Leaving Clyde, and finding you are loved.

So I got a nice surprise yesterday and I wanted to share it with all of you folks here. I got a nice email from Melissa Bright talking about this picture and how it inspired her to write this song. I gave it a listen and I think you should, too. I really liked it, and I like the cross-fertilization of image and lyric and of course I think the mood is exactly right for it.

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And you know, the cross-fertilization goes so much farther than just between Melissa and this picture. It’s got Sherwood Anderson in it, for the title of the piece I did, and because Melissa was looking for work inspired by Anderson’s book Winesburg, Ohio. And there are other photographers, the originators of the works that I appropriated to create this one, and the internet that makes it possible for these disparate threads from unknown creators to somehow be tied together- and the mood that infects us when we create or are driven to create….once you start looking at the strands you realize you can’t remove anything at all from the weaving. It’s all one, dude.

Anyway, I wanted to say thank you to Melissa for sharing this with me, and with us.

I hope it brings you some pleasure.

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Namaste.

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PS- I know, I need to keep posting stuff from the pilgrimage. It’s coming, just slowly.

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25 years

Twenty-five years ago today the Woman On The Verge agreed to marry me. I’ve been married to her for half of my life. If I could see where we are now from where we stood together on that beach on Maui twenty-five years ago, I think I’d be both pleased and horrified. It ain’t all been pretty. But it is the most significant work of my life: what I’ve spent myself on, what I’ve relied upon, what I’ve abused and neglected, what I’ve bucked against and been blind to, what I’ve bound myself to and bitterly fought, what I’ve lost and regained, what I’ve made bleed and have bled for.

Yolanda, I thank you. I yet pledge my troth to thee.

In sickness and in health. In good times and bad. You can’t yet count on me to be always wise or good, but I will be the last man standing when the lights go out. Up to my knees in the bodies of my foes.

Most of whom are only myself, I know.

How has it been my great good fortune to have loved you, and to have been so loved in return? What great deeds am I being rewarded for? Nothing I have done in this life makes me deserving of your love, yet I am in possession of it.

I am undone by you.

I am proud to have won you to me. Proud and humbled. I stand ever in awe of your great goodness, your matchless heart, your quiet strength, your unerring moral compass, your limitless kindness, your wild fearlessness, your gladness at being in the world. You are my teacher, my guide, my mirror, my eyes and my hands, my helpmeet and best friend, my lover, my destroyer, my salvation, the stone I break myself open upon, the ship that saves me from drowning, the shore I wash up on when I do shipwreck; the one who enslaves me, and the one who picks the locks and sets me free.

I think I’m a better man now than I was when you married me, and I know if that’s true at all it’s due to you and your hard work.

I love you.

I hope you’ll yet bind yourself to me for those days that remain to us on this earth.

How about a big hand for the pretty lady, folks? Don’t she deserve it?

You bet she does.

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Namaste.

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emotions

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I know better, I really do.

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Emotions are pretty interesting to look at from a Buddhist perspective. And when I can look at them from a Buddhist perspective, I find that perspective very helpful. But I am a poor practitioner who is mostly immune to the Dharma, so oftentimes I find that I get entangled in my emotions and tend to stay right there, like a kid who won’t get out of a mud puddle.

Today I am sad. I feel helpless. Overwhelmed by my many failures.

What’s doing this to me?

My mind.

I know, at least, that there isn’t anything objectively wrong outside of me that is causing me to experience these emotional shitstorms. That’s a Buddhist perspective, and I think it’s correct, and even in the midst of my meltdown I can recognize that as true. Which is helpful. Beneficial.

So. Maybe not totally immune to the Dharma. Just mostly.

Still, knowing this doesn’t shift the mood very much. I am still profoundly sad. I still feel helpless and overwhelmed by my many failures. But I recognize that what’s at the root of this experience of sadness is a mistake in my view, not something wrong with what’s happening. I’m feeling sad because I believe on some level that the experience I’m having is unfair to me, that it isn’t meeting my own expectations of how I think things should be going. I want things to be one way, and they are not that way.

To be upset about this, and to imagine, to feel, that being upset about this will change something outside of me, seems crazy. Because, you know, it is.

This is the action of both grasping and aversion. Grasping at things as if they are real, as if they have a solid existence somewhere out there. And aversion, because not only do I think they are real and solid, I think they are bad in some way, they are something I don’t want, and I push them away. So, also there is the action of ignorance– I don’t understand the way things really are.

Grasping. Aversion. Ignorance.

These are the big three in Buddhist thought, the three big errors, the three factors that lead to suffering and keep us trapped in Samsara. Keep me trapped in Samsara. Where I’ve been my whole life, and many, many lifetimes before, and where I will remain unless I change those factors for good, really uproot them and break their hold on me.

So in this way, these experiences of deep sadness, grief, rage, anger, stupidity- they are actually very good teachers. I can be caught up in these emotional storms and be completely overwhelmed by them- they color my whole world, my whole experience of what it is to be alive- they are very, very compelling. And yet, they arise because I am fundamentally confused about the nature of reality. And since this error is so compelling, I really do know that I’m confused. I can’t remain in denial about it. I’m seriously fucked up.

So, this is a great place to be, actually. I get it. I’m confused. I’m acting out of grasping, aversion, and ignorance, and this leads very reliably to the suffering that I’m experiencing right now. It’s very vivid and clear to me, I’m not confused about that at all.

Which is fantastic, because it means that I can let go of my grasping, stop trying to push away what I don’t want, stop running from it, stop judging it according to my ignorant understanding, and try to figure out what’s really happening. It doesn’t mean that doing any of this is easy for me, but it is at least possible, because I’m no longer completely convinced that how I see things is how they really are. There’s some space around the edges of my delusion. A little crack in the façade where some light can get in.

Right now I’m sad about something and I feel totally overwhelmed, like I can’t fix it and never will be able to. Instead of examining the thing itself, I’m fixated on my reaction to it. The thing itself is neutral, right? It just is. So maybe I can give it a little space to be the thing that it is, and take a breath and not make up my mind about what that means for my ego. What my ego thinks it means for my ego, which seems to pretty much always think the same thing- “This is fucked! This is totally fucked, and it’s not happening- this is NOT happening, we have to change this, this isn’t fair, nobody understands me, I’m being unfairly accused of something, I did it, yeah, but it’s not like they say, they don’t understand what I really meant to do, blah, blah, blah…Oh crap am I sad.”

The facts are unfair. The situation is unfair. The feelings and thoughts of the other person are unfair. All of these factors need to change, right fucking now. Once they have changed, once they are aligned in a way that I don’t find uncomfortable and threatening, then I can be happy again.

This is not a very reliable path towards happiness.

And yet, it’s also not the right approach to try to deny that you feel the way you feel, to suppress the feelings because they are wrong and bad. This is just making the same mistake and turning it inward rather than outward- I’m bad, I’m wrong, I’m mean and selfish and stupid and I need to stop it!

Now I’m real, and important, and terrible, and must be stopped!

So, that won’t work either.

What’s a feller to do?

Well, the instructions are pretty straightforward. On the mundane level, you can kind of just recognize where you are, and that you’re in pain and suffering, not because you are bad or wrong or someone else is bad or wrong, but because you are still a little bit ignorant and confused about things. And you can try to open up your view a little bit so that you’re not only focused completely on yourself and your own suffering, but you can see that everyone else suffers in the same way that you are suffering right now. And this can open and soften your heart, it can be the beginning of Bodhichitta, and you can have the aspiration that since you’re experiencing all of this sharp pain and suffering right now, maybe that can alleviate some of the suffering of others. You ask to take on all of that suffering so that others don’t have to experience it at all.

And you can let go of your attachment to the fantasy you have about how you wish things were. And you can sit in stillness and silence and try to relate to how things really are.  Try to see the other person as just as confused as you are, and don’t focus on getting them to change- focus on seeing their suffering as just the same as yours, and see if your heart softens just a little bit.

And on the ultimate level, recognize your own nature and the nature of all phenomenon as non-dual. There isn’t any you or them, no inside or outside that has any real, solid existence. Not really. There is just awareness and manifestation continually unfolding in the limitless present moment. This can be a tall order, recognizing this, so if you can’t, just let it be.

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Of course, I am writing this for myself. But I hope it might be of benefit to you today, whoever you are.

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Namaste.

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Kathmandu

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Kathmandu.

The very word feels exotic in the mouth. Kathmandu. You know you’re someplace else when you’re in Kathmandu. Not in Kansas anymore.

It’s true.

I got off the plane in Guangzhou after fifteen hours of flight time feeling groggy and disoriented. I met up with Rosh and Christine on the flight so we hung out together in the airport while we waited for the flight into Kathmandu. We tried to get wi-fi, I remember, and at some point the tiny coffee shop opened next to the baggage claim and they were selling coffee for eight bucks a cup. Some kind of hot-shit Jamaican brand? The guy I sat next to on the flight bought a cup. He was a doctor, going to Kathmandu as part of a Christian missionary program to treat the kids working in a brick factory. Treat them and bring them bibles, the word of God. He didn’t quite know what to make of me on a Buddhist pilgrimage. Not that he was too curious about that. He seemed content to talk about himself, and I was happy to let him. He made it pretty clear that eight bucks for a cup of coffee wasn’t going to make a dent in his financials. I’m making him sound like a dick, probably, and probably he was a little bit. But he really was enthused about going around the world and trying to make a difference. He enjoyed being of service, and he was serious about it. That part made me happy, made me happy to see a guy who, yeah, he was rich and successful and had all the toys, but here he was, on a plane to the middle of nowhere to spend a couple of weeks helping out the poor and suffering. So what if he was peddling a brand of religion at the same time? He believed in that, too. So, good on him. Doing good things, really going out there and doing them. He should have a eight dollar coffee, goddamn it.

We left the terminal in Guangzhou and stepped onto the tarmac. The sun had come up but the sky was hazy and the color of pale brick. We got onto a bus that took us out to the plane and we got on that. All the flight attendants were Chinese women. I know I’m wrong but they all looked about six four and like they had just walked off the set of a James Bond flick in about 1967. They were all business. Probably trained acrobats and part-time assassins who grew up in whorehouses and raised poisonous orchids on the side. That kind of crew.

Six hours later we landed in Kathmandu. It’s hard to describe what that was like. Of course we saw the Himalayas jutting up through the cloud cover on our approach, impossibly tall, way up in the sky where you just don’t think there should be any land at all, really- and broader than they are tall, too, that’s the thing that stuck out in my mind, how thick they are, how massive. Tall is just a part of it. And then the plane banks around and kind of dead-falls down into the valley and right at the end the pilot pulls up on the yoke and we plop down pretty hard and there’s a bit of a yaw for an uncomfortable couple of seconds, then full flaps and brakes and shuddering to a stop and getting off the plane. There’s a low brick building and we all walk into that and it looks like a bus depot in Alabama in 1935 that’s been invaded by small, dark-skinned people who are intent on something- not you and what you’re doing so much as something inscrutable that you’re in the process of interrupting.

There was a metal detector we all filed through but no one was manning it and the thing buzzed and beeped and we put our bags on a conveyor and went through and got our bags on the other side of the barrier- but no screeners, no cops. Serve yourself security screening.

Honor system, I guess.

And there was a desk with a guy in uniform who took my passport, looked at me kinda hard, asked me a bunch of questions in a language I didn’t understand, then when I didn’t say anything, shrugged, stamped my passport, and handed it back to me.

Welcome to Kathmandu.

Rosh and Christine and I gathered ourselves and our bags, changed some dollars into Rupees, and walked out of the airport. There was a noisy throng of folks waiting there, and someone held up a sign with our names on it. We followed him to a van and got in and in a couple of seconds we were zooming around the streets, buzzing with motorcycles, scooters, rickshaws, ox-drawn carts, pedestrians, all flowing around each other in a beautiful, intricate dance that scared the living shit out of us. Every time you glanced up at the windshield it was full of an oncoming truck or had just missed clipping the baby being held by the woman on the back of a motorcycle- woo! it was fun!

Kelsang introduced himself to us, told us he was from Shambala and would be with us until we went to India. We all were happy to be in his capable hands. Of course, we didn’t know then how amazing he was and how much we would come to rely upon him- but he was and we did.

He dropped us off at Hotel Mum’s Home, where we’d booked our rooms. The hotel was hidden in a warren of narrow alleyways, behind tall brick walls, but was staffed with dozens of the sweetest, most beautiful and helpful people you could ever imagine. I think these guys and girls work part-time in Heaven, welcoming the newly departed to their rooms. My room was up five flights of marble stairs. It had a great bed, and a bathroom, and a window, some bottled water- it was perfect. I laid down on the bed and promptly passed out.

I woke up disoriented. Met up with Rosh and Christine in the lobby, I think we had some coffee…then went out to the street and got swallowed by the shops and shopkeepers of Thamel. My disorientation did not abate.

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I don’t remember much other than the noise and the novelty, and the feeling of deep peacefulness, safety, and joy that I felt. I loved the people I saw, every one of them. I loved the things for sale, and how they were sold. I loved the crush and flow and the smells of it. I felt profoundly happy.

I was in Kathmandu. This pilgrimage was going to happen!

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Namaste.

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more to come…..

Notes from A Pilgrimage

I’m back from my pilgrimage to Nepal and India, and I want to start writing down some of my experiences so you can have an idea of what it was like. Of course I feel very intimidated by the task- the trip was so powerful and had such a profound impact on me that I’m afraid any attempt to capture it is doomed to failure. But I will try.

I arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal, on Feb. 12th, two days before the pilgrimage had its official start. Lots of us arrived in dribs and drabs in the week leading up to the pilgrimage- it’s a long and difficult flight and there are a lot of opportunities for missed connections and lost luggage, and no one wanted to show up for the first morning directly after thirty hours in the air. So, a day or two early was good.

For me the pilgrimage was fraught with anxiety and fear long before it began. I wanted very much to go to all the Buddhist holy places so I could experience them and benefit from a practice perspective- but I didn’t really give a shit about being in India other than that. I did not want to travel, I did not want to use the time and money, I did not want to have to deal with the ordeal of getting a passport and the necessary visas, I didn’t want to get typhoid pills and malaria pills and all the other shit…I was in many ways an unwilling pilgrim. As the day of my departure descended upon me, I was flooded with fears and regret. I was absolutely convinced that the trip was a terrible idea, that it would be a disaster, that I would die in a plane crash or from some terrible illness- all thoughts that are pretty far from normal for me- I mean, I am a good worrier, don’t get me wrong- but this was an order of magnitude higher than what I was usually capable of generating in the fearfulness area. And this fear built upon itself continually until Yolie dropped me off at the airport and I got in the check-in line with six hundred Chinese people trying to get back home to Guangzhou.

Then my anxiety just vanished into thin air, like so much smoke.

I mention this anxiety and the obstacles to the pilgrimage because I believe that they are not uncommon to experience. Maybe it sounds kind of new-agey woo-woo, but almost everyone I spoke with about this aspect of pilgrimage had a similar experience.

Something does not want us to go on pilgrimage.

I don’t know if it is just a manifestation of our ego’s desire to maintain itself, if our fears about growth cause us to throw up obstacles in the form of all these compelling reasons why we can’t go today, we can’t go this week, we can’t go on this pilgrimage but we for sure will go on the next one- as long as there are no real conflicts, no problems with our health or at work or the kids don’t need us to go to their soccer game or the air conditioning on the bus won’t make us sick…..I am sure that is part of what happens. But there seems also to be a couple of other things that might be happening as well, and that is that the pilgrimage itself wants you to really work for it, it wants to test your commitment to the true voyage- which of course isn’t anything at all about going to India or anywhere else, but about the voyage of self-discovery, of discovery about how things truly are, and what you’re going to do about it. So it seems to me that this is also part of what’s going on. Of course, I don’t have any empirical, factual support for this belief- but I do believe it.

And hand in hand with this kooky belief is this other one: there’s absolutely a force that does not want you to go.

This is the negative force, call it what you will, I don’t have a name for it really, but I believe it’s there and it acts in the world and in our hearts and minds and souls and it isn’t your own personal desire for staying behind, staying stuck where you are, but an impersonal, external one that wants us all to stay behind, to keep doing what we’ve always done, that does not want anyone to seek the light and leave the darkness.

So in order to accomplish pilgrimage, you have to begin the journey by defeating these forces who are conspiring to keep the whole thing from happening. Everyone who went on this particular pilgrimage did just that. To lesser and greater degrees to be sure, but we all had to face down these demons.

And I just mention this in case you’re ever in the position of embarking on your own pilgrimage, because you need to be prepared for it. And if you are, if you kind of expect that the terrain is going to be questionable and sketchy, and last-minute things and first-minute things are going to get in the way, and you’ll feel fearful and nervous and you’ll be convinced that it’s the wrong thing to do- then you’ll be able to just take a deep breath, tell yourself that these obstacles are not real, that they’ll resolve or turn out to be okay and that you’re committed to going forward no matter what, and you’ll end up going on your pilgrimage and gaining what’s to be gained.

If you don’t see the obstacles as part of the path, you’ll succumb to them and your pilgrimage won’t happen. The Buddhist conception of this force that stands in the way is Mara. Mara is the guy whose realm is that of the sense pleasures, of samsara, and he doesn’t want us to leave. He tempted the Buddha when the Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree. It’s not that the force is evil, exactly. But it wants us to stay.

And the thing is, the door will open. It isn’t the case that Mara can keep the door closed if you really want to open it. He’s just going to keep telling you that it probably is closed, that even if it isn’t locked, well, it’s way too heavy for you to open it, and in fact you probably won’t like what’s behind the door anyway, and wouldn’t it be nicer to leave the door alone and go over here where there’s a nice meal of your favorite food, and there are some important emails to answer, and this movie you’ve been wanting to watch….

But if you say, “Yeah, that’s okay. I’m going through the door anyway,” then the door will open when you tug on it. The door can’t stay closed to you, to anyone who wants it to open.

Open. Open. Open.

And the journey isn’t safe or comfortable- Mara is right about that. But the journey is the only thing that matters.

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More to come. Watch this space.

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Namaste.

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