Easter 2012

Today is Easter Sunday, yet again. It is also Passover for the Jews, and in Japan, Hanamatsuri, or the Buddha's Birthday (always celebrated there on April 8, though correlated with the Lunar Calendar in other Buddhist nations). Astronomically, it is the first Sunday after the first Full Moon following the Vernal Equinox, thus aligning solar, lunar, and terrestrial holidays. A propitious time, by any reckoning--if indeed the word "propitious" has any other than fanciful significance. Garrison Keillor has, as always, a good take on this today on his Writer's Almanac, in which he describes the pre-Christian or "pagan" roots of the holiday as a celebration of fertility and renewal of life:

"The word "Easter" and most of the secular celebrations of the holiday come from pagan traditions. Anglo Saxons worshipped Eostre, the goddess of springtime and the return of the sun after the long winter. According to legend, Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning it into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird, it could still lay eggs, and that rabbit became our Easter Bunny. Eggs were a symbol of fertility in part because they used to be so scarce during the winter. There are records of people giving each other decorated eggs at Easter as far back as the 11th century."

Renewal of life. The common theme in all of these equinoctial holidays--Passover (the sparing of the Israelites from the wrath of Jahweh, inflicted on their Egyptian oppressors); the Resurrection of Jesus, the Birth of the Buddha, and of course the Rabbit laying eggs. In each case, stories of something miraculous, breaking the usual pattern of things--whether we believe it or not. And this recurrent theme, I think, hints at the miraculous nature of the life we all take for granted: the gradual unfolding of a tiny seed, fed by little more than sunlight, rainwater, minerals, and compost, into new life, familiar yet unique, pursuing its own path through the world as it staves off death and entropy for a time, as it grows to its own fruition. Here is an Easter Poem by May Sarton that I found this morning in my Earth Prayers anthology:

Easter Morning

The extreme delicacy of this Easter morning
Spoke to me as a prayer and as a warning.
It was light on the brink, spring light
After a rain that gentled my dark night.
I walked through landscapes I had never seen
Where the fresh grass had just begun to green,
And its roots, watered deep, sprung to my tread;
The maples wore a cloud of feathery red,
But flowering trees still showed their clear design
Against the pale blue brightness chilled like wine.
And I was praying all the time I walked,
While starlings flew about, and talked, and talked.
Somewhere and everywhere life spoke the word.
The dead trees woke; each bush held its bird.
I prayed for delicate love and difficult,
That all be gentle now and know no fault,
That all be patient—as a wild rabbit fled
Sudden before me. Dear love, I would have said
(And to each bird who flew up from the wood),
I would be gentler still if that I could,
For on this Easter morning it would seem
The softest football danger is, extreme. . .
And so I prayed to be less than the grass
And yet to feel the Presence that might pass.
I made a prayer. I heard the answer, "Wait,
When all is so in peril, so delicate!"

I love the way she emphasizes both the sheer beauty and splendor of life in this poem, but at the same time its fragility, its vulnerability--a miracle so easily snuffed out, even by a careless footfall. It reminded me of my own afternoon in the garden yesterday, delicately planting or transplanting starts of spinach, mixed greens, collards, kale, parsley, eggplant, and marigolds interspersed amongst them all, while stepping gingerly through the crumbly, newly prepared soil, hoping I would not inadvertently crush any of these tender seedlings.

"I don't exist."

Last week in Sangha, one of our newer members, a man named Tom (We don't do last names, so that's all I know), who had spent a considerable amount of time in Japan and was very conversant in Zen Buddhism, said something that has stuck with me ever since. While the other members, during our customary self-introductory go-around, were sharing (as usual) their ongoing challenges with their practice, focusing on either self-congratulatory insights or personal frustrations and setbacks, Tom, when his turn came, made (something like) the following remark:

"Whenever I find myself either castigating myself, or taking offense at something others say about me, or wishing I were better than I am, I often stop to remind myself, 'I don't exist.' That is, this notion we all carry around with us of a separate self is ultimately illusory...I am just one temporary manifestation of the universe, but 'I' don't actually exist...the universe exists through me and everyone and everything else."

This was a bracing insight, which is good to remember whenever we get caught up in any of the innumerable self-centered, afflictive emotions (which can be summed up quite conveniently by the classical Seven Deadly Sins of patristic Christianity):

• Pride: "I am better than you!"
  


• Envy: "I want what you have!"
  


• Avarice: "I want more!"
  


• Gluttony: "I'm still hungry!" (no matter how much you've eaten)


• Wrath: "I hate you because you insulted or abused me!"


• Sloth: "I'm too tired and depressed..."


• Lust: "I crave your bod!"

The common denominator in all of these afflictions is the First Person Pronoun. But what if this "I" does not exist? Well--in fact, it doesn't. Our bodies are constantly replacing their cells at different rates, and they depend on the constant input of minerals, water, and solar energy, tranformed into the food we eat and the oxygen we breathe, as well as the output of CO2 from our lungs, perspiration, urine, and fecal wastes. If any of these crucial systems of input or output are disrupted, we die. Our brains, conversely, retain their neurons for life, though these are nourished by the same flux of energy and matter as our bodies, but this neural continuity accounts for our memories, which give us the impression of a continuous self. But it is only an impression, and will vanish, along with everything else, to its primordial source once we die, leaving our physical remains to be recycled into new organisms. This "I" is nothing more, then, than the universe looking at itself--I and I, or "eye and eye." Or as Meister Eckhart once said,


“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”

Wow! As the hippies might have said, "That's heavy!"

This basic insight--"I don't exist"--has many uses. Whether you are feeling full of yourself, embarrassed, offended, annoyed, or self-pitying, you can use it as a quick antidote--something to bring you from being caught up in your personal hang-ups or Klesha back quickly to compassionate awareness of yourself and others, all caught up in the "inescapable network of mutuality"--

• Breathing (with benevolence and gratitude for all life),
  


• Observing (with compassion, yourself and others),


• Letting Go (with selfless joy and openness to all things)


• and Abiding (in peace, with patience and a gentle smile)

Garden Practice

Yesterday was an unseasonably warm day, breaking yet another all-time temperature record for winter temperatures on that date (as we have come, lamentably, to expect in these times of runaway global warming). So after months of neglect, I decided to get a start on my garden, which is currently a shambles, full of dry brush, henbane, and onion-grass shoots, enlivened only by the early daffodils that have popped up here and there, thinking it was already spring.

Obviously, there is a lot to do, although my garden time was cut short by my stressed low-back, exacerbated by age and by the futile effort of pulling up vines along the fence.

I will readily confess that though I am an enthusiastic advocate of gardening, I am an incredibly lazy, often unwilling, frequently conflicted gardener. The laziness seems congenital--a lifelong pattern of avoidance and procrastination about any task that requires sustained physical exertion and decision-making. I much prefer predictable, formulaic tasks like washing dishes, or sedentary, equally formulaic tasks like grading papers or preparing classes.

And so, the minute I overcome initial avoidance and step out into the garden, my mind is beset with deeply rooted Klesha (the Buddhist word for afflictive emotions or neurotic patterns), including the following:

• Guilt (at not having done so sooner)
• Indecision (trying to choose among the innumerable tasks that are demanding my attention)
• Distracting thoughts (that often make it hard to plan any given task, select the right tools, and plan and execute tasks efficiently).

And once I get going on something (usually fairly formulaic and predictable, like clearing dead brush, pulling weeds, or preparing seed beds with a hoe and harrow)--come a host of further afflictions:

• More Distracting Thoughts
• Ambivalence (e.g. is that a weed or a wildflower? I call this the Gardener/Contemplative Naturalist dilemma--since my natural inclination is toward the latter role)
• Indecision and ignorance (What should I plant where? How much should I prune that shrub or tree? How can I possibly know?)
• Fatigue and Pain (the inevitable consequence of aging)

All of which, to put it mildly, often make gardening feel more like a season in Hell than a pleasant afternoon communing with Gaia. All of which begs the question: Why bother? Why not hire a landscaper to bulldoze the whole thing, and--like the old lady who lived here before us--turn it all into a bland, monocultural, easy-to-mow lawn?

The latter is not an option, of course, for it goes against all of my basic convictions about the inestimable value of native plants, biological diversity, and fresh, home-grown vegetables--all of my frequent preaching about the three primary steps in overcoming our toxic addiction to Glomart and healing and creating Gaia:

1. Plant and grow Gardens.
2. Cultivate and grow Communities.
3. Cultivate and grow Diversified, Sustainable Local Economies.

So--faced with this basic psychological conflict between theory and practice--between a passionate commitment to everything Gaian, starting with Gardening--and my habitual avoidance of hard manual labor, systematic planning, and complex learning and decision-making--what gives?

Yesterday, on my first foray into my chaotic, conflicted garden of the mind, I hit upon an idea, that is at least worth an effort: Incorporate gardening into my daily practice, whenever possible. And this means, perhaps after my formal meditation, doing perhaps an hour or so of Karma Yoga in the garden--staying in the present moment, and breathing, observing, and letting go of whatever kleshas arise, but practicing Right Effort in setting modest, achievable goals and staying with them. I feel that if my practice is authentic, then as Pema Chodron says, everything I do should become infused with Dharma. And as a kind of prop to acknowledging and letting go of all these Garden Kleshas, my Tingsha, my Tibetan Bells, will gain an honored place among my garden tools, such that, whenever necessary, I can invite them, and then--Breathe, Observe, Let Go, Abide...and resume gardening.

So be it.

Gaian Jesuits?

Even though I have never been a Roman Catholic, and have little use for the Roman Catholic Church as an institution, I have always had a grudging admiration for St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), the founder of the Society of Jesus. This Spanish-Basque soldier-turned-monk used the military discipline he had learned to create a highly disciplined monastic order, later known as the Jesuits, to undertake the enormous and challenging task of both reforming the corruption within the Church, and revitalizing it by reclaiming for the Catholic Church many of the areas of Europe that had been lost to the Protestant Reformation.

The Jesuits accomplished this task by means both fair and foul, ranging from political manipulation, infiltration of regimes, and conspiracies to the creation of a wide array of impressive educational establishments that undertook to "deprogram" new generations from (what he saw as) the Protestant "heresy" and bring them back into the fold of (what he saw as) the One True Faith. These educational institutions, in turn, trained their students with a rigorous regime of logic and rhetoric, which has created an array of very impressive and influential scholar-activists throughout the world down to this day. Yet his whole edifice of education, scholarship, global missionary outreach, and political influence was predicated on rigorous basic training in "spiritual exercises" which not only ensured their total and unquestioning loyalty to the Church, but also gave them the intellectual tools and the inner spiritual fortitude they needed to fundamentally transform and revitalize the Roman Catholic Church and give it a formidable global influence that it retains to this day, especially in the Southern Hemisphere--from all of Latin America to much of subsaharan Africa, and on as far as the Philippines.

So again, my admiration for St. Ignatius is based on his truly impressive influence and accomplishments, not on his totalitarian religious ideology ("My way or no way") nor on the ethically questionable, Machiavellian means that he and his followers frequently used in their religious warfare. This leads to my question: Could a Gaian order be established, broadly based on the model of the Jesuits, that would train its sworn adherents to undertake, with similar dedication and efficiency, the subversion of the dominant Glomart ideology, and the regeneration of both a hopelessly corrupt political culture and a dying planet? Lets imagine:

Like the Jesuits, the training for a Dharma Gaia Society would be predicated on "spiritual exercises"--not to engender total devotion to any one religious ideology, but rather to create a solid, reliable foundation for open-minded, generous, intellectually open and rigorous, but deeply rooted spirituality, accessible to anyone, and compatible with any authentic faith tradition or lack thereof. The mission of the Dharma Gaia Society would be to integrate both Vertical and Horizontal healing of our fragmented Selves, our distracted Communities, and our devastated Planet. The "spiritual exercises" at foundation of such training, therefore, would not be any question-begging ideological catechism, but rather meditation, based on the Tenfold Mantra:

1. Breathe, Observe, Let Go (Abide)
2. Be well, Do Good Work, Keep in Touch (Abide)
3. Learn, Teach, Heal, and Create.

Total commitment to this Tenfold Mantra as a guide to living would be the only precondition to membership in the Dharma Gaia order--practicing it every day in formal meditation, and having it available, at all times, to deal with the vicissitudes they encounter with life. Once trained in this basic discipline, Gaians would go forth into the world to practice Doing Good Work by learning, teaching, healing, and creating Gaia--by pursuing lifelong education in green living (Learning), by finding occasion and establishing programs or institutions to instruct others in the contemplative arts (e.g. yoga, tai chi, etc.), community regeneration (from gardening to community organizing to political involvement), and ecological healing and regeneration (teaching, healing, and creating).

So this is the dream. Is the Tenfold Dharma Gaia Mantra a powerful enough tool of basic mind training (as were Ignatius' spiritual exercises) to accomplish this huge, intergenerational task? Time will tell.

On One Breath

In recent weeks, I have developed a mantra on a single breath that has proven very effective at quickly inducing a state of meditative stability. It is so useful, in fact, that I have started introducing it to my students in all my classes, referring to it as an "inner tune-up" to complement my "outer tune-up" (which usually consists of a small selection of Qigong longevity exercises). Here is the way it works:

1. On the inhale, say to yourself, "breathing."


2. In the brief pause at the top of the inhalation, say, "observing."


3. On the exhale, say, "letting go."


4. In the brief pause between exhalation and inhalation, say "abiding."

The reason I use the participial form ("breathing") rather than the imperative form ("breathe") is that any imperative we say to ourselves immediately creates a familiar dichotomy within us: the authoritative Parent figure and thus, the recalcitrant Child figure. If, for example, a sugar addict attempts to deal with his or her addiction by saying "Don't eat that cookie," that addict immediately creates the temptation (the recalcitrant Child) to do the exact opposite.

This tendency is beautifully illustrated in Gregory Bateson's essay on alcoholism, "The Cybernetics of Self" in which he cites the success of Alcoholics Anonymous in subverting this internalized Parent-Child dichotomy by encouraging their members to surrender control (let go).

So by saying to oneself "breathing," one is simply acknowledging what one is actually doing--not giving and obeying a command to oneself. Ditto for the others: "observing," "letting go" and "abiding." As such, these words become transparent--they become windows, through which we look at ourselves doing what these words say. This is also why, in his Sutra on Breathing, the Buddha instructs us to say "Breathing in, I am aware that I am breathing in; Breathing out, I am aware that I am breathing out"--and why, in his Sutra on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness, he speaks of "mindfulness of the breath IN the breath, of the body IN the body, and so on.

As we go deeper into meditation, the words gradually drop away as crutches, rather than distracting us as attachments. Soon we are simply and wordlessly breathing, observing, letting go, and abiding. This is the wordless, timeless, selfless state known as alaya.

But for most of us, this blissful state of non-thought, of emptiness and calm abiding, does not last long. Brain-chatter, like Nature herself, abhors a vaccuum, and will rush in to distract us again and again. This is where it is useful, I find, to displace this random brain-chatter (since the our minds can actually focus on only one thing at a time) with the mantra itself--focusing once and again on the four participial verbs--Breathing, Observing, Letting Go, and Abiding.

Another technique for displacing mental chatter--throwing a bone to our restless monkey-minds, as it were--is to map on to these four terms other related tetrads, that keep us focused on the Dharma, rather than on our own distractions. Here are a few examples that map on very nicely to these four stages:

1. Empathy (Breathing in), Joy or curiosity (Observing), Benevolence (Letting Go) and Equanimity (Abiding). These are, of course, the Four Brahma-Viharas, slightly altered in order: Karuna, Mudita, Maitri, and Upeksha. This technique also fits very nicely with the practice of Tonglen (Taking in our own and others' suffering, and breathing out healing to ourselves and others).


2. Birth and childhood (Breathing in); Adulthood (Observing) Age and Wisdom (Letting Go) and Death (Abiding.)


3. Fire (Breathing in oxygen--a transform of solar energy) Air (Observing the oxygen as it is carried from our lungs through our blood to all parts of our bodies) Water (Letting go on the outbreath, as water flows downhill), and Earth (Merging with dust--with the ground of our being.


4. Om (Breathe in) Mani (Observe) Padme (Let go) Hum (Abide)

And so on. I also can extend the tetrad to embrace the entire Tenfold Mantra, thus incorporating my vows into my practice in only three full breaths:

1. Breathe, Observe, Let Go (Abide)


2. Be Well, Do Good Work, Keep in Touch (Abide)


3. Learn, Teach, Heal, Create.

Practicing this way regularly has definitely improved my concentration, making it less likely that in formal meditation, I will be carried away by distracting thoughts. And that, after all, is the point. That is why it is called "practice:" to increase, gradually, the likelihood that in the course of daily life, we are more likely to respond to vicissitudes, whether within ourselves or in the world, with empathy, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. These four participial conscious reminders--Breathing, Observing, Letting Go, and Abiding--can be coordinated with the four phases of any breath we take, any time, anywhere, no matter what, and quickly restore us to the equipoise necessary to do what needs to be done.

Regeneration

We are here. It is 2012, the Final Year, according to the Mayan calendar, of this Magnum Annum; the end of history. Or not. I don't generally put much stock in such New-Age prophecies or astrological cycles, even though many of my friends do. It seems likely that all the prophetic speculation--all the astrological and apocalyptic fears and hopes--about 2012 will end up as empty and silly as the various "End of the World" or "Second Coming" or "Harmonic Convergence" or even "Y2K" hysterias of the past, and we will muddle our collective way on into 2013 right on schedule...some eminent people dying along the way, as always.

But then again, whether connected with astrological cycles or not, there does seem to be a quickening these days, a sense of things swirling toward a chaotic and increasingly unpredictable state throughout the world. The Glomart Economy is in a tailspin, and an inchoate, mass popular revolt is brewing worldwide--the "Occupy" movement--connected and reinforced by the Internet, against a political, military, and economic status quo that has clearly become dysfunctional, morally bankrupt, and depraved; the words of Bob Dylan spring to mind again and again:

"Come writers and critics who prophesize with you pen

Keep your eyes wide, the chance won't come again,

And don't speak too soon, for the wheel's still in spin

And there's no telling who that it's namin'...

For the losers now will be later to win,

For the times, they are a-changin'!"

Somehow, the keyword that keeps tugging on my consciousness these days is "regeneration." Not "revolution" (a word tainted with too much violent and repressive connotative baggage left over from the days of Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao), nor even "redemption" (since I do not think our once-great nation can be redeemed) but "regeneration" in the sense of a phoenix rising from the ashes. And as Octavia Butler mordantly suggests in her "Earthseed" verses from her powerful dystopic novel Parable of the Sower:

"“In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.”

In short, we can no longer go back to what we once were as a nation. We are already too corrupt for that--the United States of America lost its soul--died--on that horrible day--December 12, 2000--when a corrupt and shamelessly partisan Supreme Court authorized the theft of an election by the criminal fascist Bush regime, and Congress was too cowardly to object. Since that day, we have become nothing but a zombie nation, murderously stalking the world while muttering empty platitudes about "freedom" and "democracy" that nobody else believes anymore...

And since the Great Hoax of 9/11, we have all been living out a nightmare of endless war and paranoia about "terrorists" based on a massive, consensual lie--an unchallenged, self-contradictory narrative that completely violates the known laws of physics, but that has nonetheless become the cornerstone--the enabling myth--of the so-called "Global War on Terror." So the America envisioned by Thomas Paine, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, and Roosevelt is dead and buried, while its zombie double, Glomart Fascist Amerika, the land of greed, ignorance, denial, despair, and lies, is doomed...and right now, they are rattling sabers at Iran (and vice versa) in the Strait of Hormuz, threatening thereby a nuclear holocaust that could engulf the whole planet.

Or not. Perhaps all the fist-shaking will pass, Obama's cool hand will prevail, and the leaders will find ways to save face and come to their senses, and we'll all muddle through, yet again. Let's hope. But one way or the other, "the Old Road is Rapidly Aging..." and so we all need to "get out of the new one if we can't lend a hand/for the times, they are a-changin'!"

For me, then, "Regeneration" is not of "the United States of America" per se, but of Thomas Paine's original vision--"the world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." If we must burn, literally or figuratively, in order to rise from the ashes, so be it. May I therefore become, in this new and epochal year of 2012, an agent of Regeneration--a seed of Gaian renewal among the ashes of the corrupt and degenerate old Glomart order. America is dead. And though Gaia herself is dying, may we Gaians of all nations arise! May the 99% awaken to our true nature as Gaians--as fellow citizens of the only living planet we will ever know!

RIP USA 1776-2000

Lately I have been reading a searing, vivid, powerful memoir entitled Every Man in this Village is a Liar by Megan K. Stack, a young journalist who is featured as one of the speakers at an upcoming Literary Festival at Old Dominion University, a few miles away from where I work in Norfolk. I had picked up a copy of her book at Kramer Books in Washington, DC, and was immediately captivated by her precise images and her moral passion, so I bought it, and have scarcely been able to put it down since.

The book is mesmerising in its vividness and eloquence, but her subject matter--the war zones of the Middle East where she was sent as a correspondent by the Los Angeles Times--is utterly appalling. She records what she sees and experiences, first in Afghanistan, then on the Israel/Palestine border, then Iraq (and later elsewhere) with such clarity, precision, candor and pathos that you feel it in your bones.

However, reading this account of the sheer cruelty and horror of war on all whom it touches has also left me in even greater despair for my country than ever, particularly because she is eyewitness to innumerable atrocities wrought not only by the so-called "terrorists" (whatever the hell THAT means) but by the US military as well. For indeed, we are guilty as hell in all of this--except, of course, that "we"--the majority of American voters--never actually had any say in this ongoing crime against humanity, since the Bush Regime hijacked the country in 2000 and 2004, and Obama, who was legitimately elected (for a change) on a promise of ending the war and putting an end to the perversion of justice in horrific places like Guantanamo, has only continued these heinous occupations in the Middle East and the ongoing atrocities in which "our boys" are complicit every day.

And so indeed, my original fear has been validated--that the United States of America, as a concept with any real basis in the enlightened ideals of Thomas Paine, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights, ceased to exist on December 12,2000--the day a shamelessly partisan Supreme Court overrode the rule of law and validated the theft of an election. The great hoax of 9/11/01 thereafter only confirmed the hijacking of our nation by this pernicious criminal syndicate of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al. And since then, the former "United States of America" has become a neofascist, corporate sponsored, pseudo-democratic zombie nation, living a lie, murderously stalking the world while muttering empty platitudes about "freedom," "democracy" and the "global war on terror."

I wish I could renounce my citizenship and move elsewhere--I can't. But then, it does not matter whether I am a "citizen" or not, since the nation of which I was once a proud citizen no longer exists. So instead, I have no alternative but to proclaim myself a citizen of Gaia, like my role-model Thomas Paine, who said "the world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." And a citizen of Gaia can live anywhere on the planet and still be at home. In fact, all nation states are just mental formations--arbitrary lines drawn on maps. We are bound by their laws, but the only laws that matter, ever, are those that are compatible with the Laws of God (i.e. love your neighbor as yourself) and the Laws of Gaia (This is because that is). If any given laws enacted by any human government are compatible with these, we obey them; if not, we engage in Satyagraha.