Snow Storm Mania: More on Good and Bad

Holy moly the snow in the Northeast is crazy!! It's so snow stormy that it's not even fun to romp around in. You could only walk away from the wind and then never get home anyway because it's impossible to see. Pretty awesome.

So I'm all cozy, house-sitting some cats and enjoying decadent thermostat settings of anywhere from 62 to 68. Treats for me. Too bad the sit-ees didn't leave a huge cache of marvelous treats in the fridge for the snow storm (although they did leave about a hundred batteries in case I wanted to play Wii . . . which I don't). I don't tend to check the weather, my stock reason being that it's pretty much the only thing I can ever be sure of actually happening, right now, in this moment, ever. Plus my friend rightly calls weather news "The Worry Channel" and I'm all set with that generally speaking. But knowing a storm is coming is handy. Oh, one of my only jokes also: do Xtian radio stations provide weather reports, or is that blasphemy?

So back to the good/bad issue I've been thinking about. Here is the problem: learning that anything is good means creating a seed of judgment in yourself that the opposite behavior is bad, and this is why we're all doomed to live in eternal strife/conflict. Take something like punctuality or sharing. We learn that it's polite to be on time and to share our toys. Well then, now we have some basis for thinking that anyone who is late or doesn't share toys is impolite - and we feel we have a basis for thinking of someone (or at least their behavior) as "bad." Then we get to feel offended or angry, because we know that being on time and sharing are "good," and being late and not sharing are "bad" (the issue of why we feel personal offense needs more examination I think, but another time). I mean, beyond good/bad, there are lots of substantive reasons for being on time - it's respectful of other people's time and expectations etc. And sharing is important because it fosters good will and what goes around comes around etc. But these more (barely) substantive explanations are still mired in good and bad and being judgmental. The ideal would be that I become someone who shares, but doesn't get mad or filled with hate at anyone who fails to share in the way I would. And that I am on time as much as possible, but I don't label as rude or disrespectful (aka "bad") someone who is perpetually late. Wouldn't this be nice? If we all had high standards for ourselves and infinite patience and forgiveness for others? Wouldn't the world be awesome? Wait a minute - let's change "patience and forgiveness" to something closer to total good natured indifference, and not even reach the mental state where we have to use our patience and forgiveness muscles, because this usually means something like "you're bad but I am overlooking it out of ego-driven magnanimity." I don't even want to get to that point. I just want to not even notice or be bothered if things are delayed or someone doesn't share.

How can someone be taught to behave very well without teaching them to judge the opposite behavior as being bad? It seems too abstract. When someone is late, so many things inform our anger: we're going to miss part of the show, or maybe not get tickets, or I'm hungry and we are holding dinner for the late person, or I settled into a state of mind in which I am Ready To Go and I had to put down my special projects in order to be on time and now because of this lateness I am sitting here in my nice clothes when I could have spent another half an hour in the garden and finished up the whatever I was doing. Okay so if all these things are attached to someone's timeliness, what is the state of mind that would permit someone to just not be bothered? You have to let go of EVERYTHING. It's fine if we miss the beginning of the show! It's fine if we can't get tickets, we'll do something else! It's fine if the gardening isn't done! It's even fine for me to sit here in my nice clothes with nothing to do but try not to get dirty! Yes I'm hungry and maybe there is emotions connected with the feeling of being hungry (crankiness!) but that's fine too! I don't even internalize a feeling of personal offense if the late person is so oblivious or self-absorbed to others' time that this inconvenience doesn't register for them! Phew. I mean, that is a LOT of stuff to be okay with. I think someone would have to be pretty evolved to abandon all those negative feelings in order to truly not care if someone else is late. This isn't easy. Imagine a kid believing that it doesn't matter if Susie is hogging the green crayon even though the kid really needs it for the shrubbery (and Susie totally knows this), or that it's fine if you miss the beginning of the movie. Seems unlikely.

What to do? I can't think of anything right now except to aspire to be cool with everything a la Buddha says so.

Went to Buddha Class Last Week! Also Another Teacher Training Weekend

One of the real logical rabbit holes I find myself in with Buddha stuff is the idea of acting purely and freeing myself from the constant weighing of what is good and bad. I just don’t understand how anything would ever happen if we could abandon our classifications of good and bad on everything. I can identify the seeds of vanity, self-righteousness, pride, or anything else evaluative or judgmental in practically everything I do. Going to the grocery store, for example, is a complex equation factoring in such variables as: my concepts of proper nutrition as well as my sense of entitlement to enjoy bad nutrition sometimes; my socio-political feelings about the source of food and its superior/inferior quality and ethical implications; my sense of thrift and again a sense of entitlement to nice or fancy things tempering that thrift; my personal preferences for things that I like the taste of or make me feel good or sate; my enjoyment of cooking things for myself and others. These are all decision-making factors that have evolved out of my sense of what is “good” and what is “bad.” I can’t decide to purchase a banana without the entire history of myself somehow influencing the choice. How would I ever get anything done if I were to free myself from the duality of good and bad? Should I close the packaging on these crackers so they don’t get stale? Isn’t that just my sense of what is good and bad? Stale = bad. Crispy = good.

I asked my question about piano playing at Buddha class – which was a really nice class, by the way. It’s a cozy little group of people and the next series is taking place in someone’s deli in town. I’m looking forward to the class, and to making friends, too. Anyway my question about piano playing goes like this: we can generally agree that piano playing is a good thing. Would anyone play piano if we could all transcend good and bad? There are so many things tied up in it – we feel proud of our abilities, a little vain to share them with people who might be impressed, attached to the physical fact of a big old piano that facilitates the piano practice and playing. How would one practice, play, or perform piano purely? The answer was a little abstract for me. We'll see.

Anyway. We’re doing back-bending in yoga training this weekend. Back-bending is sort of my enemy since I messed up my lower back (as is forward-bending, but whatever), but I like that we get to spend some time with it. Aversion, inability, and resistance should usually be investigated.

Also here’s another over-share if anyone’s interested: I think I’m getting happier. When I was really stressed out and miserable not too long ago – about 6 or 7 months ago – I used to check in with myself by asking myself how I was doing: “How you doin’, friend?” And for a while the answer was usually “vaguely suicidal as usual, old pal, just keep walking and don’t think too hard about it!” Well yesterday I was in the shower and I asked myself, “So how are you?” And I said back, “I’m happy.” Something right is happening; I’m really excited about it. I just have to keep working at it, and eventually maybe the “happy” response will stay put!

Timely Information

There are so many things I was not ready to take in when they were presented to me. Parents must have this experience all the time – no child can “hear” whatever wisdom you want to offer to them as you watch them re-learn everything you have struggled to know. People realize what they are ready to realize, and information comes to us when we are ready. Sometimes information comes and it’s such a revelation that it almost hurts to look back on the time that we were without it, but it is all how it is meant to be. I really like the idea that in every moment of our lives we are exactly where we are supposed to be. It takes the pressure off, for one thing. No pressure to already have accomplished more than you have, or learned more, or seen more. Today is exactly where you should be. With the pressure taken off it’s just so much easier to enjoy the day and take what comes and go where you are lead.

I keep thinking about how timely reading Walden feels (see previous post). It’s like reading someone else’s beautifully articulated narration of everything I feel I’ve finally come to know up to this point. What capacity did I have to relate to Thoreau when I was 18? ZERO. And just like all of life, our education attempts to force certain knowledge or revelation upon us when we might not be ready for it. It keeps bringing me back to Desikachar’s observation that our goals can become our obstacles – setting our sights on specific things in one specific direction can actually lead us away from where we would, and perhaps should, otherwise take ourselves. Don’t get me wrong here, I’m all in favor of seeking out teachers and teachings because exposure plants a seed of awareness that we can return to when we’re ready, and connect the dots when actually see the connections, and learning can initiate important changes of mind and heart. And especially when we don’t know where to go, it’s incredibly useful to follow the leader. But I do wonder where else I would have taken myself if the goals of education hadn’t been so prescribed in a certain direction (not in a regretful way! That is because I am exactly where I need to be right now, see supra). I feel that in many ways the things I have accomplished were just huge obstacles.

Whoa Thoreau

I am really enjoying Thoreau right now. Reading the essay Economy is really great. I can’t believe sometimes the texts we are asked to digest as teenagers that we just don’t have the context for. Reading about Thoreau’s economy is so much more poignant as an adult who needs to earn money and maintain a shelter and afford food and cover my nakedness. But it is ringing so true to me now – he cuts apart the function of education where youths go to “play” at life, education serving to encourage people to analyze life when it was once meaningful to actually live life. He criticizes the excesses people make themselves poor to afford, noting that you probably wouldn’t freeze to death in your lean-to, but you might stress yourself into an early grave fending off the relentless hounding of creditors. What I’m waiting for in Walden is a lay-out of the proper priorities of life. Would Thoreau condone owning a piano? Would he view piano-playing as a worthy undertaking? You generally have to own a piano to practice playing piano. I frequently try to articulate for myself the correct nature of a human’s relationship to material possessions and it is just so slippery. I am confident that personal progress should evolve away from material possessions, in the sense that we should be getting over the idea that nice cars and pretty clothes have anything to do with making us happy. What about experiences? What type of “experience” should we seek to afford? Travel or trips to beaches and skiing vacations? Are these more worthy as material expenditures than acquiring more stuff?

I wrote a paper on this topic in law school. Maybe I can work on it a little more, and add Thoreau’s point of view in there, and try to figure out what I really think about this question.

Dude, Meditating is Hard, But Still Awesome

Meditation practice is so hard. What I mean by meditating (or what I should say) is meditation preparation, since really what I’m still trying to do is develop my concentration. Hopefully after a lot of practice concentrating I will approach actual meditation. I did some meditating the other morning and my mind was like frantic horses, all stomping and galloping and running all the hell around the place. And trying to bring my focus back singularly to my breath really is like pushing against the gate while the horses are trying to get out. Horses! Me vs. Horses! And being released from meditation, letting the gate burst open, is their flight – and as I stop pushing the gate against their tramping and stomping, it is both an immense relief and a return to chaos. I thought about this while I was trying to concentrate. I should have only been thinking about my breath. So that’s how that’s going.

Sometimes people say they “can’t” meditate or they tried it and they aren’t “good” at it because they just can’t stand to sit still or they have to keep moving and thinking etc. And just to get a little mean here for a minute, saying you are too scatter-brained to meditate is like saying you are too out-of-shape to exercise, or too thirsty to drink a glass of water. One is the very reason to pursue the other, and the other, its cure. We will find water and drink it even if it’s a pain because it’s so vital to our comfort and existence. Calming my mind sometimes feels this important or urgent. It can feel like my very life is in the balance . . . and yet, it’s so much easier to just watch a movie with my free time instead of training my mind. It’s like dying of dehydration because that’s easier than finding water. Ridiculous. One way that meditating is hard for me is that it feels like I am confronting everything ever that has been or will be, and trying to shoo it out of the room so I can just play and be happy, but that takes so much work I’d rather just go find another space and do something else. But there isn’t “another space,” only the outskirts of existence. But still I will get too tired or weak to herd the noise, and I let all the chaos hog up the nice space, exiling me to sit in the sewers of distraction with my cowardice and sloth. Yoinks. Holy metaphors!

And the temptation to use meditation time as grocery-list time is hard, too. I’m just sitting there with nothing to do but nothing, and the rest of the day or the next day starts to come into my head asking for shape: “when should you go to the post office? Also don’t forget to go to the post office in the first place. How about calling your cousin back finally, huh? Maybe you can do that today.” On and on. Always the future coming in and wanting to beckon me out of the present, or the past wanting to settle accounts or put me on trial yet again for my errors. It’s so hard but I feel pretty dedicated, at least today I do. I haven’t been the most consistent student but that’s coming along, too.

What WOULD Happen to Heaven?

It is striking me as an important question at the moment, to follow up on my Heaven/Life post (a few posts ago) - what DOES happen to notions of Heaven if we can achieve perfect bliss on Earth?! I have nothing further to say about it at the moment except that this question is blowing my mind. To bits.

Obligations Give us a Sense of Purpose/Meaning

In college I had a pretty snarky (and kind of dreamy!) teacher in the Classics department who taught Religion in the Pagan World. Once, we were discussing ritual and its significance etc. He said that ritual is powerful because having obligations provides the necessary illusion that our lives matter. I think the gist was that religious ritual makes us matter by connecting our behavior to the harvest or the rain or something. Consequence for my actions, any consequence at all, means that I am significant, that I have impact. It’s nice. Maybe our modern expression of ritual is our habits or obligations. As a very minor example, I shower once in a while because the consequence of my stinkiness is to offend others’ sensibilities. My smelly armpits have impact on the world. Creating the obligation of showering reflects my belief that my participation in society, and the manner of my participation, matters.

Everything we do is like this. Tidying up. Calling our parents. Feeding the cat. We need obligations to feel as though we matter. Which, as you may have guessed, I am pretty sure we don’t. We don’t “matter” to anything. But this is also nice. It means that I can go ahead and behave in ways that make me feel as though I matter, knowing that it is merely a balm against the chafing of my own insignificance, because my insignificance is comforting, too – it means that “consequence” for my actions can remain somewhat abstract. It doesn’t really matter if I am the stinky person in the world on any particular day. I don’t matter. Anyone taking offense at my stinkiness would be trying to create their own sense of significance in the world in opposition to me through our handy tool of disapproval – which is just another expression of obligation (this would go something like this: “I oblige myself to be un-stinky, and to give meaning to this obligation, I must therefore disapprove of the opposite expression – stinkiness – and therefore reaffirm the credibility of my showering ritual”). So anyway I can do my stuff to make me feel significant and let the rest roll off my back.

I’ve just been rolling this idea around my head a little bit and wanted to see where it went. We’ll see.