Don't know

Right now it seems like something really big is going on.  The Covid-19 virus is making a lot of people sick and a lot of people are dying. but there is something closer than the foreground of that image.  Right now, in so many ways, I don't know what is going to happen.

I don't know what is going to happen to the people I love,

I don't know what is going to happen to the classes I am trying to teach,

I don't know when I am going to visit friends

I don't know what the impact of this is going to be on my job, my kids, the economy, etc.

This "I don't know" is something different from the actual virus.  It is something different than my job or the stresses of social distancing.  It is like the smudges on your glasses that you can easily forget are there.

Most of my day I have a sense of of what is going to happen next.  I'll shower, make breakfast, do some work, meditate, hang out with the family.  But that sense of knowing what is coming next really is an illusion.  This illusion is common among people.  I find that the truth is I don't know what is going to happen next.  There are few forces that will disrupt my routine, but countless things that I have no control over can derail my plans.

A heart attack, a bout of depression, a broken toilet, an upset child, a forgotten deadline or even just a better plan.

I draw a sense of stability from knowing what is happening and knowing what is coming most of the time.  However, right now, everywhere in the world, all at once, every one of us doesn't know.  That doesn't feel pleasant, especially in the midst of a disease that is causing so much direct and indirect suffering.

A lot of people are dealing with "not knowing" fairly gracefully.  Others are not.  Sometimes I am, sometimes I am not.  For me, being at home and working from home pushes hard against my edges.

Part of not knowing is realizing that I don't have the answers, but I will share what I am doing in these times.

Being a school teacher, I have a certain amount of experience dealing with large blocks of unstructured time, though I still need to work from home and do what I can to help the people in my life.

I keep regular hours during my workweek.  I get up between 6 and 7, shower, dress for a regular day, have breakfast with Julie and look at my schedule for the day.  With Ontario schools closed, we developing how to support the kids from home.  As a special needs teacher, this is pretty complicated, but everyone is working on it.

I am really restricting my media intake.  What I need to know about Covid-19, I get from the CBC, the CDC, the WHO and a website which compiles official statistics:  www.ncov2019.live

I am making a point of getting outside each day.  A bike ride, a walk in the neighbourhood, throwing frisbees around the park.

I meditate, pray and chant everyday.  These are very specific tools to help me do 2 things.  First, they help keep me from automatically grasping on to the panic that social media and my own mind try to put in my way.  Second, they help me keep my my mind oriented towards kindness.  When I don't know, I find that leading with compassion is good for my spiritual and physical heart (plus it doesn't throw gas on the fire).

I am cleaning the garage.  This is a big one for me, especially after a winter.  I'd share a picture, but the drastic contrast would escape most everyone.  My father-in-law has seen that horrible pit and would likely be impressed with its current state.

Finally, I am trying to find ways to stay connected with people in my life.  I find that what is coming from people who are sharing their direct experiences on social media to be very positive and supportive, (better than a lot of the stuff that is reshared).  I am playing games online with strangers and with friends.  I am also participating in livestreams with my Sangha in Toledo.  "Sangha" is a Buddhist term that basically means community.  I very grateful for this community in particular.  There is nothing quite like trying to navigate these troubling times with a bunch of people who have vowed to encounter the moment with wisdom and compassion.

I don't know how this will all turn out or when things will improve.  But here is what I do know:  if I lead with kindness and compassion for myself and others, I will be doing the best I can for myself and others.

May we all be safe.
May we all be healthy.
May we all be happy.
May we all be at ease.

Transition to a new page

If want to stay connected with this blog, you can continue to follow us by searching Norhtern Sky Zen on the web or on facebook.  This blog will be inactive but will remain as an archive.

Pain and Suffering

Earlier this week,  I dove to the bottom of a pool to retrieve a stone.  As a result I ended up with water trapped in my ear.  I couldn't get it out and neither could the doctor.  The pressure and pain came on almost immediately.  While the pain was severe, the location of the pain made it omnipresent, but not incapacitating.  I continued to work, care for my kids, play in a staff golf tournament and prep for my daughter to host a sleep over.  All while in unignorable pain.

When we engage our lives as practice, encountering physical pain gives us an opportunity to study the difference between pain and suffering.  And to be clear, there is a difference.

In this case, the pain looks like a throbbing in my left ear that amplifies my tinnitus tenfold and lets me hear my heartbeat in the painful throb.

The suffering might look like this:  

1.  "uuuuuuunnnnnngggghhh when is it going to stop? uuuuunnnggh?" (as a continual 4 hour thought)
2. the neck and upper back tension unconsciously held to accompany that thought. (so it won't get lonely)
3. "This is Bullshit!  I was just getting over a cold and now it is reasserting itself!"
4. "Damn it!  If I hadn't had that bicep surgery I'd still have sick days and could take time off to deal with this."
5. "This should be a great day!  Instead I have to deal with this crap!"
6. "Ear drops?  You'd think a doctor could just suction it out."

And on and on.  Now, as in zazen,  thoughts are going to arise.  That is not a problem.  But when these thoughts a fed, nurtured and given priority and weight, there is suffering.

When I was young, and long before I encountered Zen and a practice, I used to train in Tae Kwon Do.  I can remember harnessing some kind of Star Trek, Mr. Spock mojo to try and separate myself from my physical pain as though I was observing it from outside.  The pain still hurt just as much, but sometimes it seemed more manageable.  Although it was still there I could work with it, rather than being something that consumed my consciousness.

Today I woke up with less ringing and less throbbing.  For now at least, the big pain is gone.  I offer my practice and intention to those who deal with chronic pain, but more so to those who deal with chronic suffering.

Developing Vow

Beings are numberless.  I vow to save them.
Desires are inexhaustable.  I vow to end them
Dharma gates are boundless.  I vow to enter them
The Buddha Way is unsurpassable.  I vow to embody it.

  Over the years, I have chanted different versions of this, but it remains the most constant invocation that I use in my practice.  However, the way I hold it has changed.

It used to feel like a 'damn it all' determination from some over the top WWII movie...

Officer:  Who could we possible send?
Sgt:  I'll do it
Officer:  But it's a suicide mission!  You'll never make it!
Sgt:  Why should that stop me?  [jumps out airplane door]

yeah, it had that kind of edge to it.

These days, my understanding of this vow has more to do with the kind of mind it can cultivate.  If you set the intention to really fulfill that vow, then you need a develop patience and kindness with others, but more importantly you need those things for yourself.

While the piss and vinegar determination of that heroic paratrooper seems to give good momentum, it will eventually crash and burn, taking you with it.  The cliche that life is a marathon, not a 100 yard dash is useful here.

You can reach out to save another;  any Bodhisattva should.  However, if the other is not in the right place, they may not want to be saved, or even be aware that anything is wrong.  Our ability to receive help from others is the same way.

We can encounter a teaching, but if the conditions are not correct, we may not be in place to understand and receive it.

As a high school teacher, my job is to impart knowledge, and then send those kids along, while receiving a new group in need of the same help.  What actually is useful for them might not show up until much later in life, if at all.  As well, it is unlikely that the impact I have will be the result of some life changing lesson that I alone imparted to the student.  More likely, what I bring to the table is part of a broad fabric that (hopefully) nourishes the student and gives them a chance to grow.  In my life, the fact that I will not see the extent of this impact is a given.  All I can do is set the intention, take the vow and try to help.

With Purity Like a Lotus

For most of us, at least those who find themselves here on this path, we want to do something about delusion and suffering;  both our own and that of others.  We spend our time at the beginning of practice, developing the capacity to recognize distraction, see it for what it is, let it be and return to the place we choose to place our attention.

In our work to end delusion, this is a very big deal.  In essence we are deluded when our mind sees or weaves a reality that is something other than what is actually going on around us.  As we develop this capacity, so to do we work to end delusion and reduce suffering.

In practicing this, the ground is sewn with the potential for great compassion.  It is on this feild that I am encountering some of the hardest or sharpest edges of my own practice.  On this ground, I find it realitively easy to be compassionate towards those I love, those I don't know and even towards myself.

Where it often breaks down for me is how to practice and manifest compassion towards those people who irritate me, anger me, and (in my view) don't seem to give a damned about anybody else.  What compassion looks like when these situations present themselves is hard to pin down.  In my irritation and anger I tend to see them as a villain, as eveil, as someone who is setting out to be a jackass.  In this disturbed state, I can imagine no other way that it could be.

But what I forget, what I need to cultivate is the very awareness that lead me to practice in the first place.  

Delusion and suffering abound.  I should do something about it.

In these dark and red moments, I fail to see that the being in front of me also lives in the grips of delusion, assaulted by the pull of greed, anger and ignorance (each to their own extent of course).  Like myself, their own conditioning might run so deep that I may never make an impact on it, but knowing that there is darkness and suffering, how can I not try to help?  It doesn't really matter if it is helping myself, my child, that guy, or THAT guy.  We all live in the midst of the muck and the darkness, but in practice we see that it does not have to define who we are or limit our capacity to respond.

At the end of Oryoki (the meditative meals taken on sesshin) we chant: "May we exist in muddy waters, with purity like a lotus..."

Not "may exist apart" or "May we exist protected from".  To alleviate suffering, we aspire to exist IN muddy waters.  We aspire to exist there, because that is where we find the beings most in need of the alleviation of suffering, including ourselves.

Today, as I step out the door, I set the intention to not have blind spots in which some of those beings might hide.

May compassion and peace abound.

Ease off and Pass Through

Rinsen Sensei suggested that we post some of our thoughts on the text we are reading this Ango.  In the Canadian sitting group, we have been taking turns selecting a passage and reading it to the group just before we sit, and then discussing it during tea at the end of our practice time.  As a result, we have been moving through the text in a less than linear way.

As I move though the various chapters, I continue to come back to a portion of the introduction.

"By the examination of his own thoughts, emotions, concepts, and the other activities of mind, the Buddha discovered that there is no need to struggle to prove our existence, that we need not be subject to the rule of the three lords of materialism.  There is no need to struggle to be free; the absence of struggle is in itself freedom. This egoless state is the attainment of buddhahood."

For me, this passage has been part of an ongoing reminder, that we make, or at lest feed our own problems.  We worry;  we imagine arguments and worst case scenarios.  We create barriers.  We build gates.

The world we encounter is just as it is.  We apply the judgement and drama.  Sometimes, things need discernment.  Action based on clear judgement is required.  However, we tend to over do it.  Through a lens that is clouded by worry about the past and future and imagined transgressions, we judge and discern in ways that are excessive and unskillful.  

When we...

release the tension / stop the struggle / drop the story / stop giving our energy to the drama...

we can find our grounded center, even as it floats freely in the middle of the chaos.  Out of that center, we can act without struggle.

For a very long time, there were certain situations in which I could not stop struggling.  If I felt that I had been wronged by others, I would have an incredible sense of entitlement to my anger.  So strong an entitlement, that letting go of the anger was not an option.  It deserved to be nurtured.  It deserved to live.

However, when I would meet with these people, I would more often bring kindness, forgiveness and honest presence.  All the anger and fighting was reserved just for me, when I was alone in the dark hours.  Far from any sense of healthy indignation, this anger fueled a one man war, of which I was always the primary casualty.

I recognize the feeling of this shift much more easily these days.

Like a sigh.

Like easing into a hug as you realize you just can't do it anymore.

Like redirecting the tension and pivoting when uke comes in hard and fast.

Like the moment you release from the first stretch of the day, while still lying in bead.

This is not giving in.  When the struggle stops, it is not because we curl up and wait for death.  These struggles are often our attempts to make the 'then' or the 'now' be what IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE DAM IT!  When we stop the struggle, we can be present to what is actually true in the moment.

Right now, beautifully, it is the calm quiet just before we put the kids to bed.

Emptiness

sigh......  I should post here more often.

Right now.

Right now I am in the middle of a semester at work that has been particularly challenging.  There is poison and it is hard to deal with

Enmei is having her own challenges in returning to the classroom, and sometimes we have felt too down to be the rock for the other.  So we have held each other, both of us down, and held on.

We are on the verge of a move that has left the house 3/4 packed and with a feeling like someone has pushed a pause button on much of the activity of my life.

Yet, everything seems to be both going fast and standing still.

Enmei has just left for a three day workshop and the house seems very empty despite the activity of a teenager, her little sister an their father.

There is great activity, but there is great emptiness.

There is great activity, yet there is great silence.

It is thus, at least for now, but it is changing.

One of my working edges right now is a refocussing on my center.   Working to not be swayed by internal and external environments.

Working in this way with external environment is fair;y obvious as a process.  Even when I see myself affected by it, playing into the drama, I still know I am not these things that happen to me.

The internal environment is more difficult to work with.  I can say "I am not my thoughts" but when the anger or the sadness arises, it is more difficult to see them as something other than myself.

And so I practice.

And so I return to the center.

And so I remember to not confuse the sky with the weather.

And so I continue to work with the one point and the sky in this midst of activity and stillness.  In chaos and silence,