up drooling. I dreamt I was walking around with my eyes closed, that is I couldn't open them, but no one around me seemed to notice or care. I was carrying on my daily routine with my eyes closed (Hello metaphor!). Next in my dream I was trying to rinse my mouth out with water because my tongue had stopped working and of course, I woke up drooling.

While I was unconscious, my children told me that they watched old Scooby Doo episodes on a retro cartoon station (Really? We need to keep seeing them?), they played Jenga (I remember crashing blocks), they read comics, and they scorffed down one of the baguettes I had made for supper (I'm glad they like my baking).

What could I have done in two hours? Did I really need all that sleep? Could I have finished the boring book I have on improving learning by incorporating body movement and moved on to the novel I'd much rather be reading? Could I have written this blog and then started fixing a short story that's been sitting around for months? Could I have taken worn the belts off my snow blower and run down to Canadian Tire to buy new ones? There are 10,000 things I could have done!

When I finally woke and wiped the spit from my beard, the boys were watching mud bogging on TV. In this "sport," a redneck man or woman buys a truck, puts a tall suspension on it, fat tires, a snorkel for the air intake, and then takes turns racing full throttle through a mud bog to see who will make it through fastest. Tires spin, mud flies, drunks slip on muddy inclines as they walk into the bush for a pee (yes, that part was televised), and those unmuffled engines roar like, like ... well, like unrestrained 8-cylinder American engines -- there is no simile for that! It's like trying to say what a robin is like. A robin is like a robin.

My inner 12-year old still loves the sound of a loud engine roaring fossil fuels through narrow, unbaffled pipes into the atmosphere. I wish I still had the energy and will to stay awake like my 12-year old self did when all that mattered was growing up so I could have my own jacked-up pickup truck. I want to spin my tires, pee in the bush, and drive home with so much mud on my metaphysical car that you can't tell what colour it is. And I want to shout and roar like a souped-up American V8, sending my voice up into the endless, blue empty sky.

Yeah, that's what I want.

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A Buddhist goes to a Christian church

Go back to the beginning you will.

I haven’t been to church in a long time. Aside from weddings and funerals, it's been more than 30 years. My parents used to send my sister and I to Sunday school so they could have some “alone time,” but by the time I reached junior high, I felt alienated and ill-at-ease there (go figure). So I quit. I hated the idea of church after that. I got to the point of mocking the Jesus lovers as blind slaves to a myth of subservience and weakness.

As I aged, I felt the need for something more in my life. Work, pay bills, eat, sleep, weren’t enough for me. Perhaps my early church years primed me for metaphysical thinking or maybe I’m just wired this way. I started reading about Buddhism in the 80’s, but didn’t understand it. I attended a Buddhist gathering once, but the way they honoured the image of Buddha turned me off (scarring from my Pentacostal brain-washing days). Not much happened after that, but spiritual seeds had been planted. I felt like something wasn’t right and that maybe I didn’t have to feel helpless to the whims of fate and my family's predisposition to depression and anxiety disorder.

Eight years ago, I gave Buddhism another try. I had been reading more books and I appreciated how they believe that we are responsible for our own suffering and that we have all that we need inside us to be happy. It’s just a matter of shifting perception and making different choices about how we live our lives. I found a Buddhist group. I found a teacher. And I came to appreciate the idea of ritual and religious community again. I was old enough to understand the teaching too.

It all ended when I moved to the middle of nowhere. Not many Buddhists or vegetarians out here. I like where I live, but attending a Buddhist meditation session means a two-hour drive to the big city. Too much for me and it takes me away from a community I feel comfortable in. That and I wanted to introduce my kids to the idea of religious life.

Then here (in the middle of nowhere), I met some terrific people. Church-goers, but not pushy and genuinely easy to be around. Smart, friendly, raising children like my dear wife and I, and going through the same midlife experiences.

Today we gave Sunday church service a try. Same nice people. Easy-going service shy on ornate rituals and rich in music. And the sermon was ... OK. I learned something. The teaching was about sacrifice, hard-core and dark: Abraham was prepared to slit his own son’s throat to prove his faith to God (I guess there weren’t any sheep around) and at the last second his hand was stayed and God gave him a ram to kill instead. Sheesh. That’s a high price to pay for faith. Even killing a poor sheep is over the top.

How do you get a lesson for modern life from that?! Simple really. You convert the metaphorical music from this death-metal old testament composition to a modern pop ballad and you talk about the sacrifice we need to practice a religion (to practice anything). Buddhism is all about giving up your self so that you can live life free from suffering. Christians talk about being born again. It’s the same thing. I do prefer the quiet, private nature of Zen practice as opposed to the do everything in front of everyone practices you find in a Christian church (e.g., passing around the offering bowl so everyone can see how much you give).

For me, it means if I really want something (something worthwhile like inner peace), I need to give up my old ways of doing things. They don't work! It will take some sacrifice. I want to meditate more often. I know that it will give me insight into my habits and delusions, but damned if I can find the time to sit. It seems, I would much rather sleep an extra 30 minutes on a cold winter morning than get up and sit on my cushion. Can I give up the comfort of my bed, let go of some of my well-worn ideas and develop a regular meditation practice. I would never harm a hair on my son’s head, but maybe I could give up some of my night-time habits so that I could go to bed earlier and then get up early to meditate.

And I can go to church on Sunday morning. I never thought I would ever say that, but it's just down the street, the people are great, and the message is the same. I'll be a Buddhist in a Christian church who is working towards living a better life in the best way he can.

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Facebook: blessing in disguise?

Written in response to Roxanne's blog post: To Facebook or Not To Facebook …

Facebook is especially deadly now that I access it on my iPhone. Waiting for pancakes to brown? Out comes the phone. Commercials? Warming up the car? Waiting for my dentist? Lets see what’s new with my friends. The result for me is less time to stop and just be. I never need to do nothing ever again.

I’ve tried taking Facebook off my phone and I can last a week or two before I re-install it. Easier has been unliking all the George Takei type sites and then filtering the people who post Facebook-game crap (that means blocking my mother). All this helps cut down on the quantity I look at.

Is this what a smoker feels like? Facebook is there when my alarm goes off, then again before I sleep. I don't like that.
 
My current thinking is that this struggle we are sharing points to a type of loneliness. Facebook makes me feel like I belong to something. Community? The question is can I address this “need” so that Facebook loses its allure. I can live without what I read there so it’s not really a question of content. It’s the delusion of feeling disconnected that I would like to address. Perhaps we are not suffering from lack of contact with others, but instead from a gap in our connection with ourselves? Self-alienation.

I don’t know what the answer is. Cold turkey? Probably not. Heal myself instead? Maybe. At least Facebook has helped me see this inner work that needs attention. I feel some urgency also as my kids approach an age where they can do what I do on the computer. Gulp.

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What matters most?

This question arises for me again: what matters most?

Living with peace or joy come to mind first, but honestly, I don't think that's enough to get the golden key. Life is more than peace and joy. It's chaos and grief too and choosing one side over the other maintains an impossible separation. I think the answer lies in the direction of connection (radical acceptance). Not so much person to person, but self to everything. Much suffering comes from living in separation. Me vs. them. This career vs. that one. Scarcity vs. abundance. All this separation fuels greed, delusion, and anger. And fear.

Maybe versus can become and? If we could just figure out how to take a step back (or a few steps) and see life from a perspective wider than our thinking, I believe we would see the flashing neon "AH-HA" sign.

If it were so easy! Finding that perspective is proving difficult for me. There are so many paths to this truth and I get turned around only to find myself having circled back to where I started.

So. I go again. Always going, going, going on beyond.

All the best to all my blogger friends. May January first be as special as June 11 or August 18 or any other day.

Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today (or this year), at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful.

The Buddha

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What Zeb said

I was wondering how to offer thanks to a fellow blogger who has appeared in my netconsciousness recently. Someone who speaks a similar life language as I. How do we find each other like this? How do kindred spirits end up connected in a universe of countless constellations, stars, and planets? Wait, I don't need to know. I'm grateful it happens. That's enough.

So this fellow writes a response to my last post in an artful, poetic way about how we all suffer in similar ways. I am not the only one with this experience. I got lost in his words. I wasn't sure how to respond, how to offer my two bits to the conversation chain. I'm not a smile and be happy kind of comment leaver. Then Zebulon Walton came to the rescue. (How did it happen that the episode I watched tonight was so appropriate to the topic at hand?! And how about fiction as a source for answers about ALL important things in life?!!!)

Old Zeb said, "We can think our way into anything." Simple as that. He had seen a falling star and believed that this was portending his death. His father died after seeing a falling star, why would it be any different for him? So a healthy man took to his bed and bemoaned his quickly approaching passing. He wouldn't eat. He wouldn't get out of bed. He clutched his bible and waited for what he knew would happen. It was just a matter of time. But he did not meet his maker in this the first season of The Walton's. No, something happened that made him forget all about the falling star. His lifeblood flowed back into him as if someone had unkinked his garden hose of chi and he got out of bed. There was more living to do.

Zeb had it right. We can think our way into or out of anything. We all get stuck from time to time. Some stay stuck and spiral down deep into the mud. Some don't even know they are stuck, blissfully unaware of the rooster tail of mud they are spraying on the rest of us. And others have the spiritual traction of the Dalai Lama. They motor their way out of the mire, lovely lotus blossoms rising towards the sky. Very few people do this alone. Thinking is the problem, but what the heck, we are thinking creatures. We just have to work with it. Perhaps thinking is also the solution. Or at least an awareness of our thinking. Like DBS, I believe we all have the potential to lift ourselves from our self-induced pain and find some real peace. But let's not do it alone!

If you have a hankering for some 39-year old TV, here's the good part of the episode I watched tonight ... by chance.

Speaking of the Waltons, I love the idea of "the recipe." The Baldwin sisters are society bootleggers. They are unaware of this sinful implication and see their home-based business as a way to produce a lovely cordial to share with friends and neighbors. A way to contribute to the joy of life. That's my kind of whiskey!



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Self maintenance

Maintenance instructions, July 2010

It seems like somewhere along the way, we have forgotten how to perform periodic maintenance on ourselves. Our bodies and our minds. If you run a vehicle without changing the oil, it won't last long. I neglected my personal maintenance recently and paid the price with a prolonged flu. In a perverse way, I was glad to be ill because I could finally stop and rest.

Marty the kitten, a new member of the Offworld family doesn't have a problem with maintenance. He plays, he eats, and when he needs to, he sleeps. Doesn't matter where he is, he stops. Doesn't matter how tantalizing a toy is, he stops. Doesn't matter if he is being pushed around in the back of a toy truck by a five year-old, he stops and he sleeps. Many of us could be more like Marty.

We haven't bothered hooking up the TV in our new Eldorado home and I'm noticing that I go to bed earlier. There's no show to distract me for "just another hour," so I go to bed. And I sleep. No problem. Feels good.

Stopping can be many things: resting, meditation, looking out a train window as you zoom from place to place, or just stopping in the middle of a busy day and doing a whole bunch of nothing for two minutes. It's not laziness. Try it and see how hard it is. After a while it's not so difficult and the benefits become clear. I've noticed and stopped a tension headache before it got out of hand and needed treatment with Tylenol and chocolate. I just made it through my first five-day work week in 4 years by going to bed early each night and stopping work at quitting time even if I was in the middle of something.

"Rabbi Tarfon, who lived at the turn of the first millennium, is purported to have written one of my favorite paradoxical quotes. It's a simple, yet profound statement:

You are neither obligated to complete the task nor are you free to desist from it.

What does this message mean? The first part of it says you're not required to do whatever you think you need to do. The second part says you still need to try to do the task, whatever it is.

I want you to think of some great project in your life you feel you've been called to do. Tarfon says you don't need to complete it. On the other hand, you can't stop from trying it."

- Rabbi Brian, Religion Outside the Box

This helps me put things in perspective. There will always be too much to do. My to-do list today starts with tending the garden, unpacking the garage, taking the boys to a movie, and goes on from there. I could write pages of things I'd like to do and never achieve a quarter of them. I'll have to settle for doing what I can.

How's your oil today? Does it need changing? Can you take a break? Even a minute will help.

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