Back to Basics

Whenever I need to get back to the basics, to remember what is at the heart of this practice... whenever I need a reality check, I turn to Martine Batchelor. Martine Batchelor has been a gift and a treasure. I wonder if she knew when she started her ten year journey as a Zen Buddhist nun in Korea the lives she would touch. I wonder if she knows the difference she makes by sharing that journey with us.

I return to Thorson's Principles of Zen again and again. It is a short, sweet, simple introduction to Zen. There is a short passage in the book titled Quietness and Clarity which gave me just what I needed today. The section starts off talking about meditation--the second training. Anyone who has attempted this practice knows how difficult it can be at times to stay focused on the meditation object. Martine reminds us:

We need to remind ourselves of our intention to meditate, to focus on the question or the breath, so we have to come back repeatedly to the object of concentration. After a while we come back more quickly and stay longer on the object. Master Hsuyun said:

A thousand thoughts give us the opportunity to come back to the question a thousand times.

So being distracted is not the problem, staying distracted is!

[...from Thorson's Principles of Zen by Martine Batchelor, pgs. 6-7]

Amen, to that. And also to this other short passage in the same section on impermanence. This is for mangadezi-jr, if you're listening.

We generally believe that we will live for a few more years yet. We think it is other people who die - until it threatens to happen to us.

I realized impermanence when I saw the last breath of my father. This changed me irrevocably. I look at my family, myself, my friends in a very different light. I realized how human, how frail we all are. As Master Kusan used to say:

Our life rests upon a single breath.

[...from Thorson's Principles of Zen by Martine Batchelor, pgs. 6-7]

Everything is colored by what we are thinking about it. Everything. Our ability to love, to forgive, to embrace, to support is influenced by the things we carry in our minds. Meditation helps us to clear out the cobwebs and approach life with a fresh perspective. Otherwise, we are just pushing along... driven by complaint, judgment, self-indulgence and other unhelpful states of mind. Things can be difficult simply because we perceive them to be difficult... but when we allow ourselves to shift our perception just a  little, we can see things differently.

I want to help my parents. I want to be there to do the cooking when it needs to be done... to wash some dishes... to take out the trash, to do whatever I can so they can feel comfortable resting/healing. I want to do it because they have done it for me, over and over again. After a couple of weeks of driving to different hospitals after work, running around to buy meals or groceries, helping them in the little ways that I could at the end of the work day, I started to feel the creeping sensation of burnout. My routine became this precious thing that was being encroached upon, turned upside down. My sleeping patterns were all out of whack. I was exhausted. The more I let myself think that way, the worse off things would be for all of us. But somehow, in the space of 20 minutes, it all falls away and all that is left is the happiness that comes from just being able to lend a hand. That's how today went.

A FOOTNOTE:

Here's good news about Martine Batchelor... she has published two new books. I've started to read them, and they are both wonderful:

1. Women in Korean Zen: Lives and Practices. This one starts as a memoir... Martine takes us on the journey with her to Korea... to the beginning of her practice there. And we meet the people she met. And thank Buddha she talks about the challenges. That's the one thing I think I appreciate most about Zen teachers... they don't pretend for a minute that this path is easy, but they show is it is possible and they lead by example. That's what Martine gives in this book, co-written with Son'gyong Sunim who provides her autobiography. I haven't gotten that far yet.

2. The Path of Compassion. This one is about The Bodhisattva Precepts and the Chinese Brahma's Net Sutra. At the core of the book, you'll find the Ten Major Precepts and Forty-Eight Secondary Precepts listed with commentary.

Daily Dharma

Suzuki Roshi had been quite ill. He had been falsely diagnosed with infectious hepatitis and had gone to the hospital for more tests. I went to visit him just as his lunch was served.

He motioned me to come and sit next to him at the edge of the bed. As I crossed the room he mouthed the words "I have cancer." When I sat next to him he leaned over and took a bit of food on his fork and put it into my mouth. "Now we can eat off the same plate again." He said it as if the new diagnosis were some big gift.

[...from To Shine One Corner of the World: Moments wiht Shunryu Suzuki, edited by David Chadwick]

In Sickness and In Health

Today I watched Oprah After the Show for the first time. There was a discussion about smoking, overspending, eating, undereating... self-destructive habits that point to the fact that we don't love ourselves. Oprah said a few things that touched a nerve.

She said first off that if you are over 10 pounds overweight, that is a sign that your life is out of balance. It is a sign that there is self-hatred at play. She also said that many of us are among the living dead. We have shut down in some way, and despite how much we do, we don't have a life. We are out of touch with our feelings. We are functioning but we are not functional. We have not found deep fulfillment. We have not touched joy.

Today I visited my mom in the hospital. On Thursday she had surgery. She has cancer. She is depressed, lamenting about why she is going through what she is going through. Something on Oprah touched on this as well.

Oprah said something about warning signs. First there is a whisper. Then, there is a knock on the door. Then your back is against the wall. Then a brick falls and hits you in the head. Then the wall comes crashing down. Then a hurricane comes and you are  caught in a deadly storm. All because you are out of balance and you are not listening to your heart's call.

Perhaps this is true for me and my mother.

I don't ask why. Sometimes why is not the most productive question. Sometimes it cannot be answered. There are other questions. Sometimes what is a better question than why. What am I going to do now that I find myself in the midst of this. How am I going to face this. And I think face is the right word. When you are sick, you cannot will yourself well, but you can see a doctor. You can start to take steps so that you are taken care of. How is a good question. How can I accept this? How can I stop myself from sinking into depression? How can I remind myself that this thing doesn't have to take my grace or my joy?

I think sickness causes suffering mostly because we don't want to give up the notion that we are not in control and we don't want to give up the fantasy that life is fair. We don't want to be reminded of the inevitability of death, and we don't want to sit face to face with the fact that we will die. It is uncomfortable. It is unsettling. It shakes us to the core.

People typically don't ask why when they have a cold or a sore throat. They accept it as something natural, a natural part of life experience. They take their cold medicine, hunker down and prepare to ride it out. There is no need to ask why. They are not faced with questions of mortality. But mention the word cancer? Cancer is a soul-shaking word.

My mother has long beautiful hair. She wears a press-and-curl, and she has this fabulous salt and pepper hair. It is always curled and perfect. She will start taking radiation soon and she is afraid she will lose her hair. I want to take her India Aire's cut I Am Not My Hair. I want to sing it to her, shout it until it sinks in. Hair is so trivial. As a black woman, I know that I should add two words to the end of that statement. Hair is so trivial to me. I think if she loses her hair I will shave my head. I'll have to get a wig of some sort to wear to work so I don't freak out my co-workers, but while she finds the prospect frightening I would feel a sense of freedom loosing my hair. I'm tired of relaxing. I'm tired of combing and brushing and flat ironing. I'm tired of the damage that comes to my hair and scalp from all the chemical treatments. I would love to lock my hair... I'm just not sure that locks would be well received in the conservative corporate environment where I work. It would be nice to have no hair to worry about... to throw on a wig and be done with it.

My hope would be that it would show her there is nothing to be afraid of. My hope would be that the experience, this cancer, doesn't have to mean that life is devoid of hope or joy. Sometimes sickness can be a gift. Sometimes it can be an opportunity to take stock, to evaluate, to ruminate, and to empower ourselves to make changes.

One of my aunts is also dealing with cancer and she seems to have accepted it with a great deal of dignity and determination. She talks about how she has spent her life taking care of other people but now it is time to take care of herself. My hope is that once this initial shock wears off, that my mother will find that peaceful, courageous stand and live from that stand.