Peter Clothier's Blog, page 10
August 6, 2020
HIROSHIMA
I had just turned nine years old on this day in 1945, the day America dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Because it was August, I would not have been away at school, but would likely have been somewhere in England, caravanning with my parents. It's possible we were camped out near my grandparents's cottage in Aberporth, a village on the Cardigan Bay in Wales. A report about the bomb and its massive destructive power must certainly have reached my parents on the BBC evening news that day, but I do not remember hearing about it in any significant way. It may be that I have simply forgotten having heard.
It was a long time ago. Seventy-five years. I was just a bit older then than my younger grandson is today. Thinking of him, how smart and well-informed he is about what's happening in the world, I think it's likely that I did know at the time, but was too young to have fully registered the magnitude of the event. There had been bombs dropping all over Europe for some years already. German bombers had emptied their bays and bombs had exploded not half a mile from my house. We were not exactly a target, in the small village where I lived; they were simply jettisoning what remained of their load after an attack on London, to speed their return to base in Germany. Still, I was perhaps by this time somewhat inured to the terror, and could have thought that the Hiroshima bomb was just another one, but bigger.
All of which is merely to remind myself that world-shattering events take place while people everywhere are just doing ordinary things--as W.H.Auden so beautifully puts it in his poem, Musée des Beaux Arts, about the Brueghel painting of Icarus falling from the sky...
... where "everything turns away/Quite leisurely from the disaster" and "[suffering] takes place/While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along." With more than a hundred thousand human lives being snuffed out in the blink of an eye at the other side of the world, my family was likely sitting down to dinner or just waking from a nap.
I think I only fully registered the enormity of the Hiroshima bombing (and that of Nagasaki, three days later) some years later, on reading the John Hersey account; and perhaps, still later, seeing the 1959 Alain Resnais film, "Hiroshima, mon amour," the story of a love affair in shadow of a larger human tragedy. Today, the anniversary of the bombing, it behooves us to recalls that turning-point in our history--the moment at which we learned that it has become entirely possible for us to destroy our entire species and free this lovely, uniquely habitable planet from our troublesome presence. Sadly, subsequent events, including those through which we are living at this present moment, have made it clear that we risk failing to learn the lesson that was offered us. The nuclear threat, certainly, is less imminent than it once was, but our negligence and self-indulgence has proved the source of other, equally lethal paths toward extinction.
It was a long time ago. Seventy-five years. I was just a bit older then than my younger grandson is today. Thinking of him, how smart and well-informed he is about what's happening in the world, I think it's likely that I did know at the time, but was too young to have fully registered the magnitude of the event. There had been bombs dropping all over Europe for some years already. German bombers had emptied their bays and bombs had exploded not half a mile from my house. We were not exactly a target, in the small village where I lived; they were simply jettisoning what remained of their load after an attack on London, to speed their return to base in Germany. Still, I was perhaps by this time somewhat inured to the terror, and could have thought that the Hiroshima bomb was just another one, but bigger.
All of which is merely to remind myself that world-shattering events take place while people everywhere are just doing ordinary things--as W.H.Auden so beautifully puts it in his poem, Musée des Beaux Arts, about the Brueghel painting of Icarus falling from the sky...
... where "everything turns away/Quite leisurely from the disaster" and "[suffering] takes place/While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along." With more than a hundred thousand human lives being snuffed out in the blink of an eye at the other side of the world, my family was likely sitting down to dinner or just waking from a nap.
I think I only fully registered the enormity of the Hiroshima bombing (and that of Nagasaki, three days later) some years later, on reading the John Hersey account; and perhaps, still later, seeing the 1959 Alain Resnais film, "Hiroshima, mon amour," the story of a love affair in shadow of a larger human tragedy. Today, the anniversary of the bombing, it behooves us to recalls that turning-point in our history--the moment at which we learned that it has become entirely possible for us to destroy our entire species and free this lovely, uniquely habitable planet from our troublesome presence. Sadly, subsequent events, including those through which we are living at this present moment, have made it clear that we risk failing to learn the lesson that was offered us. The nuclear threat, certainly, is less imminent than it once was, but our negligence and self-indulgence has proved the source of other, equally lethal paths toward extinction.
August 5, 2020
ONE SMALL STEP
I sent out my weekly invitation to the group who join me for my Wednesday meditation sessions on Zoom. I headed it "One small step..." and added, in the first line: "... towards the end of suffering." I'm thinking, this evening, to propose a search for those places in the body where we tend to harbor those emotions that we hide, repress, deny; emotions that we prefer, for whatever reason, not to process. They gather in tight little knots of tension that go for the most part undetected. If I look carefully and patiently enough, I find them everywhere: in the belly, of course. That's the prime location. In the neck and shoulders, another one. But also in the fingers, hands and wrists; up the length of the arms; around the eyes and the jaw...
In meditation the strategy is not to examine their source--as it is in, say, therapy--unless that source pops up of its own accord in the form of an insight that the mind can tuck away for future investigation. But once I have found one of these knots of raw, unprocessed emotion I take care to do no more than take note of its presence, and then to use the breath to untangle the physical sensation and allow it to dissipate. If I dwell on it, the mind will wander off on an endless path of unprofitable thinking--which can soon prove the end to meditation. Notice, and let it go with the breath. And if it's a stubborn knot, if it refuses to allow itself to be untangled the first time around, try another breath; and, if necessary, another.
Each release is another small step towards the end of suffering.
In meditation the strategy is not to examine their source--as it is in, say, therapy--unless that source pops up of its own accord in the form of an insight that the mind can tuck away for future investigation. But once I have found one of these knots of raw, unprocessed emotion I take care to do no more than take note of its presence, and then to use the breath to untangle the physical sensation and allow it to dissipate. If I dwell on it, the mind will wander off on an endless path of unprofitable thinking--which can soon prove the end to meditation. Notice, and let it go with the breath. And if it's a stubborn knot, if it refuses to allow itself to be untangled the first time around, try another breath; and, if necessary, another.
Each release is another small step towards the end of suffering.
July 31, 2020
LAMENT
I have nothing but respect for the teachings of the dharma. This how I would wish to lead my life. But the realities of this country and the world are such, at this moment, that my mind is overwhelmed with powerful, obsessive feelings of anger, fear and grief. It feels to me inadequate to be struggling with the cultivation of my own peace of mind when I am surrounded by the surging forces of duplicity, corruption, cruelty, exploitation and oppression. I find myself beset with thoughts, desires, intentions which are incompatible with the teachings that have inspired me in the past, and the actions available to me seem puny in the face of so much human suffering and turmoil. This morning, as I sat and tried to focus my attention on the breath, these thoughts kept returning to my consciousness. I try reminding myself that any inner peace I find can be sent out and shared with others, tiny ripples, the beating of the butterfly wing in one small corner of the world that reverberates throughout the universe. Small comfort to my infinitely small and singular mind--a mind at constant risk of surrendering to the current state of chaos.
July 18, 2020
Yes! (for John Schroeder: A Catalogue text)
The seeds lay sown
in the glowing moon.
Seeds given, carefully planted,
and given again.
The moon grows,
and some pluck the fruit.
The fruit will grow
over many seasons,
and many will pluck and eat,
many whose eyes I will never see.
It matters not,
for the seeds were given me.
I only planted.
John Schroeder (1943–2004)
The lovely poem John Schroeder wrote—the one that serves as the epigraph to this celebration of his work—is an incantation, a “spell” of words that accompanies the scattering of seed. He wants us to know that he sees himself less as the creator of his artwork than as the chosen recipient of a gift, or many gifts—not for himself but given him with the responsibility to re-distribute them, to scatter them and leave them lying where they fall. It is others than himself who will benefit from their blossoms or their fruit.
It’s an engaging vision of the artist’s role—and a very different one from the more familiar, ego-driven vision of the artist as one who speaks out boldly with “something to say”, a “statement”, a message to be delivered to the expectant world. John sees himself more as the medium, the messenger—he’s often called a “shaman”—between a meta-world, a world of, let’s say, super-reality (“truth”? “spirit”?) and the mundane world we are given to inhabit, the world of our ordinary experience.
It is not surprising, then, that John’s work has a kind of modesty, a quality of self-effacement, in scale as well as in intention. Look at his drawings...
(my apologies for the absence of titles, dimensions, etc. with these images)
They have a delicate, whimsical quality in execution, and offer a simple delight to the observing eye; yet they explore the marvelous diversity of nature and—importantly, today!—expose its vulnerable fragility. They seem to me the product of a curious, inquiring mind engaged in a restless search to find out meanings on the way to giving them expression
The theme of vulnerability finds renewed and deeply poignant expression in John’s “war” paintings. Even the surface—glass!—on which they are painted speaks to the fragility of those somehow exposed and defenseless human beings that are their subject...
The broken, ravaged landscapes offer them no protection as they call upon our compassion, through the artist’s. His function, here, is to channel their distress without mitigation or artifice and with such intensity that we are not excused nor allowed to look away.
... pouches, water bottles lovingly assembled out of ritually-charged materials from the natural world, skins and feathers, sticks and bones, rocks, seashells.... Others belong more clearly in the tradition of contemporary artists since Dada pioneers (Joseph Cornell comes immediately to mind).
And the most powerful of John’s construction works bring both those two traditions convincingly together, the ancient and the entirely up-to-date contemporary.
And let’s not forget the humor in John’s artworks, the subtleties and odd juxtapositions, the wit and wiles and eccentricities that elicit a chuckle or a smile, for these are the evidence of their compassion and their humanity. They are the triggers for the delight we can experience when we encounter his acts of magical metamorphosis, where eye and mind are beguiled by the revelation of some heretofore hidden but unquestionable truth. We gaze into the mysterious, irreducible presence of his objects, and we just say: Yes!
July 15, 2020
INTEGRITY
I know I have written about it before. Maybe several times before. But I got into this debate last night with the group of men with whom I have started to meet regularly once a month and the subject came up once again.
The whole thing started, I think, with my expressing a confusion of emotions in our current situation. It's hard not to feel angry at the way the government of this country is being mishandled--not only, but especially the pandemic that besets us. I share the anger of those who are tired of the oppression they have experienced in a multitude of ways, not least at the hands of those whose sworn duty is to "protect and serve" them, along with every other citizen. The fear that rises in me all too frequently these days has to do with the future of the country, the world, the planet we inhabit: will it all survive for the benefit of my grandchildren and future generations? The answer is unclear. And then there's the sadness, the grief, the sense of loss that comes in part naturally, with age, in part as a result of all of the above.
Which led us into sharing views on the social and political climate that now so deeply affects our lives. Which led us in turn to our judgments of the man who, many of us feel, has led us into our current predicament. Which led us to the question of integrity. Of four men, three of us saw the president as a man entirely lacking in integrity. Between us, we cited numerous examples of the kind of words and actions on his part that betrayed a lack of compassion, understanding, human decency, and concern for the well-being of the country and its people. We pointed to his intellectual dishonesty, his obsessive lying, his tenuous relationship with science and factual reality.
The specter of both-sides-ism arose, and I expressed a firm rejection of the notion that both sides on the political spectrum bear equal blame for corruption, cynicism, and distortion of the truth. I see no equivalence between one side that habitually cheats and lies and caters to the worst qualities in its supporters and another that strives for decency, compassion, mutual respect, equality. No human is without flaws, we could all agree, and there is bad behavior on both sides of the spectrum. Even so, I insisted, the judicious exercise of discernment should enable us to make sensible preferential choices between one side and the other.
We arrived at a familiar issue: whether laudable actions in one area should excuse execrable actions in another; specifically, could the president's actions to halt the sex trafficking of children be used as an excuse for the enforced separation of many other children from their parents at this country's border, and their enforced imprisonment in sordid and intolerable circumstances? And should one--or even a few--admirable deeds be allowed to weigh against the preponderance of despicable ones? The argument of our majority was that, in the matter of integrity, that should not be the case. Our minority member insisted that the president should not be judged; he could see "slivers of integrity" even where we opponents saw an almost universal absence of that quality.
Integrity, in my view--and I expressed it without reservation--does not come in slivers. It is, by definition, whole. It is characterized by honesty, good character, cohesion, a consistently honored set of values. Call it, perhaps, honor. Or an old, some would say quaint expression, virtue. Like pregnancy, famously, it's all or nothing: just as you can't be a little bit pregnant, you don't get to claim integrity on the basis of some of your actions while you practice the opposite in others. It's integrity that inspires trust, and trust is the prerequisite for all human transactions, whether social, political, or simply personal. And in this, with all the goodwill I can muster, I do not see an equivalence of either responsibility or blame.
The whole thing started, I think, with my expressing a confusion of emotions in our current situation. It's hard not to feel angry at the way the government of this country is being mishandled--not only, but especially the pandemic that besets us. I share the anger of those who are tired of the oppression they have experienced in a multitude of ways, not least at the hands of those whose sworn duty is to "protect and serve" them, along with every other citizen. The fear that rises in me all too frequently these days has to do with the future of the country, the world, the planet we inhabit: will it all survive for the benefit of my grandchildren and future generations? The answer is unclear. And then there's the sadness, the grief, the sense of loss that comes in part naturally, with age, in part as a result of all of the above.
Which led us into sharing views on the social and political climate that now so deeply affects our lives. Which led us in turn to our judgments of the man who, many of us feel, has led us into our current predicament. Which led us to the question of integrity. Of four men, three of us saw the president as a man entirely lacking in integrity. Between us, we cited numerous examples of the kind of words and actions on his part that betrayed a lack of compassion, understanding, human decency, and concern for the well-being of the country and its people. We pointed to his intellectual dishonesty, his obsessive lying, his tenuous relationship with science and factual reality.
The specter of both-sides-ism arose, and I expressed a firm rejection of the notion that both sides on the political spectrum bear equal blame for corruption, cynicism, and distortion of the truth. I see no equivalence between one side that habitually cheats and lies and caters to the worst qualities in its supporters and another that strives for decency, compassion, mutual respect, equality. No human is without flaws, we could all agree, and there is bad behavior on both sides of the spectrum. Even so, I insisted, the judicious exercise of discernment should enable us to make sensible preferential choices between one side and the other.
We arrived at a familiar issue: whether laudable actions in one area should excuse execrable actions in another; specifically, could the president's actions to halt the sex trafficking of children be used as an excuse for the enforced separation of many other children from their parents at this country's border, and their enforced imprisonment in sordid and intolerable circumstances? And should one--or even a few--admirable deeds be allowed to weigh against the preponderance of despicable ones? The argument of our majority was that, in the matter of integrity, that should not be the case. Our minority member insisted that the president should not be judged; he could see "slivers of integrity" even where we opponents saw an almost universal absence of that quality.
Integrity, in my view--and I expressed it without reservation--does not come in slivers. It is, by definition, whole. It is characterized by honesty, good character, cohesion, a consistently honored set of values. Call it, perhaps, honor. Or an old, some would say quaint expression, virtue. Like pregnancy, famously, it's all or nothing: just as you can't be a little bit pregnant, you don't get to claim integrity on the basis of some of your actions while you practice the opposite in others. It's integrity that inspires trust, and trust is the prerequisite for all human transactions, whether social, political, or simply personal. And in this, with all the goodwill I can muster, I do not see an equivalence of either responsibility or blame.
July 14, 2020
TUESDAY
How strange it is to wake up on a Tuesday morning with the realization that there is nothing normal about the day!
I suppose we have adapted to a new "normality", in which we no longer venture out the door without a mask. In which, when we meet others walking in the opposite direction, we expect them, too, to be masked, as we are, so that we see nothing of the expression on their face. We cannot even know what they "look like." We have arrived at a shared anonymity where we could cross paths even with our closest friends and not know who they are.
Whether we like it or not, we have all been constrained to hide an important part of our self--that part by which others, outside our house, would recognize and know us. We are confronted, instead--and present others--with a presence whose individuality is essentially hidden from us. And it was always precisely the individuality that seems so important to us. Oh, there are clues: the clothes, the hat, the hair; if we are closer than social distancing permits, the eyes. But with the face hidden, masked, we have no more than this fragmentary picture.
Before, in the unmasked days, we could imagine that we had the whole picture when we met with someone, face to face. We could imagine, unquestioningly for the most part, that we "knew" this other person, this friend, this neighbor, this acquaintance. The mask is a useful reminder that what we thought we knew was always partial; it was easier to allow the mind to deceive itself into believing it had effortlessly filled in all the gaps. Here, it assured us, was the person that we knew.
The reality, of course, is that what we know of ourselves and others is always partial. For our convenience and comfort, we create a single identity, a single "self" out of the many shifting selves that manifest at different times and in countless different ways, whether within the course of a day--Tuesday, say--or over a lifetime's span. The mask we put on as we go out for our morning walk is a good reminder that we will put on other masks throughout the day, and that others will be wearing theirs. And that not one of those masks should be mistaken for that other comfortable delusion: the "real me."
I suppose we have adapted to a new "normality", in which we no longer venture out the door without a mask. In which, when we meet others walking in the opposite direction, we expect them, too, to be masked, as we are, so that we see nothing of the expression on their face. We cannot even know what they "look like." We have arrived at a shared anonymity where we could cross paths even with our closest friends and not know who they are.
Whether we like it or not, we have all been constrained to hide an important part of our self--that part by which others, outside our house, would recognize and know us. We are confronted, instead--and present others--with a presence whose individuality is essentially hidden from us. And it was always precisely the individuality that seems so important to us. Oh, there are clues: the clothes, the hat, the hair; if we are closer than social distancing permits, the eyes. But with the face hidden, masked, we have no more than this fragmentary picture.
Before, in the unmasked days, we could imagine that we had the whole picture when we met with someone, face to face. We could imagine, unquestioningly for the most part, that we "knew" this other person, this friend, this neighbor, this acquaintance. The mask is a useful reminder that what we thought we knew was always partial; it was easier to allow the mind to deceive itself into believing it had effortlessly filled in all the gaps. Here, it assured us, was the person that we knew.
The reality, of course, is that what we know of ourselves and others is always partial. For our convenience and comfort, we create a single identity, a single "self" out of the many shifting selves that manifest at different times and in countless different ways, whether within the course of a day--Tuesday, say--or over a lifetime's span. The mask we put on as we go out for our morning walk is a good reminder that we will put on other masks throughout the day, and that others will be wearing theirs. And that not one of those masks should be mistaken for that other comfortable delusion: the "real me."
July 13, 2020
A NON-GRADUATION (a dream)
I dreamt of a former student, from my days as a Comparative Literature professor. This was about 50 years ago! I served as the director of her doctoral dissertation, which was approved. She went on--wisely!--not to become a professor of Comparative Literature; I went on--wisely!--to quit academia a few years later. I was never meant to be there in the first place.
But anyway... the dream!
In the dream, I rejected the dissertation she had worked so hard on. She showed up for a graduation ceremony and was surprised to learn that she had failed. Not only did I fail her, I gave her a terrible dressing-down (completely out of character!) for the inadequacies of her work.
There followed a procession to leave the ceremony, which seemed to wind downhill through a pleasant landscape toward the way out to the world beyond. (The descent reminded me of the long, curving driveway that led down to the highway from my old boarding school in Sussex...)
I was standing at the gate like the vicar waiting to say goodbye to his congregants after the church service when my student approached with numerous members of her family. She was also accompanied by a big, fat grey cat on a string.
I wanted to stop her to say: I love you, but she wouldn't have it. I tried at least to tickle the belly of the big, fat grey cat, but she pulled it away on its string. Then she left without even saying goodbye.
I was so upset!
But anyway... the dream!
In the dream, I rejected the dissertation she had worked so hard on. She showed up for a graduation ceremony and was surprised to learn that she had failed. Not only did I fail her, I gave her a terrible dressing-down (completely out of character!) for the inadequacies of her work.
There followed a procession to leave the ceremony, which seemed to wind downhill through a pleasant landscape toward the way out to the world beyond. (The descent reminded me of the long, curving driveway that led down to the highway from my old boarding school in Sussex...)
I was standing at the gate like the vicar waiting to say goodbye to his congregants after the church service when my student approached with numerous members of her family. She was also accompanied by a big, fat grey cat on a string.
I wanted to stop her to say: I love you, but she wouldn't have it. I tried at least to tickle the belly of the big, fat grey cat, but she pulled it away on its string. Then she left without even saying goodbye.
I was so upset!
July 11, 2020
LETTING GO: A MEDITATION ON THE EMOTIONS
I have been working on a practice intended to find freedom from emotional suffering. It goes like this:
Start, as always, with the breath; take a few deep, conscious breathS, watching the full length of the inhalation and the full length of the exhalation; be sure not to let the attention wander before the full completion of each breath. Make it smooth, with no perceptible transition between in- and out-breath; and no perceptible transition between breaths.
Once you are comfortable with the breath, use it to walk the mind through the full range of familiar emotions: sadness, fear, anger... gratitude, elation, joy. Determine which of these is the dominant emotion right now, in the present moment; if it's a mix of more than one emotion, be with that mix; if it's a confusion of emotions, be with that confusion.
Breathe deeply into that current emotional state; from the safe refuge of the observing mind, use the breath to find its predominant location in the body, and breathe into that place; rest quietly in attention to that emotional state.
Still from that safe refuge of the observing mind, allow that emotional state to slowly expand from its predominant location; to fill the lower torso... the chest and heart... the head... the neck and shoulders... down the arms to the fingertips, and down the legs to the tips of the toes. Using the breath, allow that emotional state to expand throughout the entire body.
If it feels safe, exaggerate the emotional state with the breath to maximum intensity. Experience it throughout the body, to the fullest extent possible, and as intensely as you can.
No need to find the cause; no need to find the object of the emotion. Enough to experience in full, in its raw state.
Now, using the breath, begin to let go of the emotion. Breathe it out from the lower torso... from the upper torso, chest and heart... from the head... from the neck and shoulders... from the arms and out through the fingertips... from the legs and out through the tips of the toes. Breathe it all out, watch it drain from the body.
Once you have fully let go of the emotion you were holding, use the breath to replace it with the feeling of goodwill, compassion, equanimity. Breathe it in. Follow the same pattern through the body, lower torso, upper torso, chest and heart; head; neck and shoulders, arms and legs... filling every nook and cranny with the new emotion until the whole body is breathing it in.
Now breathe it out. Breathe our all the goodwill and compassion, all the equanimity; feel it radiate out from every part of the body with the exhalation. Send it out. Dedicate it, first, to those closest to you, family, those your love... then, slowly, in ever expanding circles out to every living being in the universe, north and south, east and west, above and below, all the way out to infinity.
May all living beings find true happiness in their lives.
Start, as always, with the breath; take a few deep, conscious breathS, watching the full length of the inhalation and the full length of the exhalation; be sure not to let the attention wander before the full completion of each breath. Make it smooth, with no perceptible transition between in- and out-breath; and no perceptible transition between breaths.
Once you are comfortable with the breath, use it to walk the mind through the full range of familiar emotions: sadness, fear, anger... gratitude, elation, joy. Determine which of these is the dominant emotion right now, in the present moment; if it's a mix of more than one emotion, be with that mix; if it's a confusion of emotions, be with that confusion.
Breathe deeply into that current emotional state; from the safe refuge of the observing mind, use the breath to find its predominant location in the body, and breathe into that place; rest quietly in attention to that emotional state.
Still from that safe refuge of the observing mind, allow that emotional state to slowly expand from its predominant location; to fill the lower torso... the chest and heart... the head... the neck and shoulders... down the arms to the fingertips, and down the legs to the tips of the toes. Using the breath, allow that emotional state to expand throughout the entire body.
If it feels safe, exaggerate the emotional state with the breath to maximum intensity. Experience it throughout the body, to the fullest extent possible, and as intensely as you can.
No need to find the cause; no need to find the object of the emotion. Enough to experience in full, in its raw state.
Now, using the breath, begin to let go of the emotion. Breathe it out from the lower torso... from the upper torso, chest and heart... from the head... from the neck and shoulders... from the arms and out through the fingertips... from the legs and out through the tips of the toes. Breathe it all out, watch it drain from the body.
Once you have fully let go of the emotion you were holding, use the breath to replace it with the feeling of goodwill, compassion, equanimity. Breathe it in. Follow the same pattern through the body, lower torso, upper torso, chest and heart; head; neck and shoulders, arms and legs... filling every nook and cranny with the new emotion until the whole body is breathing it in.
Now breathe it out. Breathe our all the goodwill and compassion, all the equanimity; feel it radiate out from every part of the body with the exhalation. Send it out. Dedicate it, first, to those closest to you, family, those your love... then, slowly, in ever expanding circles out to every living being in the universe, north and south, east and west, above and below, all the way out to infinity.
May all living beings find true happiness in their lives.
July 9, 2020
GO TO THE EDGE
Go to the edge.
Go to the edge of your practice, the place where you begin to lose attention or you begin to be consumed by reactivity. That is where all questions come from, whether you know it or not.
Ken McLeodUnfettered MindNewsletter, 7/7/20
He's talking about questions for a teacher, how you find them, and how you ask them. Out of a number of suggestions on Ken's list, this is the one that caught my attention and provoked a radical disturbance in my mind. So I should pay attention.
I have followed a meditation practice for more than 20 years. I have allowed my views and my way of life to be profoundly influenced and guided by the wisdom of the dharma. And yet I have resisted the further step of embracing Buddhism whole-heartedly. I have attended retreats, not only with Ken but also with other venerable teachers, Shinzen Young and Thanissaro Bhikkhu, and yet I have acknowledged no one as my "teacher" in the Buddhist sense--even though I understand this to be an important step for anyone who wishes to progress with a serious meditation practice.
I recall receiving an inquiry Ken put out many years ago, asking what people expected in their relationship with a teacher. I gave the matter a good deal of thought. What I discovered in some dark recess of my mind was a fundamental resistance to the whole notion of a "teacher"--which I took to mean submitting myself to someone claiming greater knowledge, greater wisdom than I could find within myself. My association with teachers took me back to childhood days, a time when I learned fear, resentment and distrust of the men (mostly) who lorded it over me in the classroom. To be a boy in boarding school required submission. It was enforced. And when I was about 12 years of age, I was invited to a sleepover at the home of one of them, who summoned me to his bed in the night and abused my boy's body to gratify his sexual needs. And, meekly, I submitted.
But that was 70 years ago. I have nothing now to fear from a teacher other than the unprofitable reopening of those ancient wounds. It would be dishonest to use them to justify my resistance even at my current advanced age. Yet I resist. I resist the call of Buddhism, and explain the resistance away on the basis of some ancient, cliche'ed prejudice against "organized religion." Brought up the son of a Christian minister and schooled in a tradition from which I separated as soon as I reached an age where I could question my father's faith, I developed an intellectual antipathy to religions of all kinds. I learned nothing but disdain for their patriarchal moralism, their intolerance, their dogmatism. Mistaking my intellectual arrogance for sound judgment, I basked in such assumptions without much questioning or doubt.
Venturing further into the murk, I suspect there is another, more disturbing aspect to my rejection--one so deeply mired in shame and denial that it's hard to contemplate, let alone to write about. It is an aspect of my character that I have long deplored but has proved impervious to change. I'd like to find a nicer word for it, but the simple, honest one is: laziness. (In the articulation of those old Seven Deadly Sins, it's Sloth). For me, it takes the form of a tendency to take the course of least resistance (there's an irony!) in all my undertakings. I choose not to make the effort, when there is effort to be made. It is enabled, surely, in part, by the fact that things have come to me so easily--jobs (in the days when I had them) or freedom from employment (I have not had one in more than 30 years), relative financial security, relationships, a modicum of professional success. I was gifted with a certain easy "English" charm, an unassailable social position, one of the best educations available anywhere in the world, a learned command of language, even an accent that appeals pleasantly to the ear. All of which, despite the obstacles and heartaches no human is spared, has eased the progress through my life.
So this is the edge, the place where I begin to lose attention and begin to be consumed, in Ken's formulation, by reactivity. The reactive pattern is the retreat from effort when things get difficult or challenging, a capitulation to the familiar distractions of the mind. It's a good place to rest in contemplation and begin to start afresh.
July 6, 2020
GENEALOGY
What am I to do with documents like these? I turned them up in the process of sorting out the storage boxes in the garage. There are dozens of them, dating back to as early as 1830, all executed on still crisp parchment in impeccable calligraphy and validated with elaborate stamps and seals attesting to the signatures of my ancestors. Along with the Clothiers there are Deans (my middle name, and my son's) Leggs (my father's middle name) and Murcotts. Their peculiar beauty is not limited to their physical appearance; they echo with a long family resonance, through nearly two centuries of English history.
My mother preserved these documents. She was the family archivist and genealogist. I remember her poring over the family trees she painstakingly constructed in her neat handwriting, not only the Clothier side but her side of the family, too, the Williamses, the Stutevilles and the Isaacsons (the non-Jewish Isaacsons, my grandmother would proclaim; she, with the Hebrew-inlaid furniture and the memory of Yiddish from her childhood in the streets of the east end of London!) There was the St. Quentin family, too, refugees from Revolutionary France; I forget which ones, if any, lost their heads to the guillotine! There was a treasured book in my mother's possession--who knows where it could have got to, these many years later?--titled "The Royal and Noble Families of England", or something similar, in which she proudly traced the family back to Edward I, with many notable historical figures in between.
I think I have copies somewhere of all the work she did, those elaborate family trees. If I ran a search, I could probably lay my hands on them. The truth of the matter is that, while I appreciate her passion, I have never shared it. Still, I find myself unable to unclutter my life from "treasures" of this kind. My daughter, Sarah, is a trained archivist and sparks with interest when she sees the contents of those boxes. Perhaps one day she will find the time to go through them and preserve the family history for future generations. Or perhaps not. In the meantime, I suppose they are doing no harm on the shelves in the garage, to which I will, as usual, return them.
