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,

A New Autumn

I think it is safe to say that we, as a society, traditionally see Spring as a period of birth and beginnings, while Autumn is a period of letting go and preparation for endings.

However, my personal experience has been somewhat difference.  I am not sure it is because of the practice or if it is because I am a school teacher, but I tend to find a certain energy in the end of summer.  It is a sort of determination that carries a deep intention to improve on past weaknesses.

I have face many school years as both a student and a teacher, and although there have been a number of months, semesters and years I might rather forget, the hope of the Autumn remains unblemished.

From the perspective of Zen, Autumn is a time to turn inward.  This has nothing to do with shunning the world, but more with increasing the focus on the inward eye.  Zazen can happen at anytime or any place, but the cooling of the days has a way of providing more opportunities.

Soon, the Fall Ango will be upon us and we will be asked how we will amplify or expand our practice.  Such a decision is worthy of our attention now.  Intention tempered by reflection over time is a power thing.  Not powerful like a hurricane, but like a river that runs fast and deep in search of a great ocean that it already touches.

The end of summer deserves its share of melancholy, but only as far as it is the result of a settling of activity.

Seasons

I can remember a time in my life when things were all or nothing.  I'd plan a big change and it would work out, or it would be abandoned.  Life never really worked out that way, but that was the way I approached it.

These days I have come to recognize the seasons of things.  Rather than forcing all things into being or extinction, I find that I am getting better at noticing the shifts of things.  When to push forward, when to back off.

Appropriately enough, the this shift came gradually.  Learning to let things rest, to just be what they are until they need to be something else, is a developed skill for me.  It is not an easy thing.  It can be very difficult to not burst in and start projecting myself on a reality that does not fit my perception.  It also takes a lot of attention to make sure this does not just become passivity.

Vague enough?  Sorry.  That's the way it feels right now.  The winds are changing, or maybe it's just a gust.  We'll see.

The Matrix

When Rinsen (my primary teacher) talks about what enlightenment is not, he often makes a matrix reference, saying that it is not like you can suddenly see the matrix code. The world seen before this incredible insight is the world that is seen after.

From what I have seen in this life, primarily in the teachings of enlightened beings and my observations of them, this appears to be so.

However, analogies are limited and can be applied in a variety of ways. So without disputing Rinsen's observation or claiming to have reached a great enlightenment, I'd like to make the statement: I have seen the matrix.

It was early in the morning, just the other day. The environment was quiet. My mind was quiet. Then as I moved into the shower, I became keenly aware of myself as the observer of my own mind. The incoming data (warmth, wetness, stiff muscles, eyes squinting against bright lights) was being filtered through my experience and seen by my mind.

In computer science with Mr. Murphy back in the mid 80's, we learned that data is just data. Although the program and the data need each other to make things happen, data flows forward without intent or value until it is processed through a program, or if you will, a matrix.

That program or matrix can take that data and use it to detonate a bomb, make blips on a heart monitor or tell you when the oven is hot enough to bake cookies. The nature of the program determines the nature of the data.

Our minds are very much the same way. The direction, intent and adaptability of our mind will determine how it processes the day that unfolds before us. This is not to say the solution is to just stay positive. For me the key seems to be mental flexibility, but I digress.

What I am getting at is the idea that our minds are the matrix. I believe it is possible to see the nature of one's own mind.

In that moment, moving to the shower, I saw the possibilities of the day that lay ahead. Not in the data, but in the clarity and pliability of the matrix that would process it. The day unfolded in a seemingly ordinary way. Pleasant and unpleasant things came up. I'd like to say that I did not let my mind amplify any of the negative things. I can't though. I can say I saw it, caught myself, and to the extent that I could, I made it better.

I like my analogy. I recognize that it is being used in a very specific way. In the end, what do we see when we see the matrix? We see a day. Just a day. Unlike any other.

My Ducks

(picture taken last Spring with my eldest daughter)

Recently I was able to attend a Sunday service at TZC. The format usually makes for a fairly short talk, but this one was one of the more notable ones I have heard in a long time.

Rinsen spoke of ducks.

The gist of it was the nature of ducks vs. our tendency to want our ducks to be in a row. As he explored this, my mind tried to identify it's ducks. (given that the mind is one big duck to begin with) Today however, I found one of the more disorderly bunches of ducks that I have been hanging with. Collectively, they are my house.

In August we had some flooding in our basement and the repair work (covered by insurance) has been very slow. The contents of our basement were moved to our living room and our garage. The short of it is that our living space consisted of a kitchen, 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms for 3 months. I have been very stuck in the mind that says "I'll be happy when all of this is done and I have my house back". Although I am happy that the repairs are almost done, I can see that I have been playing a very dangerous and unhealthy game with my own mind.

As drastic as the damage to the basement was, I have to recognize that even now there are issues. Things to be worked on and repaired. The new paint and carpet will get dirty or chipped. The idea that there is a perfect way for my basement to be, is a static view of a dynamic situation. Even as the ducks seem to be coming into line, I have to recognize that they will drift apart again.

This was basically what Rinsen was getting at, but it is much more useful when these things can be seen in our own lives and not just as abstract concepts.

I am going to go downstairs now and play with my ducks.

Why Me?

Lately I have been going through some minor plagues. Nothing major, just a torn calf muscle and some colds and flu's. But for most of the time I was going through it, it FELT major. It felt terrible. I felt terrible. I felt like my entire life was crumbling around me. It took some time to create the space I needed to work through it, but once I did, I spent some time thinking about how situations like this arise.

What I found was not earth shattering, surprising or even new, but it came from a different angle and provided some insight.

In the physical universe, there are countless bodies in motion. Every body has a gravitational field and that field acts on every other body in the universe. This creates an infinitely complex and dynamic relationship between everything in existence. Pull back far enough and it can be seen that there is a geographical center to the universe, and everything is moving outward from that. Some theories hold that the universe will eventually collapse back to that point in the Big Crunch.

But that is not where we live. We live in eddies of activity and drama. We exist in currents of dynamic drama with people we did not know 10 years ago and who will not always be a part of our lives. We live in homes that will decay and eventually be abandoned, regardless of how much time and money we put into them during our lives.

We move through these swirls of life and activity from which there cannot be perceived a center. There is only motion, in even in stillness.

Then a moment comes. We might perceive some subtle agency behind a collection of our circumstances that brings us to wrongly pursue a line of thought based on an idea that we are getting more than our own share of suffering and calamity.

What is your due portion of calamity? Really?

I played a bit of poker in my life. I know how the odds work. In Hold'em, if you are chasing a flush after the flop, you have approximately a 36% chance of making your hand. But YOU WON'T ACTUALLY hit that flush 36% of the time. You'll die first. To get what the odds say you should get you'd have to play poker forever. The closer that your time playing gets to infinity, the closer your outcome will reflect the odds. Despite this, many players decide poker is rigged because they are hitting their hands less often than they "should". Others feel they have something called "luck" on their side because they seem to make their hands more than they "should".

What is your due portion of luck? Really?

So what happens when my world is collapsing around me? Having made the error of thinking there is a certain amount of luck or calamity that I should have, I place myself in the center of the universe. This is a terrible place to be. When you are at the center of the universe, the universe is either running away from you, leaving you alone and isolated, or it is rushing towards you, threatening to crush you.

When I slip, it is a slip into the center of the universe.

For me, when I break out of these frames of mind, it is usually the result of displacing myself from the center of the universe. I might see it through the suffering of another person, or even from just looking up and truly seeing the unblemished sky that covers all the beings of this planet.

Parks and Rec

Julie asked why I was putting trip reports on my Zen blog.

Where else would I put it?

I know it is not particularly reflective like most of my other posts, but there is more to contemplative life than reflection. There is also awe and living. Short trip that this is, there is a many layered beauty in it. The movement through this country is parallel to the movement through this life. The depth of connection between Julie and I, although it is always there, can ride at the surface of our awareness in those brief moments away from familiar places and faces.

There is beauty.

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Friday night we went to bed early. I won't say it was a mistake, but in the morning we knew we had to force ourselves to sleep long so we would be better able to handle the day.

Saturday morning we went for a walk in the rain after breakfast, and got our hands on a coffee and an umbrella. Julie made an appointment to get her hair done for the wedding and we did a little shopping at Zellers and Winners.

We had a lot of time to kill until the wedding, so we looked at a map and I suggested the Elizabeth Lake Bird Sanctuary. We learned from our cabbie that this used to be a popular duck hunting spot. It would be a popular ANYTHING spot.

Eventually, one of the paths let us exit back into Cranbrook's suburbia. We walked and talked, and I kept Julie laughing a lot of the time. If for no other reason, this trip has been worth it for the time we have had alone together. After a lot of walking and a little garage sale-ing, we called a cab. It was time to rest and get ready for the wedding.

Dave is a friend of ours from high school. We were not best friends, but we ran in the same crowd. He is one of 2 friends whom we have stayed in contact with more or less consistently since 1990. We went to different universities and after school he pretty much went straight out to Penticton BC to work as an astrophysicist at a radio observatory. We would see him every few years, and we even drove out West and saw him after I started teaching full time. There are few things in my life that I would change at this point, but being closer to Dave is one of them. He is a source of goodness in the world. A positive soul whom I am better for knowing. I am so very happy for him and Jackie on their big day.

Going to this wedding, Julie and I have already been married for 18 years. It is an amazing thing watching our friends just getting started on this journey. Last night was a celebration of the day. Their coming together as individuals, remaining individuals but become a single thing. If I could offer them anything about marriage it would be this...

Look closely at yourselves and your lives and see that you, as individuals are not set, static, unchanging beings. Your experiences, likes, dislikes, dreams, goals and biases have been in flux for almost 40 years. This is living. This is being in tune with life. You will continue to be so. As a couple, grow together. Don't let yourself attach to some unchanging image of who the other is. Celebrate this growth and change. Explore how your love and friendship develops and changes. Revel in its robust moments, nurture and sooth its weak moments, cherish every moment.

Lose the ability to hear the phrase "you're not the person I married" as a complaint. It is an observation that points to the unique path you will create together.

I wish you all the best. I love you both.