Girl on A Swing

 

*

The boss gathered everyone together this morning in the big conference room so we could talk about the recent tragedy that took the life of a co-worker’s child over the weekend. It was a somber gathering, everyone thinking about this loss and all the others that came before, those yet on the way. I looked around the room and saw three different women who have lost a child the last couple of years. I thought about my buddy who had a friend’s child die in his arms on a family vacation three years ago. I thought about how sweet it was that we were all there in the stupid conference room, awkward and uncomfortable, unbearably sad at this new loss, thinking of our friend and wishing there were something we could do beyond cards and flowers and knowing there wasn’t, not really.

I wonder about how those of us on the periphery of grief kind of latch onto it, gnaw at it, worry it in our teeth, mindlessly and obsessively. We didn’t get any actual grief, but it left a scorched trail in the air behind it and we love the smell of it, we follow it like dogs. We’re sad but we’re thrilled, too, at the way it passed us by.

We keep thinking it will just keep doing that.

And don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being glad that you dodged a tragedy. That’s natural. It’s all natural, the grief, the helplessness, the rage. Everything we do, we all of us do it, on our good days or on our bad ones. It isn’t like there’s somewhere a person who did it all right, got the gold star and went to the head of the class for it. We are terrible creatures. Terrible.

Still, we do what we can. We bring flowers, we make lasagna and pots of beans and we feel helpless and ashamed.

*

In other news, I’m falling back in love with my daughter. She popped out two babies, maybe that’s what it is. Too much oxytocin in the air. But I watch her being a mommy and it makes me glad all the way down. I imagine all the grief and pain her drug-fueled reign of terror caused us, all those years of just soul-killing anguish and suffering, and it seems like a kind of wild place we went to on vacation once. Like an all-inclusive two week tour of hell. Plus a stay over in Burmuda.

Maybe I been dragging the burned out wreckage of that behind me long enough now. Maybe I can cut the painter and let the whole barge of it drift downstream.

Stand on the shore and wave goodbye.

*

 

You always kind of feel like, when it’s happening to you, that you’ll die from it. That loss of all you hold dear. Your child dying or sick with cancer or your spouse leaving you or getting fired or sick yourself, you know, whatever it is, you had something, you wanted something, yeah, maybe it wasn’t perfect, maybe you hated it all the time you had it, maybe you never appreciated it, maybe you would have if it had been just a little bit better than it was, a little bit easier, he was more thoughtful or he didn’t do that thing or she did do that thing but at a better time, but now, now, now that’s all fucked and it’s never going to get to be the way you wanted and now it’s even worse than that and it won’t ever  be better, it won’t ever be the way you need it to be so that you feel safe, you feel perfect, you feel the way you want to feel and ought to feel all the way deep in your bones. You think it’s permanent, you think it’s over forever and you’ll never feel the same again.

But of course you will. You will feel the same again. You’ll be loved, you will love. You will smile and laugh and think about things that have nothing to do with your loss and your grief. You’ll latch on to new things and new people that you’ll want to be a little bit better or different from how they are so you can appreciate them fully instead of just being irritated with their shortcomings. You’ll take other things for granted. You’ll put off telling other people how much they mean to you until they’re dead too and it’s too late again. You’ll take it all personal.

It none of it is, not really.

It’s just the show. That’s the nature of things, that’s the nature of us, that’s you, man, that’s how you are.

 

It’s just one thing after another.

 

I mean, that sounds kind of simpleminded, but way down deep that’s what it is, the play of forms. It’s just one thing after another. Ceaseless. Think about how long the waves have been lapping at the shore, one after another, without stopping since the seas were formed. Way, way, way, longer than that. One thing, then the next thing. Now it’s like this, blink, blink, now it’s another way. Everything. Everything. Everything.

It won’t ever stop.

 

For me, it gives me a new view on change and loss. If you think you have the things that appear before you, your wife and your house and your job and your car and your kids and your winning smile, then, yeah, it hurts like hell when they are torn from your hands.

You don’t have them, not in any way that could be called permanent. They rise and fall. They weren’t always here, and they won’t always be here. They’re here right now, though, and they’re real pretty, my God, they’re fucking gorgeous and there they go.

You don’t have them, you can’t keep them, they’re not yours, they’re not theirs, they belong to no one. None of us do, not even to ourselves.

Wave goodbye, it’s all going away. Always and always and always going away. Unstoppable.

 

But, hey, look over there! Here comes the new thing. It’s pretty, too.

 

It’s real pretty.

 

There it goes.

 

***

 

What you do get though, is this never-ending stream of gifts. Literally, it never, never stops. It is the very working of the machine, churning out form after form after form without end. (Okay, maybe, maybe it will end, but if it does, if it really does? It won’t matter to a single soul. So, seriously, we don’t have to consider it. We’ll all be dead and gone and everything else will be too, so there’s nothing to grieve over and no one to do the grieving.)

That constant play of forms, right there in front of you, that never ceases and never runs out. What could be the point of trying to hold on to everything? You have to let go so it can keep on going.

 

I suppose that’s not much comfort, but maybe it is. Maybe it could be.

 

***

 

Love. And service.

 

And the play of forms.

 

***

Namaste.

 

***

 

 

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Amour

 

*

My woman’s been hell and gone trying to find us a new rig. I tell you what. She’s a damn pro now, though, know’s what’s what on sight. When she does finally pull the trigger on one, I know it’s gonna be tits.

 

I’m grateful to her, all the work she puts in.

 

I think we got a good thing going. I been lately feeling the years, you know, we’ve got friends getting sick, kids grown up and having more kids, I can look at a fence I built twenty years ago needs tearing down, you know, shit, we been on this planet a while now, we’re rolling into the dusky shadows of late afternoon. But man it gives me such pleasure to know her, to have used up these years with her, to have grown together like a couple of trees entangled at the trunks, branches and roots all intertwined. You couldn’t just cut one of us down anymore. We could go a week without a word between us and still know exactly what the other was thinking. She gets an itch and I start scratching. I get thirsty and I look around and she’s got a glass in her hand, headed my way. I couldn’t love her any better, at least I can die happy knowing whatever ways I failed this world failing in loving her won’t be one. Maybe I do it wrong sometimes, but I always do it.

You wouldn’t believe the oxytocin flowing around these parts with that new grandbaby. Awful lots of cooing and ahhing and isn’t he the cutest thinging. It’s sweet. It’ll melt your cold heart. There was times around here I would have put up even money we was past all the happiness, that we’d used up our allotment and had only the wasteland left to traverse. I’m glad to see I was wrong.

 

I was sitting the other day out on the back deck where I like to meditate and it hit me that what we’re always craving is to perceive these wonderful things, I mean, from a spiritual wonderment perspective we kind of seek these transcendental, holy states. I kind of always held in my mind since I was a kid I wanted to see wonders, I remember sitting in church imagining that if God really existed he should reveal himself to me by making the big cross levitate, or glow with light or something. You know, a sign. And even starting to meditate, I thought what I wanted was to see the world behind the world, to directly perceive the emptiness and bliss, to see Buddha or have my head explode or something. I don’t know. But anyway, what struck me was this focus on what was being perceived, like that was the deal. If you were spiritually creamy enough, you’d perceive something wonderful and amazing. Completely missing the point that it is perception itself that is wonderful and amazing. Know what I mean? It’s like, okay, isn’t that magical enough for you? You can pick up on the play of photons striking atoms and from that your brain creates this vivid and remarkable world full of birds and blue skies and wind through tree leaves and the face of your beloved, all manner of wonders and glories.

We get a never-ending magic show, day and night.

Wonders never cease.

 

*

 

Wonders never cease.

 

Think about that for a second, it’s the literal truth of things.

 

*

 

Namaste.

 

***

Three Vices, Three Virtues.

 

*

 

Now when I get all tangled up in my bad wires, I know where to go to fix it. I used all the time to pour alcohol over the motor to try to slow it down, tamp down the flames, grease the bound gears, ameliorate some of the badness. Not to say I don’t never do that now, I still do sometimes, sure, but less and less with an idea that it might help anything. Mostly now I do it just for the drinking, not thinking it will fix or delay or improve any badness in me. Not thinking that.

But, no, now I have this other thing. I can drag myself out to the lair and have a nice long sit and take a look under the hood. Like a backyard mechanic, working on some stuck valves under the shade trees. I used to be fairly convinced that I felt bad because there was something out there that was wrong, that if I could somehow grab onto it and make it be like I wanted, why then, I’d be right as rain. It never dawned on me that even when I could fix the one thing, then three more other fucked-up things would spring up to take the first one’s place. Maybe it did. Maybe I noticed it, but I still went after it like it was that thing out there was causing me all this grief.

Of course it were me all along. My ego wanting things, whispering to me, cajoling me, getting mean and shitty with me, taking my thoughts and emotions hostage until I did what it demanded.

 

And never satisfied, not for one second.

 

‘Okay, yeah, yeah, but now, now, now there’s this other thing what about that what are you gonna do about that, huh?’

 

It never will shut up.

 

*

So at least now I know it. Now I know what’s going on. The problem really is under the hood, not outside. And when I sit and watch carefully, I can actually see it at work. See that fuckin’ crafty ego of mine, busy day and night, fucking me over. Telling me to get all nervous about this thing over here, and I’d better start resenting this other thing over there, and I should be pretty mad, shouldn’t I, don’t you think it’s fucked up what they did to you over here? Huh? Huh? You listening to me?

 

Seriously, man, it’s fuckin’ funny after a while.

 

*

I just love to sit. I get a deep pleasure out of it.

 

That is of benefit to my broken mind is just icing on the cake.

 

*

 

It’s like a hundred and thirty nine in the shade today.

 

*

 

 

Namaste.

 

 

***

Not A Sparrow Falls

 

*

Maybe it is like that.

 

Maybe someone is at the controls.

 

*

 

I’m not a believer in that, I guess I have to come right out and say that.

 

Well, maybe that’s not quite correct. What it is is that you can be at the controls. If you want. But you only get to control your own little game. No fair trying to control everyone else’s.

 

Stay you in your own sandbox.

 

*

 

I think that those Buddhists see it this way, that you can actually take the controls of your own mind. Learn how to fly that little dirigible over your toy town, go hover over the ball field and watch the boys run out of the dugout, waving their caps and shouting in their tiny, far away voices. Run you the train along the tracks that divide the good side of town from the slums. Put the signal arms down at the intersections or let the engine smash into that pale blue station wagon that’s stalled on the tracks, the harried mother behind the wheel, cranking the key in the ignition and telling the kids to stay in their seats.

Make it rain.

 

*

 

Or, you know, have the sun come out.

 

Make them tiny flowers unfurl themselves from the dirt and turn their petals to face the sun.

 

Send a little breeze to make them quiver.

 

Toss a handful of birds around to animate the trees and the bushes and to peck at the insects on the ground.

 

*

 

You can worry about how things are going to be when you die if you want. You can think about it being like how it was in the world before you were born.

 

But I wonder if you think about this:

 

You will never know a world without you in it. Every moment of existence you ever get a taste of has got you right smack dab in the middle of it.

 

It is always going to be just like this.

 

It ain’t a thing to fret about.

 

*

 

I hope you have you a real good weekend.

 

I aim to.

 

 

***

 

Namaste.

 

 

***

Attending To The Minor Creatures

*

All’s I got is gratitude, man.

 

Well, you know, gratitude and a beverage.

 

*

Namaste.

 

***

 

In The Office Of Forgetting

 

*

One of the things I’m working on in my practice is dream yoga, otherwise known as lucid dreaming. The idea behind it is that if you can wake up in your dreams, then you can do all this cool stuff while you’re asleep. You can meditate, seeking teachings from the Buddha, or other deities, past masters, your own guru, etc. You have the opportunity to use those hours of sleep as additional practice, and there are also applications for making the transition through the bardos when you are dying- sort of like practicing for the final exam ahead of time.

I am using a text called “The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep” by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche as my guidebook.

I freakin’ love it.

*

Now, there are a lot of kind of esoteric visualization exercises he recommends, and he says right up front that the traditional view is that this kind of practice is reserved for very experienced practitioners, so it’s not super approachable in all aspects, and I’m only tackling the initial steps of the practice right now. But I love his clear teaching style, I think he’s really an amazing teacher. And I love the idea of exploring my own mind in such an in-depth way. It doesn’t make sense to only use those few minutes of meditation each day as the only time that appropriate for self-examination. It makes sense that since you are using your mind all the time, awake and dreaming, that you study both aspects if you want to understand it better.

So what I’m doing is sort of setting my intention as I’m falling asleep that I will remember my dreams, and that I will try to realize during the dream that I am dreaming. I tell myself I am going to experience a lucid dream and during the dream I will seek a teaching and sit meditation. This aspect, so far, has not met with much success. Still, I find it valuable and it doesn’t do any harm.

The other thing I do is walk around all day telling myself this is all a dream. “You are dreaming right now. Can you see that? This isn’t real. This is a very vivid, very powerful dream state. You are awake inside your dream, and now you can do whatever you want.” The idea behind this is that once I’m in the habit of doing this, I’m more likely to keep doing it in my dream state, and when I hear this in the dream state I can “wake up” to the fact that I’m dreaming and then try to do the practice stuff.

This has been working pretty well for me, and I’ve had a handful of lucid dreams in the month that I’ve been trying to do the practice. I have not yet gotten any real practice in when I do have a lucid dream. Usually I just start flying around and jumping off of high things and stupid shit like that. Which, you know, is pretty fun.

But what I like best of all is that instead of becoming lucid during my dream state, what I’m really learning how to do is to be lucid while I’m awake.

Even better than the other way around.

By telling myself that every experience I have is a dream, I am aware, vividly aware, of what I’m seeing and experiencing- kind of like dropping half a tab of acid, everything gets turned up to eleven. I feel enlivened and interested in what’s going on, how the dream is manifesting. And the Tibetans will tell you that this is actually pretty close to the way things really are, that the world around us is actually an illusion that is manifested by our minds, and that the quality of our minds determines the nature of the reality we experience. And I’m in agreement. I mean, I think that the dream state and the waking state are different, there are different sets of rules for each state- but I don’t think that it’s harmful or being willfully stupid to experiment with treating the waking state as much more fluid and changeable and as something that is actually being determined by my own mind- at least my experience of it is.

Then the movement between the two states becomes an exercise in trying to maintain awareness throughout the process. Lucid dreaming, lucid waking life, and eventually maybe even lucid unconsciousness- although I admit that this is a big reach for me and not anything I’ll be trying to get to any time soon. But lucid wakefulness is pretty awesome.

The Tibetans say that the transition from the bardo of living to the bardo of dying and the bardo of rebirth is quite similar to the transition from wakefulness to sleep, to dreaming, and then back to awakening. If we can practice awareness during these transitions in life, and become proficient at noticing when we’re dreaming that what we’re seeing and experiencing is only the projections of our minds, then we will have a good chance of recognizing the bardo state of transition and can use that opportunity to become enlightened. Which is supposedly pretty easy when you’ve cast off the body and are only mind activity anyway- you’re closer to your true nature and if you recognize that true nature in the bardo, you can leap right into the enlightened state.

I don’t know about all that, but I think there’s a big benefit to this practice while I’m still in this bardo of living.

 

*

So. Lucid wakefulness. How about that?

 

*

 

You know those times when the veil falls away, when the glory of the present moment stands before you and utterly transfixes you with its astounding, heart-breaking beauty? Imagine seeing that all the time.

It can happen.

 

***

 

And you? Are you well? Are you happy? Are your disasters teaching you everything you need to learn? Are you dancing enough? Getting enough chocolate?

 

***

 

 

Namaste.

 

***

 

Waiting For The Number Seven

 

*

A good weekend was had. That new grandbaby woke up for a few minutes and I got to see his eyes looking all around, trying to take in the world in all its glory. I got to go for a walk with the Number One grandchild on Sunday and we managed to go on a pony ride and then eat a big scoop of dark chocolate ice cream called “motor oil” and the whole time that boy carried his big book of Dinosaurs tucked under his arm.

I got the roof on the bathhouse without killing myself, much to the Woman’s surprise. And relief, I venture to say.

I got to eat a bowlful of her roasted veggies, kale, tempeh, and pickled onions for lunch.

We watched us some Deadwood. Goin’ through it a second time.

 

*

 

It is my great good fortune that she tolerates me as much as she does.

 

*

 

I have yet a great zeal for practice and so much gratitude that I’m able to give myself to it as much as I am doing. Always there is the urge for more, but I am fine with that. I think that’s nice, actually. I wouldn’t want to be sated in it. This morning I got to listen as the birds woke up, the ring-necked doves first, then the wild turkeys somewhere up the hill behind my neighbor’s place, then the sparrows and the jays. A handful of others I couldn’t tell by their calls. And imperceptibly, or nearly so, the darkness gave way to daybreak. A shivery breeze animated the branches of the bushes that arc over the stone Buddha and set loose a shower of tiny white blossoms, like snowfall. The smoke from the incense drifted up in loose, playful loops before dissipating into the silvery air. And I began my day with prayers and meditation. Devotion, gratitude, and longing. A love for this world announced and dedicated, a pledge to give myself, body, speech, and mind, to the benefit of all sentient beings.

A wish for happiness and an end to suffering for all.

 

*

 

It seems a nice way to begin things.

 

*

 

Namaste.

 

 

***