Radical Discipleship in an Unjust World

Have just signed up for a weeklong workshop by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, two of our country's foremost Bible scholars. Have read several books by each, and am moved out of quiescence to revisit the Bible from the perspective of transformational Christianity. To see the workshop description, click on post title.

I seem to be bound to repeat the Buddha's story- always hoping for inspiration and a way to end suffering in the world. I guess for me, it won't be sitting. Can't.

According to Borg, the whole Bible story (Torah to Revelation) is about liberation from suffering in all its forms- slavery, political oppression, economic stratification, personal bondage of any kind. He is a wonderful writer, and I am always inspired by his "big picture" thinking about the Bible and our faith lives.

A lecture from Union Theological Seminary encourages all Christians to intimately acquaint themselves with at least one other world religion in order to create an inner dialogue amplifying Christian perspectives, and also the ability to have meaningful dialogue with adherents to other faith traditions. OK! I'm already there!

Still Thinking About Paperclay (Click title)

I am still thinking about the paperclay workshop, and with great relish, because I will be spending several days and nights at Artifacts studio where this workshop was held while its wonderful owner gets a new hip. (A new hip!!!!).

Several years ago, I "rescued" a dozen or so desiccated 25 pound blocks of clay from a condemned studio building. It has sat in my studio awaiting further purpose, and now 100 lbs of it is slaking in buckets at the Artifacts Studio so that it can become paperclay, and I can play with it while studio sitting.

Graham Hay did outrageous things with the paperclay. He dipped hot dog buns into it to make little building blocks, he ran yards and yards of yarn through slip creating sticks of it, he flung 25 pound slabs like huge frisbees onto the top of buckets to make bowls. This, believe me, is MY kind of clay work.

I had stopped doing it for several years, but next week, I am going to have a grand no-mind wallow in paperclay slip. Zeus (the studio dog), the happiest dog in the world and I are going to go for it. What a dream!

Experiencing Ego

I understand "ego" and "identity" as mental tools by which I navigate the earthly plane. The disciplines of Zen, and other spiritual practices help me spend time away from my accustomed ego/identity enabling me to experience a truer, more complete reality than the one "ego" seeks. "Ego/identity" is an easier thing to grasp intellectually than to experience directly, however.

I am experiencing identity now as I sit at the Mayo Clinic once again looking for causes of ongoing pain. Entering the Mayo, one of the best patient care systems in the world, I find my identity becomes that of sick person, a change from its usual state which is that of a sick person only when I can't function.

Today at the Mayo, everything that is around me, everything I do, all of the people I interact with, are purposed toward alleviating sickness, and I play my part by being in the identity of a sick person. Even the beautiful art placed here and there to soothe and distract me is there because I am sick, and this art might help me get better.

I discover that while here, I am even more aware of pain, I feel weaker and less able, my self-talk is more negative. I experience a different ego. This lessens while I am writing this post (and totally in my head- a different identity), and it comes back when the nurse re-enters the room with her testing equipment.

This is not a rant about medical care-oh no! This is a moment of enlightenment about ego/identity. I am experiencing its fleeting nature, its impermanence, and its conditioned dependence.

This direct experience of a shifty reality enlightens me, making way for another direct experience- a truer self. Now I am thinking about Eckhard Tolle's words paraphrased below. They have been my koan since I heard them.

"You are not your ego. You are are all of life, aware of itself."

Clay- It's More Fun Than Insomnia

Today I'd much rather talk about clay than to talk about sleep. I have been to a two day workshop by Australian artist, Graham Hay, who specializes in paperclay (clay mixed with dissolved paper).

He was a human dynamo of ideas- the Red Green of clay, the master of messy mudpies. He was irreverent toward traditional clay ideas- my favorite kind of clay artist. He was totally my kind of artist- always experimental and loving the process more, really, than the product, though his products have won him international recognition and a lot of trips around the world.

What he does is available on his website http://www.grahamhay.com.au/paperclay.html. This website is also a compilation of his art buddies and their work, lots of how-to's, lots of images. It is a very generous website.

Insomnia- It is what it is

What to do about insomnia when you cannot tolerate barbiturate or barbiturate-like drugs:

1. Accept it as if it were in the same category as having fingers and toes.

2. Find enjoyable and useful things to do with your time awake.

3. Celebrate having enough time to listen to lots of podcasts, and learn a lot of new things.

4. Use skills learned on zenhabits.net to devise a way of implementing good sleep hygiene habits to give yourself a fighting chance at a healing amount of uninterrupted sleep. Next post will be on my sleep hygiene practices and tips.

5. Do not add suffering to pain by wishing it were any other way than what it is.

6. Do not add negativity to your ideas about it. Do not call it IN-somnia; call it an elegant sufficiency of wakefulness. You might think this is sarcastic, but those who know me know that I rarely practice sarcasm.

True Causes of Suffering; Ambien

Mindful paper shuffling at the Retreat Center again today. Last week, I copied and collated around 2000 pages to arrange into 70 information booklets for the rooms at the Center, failing to work mindfully because of an inner rant about church.

As the week went on I ranted further (my usual topics- medical care, things made in China, wastefulness, etc.) At the same time, back pain was at all-time high levels. It was a pretty bad week.

This Saturday, when I returned to my 2000-sheet project, I learned that I had to rearrange a number of sheets in each packet from the collation I had done last week. Surprisingly, this neither agitated me, nor made mindfulness difficult.

In retrospect, I see the reason. Enlightenment, it was not. The week before, I had begun a prescription for Ambien so that I could fall asleep in spite of pain. It was a godsend, I thought, because I could drop off like clockwork instead of the usual insomnia. And 8-9 hours of sleep is unheard of for me.

But uncharacteristically bad pain in the afternoon, and daily rants began to make me suspicious, so I googled around. Sure enough, these are side-effects for a small percentage of folks. Those who wrote, echoed my experience exactly. So I reconciled myself to insomnia, quit the Ambien, and I am on a more even keel.

This is not the first chapter in my story of drug intolerance. (ref. 1.25.08 post). This week's experience recalls the revelation of "A Resilient Biology" from my last retreat (ref. 2.13.08 post). I am thinking that much we ascribe to the spiritual really arises from the physical, though it is experienced or attributed otherwise. How much suffering could we alleviate from our lives by correct attribution, resulting in correct steps to alleviate actual causes?

Do the Math

"It is not what we do that makes us holy; it is making holy what we do" Meister Eckhart

This is how it is going to have to go for me. I have not been to a sit or dokusan since Roshi told us in retreat several months ago that it could take twenty years of daily sitting for many hours to have one enlightened moment. I'm not so ignorant that I didn't know this already, and he had actually given a magnificent teisho earlier which addressed this, but the message was more obscure and I was swept away by the poetry of it.

I have done the math, (I am over 60) and have come to terms with my miserable bulging disced, bony-spurred back. Eternity is a long game, but I realize that in this lifetime, mindful working is probably going to be my best shot at resting my neurons, making more room in the dendritic RAM, and that one moment of enlightenment. So with mindful work as my practice, I am taking Meister Eckhart's statement to heart.

I am truly inspired by the blog zenhabits.net, written by the grandson of Joe Murphy (the late editor of the Pacific Daily New on Guam). In it are wonderful ideas about how to create new habits. The new habits I seek are those which make holy what I do.

I Can't Do It

Two goals today: 1. No ranting while arranging medical appointments. 2. Make decision re upcoming Zen Sesshin (=overcome fear of not being able to sit for four days due to bad back.)

My inspiration today: From NOVICE TO MASTER: AN ONGOING LESSON ON THE EXTENT OF MY OWN STUPIDITY by Soko Morinaga (see and read at theartofzenliving.com).

"When you feel you have a capacity of say, 10.0, anything up to 9.9 feels possible: the feeling, 'I can't do it' arises just at the point at which you 're given a 10.1 assignment. The person who is quick to judge a task as impossible will never perform beyond a 10.0. That person will never improve. For this reason, you must never think, 'I can't do it.' '

"No matter what demands a teacher [life] makes of you, you must somehow fulfill them. You must make unyielding efforts to work it out, as you climb- 10.1, 10.2, 10.3- you gradually develop. for the first time, you have power you never thought yourself capable of having."

Moon Shadow

Lest anyone ask, "Is the recession real?" let me answer. I have been shopping for appliances, something I did at this time last year. The prices are up 30-50% over last year. I ranted today about that and some very poor and financially specious service from the medical care community.

Tonight, I am bedazzled by the full moon. In our crackling air, the moonlight is so bright it reminds me of one unforgettable night when as poor students, my then husband and I were similarly bedazzled. We awoke at 2 a.m. to find a new layer of powdery snow reflecting every lumen of a full moon in the clear sky over Grand Rapids, MI. We could see for blocks.

We were so thrilled we suited up and took a long walk, leaving the first footprints on that sparkling blanket. The swish of our snowmobile suits, and the crunch of the snow underfoot was all we could hear in the silence. It was a long time ago, but I felt that thrill again tonight as I looked out across the desert hoping to see a coyote walk the arroyo in the blue moonlight.

On neither night did that pleasure cost me one red cent.

Busted

I reread yesterday's post and I am totally busting myself for NOT working mindfully at the Redemptorist Center. Instead, I was very engaged in a mental wank about church. Not only that, but I wasn't even aware of it then, OR when I wrote. Xeroxing, punching, and collating that could have been mindfully done, was not. It's a miracle I lasted as long as I did (3 hours).

A. That's the result of several weeks of no mindfulness practice, and B. That's why monks can sometimes practice for twenty years all day and never experience the first enlightened moment.

Church, by the way, was fine. We missed Liz, but are ready to move on. Kicked ourselves with regret, however, when we read the bulletin and learned that the meditation group was at a retreat this weekend, and we weren't with them. Out of touch.

Welp, back to the drawing board.

Mindless Work Mindfully Done

Glad to be back doing our mindful work at the Redemptorist Center. Always a good time to reflect and contemplate. Today, this:

What if I just decided to re-up with the Catholic Church. The big secret of the universe all boils down to submission. Call it salvation, obedience, non-attachment, enlightenment, whatever. So what if I just got tired of all the Protestant do-it-yourself theologizing, and figured that I don't have enough years left to sit zazen long enough for enlightenment, and what if I just decided to leave it up to the professional theologians?

I would continue with silent contemplation, and participate in the sacraments which have not only not lost their meaning, but have gained some with my advancing years.

It was a great fantasy until after xeroxing five reams of bright white paper, punching 3 holes in all of the sheets, collating them into 30 page orientations to the Redemptorist Center, I remembered that the Catholic Church only allows communion hosts made of wheat.

Tomorrow I will be taking my Corn Thins to the Episcopal Church for consecration, and will sit there sad because the great "chick" Vicar (her words) is gone, and we have no idea what is coming next. But I WILL sit there.

Zen Habits- a Blog

My son-in-law introduced me to one of the most beautiful blogs I have ever seen (in my fairly naive blog-life). Everything about it is beautiful- the blog itself, its content, and the fact that its author shares with me one of the best aspects of my life- a love for the island of Guam. To see for yourself, go to http://zenhabits.net/2008/04/the-beauty-and-culture-of-the-island-of-guam/

The blog seems to be about (among many things) self-improvement of the zen kind. A quick look reveals page after page of wisdom, which probably explains why it is so popular.

I am totally taken aback by this blog, because of the flashback it is giving me about my time on the island of Guam and how my life there indelibly transformed everything I believed and felt prior to living there. It is the second flashback this year, the first being the month we spent on the Big Island of Hawaii. A sweet piece of synchronicity.

I am also instantly attracted to this blog because as I click around its pages, I see many things that I myself have learned and experienced since I began zen/mindful practice just a few years ago. I have been trying to write about these things, but have not come even close to what the blog's author. Leo Baubauta, has accomplished.

Thanks, Mark. I am passing the favor on.

Papa Wins the Prize!

At dinner tonight, Papa mentioned that his men's Bible study group has been futilely trying to come to a consensus in their discussions about pre-destination and free will after 16 chapters of a very comprehensive systematic theology book. (Joining many centuries of professional theologians on the matter).

Apparently he has grown weary of the debate, for he revealed that in the last discussion, he told the group that his wife had said this kind of deliberation was "wanking," and he was beginning to be inclined to believe her.

You would have to understand the rarity of a comment like that from Papa to realize why he won the prize- but it segued into a fabulously serious and articulate dissertation by the eight and nine year old grandchildren about Pokemon. A most wonderful dinner conversation on many levels.