*
This morning I was heading in to work, listening to StoryCorps, Elisa Seeger and her husband Bobby, remembering their son Aiden, who died at seven. Earlier in the week I found out a good friend of mine is dying of the cancer. Another friend of mine, a kid, barely thirty, went in to get checked out for chest pains, they found a six inch cancerous tumor growing on his heart. I was in traffic, stopped at a light, and I looked over at this van next to me, it was from this place I used to work, a couple of group homes for people who had been institutionalized most of their lives and we were trying to get them into this kind of friendlier, more supportive group home space. For the most part it was a disaster, I think. Under trained staff, inexperienced administrators, lots of assaults and injuries and clients gettting out and wandering the streets. Anyway, there was this guy in the front passenger seat, intently biting one of his fingers, a kind of intense and quizzical look on his face, that familiar and yet individual and unique look of someone whose wiring is profoundly in disarray. It brought all that back in an immediate, visceral wave, like biting into one of Proust’s madelines, the years I spent working in children’s hospitals and group homes, locked juvenile facilities. All the physical interventions, jumping on them and holding them down to be forcibly medicated after they’d assaulted someone, the flung poo, the screaming, the relentless sadness and frustration and senselessness of it all. The lack of hope. And also the love, the sweetness, the moments of joy and tenderness unmediated by any kind of filter, just simple and raw experience. The good and the ugly.
And my heart was both broken and assuaged by it. Lifted as if on waves in the stormiest of seas and plunged down into the abyss as well. Both conditions, of bliss and grief, stood there in the middle of the street and started making out like teenagers. We all honked our horns but they continued, plunging their hands into each others pants, deaf to our entreaties.
We had to drive around them to get anywhere.
*
To me the great wonder, the great question, is not why does all this bad shit happen to me, but why it keeps failing, for the most part, to happen. I mean, I know I have suffered my small troubles and I know I won’t be spared in the end, or even much along the way, but still. There are great wide expanses of calm seas, with a favoring wind and sweet water to drink and plenty of supplies laid in. My wealth seems limitless for days at a time. I have lashed myself to a great woman and like Ahab I will not quit in my endeavor though she maim and kill me, for she is the only prize in the sea worth spending myself upon. I have a job that allows me the illusion of making a difference, and even if I don’t, it lets me play with guns and fight people and chase badguys, so. I have my strength yet, and vision, hearing, smell. The joy of eating good food, the joy of making art, the great gift of practice and following the dharma, a wonderful family, good friends, money in the bank.
I should be delirious with joy. And frequently am.
It is fitting that I should be crushed with grief, too.
And frequently am.
*
I know there’s no world more strange and glorious. It costs your life to take in the show, and that seems about right.
***
Namaste.
***
The Dishwasher's Tears 
Purification?
I say, half heartedly: Bring It!
The other nice thing about the path. The more you suffer, the more you purify your karma!
yay dharma practice!
“It costs your life to take in the show”…. Man. Open-eyed silence.
Right? I mean, you already put your money down, might as well enjoy the show.
They ain’t giving no refunds.
hi.
because wordpress emails me your blog updates and because my (so-called) smart phone is always signed into gmail, which i otherwise never enter due to my inability to attempt to remember my password, i get your updates.
and i read them.
just wanted you to know.
as far as my practice goes, it’s in a state of semi-dormancy. i think about it everyday but i’m not active-active. i would love to find a teacher but i don’t know – that sounds very intimate and, yikes on that. i felt very, very welcome in the Shambhala center i visited (took a weekend class) but it’s very, very difficult for me to want to “join” anything or become involved in that way with people. i guess i have to circle and circle and take forever doing it.
i probably will at some point. possibly.
anyway, i like what you say here. i like you guys. i’m glad wordpress emails me.
say hi to yolie.
Kay!
I’m so happy to hear from you. I am glad to know you’re still reading here, that makes me happy.
I think that semi-dormancy of practice is a common occurrence, and I spent years like that, thinking about it every day but not being active in either sitting practice or attending teachings. I think that’s fine and natural and nothing to worry about.
But I would urge you to keep looking for a teacher, I think that’s vital. I would not worry about joining, or having any very intimate set-up with a teacher, I think both those events could be very far off right now. But putting yourself “in the way” of a teacher, of teachings, can be very fruitful for your own individual practice. I think in a lot of ways that Buddhism is very supportive of the individual and their space- each of us is in pursuit of the completion of the path individually- we come together to support that individual pursuit in a lot of ways. It’s not super ‘joiney’ in the way that other pursuits can be, at least, I think that there’s a lot of room for individual space.
What is vital, though, I think, is that you don’t circle and circle your own practice. I’d urge you to leap into your own practice with all the commitment you are able to muster- commitment to the practice, but without expectation of how that will manifest or what the results might be. In my own very limited experience, it is the commitment itself that opens the door and everything else flows from that.
I realize that I can come across with a little bit too much fervency and excitement around this path, so please don’t feel like you have to listen to anything I have to say. But if you’d like to talk about it privately please email me and I’ll be happy to listen and give you the best feedback I can muster. I’m at tearfuldishwasher@gmail.com I think you’ve got that already but just in case.
I like you so much. Yolie and I both do. I said hi to her, for sure.
all best-
Scott
That place you used to work? That’s the kind of work my older brother did the last 10 or so years of his life. He loved it. And was good at it. He was the calm, the eye in that storm of chaos and senseless, sometimes completely unintentional or misdirected anger and violence. He was maybe the calmest person on the planet aside from my father. I’m convinced both of them, father and son, were tapped into the highest buddha sense of self I’ve ever been up close and personal with it. (I have a bit of it in myself.) But circling back, my brother loved his job so much, loved his “clients” so much that he worked every day until he couldn’t work anymore. He was in chronic, unimaginable, curl up in a ball and scream pain every day, and heavily medicated for it, but because of his tolerance–life long addict that he was, his onboard med loads were superhumanly high–he could function, he could work, he could do the job he loved. Brother, he used to tell me the scariest things about that job, the threats, the encounters, the craziness, the exhilaration, the small differences he felt he was making. I knew he and you were cut from the same cloth. I’ve always known that. Gosh, you two would’ve been great good friends. He was a poet, too. And a damned budda. Like you. Oh, how I miss him.And oh, how happy I am, how full my heart is with happiness and love and gratitude, how lucky I feel just having had him in my life for the time that I did. I’m sitting here right now shaking my head and smiling. Thanks for this post. Thanks for reminding me of the hard jobs that people do not because they have to, but because they damn love doing them. He is here with me now. Thank you for that.
Laurel-
You provide such a beautiful example of what it is to love. Your love for your father and your brother is so wonderful to witness. I know that they both feel your love wherever they are now.
I really believe that love is the engine of the world. You make that engine hum, you really do.
Namaste-
Scott
thanks for the reply, scott.
don’t worry about how you come across to me. i’m acquainted with your enthusiasm for the things you love and i think it’s a great thing.
and thanks for the offer of ear/eye.
this is me stalling a start to a six hour walk. i wonder how effective a walking meditation can be with a 17 yr old boy complaining to me the whole time.
we’ll see.
Thank you for sharing your journey with us. You have such a beautiful way of articulating the sacred and yet crazy ride, working through the difficult and the amazing things is this world.
Elizabeth-
I’m grateful to be able to share my thoughts with you and everyone else here, it really helps me understand my own mind better.
Hope you are well and happy, and thanks for your comment.
Namaste,
Scott