Beyond Rivalry

I read Barbara Bash's True Nature: An Illustrated Journal of Four Seasons in Solitude (2004) today while sitting in the sun with the dog. It's a simple, lavishly watercolour-illustrated journal of a retreat in the woods, taken during seven days in Summer, seven in Spring, seven in Fall, and ending with seven days in Winter. She's a Buddhist (Chögyam Trungpa is her meditation teacher) who is struggling with fatigue, fear of the dark, a need to do, a certain restlessness, loneliness, self-doubt.

 

This first journal entry reminds me of the 'grief' I wrote about yesterday:

 

"My insides are heavy. There are voices tisking and shuddering at such laziness, but I am listening to deeper voices."

 

That's how I feel. I can hear the voices that tisk and shudder, and, I can hear voices from a deeper place, and I am listening to them.

 

In Winter, she says something that seemed to me to reframe the dilemma a friend expressed earlier in the day:

 

"Here in this cabin for six days these demons of pressure and critique can be -- what? Loved? Banished? Teased? Ignored? Put down for a nap? ... It has been a day of doubt. The wind of my mind blew me around. Here's the dilemma -- to articulate the confusion, describe it, know it -- or to label it 'thinking,' let it go and return to the breath. I walk both paths."

 

It seems it's often a question of whether to engage with the confusion -- to work with the pain, resentment, desire for connection, longing for affinity, fear of disappointment, hope, lack of trust -- or to recognise that those feelings, opinions, beliefs, reactions, and thoughts are just 'thinking' -- they're transitory, they're a fantasy our mind weaves, they can be released. Yes. We do both.   

Thinking about Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1996) today after coming across a short quote by him: 

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

 

I don't know that much about him -- his writings are voluminous and some are still being discovered, edited and published. He was Indian, traveled extensively, was involved for a while with the Theosophical Society but broke from them around 1922, during which he experienced several mystical encounters (which he termed "the process") in which he felt a mystical union and immense peace: "Love in all its glory has intoxicated my heart; my heart can never be closed. I have drunk at the fountain of Joy and eternal Beauty. I am God-intoxicated."

 

By 1929, he had renounced any path as a way to Truth:

 

"You may remember the story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, 'What did that man pick up?' 'He picked up a piece of the truth,' said the devil. 'That is a very bad business for you, then,' said his friend. 'Oh, not at all,' the devil replied, 'I am going to help him organize it.'

 

"I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or coerce people along a particular path." (in Krishamurti: The Years of Awakening, 1975, by Mary Lutyens)

 

Schools that he and his followers (though he said he didn't want followers) founded in India, England and the U.S. emphasise a holistic vision, concern for humans and the environment, and a religious spirit.  He was awarded the United Nations Peace Medal in 1984. Of course, he's on YouTube (I haven't watched these yet.)

 

Krishnamurti's thoughts on meditation speak to me:

 

"Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life -- perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy -- if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation. ...

 

"Meditation is the emptying of the mind of the known. It cannot be done by thought or by the hidden prompting of thought, nor by desire in the form of prayer, nor through the self-effacing hypnotism of words, images, hopes, and vanities. All these have to come to an end, easily, without effort and choice, in the flame of awareness."

 

 

There's a line in a song I like that goes "I've grown so tired of grieving for what I did and what I did not do." It's been running through my head a lot lately and it feels like grief just saying it.

 

In some churches, there's a prayer asking for forgiveness for sins of omission and sins of commission: "in your compassion forgive us our sins, known and unknown, things done and left undone."  Is to ask forgiveness the same as to grieve? Is there a time factor at work, so that perhaps grieving comes first, then asking for forgiveness, and then absence of grief as I feel absolved; or perhaps grief, a recognition of wrong or imbalance, is sometimes simultaneous with confession?; and likewise, if I don't feel my grief, and/or don't ask forgiveness, will I continue to grieve as an ongoing process, perhaps lodged in my body as much as my heart or mind?

 

I'm asking because I was reading the other day that some people think resentment -- holding onto wrongs, attaching to them, perhaps even nursing them -- causes cancer (Louise Hay for one, here for another; just google 'cancer' and 'resentment' and you'll see). I don't think I'd ever say that emotion or even attachment to emotion causes physical cancer, but I think that getting stuck emotionally probably contributes in some way to an overall lack of embodied well-being.

 

But then I thought that maybe grief, and in particular grief about one's own actions -- or perhaps it has more the quality of regret, shame, disappointment, remorse -- might affect well-being as strongly as resentment. (And maybe they're related, concurrent.)

 

Even if I don't go over and over in my mind or heart some wrong I feel I've done, some good I feel I'm not doing, there is still a sense for me sometimes that I'm always being called to account for the moral right and wrong that I've done, and, even more, the right and wrong that I continue to do. How much of that underlying sense comes from the American/Puritan emphasis on individual responsibility, (Amercan) Christian teaching, the 'punishment' tendency of the current culture, my own genetic predisposition and upbringing, who knows. I know I'm not alone because I hear a lot of other people voice the same thing, though more often in talking about a sense of personal duty as necessary, meaningful, and fulfilling than in talking about how wearisome such a sense of duty feels.

 

The line from the song captures so well how it feels to me: the energy-drain, the resentment, the grief I feel about feeling that I have to be always grieving my imperfect actions. It's oppressive, heavy, enervating.

 

I find some solace, strangely, in the prayer of confession, even as it directs my attention yet again to what I'm doing wrong. And I find solace in James Alison's discussion of forgiveness. He calls it, in On Being Liked, "a process of undergoing 'being undone' from various traps, dead ends and ensnarlments," and thus being able to participate in being (re)created. That's how Buddhist meditation feels to me, too, a way of 'being undone' from ensnarement.

 

Alison says that faith is not about morality or about what we do: "It's a receiving something. It's someone having done something for us." It's being able to relax in the regard of someone coming towards us, someone who likes us, someone always offering us friendship.

 

I know the partyline on confession is that it can keep us from holding on to past sins of omission or commission, that it offers relief from the grief, but I'm after something else here. There's something in the whole standard of good and bad, in the need to measure oneself against that standard, that seems counter to who I hope and even believe God is. (And as I write that, a flood of Bible passages come to mind to counter my hope. I have another hope, thanks to Girardians, that we've read a lot of that stuff inaccurately over these many years.)

 

I might phrase my 'belief' as "All have fallen short, and all are falling short, so why measure? Does it matter exactly how far short I am? And striving to improve my position vis a vis that standard by doing what I think are good acts -- is there a point to that? Is faith really about morality? What if God just wants to give me something, just wants me to receive it lightly, not to grasp it but to let it undo me, and in being undone, to live life more fully, with all the passion, participation, presence, and risk that implies?"

 

Even that, curse my heritage, leaves me with a standard against which to measure myself, which is, to what extent is what I'm doing life-focused, to what extent death-focused? Am I acting in the flow or not? "Am I alive enough?" becomes just another way of asking myself "Am I good enough?"

 

Somehow, it's the measuring that prompts the grief, and the weariness, and the dissonance, and yet everywhere around us, including in religious teachings and practice, there's the encouragement and often the obligation to measure. I think there's another way, another way to be alive without the measuring. In fact, I think the only way to be alive is sans measurement. I know it for sure when I am so involved, so 'part of,' that the present enlarges and I have no sense of time passing. That is the 'flow' that so many speak of (I first read about it in Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's book about it), where measuring falls away, is undone, and something that can compassionately accommodate both "what I did" and "what I did not do" is created, discovered, revealed.

 

Yesterday, I thought I did nothing. Nothing worth the while, nothing to reflect on, nothing 'good.' I probed that, feeling that I had done something, and something worthwhile, even if it was nothing that fit the cultural and partially internalised rubric of worthiness, and came up with this list of what I chose to do (and what I chose not to do):

 

I slept late because I was tired from dreaming.

I listened to some of Morning Edition on NPR.

I made the bed. 

I watered house plants and hanging plants.

I clicked on the Animal Rescue site and all the other rescue sites. 

I read and responded to email, including listservs. I read my feeds via Bloglines several times during the day.

I entered the HGTV "Green Home" sweepstakes, as I do every day (until this Friday). 

I did two loads of 'dog' laundry (her blankets, bedding, etc.) and a load of dishes.

I reconciled the checkbook with the bank account online.

I made a batch of brown rice for the dog. 

I moved money from a sweep account at an online brokerage into a mutual fund there.

I did minor research of a house for sale in town (pure curiosity). 

I took photos in the garden and watched the robins build their nest. I looked for the snake but didn't find it. I put the photos online at my Flickr account.

I weeded the yard/garden.

I stroked the neighbour's cat in my garden, while I was digging dirt, and I kept my dog, who was sunning herself on the deck, from attacking the cat. (It was rather dramatic and required strategy.) 

I planted lettuce and arugula in containers on the deck. 

I tracked down and printed a cookie recipe (but didn't make it).

I imitated the seagulls' cries.

I wrote two blog entries for my 'work' blog. 

I didn't do any editing of my 'work' website, other than the blog.

I didn't write an author's profile though I have the notes for it. I didn't edit another author's profile, though she sent me edits.

I swept the kitchen and hallway.

I listened to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright taking questions at the National Press Club on NPR (missed the first part).

I blogged here. 

I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out what to wear for a walk outside.

I took a walk downtown and did a few errands. I bought a heavy item and carried it home because I knew my spouse would appreciate it. (compassion, or earning merit?)

I bought a small gift for a friend.

I rehearsed fantasy (un)conversations in my head.

I took a half-hour online Harris survey that involved determining our net worth (omitting real estate) and exactly what percentages of it are in what kinds of investments.

I did my daily half-hour weights and stretching workout.  

I watched bits of "Red Green," sports talk shows, "What Not To Wear," "House Hunters," and "It's Me or the Dog," amounting to about an hour of TV. I taped "House MD" to watch later.  

I didn't watch any Kentucky Derby coverage because it made me sad and angry. I signed a letter online via PETA concerning horse-racing (I amended the letter a bit).

I re-heated Chinese leftovers for dinner. (Happy Cinco de Mayo! ;-))

I talked with a few friends via email and one briefly on the phone. Except for my spouse and dog, I didn't have a face-to-face interaction with anyone I know.

I wrote a grocery list and a short list of things to do this week. 

I read and finished a crime novel. 

I wrapped another gift for another friend and got it ready to mail. 

I didn't read anything scholarly.

I didn't do a crossword puzzle. 

I didn't drive or ride anywhere. 

I didn't make any money.

I didn't volunteer anywhere.

I prayed and meditated but rarely as discrete actions.

 

(Short answer, no, not any more than we ever miss the moment.)

 

Thank god, an answer to this age-old question with an explanation I can accept, from Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution.

 

Someone asks him "Is taking a photo or video of an event for later viewing worth it, even if it means more or less missing the event in realtime? What's better, a lifetime of mediated viewing of my son's first steps or a one-time in-person viewing?"

 

Cowen's main response is two-fold:

 

"If you take photos you will remember the event more vividly, if only because you have to stop and notice it. The fact that your memories will in part be 'false' or constructed is besides the point; they'll probably be false anyway. In other words, there's no such thing as the 'one-time in-person viewing,' it is all mediated viewing, one way or the other.  Daniel Gilbert's book on memory is the key source here.

 

 

One of the comments, though, brings up the common theory that taking pictures can be a way of hiding behind the camera, making us merely observers of participants, creating distance between us and what we are photographing. This seems true at times for me, particularly at parties or group events -- I like to have a role that supercedes the social requirement of chit-chatting -- but not in the garden, while travelling, taking photos of close friends or family, etc. Even at parties, I feel that I am participating by being an observer, and sometimes the role of photographer seems like the role of therapist: people will reveal things they might not otherwise, because I am hidden, because I seem neutral, because I am part machine.

 

(Photo taken today. The robin pair, whose nest this is, was not happy to find me in the garden. I wasn't happy to find their nest so close to the ground -- in a rhododendron shrub -- knowing that neighbours' cats stalk our yard.)