Taking Refuge in the Dharma

Posted on June 29, 2012 by

Let me be heretical for a minute: I don’t think that AA (or NA, or Life Ring, or any other structured recovery program — I’m a drunk, so for my purposes I talk about AA) is a good way to stop drinking.

I promise I’m not being controversial for its own sake; let me explain what I mean.

So there are 12 steps in AA “which are suggested as a program of recovery,” right?  How many of them talk about alcohol?  One.  The first step, which reads: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol–that our lives had become unmanageable.”  That’s it.  It doesn’t even say “and so we stopped drinking.”  The other steps maybe presume that we’ve quit drinking, but maybe not: The third tradition of AA states that “the only requirement for membership is a  desire to stop drinking.”  I see nothing in the official AA literature (I’m referring here mostly to the Big Book and the Twelve and Twelve; there are other AA books that I haven’t read, but those are at least the Big Two) to suggest that one couldn’t be a lifelong, earnest, productive member of AA, working all of the steps and getting full use out of the program, and still also be a lousy drunk.  Certainly there are some unofficial AA “rules” that would prohibit such a member from, say, leading a meeting, or heading certain committees; those usually require a certain amount of clean time, and it’s usually suggested as well that those without a certain amount of time not take on sponsees, but there’s also nothing in the 12 steps to suggest that these are necessary parts of the program.

So is this what I’m advocating?  No, certainly not, for practical reasons if nothing else: when I was drinking, I had a hard enough time mustering the energy to do the laundry, let alone doing such emotionally rigorous things as being honest about my faults and making amends to the people I’ve harmed.  I don’t doubt that most addicts are similar: We stopped using because our addictions made it increasingly impossible for us to have anything approaching a “normal” life, let alone a productive one.

Still, I think it’s a fascinating situation.  We have a program whose ostensible purpose is to enable alcoholics to stop drinking, but whose actual program, the 12 steps, doesn’t talk much about it.  So what I’m suggesting, what makes sense for me, is that quitting drinking is not the goal of the 12 steps, but a presupposition to them.  First this, then that.  And once the idea of that as a goal is stripped away, I think what’s left amounts to the AA dharma.

Here I should explain.  I talked a bit in my last post about the idea of buddha mind, or buddha nature.  I won’t rehash everything that I wrote, but to briefly summarize, I understand it as something like being utterly immersed in being exactly what I am.  And, according to Zen, everyone has it (or maybe everyone is it).  For Zen master Eihei Dogen, this posed something of a puzzle: Why practice if we’re all buddha nature?  Sitting on the cushion, reading the sutras, finding a teacher — great, but if enlightenment is already available to everyone, all the time, then why do it?  Dogen reversed the matter: because we are buddha nature, we practice.  The practice is the manifestation of buddha nature.  There isn’t a “why” to practice, it isn’t for anything, it’s just what you do.  He wrote:

Do not practice buddha-dharma for your own sake.  Do not practice buddha-dharma for name and gain.  Do not practice buddha-dharma to attain blissful reward.  Do not practice buddha-dharma to attain miraculous effects.  Practice buddha-dharma solely for the sake of buddha-dharma.  This is the way.

This is how I understand the 12 steps: We don’t practice the 12 steps to get sober; we’re sober, and so we practice the 12 steps.  The practice is a manifestation of sobriety.  It’s not for the sake of stopping drinking, or mending relationships, or becoming a better person.  That’s all within us the moment we decide to practice the 12 steps.  By practicing the 12 steps, we actualize those things within us.

Or maybe that’s just the Zen talking.  I think that there’s more that I want to write about this, but exactly how isn’t coming to me easily, and this post is late already.  So I’ll throw this out there and see if it sticks.

Posted in 12 Steps, Bodhisattva Precepts, First Step, General Buddhism, General Recovery, Three Refuges | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Better Late Than Never: Taking Refuge in the Buddha, Part 2

Posted on June 15, 2012 by

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been scrambling around to make some things happen in my professional life.  It’s an experience I’ve been grateful for, but it also means that I’m running late on writing this.  Apologies.

In my last post, I looked at some of the possibilities of placing faith in teachers like the historical Buddha, like Bill Wilson, like an AA sponsor.  I also looked at some of the pitfalls.  So how does one realize the possibilities without falling into the traps?  That leads me to what I see as the most important aspect of taking refuge in the Buddha: authentically being what I authentically am.

In the Zen tradition, we say that everyone has what’s called Buddha mind, or Buddha nature.  Or, sometimes we say that everyone is Buddha mind or nature.  What I understand this to mean is that everyone has the capacity to see things as they really are.  Not that we’re free of our delusions, necessarily, but that we understand that we are deluded.  Reb Anderson writes, by way of explanation:

Another part of what you are is a human being who keeps running away from what you are, who keeps trying to be something else.  If you think that you are worthy, then you want to hold on to feeling worthy.  If you feel unworthy, then you may want to change or somehow fix yourself.  In other words, you can be distracted an undermined by your ideas about yourself.  In that sense, you flee from yourself.  Of course, you can never really run away from yourself: that is only a delusion.  You need to balance this delusion of running away with the recognition that it is a delusion, that you didn’t run away.  Returning to buddha is an antidote to running away from yourself.  To come back, to just be the way you are, including all your delusions, is to take refuge in the buddha.

So we can see clearly that we can’t see clearly.  It’s not concentration, or ethics, or compassion, though those are all part of it (and vice versa), it’s just being.  And in this being, in this clarity, we can see which teachings may be beneficial and trustworthy; which of our actions can do some good.

How do we get there?  Well, one way is to get beat down really hard.  I heard a story recently from my friend and teacher Wendy Johnson.  She had an article to write for Tricycle, the Buddhist magazine, but got tremendously sick while writing, and that ”helped [her] arrive more than anything.”  Wendy’s a preparer, and sometimes an overpreparer.  Ordinarily, in writing, she would intricately plan the shape of her article: the perfect Zen quote, how the article connects to other teachings.  But of her illness, she says: “It slowed me down; slowed down the grandeur of my inquiry, and my intensity.  And all my planning just fell away.  I was stripped.”  Because of the illness, the gap between who she was, and who she thought she was, dropped away.  And so when she wrote, the only thing that she could do was write something really honest and raw.

I think most addicts and alcoholics are familiar with this kind of clearness through suffering.  Maybe that’s what happens when we hit our bottom: we become so sick and so beat up that our ego gets stripped away, and we can recognize for what it is the delusion that we’re doing OK.  We don’t become any wiser or more knowledgeable than we were the moment before, and we don’t lose our delusion, but we can see that it’s a delusion.  We can see that we can’t see clearly.  We see that we’re addicts, that we’d become powerless over our addictions, and that our lives had become unmanageable.  Not for nothing, I think, is that moment when we hit bottom also called the moment of clarity.  In that moment, we are authentically addicts; authentically who we are.

OK, great, but how to get there without suffering deeply?  For me, hitting bottom, finding that moment of clarity, was a great moment.  It was also terrifying and painful, causing a lot of damage to me and to my family, and I’d rather not repeat the experience.  Wendy wrote a lovely article, but she also spent eight hours in the ER feeling like shit, and her sickness cost her time she was hoping to spend with one of her close friends.  Clarity through suffering is clarity, but it can’t be the only way.  The Buddha cautioned us against trying to wake up through rigorous ascetic practices: We may get there, but what good is it if we’re too sick to go out into the world and act with our understanding?

I think this is where the practice part comes in.  We practice at trying to notice where we are.  Not to run from where we are, or to try to get someplace we’re not, but just to notice “OK.  Here I am.  What’s that like?  What’s going on?”  And to answer my question from before, i.e., how do we know if what a teacher is telling us is what we should be doing, we try to see if the teaching is meeting us where we really are.  Not, “is the teaching right” or “is the teaching wrong,” but, “here I am, does the teaching reach me?”

This practice is really, really difficult for me.  My mind is constantly spinning stories about where it thinks I should be, or what I should be doing, that may or may not bear even a faint resemblance to where I actually am.  But I think that’s why it’s a practice, and that without the difficulty, there wouldn’t be a practice.  I have faith that, with practice, I’m capable of seeing things clearly; I can take refuge in the possibility.  Fortunately, I’m not doing this alone: buddha mind leads me to the rest of the precepts, and the rest of the precepts lead me to buddha mind.

So I’ll try to tackle the second precept, taking refuge in the dharma, next time around.

Posted in 12 Steps, Bodhisattva Precepts, General Buddhism, General Recovery, Three Refuges, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Livin’ Like a Refugee: Taking Refuge in the Buddha, Part 1

Posted on June 2, 2012 by

Programming note: Because this started to run long, it’s the first part in a series.  I don’t know how long it’ll go (I’m wordy) but I’ll publish part 2 next week.

As I mentioned in my last post, in preparation for lay ordination, I’ve been working through the sixteen Bodhisattva precepts that my particular Soto Zen tradition considers to be a pretty good way of living one’s life.  What follows is my limited attempt to understand how the first precept, taking refuge in the Buddha, can shine some light on my ongoing quest to stay sober.

When I think of taking refuge, reliably the first thing that comes into my mind is the Tom Petty song “Refugee” (what can I say, I’m a child of the 80′s).  Which means that I wind up YouTubing it or playing his greatest hits album on Spotify, and I’m reminded of two things: First, that it’s a pretty great song.  Second, that I can’t identify with his central refrain.  Petty sings “Everybody’s had to fight to be free / You don’t have to live like a refugee.”  Everyone needs refuge at times — when it rains, we look for shelter — and taking refuge is, for me, part of my fight to be free.  (I have no such qualms about “Mary Jane’s Last Dance“; that song just kicks.)

We need to specify exactly what kind of refuge we’re talking about, though.  For a while, alcohol absolutely was a refuge for me.  It worked well.  We can debate how physically and emotionally healthy it was to try to find relief that way, but we can’t debate the results.  If I didn’t like how life was treating me (or if I liked it too much); if I was down (or up); if I couldn’t, or didn’t want to handle what was going on, I sought refuge in a bottle (or a joint, or a line.  Drugs weren’t a big part of my story, but mostly because alcohol was cheaper.  It wasn’t because I was somehow above all that), and the problems went away.  Booze was safe, and easy, and for a long time the consequences weren’t too bad.  I never lost a job; never got a DUI; never got into bar fights; I didn’t even get hungover much.  But eventually, the consequences got worse, and the refuge stopped being so safe and easy.  That’s the tricky thing with alcohol: It stops working when you start needing it to work the most.  ”Men, driven by fear, go to many a refuge, to mountains and forests, to groves and sacred trees.  But that is not a safe refuge, that is not the best refuge; a man is not delivered from all pains after having gone to that refuge.” (Dhammapada 188-89, Muller trans.)  Now I look for something healthier, and something that hopefully won’t stop working.

There are a couple of ways to think of taking refuge in the Buddha.  The first, and most obvious, is to have faith that there was a man born in what’s now Nepal about 2500 years ago, who transcended his ordinary life to embody an extraordinary wisdom and compassion, and whose teachings are good medicine for my life.  I think that’s right; I have faith that it’s so: The historical record seems clear that the man lived, and if he said and did even a fraction of what is attributed to him in the sutras (including even just the mostly prosaic Theravada texts rather than the more fantastical Mahayana scriptures), he was quite a guy.

That one Buddha lived doesn’t mean that the set of buddhas begins and ends at one.  We usually think of “Buddha” as being the historical Sakyamuni Buddha, in much the same way that we usually think of “Christ” as referring to Jesus of Nazareth.  And in much the same way, that’s not totally right.  ”Christ” comes from the Greek “khristos”, the anointed one, and is a translation of the Hebrew “messiah.”  Jesus Christ = Jesus, the messiah.  It was only later that it became thought of as Jesus’ surname.  Likewise, there was never a man named “Buddha.”  ”Buddha” simply means “awakened one” or “enlightened one.”  In Buddhist scriptures, Siddharta wasn’t the first and won’t be the last on this planet, which also exists in parallel to innumerable other Buddha-fields, where countless other enlightened beings teach the Dharma to the residents of those universes, according to their capabilities.  So I think of “taking refuge in the Buddha” not just as my faith in the existence of the historical Siddharta, but of my faith that there exist in my life other wise people who can teach me valuable lessons according to my own capabilities.

Bill Wilson, cofounder of AA, was a difficult man, and far from perfect, even after attaining sobriety.  He smoked himself to death.  He liked to trip on acid.  He could be casually cruel to friends and acquaintances, and alienated as many people as he helped.  He probably cheated on his wife with multiple women, and didn’t appear to bother hiding it particularly well.  No Buddha, in other words.  But in his life, he achieved at least one great realization: That one alcoholic or addict can stay sober by helping another alcoholic or addict stay sober.  To me, who struggled so hard, and so uselessly, to get sober on his own, that’s a profound truth.  It’s one I can take faith in.  So if not the Buddha, then maybe I can take refuge in him as a little-b-buddha.

My sponsor’s another little-b-buddha.  He’s a good guy, and knows what I’ve been through.  His story isn’t my story, but it’s close enough.  He seems earnest and eager to help me sort through my shit and move on to a place of greater sobriety.  I have faith in that, too.  And there are countless other little-b-buddhas and bodhisattvas spread throughout the recovery community.

There is one problem that I can see with taking refuge in these little-b-buddhas, and even with the capital-B one: Where lies critical analysis?  How can I know that my faith is justified?  Certainly, the historical Buddha thought that an analytical approach bore merit, saying: “Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”  Bill W didn’t ask for blind faith, either: AA has lots of catchphrases, some more helpful that others, and one of the best is “take what you can use, and leave the rest.”  And while I’ve never directly asked my sponsor if he thinks I should follow him unquestioningly, I hope I know what the answer would be.  And anyway, he’s just a lousy drunk like me; who’s gonna put blind faith in that?

How, then, do I decide if any of this is really a good idea?  The answer is the last, and I think most important part of taking refuge in the Buddha, and it’s that part which I’ll take up next time.

 

Posted in 12 Steps, Bodhisattva Precepts, General Buddhism, General Recovery, Three Refuges | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hola amigos

Posted on May 22, 2012 by

It’s been a while since I rapped atcha.

There’ve been some changes in my life since I last wrote.  First and foremost, on January 13, 2012, my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, who we named Dahlia.  She’s pretty awesome, even if she does spit up a lot.  A close second: my wife is still my wife.  It was touch and go for a while, but things seem to be getting better.  Third, I’m sober.  Hooray!  That was also touch and go for a while.  I’ve been going to meetings, not daily but around 5 times a week.  I find that’s about as often as I can go without missing out on the other things that enrich my life.  And I’m working with both an AA sponsor and a Zen teacher, both of whom are great.  Assuming I don’t find a way to piss them off, which is ever a possibility given my prickly (to be charitable) nature, I feel that I’m in good hands.

I’m content about where my life is going these days, but I also remind myself that it’s not like I’ve acquired any sort of immunity from my cravings and delusions; more like a temporary reprieve.  Which is what leads me to write this.

As far as this place is concerned: It’s still 99% for my benefit, and I still don’t expect others to take much from it — though if anyone does, I’m grateful for that.  Writing helps me, so I write.  As a means of clarifying my own thoughts, my intention is to write more regularly, about once a week, and in a less piecemeal fashion, and with less juvenile snark generally.  Coincidentally, for the three people who may be reading this, it will hopefully mean a less disjointed and possibly exasperating experience.  Both to provide myself with a roadmap, and to express some commitment to it, I’ll lay out some plans below.

I’m currently studying towards something called Jukai, or lay ordination in the Zen tradition.  The import falls somewhere between becoming a monk, and remaining a straight up householder.  In practical terms, it amounts to three things: (1) It’s a formal declaration that I’m a Buddhist; this is where I am;  (At least for now.  I’ve no idea where I’ll be tomorrow.) (2) I intend to live my life in accordance with the Sixteen Bodhisattva Precepts (about which more in a minute); and (3) I get to sew myself a snazzy blue bib called a Rakusu.

The Precepts are . . . not Commandments, exactly, though many of them will sound familiar to those of us who were raised in a predominantly Judeo-Christian nation.  There’s nothing in here that “thou must”, more like “you might want to consider; it’s probably a good idea.”  Every variation of Buddhism has its own set, some more, some less, and even within the Soto Zen school that I’m a part of, there are different translations of the sixteen, some of which put the emphasis on different syllables.  I’m borrowing with gratitude this translation from Tenshin Reb Anderson, not because I think it’s necessarily the superior translation, but because it’s plainly written, I like it, and it was one of the first hits on Google when I searched for “bodhisattva precepts.”

Refuges

I take refuge in the buddha.
I take refuge in dharma.
I take refuge and sangha.

Three Pure Precepts

I vow to embrace and sustain right conduct.
I vow to embrace and sustain all good.
I vow to embrace and sustain all beings.

The Grave Precepts

A disciple of Buddha abstains from killing.
A disciple of Buddha abstains from taking what is not given.
A disciple of Buddha abstains from misusing sexuality.
A disciple of Buddha abstains from lying.
A disciple of Buddha abstains from intoxicating the mind or body of self or others.
A disciple of Buddha abstains from speaking of others’ faults.
A disciple of Buddha abstains from praising self at the expense of others.
A disciple of Buddha abstains from clinging to anything, even the dharma.
A disciple of Buddha abstains from harboring ill will.
A disciple of Buddha abstains from abusing the three treasures.

In studying for the lay ordination, I’ve been working through the precepts with my Zen teacher in much the same way that I’ve been working through the 12 Steps of AA with my sponsor in that program.  The more I do so, the more I realize just how much crossover there is between the two traditions (I reemphasize, this is hardly an original thought of mine.  As a side note, I’ve read both the SFZC’s essays in the first link and Kevin Griffin’s book in the third; I highly recommend both.  I’ve not read the other two books, though I’ve heard good things about them).  For whatever reason, my mind seems more inclined towards organizing my thoughts along the direction of the Sixteen Precepts, going through each one and exploring how, for me, each one relates to my recovery, rather than going through the 12 Steps and exploring how each relates to Zen.  Again, I don’t suppose that my way is somehow better, just that it’s the way that makes more sense to me and for me right now.

If anyone is still reading this, thank you for bearing with me, though the word count is approaching 1,000.  Next up, taking refuge in the Buddha.

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Everyday Zen

Posted on October 23, 2011 by

Holy shit!  Content!

I haven’t, in fact, forgotten how to write.  For both good and bad, over the past few months, I’ve been busier than I’ve ever been before — and I should mention: I went to law school, worked while doing it, and did pretty well.  One can level a lot of charges against me, but laziness isn’t one of them.

I’m working again, or, at least, sorta: it’s a volunteer gig, but it’s a good one; a real one.  It’s good experience for me personally, and I think that it’ll be a meaningful addition to my CV.

The real time-suck, though, is a much happier one: My wife and I are expecting our first child in about three months.  I like to think that I’m prepared for the amount of work a newborn takes (though I’m sure that’s actually not true), but what I really wasn’t prepared for is the amount of work a fetus takes.  All of a sudden my wife is all “we need this, and we need that, and you need to do this, and you need to do that” and I’m all “hey, I did my job, right?  High 5!”

Note: sarcasm is extremely difficult to detect over the internet.

At any rate, to the remaining, like, three of you who haven’t written me off as a pitiable misogynistic turd: I think it finally hit me that whoah, this is serious, when I laid the bouncy chair down on top of my zabuton.  For the uninitiated, a zabuton is a black, flat, square cushion, usually filled with buckwheat husks, upon which Zen students place their sitting cushions or benches.  Upon the zabuton, a Zen student achieves buddha-mind.  And a bouncy chair is a chair that goes BOUNCY BOUNCY BOUNCY and is apparently baby magic.  I leave it to you, dear reader, to determine which is the better investment.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Zen teacher Norman Fischer has an organization called “Everyday Zen“.  I should add here that I have nothing to do with the organization; have never spoken with Zoketsu Fischer; etc., but I very much respect what they do.  In brief, their mission (as I understand it, and if I’m wrong I’d like to be corrected) is to bring Zen teaching out of the monastery and into the secular world.

I bring this up now because, man, I fuckin’ feel it.  There is a BOUNCY CHAIR on my zabuton.  Even if I wanted to (and it’s debatable, given that I need to do some more cleaning, and then some cooking, before I could take some free time) to sit zazen, there is a BOUNCY CHAIR ALL UP IN MY SHIT.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The best understanding that I have of Zen is to be present in this moment.  I love my wife.  And I’m excited about this baby.  But let’s not bullshit: this is a new thing for me.  I’ve barely learned how to deal with myself, and I’m now apparently expected to be responsible for a helpless pink bundle?

Breathe in.  Breathe out.  Count breaths.  Zazen is everywhere; not just on the cushion.    Or at least, so I hope.

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Buddhist Self-Mummification. No, Seriously.

Posted on August 29, 2011 by

So yeah, this is weird (WARNING: the link contains images that creeped me right the fuck out, and may do the same to you).   For those of you who choose not to click due to the ick factor, I’ll briefly describe the contents of the linked article.

The article details a practice called Sokushinbutsu, once thought to be a myth but now verified by (extremely creepy) archaeological evidence as being extant in one province of Japan in the 19th Century.  Sokushinbutsu, meaning something like “promotion or facilitation of Buddhahood” was a years long process in which Buddhist monks first stripped the fat off their bodies through a combination of extreme diet and exercise, then took a purgative which caused constant vomiting and diarrhea and also, by the way, poisoned the flesh with high concentrations of arsenic to prevent microbes from breaking it down after death.  Finally, the monk would shut himself in a stone tomb with a bell and an air tube.  Sitting in the lotus position, the monk would ring the bell once a day to indicate to those outside the tomb that he was still alive.  No more bell, no more monk, and those outside would remove the air tube.   Three years after death, the monk would be uncovered.  The mummification was considered successful if the withered visage displaed a beatific countenance, and if so, the monk was declared a Buddha and displayed in the temple.

First thought: nnnnrrrggghh.

Second thought: Part of me wants to find the dedication required to put oneself through such an ordeal admirable, but I just can’t get there.  Setting aside the ick factor, this practice seems to me to run directly counter to foundational Buddhist teachings.  Shakyamuni Buddha (the Buddha everyone thinks of as the Buddha) formulated the doctrine of the Middle Way specifically as a response to his own experiences with extreme ascetecism.  He himself went through a period of intense fasting, and instead of finding that it brought him closer to enlightenment, he found that it made him irritable and muddle-headed.  The Boy Scouts have it right: Mens sana in corpore sano.  One cannot properly cultivate understanding while neglecting the body.

And nowhere in any Buddhist teachings that I’ve read is it suggested that there’s any sort of “I WIN” button for enlightenment; no shortcut.  For every story of a monk reaching enlightenment by hearing the clack of a pebble on a tile, there’s another of a monk spending a lifetime contemplating the Way without reaching anything.  Shakyamuni Buddha himself had to spend a long time sitting under a tree before his nirvana.  This all assumes that there is such a thing as “enlightenment,” which sorta depends on who you ask, but assuming that there is, I can’t believe that mortification of the flesh is the fast track.

So everything in me wants to jump up and down and scream “not the Dharma!  Not the Dharma!”

And yet.  I know a little bit about what it’s like to poison oneself with the delusion that it’s for the best.  I never thought that I was drinking myself towards enlightenment; more like oblivion.  But I did successfully convince myself that oblivion was the best place I could wind up.  As we say, delusions are endless, and I can’t buy in to the delusion that convinced these monks that self-mummification was anything other than an elaborate and gruesome form of suicide.  I’m having a hard time even trying to feel compassionate towards them.  Pity, maybe, but not compassion.  In some small way, though, I may understand.

Posted in General Buddhism, Self Flagellation | 1 Comment

Mea Culpa

Posted on August 16, 2011 by

Yeah, so it’s been a while.  This is a pretty common pattern with my writing: periods of nigh-impenetrable writer’s block followed by periods of prolixity.  When I started this blog, I had conceived of myself in the blogo-heroic vein: a literary colossus straddling the intertubes, regularly dispensing pithy sayings, humorously puncturing traditional pieties about both recovery and Buddhism, both broad and subtle.   In my arrogance I thought that my intelligence, be it as it may, would allow me to make up for my inability to devote as much time as I’d like to my writing, and I thought that my initial “hey I’m writing a blog!” burst of enthusiasm would provide me with an endless source of inspiration.  So it went: I’m a smart guy, and I seem to have a lot that I want to write about, so surely that will persist.  Let the page views start stacking up, and book deal plz kthx.

Maybe some people can roll that way.  I can’t.  It’s really fucking hard.  It’s hard to string together words such that they will form a halfway readable sentence; it’s hard to pile up sentences such that they will form a decently coherent paragraph; it’s hard to mold those paragraphs into a narrative worth a damn.  In some form or another, I’ve been a professional writer for all of my adult life (editorial assistant, counter-terrorism researcher, law student, lawyer), so I should have foreseen this difficulty.  Certainly I’ve suffered through plenty of unpublishable manuscripts and muddled legal briefs, sipping my coffee as I tut contentedly to myself: “what careless writing!”  I knew, or I should have known.  So what folly to think not only that I could put together decent prose on a topic very raw and painful for me (however much I hide behind a facade of winking cool), but that I could do it quickly, and easily, and regularly.  What hubris!

Thus, to those of you following my writing (all three of you; thanks hon!), mea culpa.  In a very real sense, I have failed at what I set out to do.  That doesn’t mean that this experiment is over, it simply means that my expectations are now much different than they were when I set out.  I am perhaps a little bit more humble than I was a month ago.

So: from here on out, do not expect posts to come regularly.  Maybe once every two weeks.  Maybe once a month.  I aim to take my time, edit, and try to produce somewhat longer pieces — but don’t hold me to that, either.  I may still fail, but I hope to start failing better.

I am in fact working on some real content; I hope to have that up soon.  Until then:

All my ancient twisted karma,
From beginningless greed, hate, and delusion,
Born through body, speech, and mind,
I now fully avow.

–repentance verse (from San Francisco Zen Center chant book)

Posted in Jon's Shitty Karma, Self Flagellation, Unrealized Grandiosity | Leave a comment

Ou sont le booze d’antan?

Posted on July 22, 2011 by

A point I should have made earlier, is that these posts appear in no particular order.  As thoughts come to mind, I put them to screen.  If that feels disjointed, well, my apologies.  So here I’ll jump from the niceties of 2000 year-old doctrinal splits to one of the most fundamental aspects of the Buddhist approach to reality, as I understand it.

Two relatively recent texts can, I think, shed some light on the Buddhist concept of impermanence.  They’re not canonical, but they seem to fit quite nicely.

Tell me where, or in what country,
Is Flora, the beautiful Roman,
Archipiades or Thais,
Who was her cousin?
Echo answering, at the clap of a hand,
Over the river or the stream,
Whose beauty was more than human?
Where are the snows of yesterday?
 
Where is the wise Heloise,
For whom was castrated and then made a monk,
Peter Abelard, at St. Denis?
He suffered this for his love.
And where is the queen
Who ordered that Buridan
Be thrown into a sack in the Seine?
Where are the snows of yesterday?
 
The queen Blanche, white as a lily,
Who sang with a siren’s voice;
Big-footed Bertha, Beatrice, Alice;
Erembourge, who ruled over the Maine;
And Joan, that good woman from Lorraine
That the English burned at Rouen?
Where are they, sovereign Virgin?
Where are the snows of yesterday?
 
O Prince, do not ask me again
Where they are; neither again in this year.
I can only bring you back this refrain:
Where are the snows of yesterday? 

François Villon, 1461, poorly translated from the original French by me, with hat-tips to Google and Rossetti’s 19th Century translation

 
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.  Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains.  Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818

Yeah, so maybe using them both was piling on a bit, but I think the implication is clear: Nothing lasts forever.  The good, the great, the beautiful: They’re all gonna die.  Monuments crumble.  Snows melt.  Of the cells that made up your body when you were born, not a single one remains.  Of the cells that make up your body now, not a single one will remain when you die.  OK, so?  In Buddhist philosophy, this isn’t a good or bad thing, it’s not nihilism or fatalism, it just is.  You can either accept it or fight it, but fighting it just leads to more suffering when the things to which you cleave so desperately, too, disappear.  

I’ve written previously about how alcoholism often felt to me like an inevitability.  I’ve heard variations on this theme from other alcoholics: Recently, someone shared with me the story of his drinking.  He assumed that he couldn’t stop drinking, that he was going to live the rest of his life as a functional alcoholic, and even began to do research on some of history’s other great drunkards in order to get some good tips for how to live his well-lubricated life.  Lucky for him, it didn’t work out that way, but I understand the feeling.  I’ve had it too.

This, of course, is delusional.  Nothing lasts forever.  Intellectually, I realize this.  If I have a craving for alcohol, often it lasts for ten minutes or less.  If I can get my head out of my ass for the length of your average prog-rock song, no problem.  It passes.  The only way in which that craving has an enduring existence is if I continue to breathe life into it.

Right now, day by day, I feel pretty fucking lousy.  I haven’t been perfect, and I could use a drink now.  My mind is on edge, and I find it very hard to settle into anything resembling peace or serenity.  It’ll pass.  It always does.

Posted in General Buddhism, General Recovery | Leave a comment

Mahayana Dreams

Posted on July 15, 2011 by

So I took a class the other day, and realized…

Actually, this needs some background.

The History of Early Buddhism, According to a Mahayana Partisan

So the Buddha came around, and showed us the Way, and directly led thousands of people to enlightenment, and was generally pretty awesome.  But he had a problem.  See, in the beginning, he could only give out the second-class dharma.  Most of the members of the early community, or sangha, weren’t bad enough dudes to handle the really good stuff.

An early depiction of the Buddha

I mean, look, what he was giving out wasn’t bad: the path of the arhat, or saint, allowed individuals to reach enlightenment.  But the good stuff was just way better: the path of the bodhisattva, or enlightened being, in which the bodhisattva not only worked on his or her own enlightenment, but worked tirelessly for the enlightenment of all beings.  Cool, right?  And so rather than let this extra-hot dharma go to waste, the Buddha gave it to some friendly dragons, who hid it under the sea until people came along who could handle it without wigging out.

Seriously.

The guardian of the dharma

Several hundred years after the death of the Buddha, the dragons decided that the conditions were ripe to drop the good stuff, and so appeared to Nagarjuna, the founder of the Mahayana branch of Buddhism.  Mahayana means, by the way, “the Great Vehicle,” to distinguish it from the already-existing branch of Buddhism, which Nagarjuna termed Hinayana, or “the Lesser Vehicle” due to its focus on individual enlightenment rather than the enlightenment of all beings.  Fast forward another couple hundred years, and Mahayana Buddhism split further into different schools, including the Soto Zen school in which I practice.

The Mahayana kids all made fun of the Hinayana kids in the playground.  The Hinnies couldn’t handle their shit, all the Mahayana kids would say!  Who would want personal enlightenment when you can get that and enlighten all sentient beings to boot?  A dick, that’s who.  A big old stinky Hinayana dick.

Now, here’s the funny thing: if you’re a practicing Buddhist in the US, you’re probably in that lesser, selfish Hinayana school.  Surprise!  Betcha didn’t realize you were second class.

But Seriously

In truth, the schism between Mahayana and Hinayana (or, more correctly, Theravada, unless you’re alluding to the historical record or deliberately trying to be a dick) was never as dramatic as the early Mahayana partisans made it out to be.  And today, although some differences remain (some of which are profound), the two branches of Buddhism are becoming more syncretic than ever previously.  For example, many Theravadans appreciate some of the core Mahayana texts such as the Heart Sutra, and, at least in my temple, we’ve adopted, and regularly chant, the Metta Sutta, a core Theravadan text.

The Point

For the time being, bear in mind that background as seen through the eyes of a Mahayana partisan.  I’ve begun taking a class on a text called the Vimalakirti Sutra.  It’s a core Mahayana text, and also a very early Mahayana text.  As such, it’s chock full of digs at those lame Hinayanans.  So with all that in mind, here’s the question that our teacher asked us at the end of our first class: Where are we in that personal developmental shift, from self-concern towards concern for both self and others?

As an alcoholic, I’ve been mostly concerned with myself for years.  That’s not to say that I didn’t do anything for other people.  I tried to be a decent guy, sometimes even went well out of my way to help others, but when it came down to it, if the question was between being a decent guy and self-medicating, the booze won every time.  And looking back, I wonder if my “helpfulness” wasn’t either an attempt to salve my self-worth, or an attempt to look good to the people I was hurting with my drinking, or both.  Probably both.

In the Mahayana tradition, we have a beautiful, impossible vow that we make:

Beings are numberless; I vow to save them.
Delusions are inexhaustable; I vow to end them.
Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them.
The Buddha’s way is unsurpassable; I vow to become it.

Maybe now I mean it.

Posted in General Buddhism, General Recovery | Leave a comment

Powerlessness and Karmic Life

Posted on July 10, 2011 by

Yesterday I wrote about my understanding of the concept of surrender as it applies to recovery.  I touched only briefly on the idea of powerlessness, but the two concepts necessarily exist cheek by jowl (indeed, I probably should have written first on powerlessness; one who has a feeling, whether real or delusional, of power, cannot surrender).  To recap, the first step reads:

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

Now, I didn’t spring fully lush from the skull of Bacchus.  There were many years where I enjoyed alcohol for the taste and the social aspects and, yes, the physical sensation of drunkenness.  But I could take it or leave it.  I could have one beer with dinner and leave it at that.  I went without drinking for weeks at a time and didn’t think much of it.  I can’t pinpoint when that changed, though I suspect it was my last year in law school.  I had essentially secured my class rank, I had a post-grad job lined up, I was working part time and bringing in a decent amount of money for the first time in my life, and I was smarting from a messy breakup.  It became too easy to come home after a night at work, or studying in the library, and kill a six pack mostly for the sake of it.  I’d get a good buzz going, eat some dinner, finish off the rest of the beer, go to sleep, wake up the next day, and get ready to do it all again.

Whenever exactly it started, over the years, drinking became, for me, an inevitability rather than a choice.  If there was alcohol in the house, I’d drink it (barring things like cooking sherry and very sweet liqueurs; some things were beyond even me, though I suspect I’d have gotten there eventually).  If there wasn’t, I’d find some.  The question was not whether I would drink, but when, how, and what the consequences for drinking would be.  Sometimes there were external consequences, ranging from the minor, like a hangover, to the major, like a blowup with my wife.  Sometimes there weren’t any external consequences, but even if not, there were always internal consequences: I’d feel guilt for spending our money on booze, fear of being caught, ashamed of breaking promises.  And the next day, to escape the guilt and fear and shame, I’d get drunk again.

Shunryu Suzuki founded the San Francisco Zen Center, of which Green Gulch Zen Center, the temple at which I’ve done most of my Buddhist studies, is a part.  He died forty years ago, but left behind several books compiling transcriptions of some of the talks he gave.  This is from one of those talks:

According to the traditional Buddhist understanding, our human nature is without ego.  When we have no idea of ego, we have Buddha’s view of life.  Our egoistic ideas are delusional, covering our Buddha nature.  We are always creating and following them, and in repeating this process over and over again, our life becomes completely occupied by ego-centered ideas.  This is called karmic life, or karma.  The Buddhist life should not be karmic life.  The purpose of our practice is to cut off the karmic spinning mind.

This seems to me to speak to the cycle of inevitability my drinking acquired.  If I truly accept that my drinking was a product of my own guilt and fear and shame, which have no basis in reality except for whatever life I give them, I can see that my drinking was a product of my ego.  I can further see that the consequences of my drinking only strengthened these ego-centered ideas.  Rather than focusing on things that were beneficial to myself and others, I became focused solely on things that served to drag us down.

I don’t know whether it’s fair to say that I am powerless over alcohol, full stop.  The Life Ring people have a saying that I like a lot: “I’m not powerless over the first drink, but I’m powerless over the second.”  Certainly, as long as I allow that karmic cycle to continue, I am powerless over alcohol.  The cause leads to the effect leads to the cause.  But if I cultivate practices that are beneficial to myself and others, if I cut off that “karmic spinning mind,” and, perhaps most importantly, if I just don’t take that first drink . . . well, there’s power in that.

Posted in 12 Steps, First Step, Gnomic Zen Shit | Leave a comment