Sidetracked for a Moment

I recently said that I am a little tired/overwhelmed by the endless number of possible re-revelations available and that I’d like to remind myself to scale it back and take things one thing at a time. I’ve made a little side-trip on that simplification mission to read a few books recommended by friends.

The first book I just finished – it was a quick read – was Women Food and God by Geneen Roth. This appeared to me to be a self-help book that I would never in a million jillion years have sacrificed my pride to read, but I sort of had to. My friend “Ladypants,” whom I love and respect, had it on her couch when I went to visit her this week. And of course, even though I am waaaaay too good for self-help books, I actually really like them, and of course this book appeared to be about food and women and who doesn’t have at least some kind of dark and damaged relationship with food on some level? So I picked it up and asked her what it was about. She said it was basically about the title, but then she also said that by page five she was in tears, and that she read the book with a box of tissues and would just read and cry and read and cry. Compelling book review, Ladypants. Sold.

Okay first things first – I’ve been thinking about The Feminine Mystique and Betty Friedan’s articulation of the mass purposelessness of women in the 1950’s. I’ve been thinking about happiness and wondering what makes someone happy – is it working really hard to be content with what one has (a la Buddha and meditation?), or is it working really hard to shape and influence one’s reality in a way that is personal to your own sense of self and your own individual passions (a la The Feminine Mystique)? Am I describing the same thing in two different ways (and contentment does not foreclose meaningful change), or are these two approaches incompatible with each other (happiness and striving cannot co-exist)? One seems to require the elimination of self and ego and ambition, and the other requires the cultivating and refining of self and ego and ambition. And when do we know to endure drudgery and misery with a “contentment” state of mind and when to rail against drudgery and misery as a fruitless waste of our precious life and passion in a “save myself” state of mind? I can’t tell. And I am still in the process of re-writing my understanding of my own journey into a really draining career situation that I thought I was toughing out in a “contentment” kind of way which eventually gave way to quitting the job in a “save myself” way (that career situation was corporate lawyering).

So the first sort of case-study that Geneen Roth provides in the book is, you guessed it, a letter of desperation from a first-year litigation associate at a big law firm who goes home and eats every night to numb her pain. (I, by the way, gained 17 pounds in six months at my job by filling myself with cheesy starches and red wine every night to kill the pain.) Lordy lordy lordy. So what was the author’s prescription to this girl? Not so much about finding one's purpose - it was all about Live In The Moment. Observe the hallway lights and the glorious humanity of your “aggravating” situation. Feel the sensation of the emptiness you find so terrifying that you want to numb it with food every night; disentangled this emptiness for yourself and feel, observe, feel, observe.

Dude, QUIT YOUR JOB and find a better outlet for you energy. See, the author offered a sort of Buddha-esque solution, and I offer Betty Friedan, so we can see where my current inclinations lie.

I guess quitting her job is not really necessarily the answer though. Being a quitter is bad, right? – when push comes to shove you can’t just hide under the bed, like me. And sometimes people have to endure crap to get to somewhere good, right? Like dues-paying? Be broke and write off-off-Broadway for thirty years and then get to be head writer for Sex and the City like Michael Scott King. That’s a bad example, because ostensibly theatrical writing is a passion-based job and money wouldn't matter. I guess the law can be passion-based, too, and maybe the miserable chick was really dedicated to being a big lawyer someday but I don’t recognize that as a legitimate goal for anyone to pursue so there’s a problem with me getting her situation completely.

Okay whatever I don’t have a cogent conclusion to draw from this example except that for me, rolling with the drudgery and observing my own pain wasn't going to work while I was at that job – I had to quit, and I am having trouble telling the difference right now between what I should endure and what I should not endure according to which approach of viewing life.

Another interesting insight I got from Women Food and God was about searching for answers, and how seeking answers can be just another form of self-evasion:

“One month it’s about white foods. Then it’s about brain chemistry. Finding the right drug. The fat gene. Being addicted to sugar. Eating for our blood type. Alkaline- and acid-forming foods. Although attending to one or some of these issues might indeed ease our struggle, we use the hunt for answers to abdicate personal responsibility – and with it, any semblance of power – for our relationship with food.”

Well, if I could summarize my concerns about my life any more succinctly, I would. I wrote in THIS post that I am conscious of externalizing my problems – I am spending time learning and thinking blah blah blah in order to further postpone confronting the challenges of actual life. Buddhism as escapism. Education as escapism. Self improvement in general as escapism. It sounds tautological (because it is), but searching for what I am supposed to be doing is a great way to abdicate responsibility for what I am supposed to be doing . . . which is . . . what? Earning some money? Getting to know myself? Meditating? Starting an underground newspaper? Shouldn’t I be looking outside myself to test my relationship against things that may or may not be great for me to do/know/think/achieve, since how else am I going to know what to do with myself? But on the other hand, can I even know how to direct myself purposefully, and sincerely, without letting go of ambition, and of all the ways in which I wish I were different and all the work I keep doing (or failing to do) to make myself into someone I really like and respect, at last (gourmet chef, speak Portuguese, better clothes, get into Harvard, win an award)? Do I have to stop trying to be something in order to be something? Is this the intersection of Betty Friedan and Buddha?

Okay anyway if that made any sense you can let me know. The next book I’m going to be happily side-tracked with is “The Happiness Project.” Another friend mentioned it and it was at the library, and I loooove reading the same book as someone and then getting to talk about it, yay!!

Feeling Conflicted (as usual) About Revelatory Insights

It seems like I am always hearing about people's next, next, and then next best and profound realization about life. I get tired of this. There is always a book I have never heard of, a swami I've never heard of, a retreat to the mountains I've never heard of, or some obscure little extra credit corner of spiritual and revelatory life that is providing someone with the new perspective they are finally ready to hear (tee-pees! Amazonian Shamanism! Kundalini energy!). Bleh. Even just the saying "when the student is ready the teacher appears" is kind of snobbish - "well look at me, I'm ready!" It could just as easily say "when the human is desperate, the free market will fill the hole for anywhere from 20 to 3,000 dollars." I mean, I'm pretty skeptical that new-insight people are enjoying entry into new aspects of self-inquiry as a result of their mastery of previously studied disciplines. And it's tough to take seriously the "next thing" seekers when everything else in their lives seems to have been taken so lightly that it can be abandoned for something "better." I mean I'm not trying to hate on personal evolution - our progress should be continual/cumulative in life and I certainly don't think we should ever consider ourselves to be "done" becoming who we are, but there's a line, no?

On the other hand: I like this stuff a little bit. I like to read books about things that are supposed to be useful to my perspective on myself and the world and everything like that. I even like to tell my friends about handy little ways of looking at the world that have been useful for me, and I'm sure I have been at least a touch sanctimonious about it a few times (I am thinking of one blog post in particular that I re-read and then cringed at myself about; there is no prize to readers who know which one I mean). And I love love love to hear what other people are thinking about with stuff like this. Also I am sensing a shift in myself away from the sect of Buddhism I have been looking into and more toward the India-centric yoga-related schools of meditation and stuff - at least in my inquiry stage (man I'm feeling jaded about Buddha - dharma is cool, but karma can suck it, and so can the priestly hierarchy and the glamorous temple and the unending, supplicating prayers). So am I a dabbling dilettante? A potential guru-hopping "new truth finder?" Probably. What to do about this?

Well, sticking with something is maybe a good start. I mean, sometimes I don't want to read anymore books about this stuff. I have enough books as it is, and I haven't exactly integrated them fully into my life in terms of insight and application. In a case of actual irony, I am thinking about this partly thanks to the insightful books I just read that my friend lent me. But really, to just keep reading on and on and on is the same thing as Sharpening Pencils. It's hard enough to hold on to new insights as they are arising. It's another thing to apply them to life and let them affect you enough to mean anything. In Buddha class this comes up sometimes - intellectual insights are nothing without putting it into practice, and the metaphor is that it's like having the prescription for the right medicine, and believing that since it is on your bathroom sink you're cured. You have to actually take the medicine. Knowing something is useless without acting upon it. In some way, being in a constant stake of seeking is yet another way to postpone meaningful life progress.

So anyway I feel like I have to boil down my plan for my relationship to yoga a little bit so that I don't end up in the ever-seeking stage dilettantish amateurism they way I have for everything in my whole life so far. For now, I have in front of me: The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, which is the main yoga source text; my own physical and mental yoga practice; and muscular anatomy to learn. That's plenty. Can't go picking up book after workshop for the rest of time. Sigh, well, I have one new book right now on women and yoga which I'm going to read but I feel okay about that one because I feel like I can file it under anatomy. But seriously let's keep things manageable, here.

Some New Buddha Books

So I have been reading a few new Buddha books that my friend lent to me. One of them combines yoga and Buddhism into an approach the author has given his own sort of proprietary title, which I will omit here because I'm not crazy about his whole thing. The book is useful in a historical/comparative way. Someone was going to systematize and label this yoga/Buddha synthesis eventually, so anyway that's out there. I am a little resistant to fully embracing this book's message because I took a class once with this author several years ago and I didn't like it/the author. Oopsies I'm letting cult of personality influence my receptivity to information! Oh well.

The second book I'm really pumped about - Buddhism Without Beliefs by Stephen Bachelor. I've read a bit of it so far and it's offering a nice contextual/historical perspective on the religion-ification of Buddha's teachings. This book is right on time for me as I am feeling a little bummed out by the shiny glamor and obvious expense of the temple I went to, as well as the priestliness of the whole thing.

One thing is sort of bothering me so far, though - in "Beliefs," the author says that "The Buddha did not reveal an esoteric set of facts about reality, which we can choose to believe in or not. He challenged people to understand the nature of anguish, let go of its origins, realize its cessation, and bring into being a way of life." Well, there are at least two facts in operation here - the presumption of existing anguish, and the desire or expectation that this anguish should, for whatever reason, cease. In the law we might call these the ipse dixit(s) - the things asserted but never proven. Usually an ipse dixit is the cause of many many specious arguments. Maybe here is where I am a little stuck lately; it's pretty hard to deny that there is massive suffering in the world and in our minds. That this anguish exists is not really disputed, and we all feel it plenty so we don't really question it - and as a further precondition of awakening, we need to see and feel the anguish to realize its cessation. But isn't there another way of looking at it? I know Buddhists get a bad rap for dwelling on suffering so much, and I definitely feel that. It's a problem.

Maybe I think that another way to see the eventual end of suffering is to see that there is no suffering, really. I'm not sure where this is headed, I have to think it through a little bit.

Ego's Incessant Corruption

In my Buddha book and at Buddha class there is a meditation approach to cultivating love for the whole world and developing a real bodhicitta (wish to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all living beings), wherein you think to yourself how much you want to remove the full range of suffering of everyone you love, and then eventually extend this wish to the whole world. Once this is sincere and you really get it then you are starting to get somewhere.

This is a helpful way of viewing the world for me sometimes. Like if there's a pushy person at the bank or something who might make me roll my eyes and think what a jerk they are - instead, I can think to myself that I wish for their suffering to end, for their feeling of impatience, their feeling that they have to be aggressive on their own behalf, for any feeling making their trip to the bank so negative to go away so they could be happier. I think it's a fair assumption that a host of unpleasant mental functions are contributing to people's behavior, since this is my personal experience too. I can cultivate a little compassion for people by referencing my own craziness, like when I want the line to move faster and someone decides to write a check, I might feel impatience swell up in me (not that much though because I am an exact-change-counter-outer in lines which takes a bit long sometimes so I am happy to hang for check-writers). For some people that impatience just rolls right out of their mouths or makes them push and shove or whatever. I can genuinely wish for their suffering to end the same way I wish all my trips into the world could be free from suffering.

Okay so there's the good side of this way of thinking. But there's a dark side. I am really challenged by my feelings of dislike for someone that I have to maintain a pleasant relationship with, and calling upon my "may your suffering end" technique has taken a dark turn. It feels like pity in my mind. I'd like my thought to be something like "I see a grain of my own suffering in your experience, and through us the suffering of the world, and I wish for your and the world's suffering to end, forever, amen." What it comes out as is more like "I wish for your suffering to end, because you are so freakin' insufferable and so unlikable that I feel bad for you, and I also feel kind of bad for me that I have to be around you, and if your suffering ends then maybe it would be less painful for me to be around you, amen." So that's the bad side of this way of thinking.

I'm just noticing how my own ego can corrupt a gesture of love and compassion into a way to feel superior to people - especially people I don't like, because believing they are lesser than I am by pitying them makes their unlikeability more palatable, and less threatening, or whatever. It's pretty impressive actually, the ego's cleverness. I don't even know if I'm using "ego" in the correct "Ego" way but I think that's what I'm driving at, etc. Anyway I'll have to spend a little mental energy on purifying this technique again for myself and not conflating it with pity and dislike and superiority.

One Freakin' Thing at a Time

I was discussing yesterday with Friend the issue of submitting to an entire religion or philosophy whole heartedly, believing (and presumably also adhering to) every aspect of it, as opposed to taking what you want and not worrying too much about the rest. Friend suggested that maybe this was a Western thing, this feeling that participating in something that you only kind of mostly believe is insincere, or deceptive, or at least an incomplete experience. A spiritual path would be diluted if it were only guidelines, left to each semi-adherent to adjust it as s/he sees fit, no? What are you looking for if you want to keep your own ideas whole and just sort of be affected or moved by something - you're certainly not looking for change or for god, right?

Well, I don't know. I love that I can enjoy Buddhism without having to worry too much about samsara and karma. I love this so much that - bear with me here - I got myself all excited about going to divinity school. Really. I mean hell, why not? I'd love to study the Bible for reals, and if I can enjoy it for what it offers and shed the rest, well, that would be great! Actual Xtians already do this - it's not like all those Xtians wear strictly single-fiber clothes as the Bible commands, etc etc all that other crap that nobody pays attention to. As the secular world so frequently likes to point out to crazy bigoted fundamentalists, there's an awful lot of cherry picking of the Bible that goes on. And sometimes it's evil and used to justify meanness, but sometimes it's great - HERE is an awesome radio story about an evangelical preacher who decides that there is no hell. And his revelation is really persuasive and moving and makes me like Jesus so much more, and makes the crucifixion make so much sense that it goes beyond sensible and back to magical. But anyway thinking about the take-it-or-leave-it part of religion and philosophy made me excited about being able to actually enjoy Xtianity stuff (because whoa nelly believe you me normally I wouldn't really want to be associated with all the stuff that goes on under that umbrella), especially if I can just make it my own.

So yeah back to this - right now in my fantasy life if I could go to divinity school and become a pastor-type thing that would be awesome. Which at last brings me to my actual point: one freakin' thing at a time, pal. This is a kind of curse of the contemporary purposeless human (which is me, so maybe it's just me), this feeling that there is something really huge and complete that you can/should be working toward, and that whatever you're doing at the moment isn't really what you should be working on unless it's part of this bigger thing, and you should maybe hurry up and figure out what your bigger thing is so you can feel peacefully ready to die someday, and death, by the way, will happen before you know it. School is so handy for that feeling. You get to have the manageable task thing from semester to semester, and it's all part of Your Important Degree, and everyone agrees in our cultural that Education is Really Important, and it's just a highly credible long-term thing to be doing.

But right so with this potential new permissive kind of belief I started letting all these things about myself take form in a litte spirituality orb, adding pieces of my philosophical self (law degree! totally read part of a book by Aristotle that one time! I have completely heard of Plato and the Situationists!); my spiritual self (read most of a book by a real live Buddhist! totally learning about yoga! meditate sort of!); my other hobbies (playing music! and I took some Latin in college, those are totally religious things!); and my personality (kind of a talkative know-it-all, enjoy writing a blog, so perfect for a preacher-type!), and made a little fantasy about becoming a woman of the cloth and quoting Joseph Campbell and just digging life and having something really big to be working on, and feeling finally like all the freakin' hats I've tried on in the last 32 years will actually make one cohesive outfit. Of hats. Whatever.

Okay, slow down. Not even one third of the way through my yoga training. That half of that Aristotle book was kind of boring. Still have to finish the Buddha book anyway. Need to get a job. I sometimes can get myself worked up about a big purpose to the point that I can't even actually take the steps required to finish one tiny component part of the fantasy. It's like this: "I can't read this book on yoga, I'm too busy becoming a yogi." Anyone picking up what I'm putting down, here? So my mission for the foreseeable future is to do one thing at a time and actually enjoy it and not worry that too much time is passing without me making important strides toward my Real Big Purpose in life, and that I'm not losing time or progress or anything if I don't start on a Bible-reading regimen or start a philosophy book club or brush up on my Latin all by next month. Chillax. One freakin' thing at a time. My actual life in this actual moment is really nice and has the benefit of leading me toward something big, yoga teaching! That's big enough. Hell being happy is big enough. That's what I'm going to work on.

Buddha Man Layin' Down Some Sick Wisdom

I went to the Buddha place in Prospect Heights that I like (it's the only one I've ever been to) last night and man oh man is that guy smooth. He has really learned to articulate the human experience in a way that shoots right into my guts. I wish I could just repeat the whole class right now, but re-stating his special understanding is pretty tough. Straight up wisdom, yo.

Last night was a lot about bodhichitta, the spontaneous wish to realize enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I don't think I have this wish sincerely inside me yet, or know if it will appear, but I don't think it matters. Bohichitta seems like a technical term, but the talk was about how we have a grain of Buddha inside of us already. We want to help others, like the people we love, remove their suffering - so we can build on that part of our nature to have love and compassion for all people. And how everyone we see is just like us, trying to be happy, but we all have delusions getting in the way of our happiness. And all the crazy things we do and fantasize about to try to find some peace for ourselves and how fruitless it always is, every time, but we keep doing them. Clicking on stuff on line, buying better furniture, constantly experiencing our dissatisfaction in life as a temporary state, after which some thing or purchase or new job or boyfriend will make us finally happy. And it just never happens. We never arrive into our happiness. We get glimpses of it, but it's not sustained. This and all the rest all makes such total sense to me that for the most part I believe Buddha knows exactly the prescription for my ills and I'm ready to follow orders.

With a small exception! So I read most of a book by the founder of this particular branch of Buddhism and wasn't really feelin' it regarding: karma, six levels of reincarnation, and this horrible description of being the womb that really disappointed me. So I asked the guy after class about all this - basically saying that my skeptical impulses with some of the more specific beliefs was distracting me, that I really dig the meditation and love and bliss stuff, but what can I do if I can't get into this other specific stuff? Buddha man of course said the perfect thing. Basically he said don't worry about it. Take what you want and let the rest sit on the back burner. Keep your doubt, it's fine. Treat karma metaphorically if you want. Six levels of suffering in samsara? You don't have to sign on to that - besides, there might be 30, it's just a framework. You don't have to believe everything, Buddha doesn't care.

Man was I relieved to hear this! I was more relieved than I even realized I wanted to be - I can still enjoy Buddhism without treating any particular thing as gospel. My friend asked me afterwards why I needed to hear that my doubt was okay from the Buddha guy, and it's a good question. I am always free to take what I like and leave the rest, in every aspect of life, so why the need to consult? I think it's because I like Buddhism, and knowing I'm welcome in it even if I am not ready to believe some stuff makes me like it more. Knowing that the teacher there himself sympathizes with my hesitancy and doesn't see it as a bar to my enjoying and benefiting from Buddhism is really reaffirming. It's so sensible, that finding happiness and extending love to others is the priority, and that if I'm on board for that aspect of it, then that's great. I love that.

Too Vain for Meditation Books

Holy moley so I've started to read a Buddhist meditation book since, you know, knowing something about what you interested in is usually a good idea. I have minor beef with the title, though, which is "Transform Your Life." Too corny! Too self-help! I want a book titled "Serious Ideas for Truly Credible Thinkers." That's something I could take on the subway, or run into an old friend while carrying. (Even though, yes, I am reading it to help myself. Still, come on.)

But on to the real fun. In keeping with the Buddhism = life sucks model, the first hundred pages of this book are a non-stop description of the sadness in the world. The most upsetting so far is the discussion of old people and their physical deterioration and mental isolation, dying alone and wishing for company that never comes. Yeesh.

But the best so far is the story of human biological creation and how much we suffer just being conceived and carried around! Enjoy:

"Our home for nine months is this small, tightly compressed space full of unclean substances. It is like being squashed inside a small water tank full of filthy liquid with the lid tightly shut so that no air or light can come through. [para] While we are in our mother's womb . . . [w]e are extremely sensitive to everything our mother does. When she walks quickly, it feels as if we are falling from a high mountain and we are terrified. If she has sexual intercourse, it feels as if we are being crushed and suffocated between two huge weights and we panic. . . . [para] When we are emerging from our mother's womb, it feels as if we are being forced through a narrow crevice between two hard rocks, and when we are newly born our body is so delicate that any kind of contact is painful."

Okay, so there are a few things about this that bother me. I mean, babies definitely have anguish and stuff, no doubt - but I am convinced, first of all, that the womb is probably great. I think it must be a warm, suspended, peaceful, magical place that we are all really sad to have left. Everyone curls up fetal sometimes because it's the most comforting thing to do with ourselves, and that's what we like. Second, I am not sure anyone, even a Buddhist master, can remember this experience, and I would like to decline the invitation to put such a horrible spin on something I have no memory of. Wow, that's going to be one of my new General Policies. Note to self: no making up upsetting memories.

I get that the whole set up here in this book, that life is miserable, is meant to emphasize that meditation/nirvana is the only way to eliminate our suffering, but this seems a little much. We'll see what happens in the rest of the book.