Theory to Practice: zen lessons learned in the navy

Slightly different style.  I wrote this as a general piece of reflection on some experiences over deployment and before and what I had learned about zen practice through these experiences, with an eye toward submitting it to Tricycle and Buddhadharma, but they both passed.  So I am putting it on my blog because I've been a lazy bum about writing on here as of late.  Enjoy.

When I decided to join the navy, I was fresh out of a summer of work practice at Tassajara Zen monastery in Northern California.  Having made it through that experience, I imagined that I could zen my way through any difficulty.  After five years working in reactor department on an aircraft carrier, I can safely say that I was wrong. In the nuclear propulsion community, we have a saying: Theory to practice. It means putting what is understood through contemplation into action. It also means recognizing that how things play out in the real world is not always how we imagined they would.

One of my favorite moments from deployment this year happened when a group of Japanese naval officers (and a few enlisted) came to join the buddhist group for meditation. I'm the lay leader. While I am honest with the group that my experience is almost entirely zen, I try to keep the group non-denominational. I avoid words like "zazen," substituting "meditation" in readings, for example. Or I say "flat cushion" and "round cushion" instead of "zabuton" and "zafu". It is important to me that other sailors interested in buddhism not feel forced to adopt a specific sect or school, and I felt like I ought to be able to practice non-attachment to zen forms and lingo with ease. But I do miss the shared experience of practicing with other zen students.  So I was tickled pink when the Japanese contingent arrived and one of them looked around at the setup and the posture we were in and went "Oh! Zazen!"  This is but one of many instances in which I was confronted by the gap between theory and practice as a zen student in the navy.

For me, zen practice encompasses much about that need both to verify with actual experience something I have read, for example, and also the notion that understanding something once, twice, a hundred times, isn't enough; I have to do the work, instance by instance, if my practice is to have meaning to my life.  I have felt many times like I understood some helpful aspect of zen teaching.  Those moments mean nothing, however, when it comes time to actually put it into action. I can draw on that understanding, but doing it is the meat and potatoes of zen practice, and that is the hard part.  Even writing this piece is all well and good, but I'd bet my paycheck that I'll still lose my shit the next time they run out of a dish I was really looking forward to in the chow line.  So it is nice to go up to the flight deck, look around at the horizon, and verify that, yes, as Dogen says, the world does look like one big circle when one is out on a boat far from shore.  But life in the navy has presented me with many difficulties through which I have not been able to zen my way. While I could conceive of an alternate reality in which I "did the work" and got myself through those struggles with the cool, breezy air of an adept monk, in this life I failed again and again, and I started to feel that this meant I was failing as a zen student.  Again, though, I was wrong.

Failing to maintain aloof composure isn't a failure to practice. Failing to act selflessly isn't a failure to practice.  The practice of zen (and this is one of those nuggets I have understood in the past and STILL forgot) is about coming back, coming back, coming back: to the cushion, to my breath, to the present moment.  It's about falling down and getting up.  As my teacher, Greg Fain, puts it, "be present for what arises."  When I was comparing my life to what I thought zen practice looks like, I felt like the gap between theory and practice was unacceptably big.  By dwelling in imagination, I was ignoring my life in practice.  But after bumblefucking my way through enough of these experiences, it eventually occurred to me that my ideas about zen were flawed, and I came to a new appreciation of zen theory.  I continue to encounter difficulties.  And I do try to be kind, compassionate, slow to anger, etc.  What I am working on more now is meeting my experience, whatever it is, and carrying on rather than falling into rumination and regret.  And that, theory to practice, is a lot healthier.

One last sea-story, I think, could well be put down as a genuine navy koan.  The case:  A sailor in reactor department (me) was tripping out in his head over time.  We measure distance with feet or meters, we measure weight with pounds or kilograms... What, exactly, is it we are measuring with seconds, minutes, or hours?  So the sailor went up to his chief and asked, "Seriously, chief: what IS time?"  The chief handed the sailor a fox tail (hand-held brush-broom) and said, "Go clean something and find out."  Commentary: What was I hoping to accomplish by using mind to answer a question I cooked up?  Field day goes for two hours, no matter what "hour" means in theory.

Ocean of Samsara

     Watching the sea, with its choppy water, I had the sense I was observing some alien form of society.  The way the crests and valleys would dance with each other, changing places, it seemed like the water was communicating with itself in a manner unintelligible to conscious thought.  I witnessed populations continuously manifesting and dissolving, imbued with a latent intelligence, carrying forth living and dying in a drama that was all their own.  This life was merely the result of energy, abundant and mysterious, on the surface of the ocean, the surface of the physical realm, not dissimilar to humanity in this respect.  We are intelligent, yes, but how much of this human drama is no more than the interplay of energy (karma?) in the medium that is sentient biological lifeforms? Scientists and mathematicians can describe the action of waves, outlandishly intricate and random though it may be, with vectors and calculus and algorithms.  Though there may be orders of magnitudes more variables involved, it seems that, by and large, a sufficiently smart, talented, and studious collective of scientists and mathematicians (perhaps a hyper-intelligent, non-human species) could describe our human drama with high math and vectors and algorithms as satisfactorily as we describe the movement of the sea.  Human fluid dynamics.  Then again, when it comes to nuclear physics, although scientists are able to predict with a very high degree of accuracy the time it takes for half of a sample of a given nuclide to decay away and what manner of decay it is likeliest to undergo, they are not (yet?) able to determine WHEN or WHY any given atom of said nuclide will decay or how.  Humanity may be like this, instead of like the ocean.

      I may be wrong about a couple points.  It may not be possible to completely account for all the variables involved in the interplay of energy in the sea.  And for all I know, some scientists may have already started to crack the code of individual atoms' fates.  But I am pretty sure that we will not ever arrive at an accurate, satisfactory explanation for human behavior.  Even if sociologists and psychologists can predict that one in ten people will steal the spare change from the dish at the convenience store, and even if they can further explain the indicators which made this action more likely in the tenth person and unlikely in the previous nine, I doubt very much we can ever know for certain WHY people do or do not do any particular thing.  Zazen, the spiritual life generally, can have a transformative effect on karma.  I think the impulse to seek the great self is universal, but listening to that small whisper inside is not.  Why do some people listen and some do not?  Why do some people keep following the trail of breadcrumbs and others walk away?  How revolutionary is the path that goes against the stream if a high degree of proclivity is the threshold for seeking it out to begin with?  Christians may answer these questions with "the grace of God", and I think more than a few Buddhists may answer with something similar.  More and more, I feel like I can count myself among them.  Because really, I don't fucking know.  And I don't think I can know.  I think subjects like these lie beyond some philosophical event horizon, past which the mechanisms for understanding just do not function.  Like atoms, like waves, humanity is to some degree predictable, and to some degree a baffling mystery.  I think most of the universe may be that way.  That's fine.

      As an afterthought, I recently had the opportunity to ask a zen teacher a question, and I asked "what is free will really like?"  His eventual answer was something to the effect of: you need to stop taking for granted the framework which gives rise to this question; as the relationship to this framework changes, the question can't continue to exist.  I feel like this is a modern form of "the question does not suit the case".  I'll square with you: I am bothered by the things I do, sometimes, and I don't really understand why I am the way I am, and this troubles me often.  This is one reason I have been trying to sort this issue out.  Another is my concern for human beings' future as a whole.  The concern is big.  I realize, though, that troubling myself over esoteric, philosophical conundrums does nothing but muddle me about.  Maybe I should instead try to make peace with the limits of reason and speculation and put my efforts into seeing beyond this framework or whatever.

Being a Warrior isn't Buddhist

     In the student bathrooms at Tassajara, there is a sheet of paper with spots on it for students to sign up to clean throughout the current month.  The note accompanying the sign-up sheet details what needs to be done and urges students to follow through and actually clean on the day they sign up for.  The last sentence of the note reads: "Remember: cleaning is a core practice of zen training."
     Both with and without remembering this note, I have often thought to myself that with all the cleaning I do in the navy, I'm basically already doing zen training.  There are many parallels to monastic life in the navy, actually.  Every morning at Tassajara, there is work circle -- the navy has morning quarters.  At Tassajara there is soji -- in the navy we do "cleaning stations".  Also, I am usually sleep-deprived, my nerves are frayed, and the temperature of where I sleep is largely influenced by the weather.  So what do I have to go to a monastery for?  I already touched on this subject in a very early post that I wrote here.  But I have continued to think a lot about this issue, and there is more I would like to say.  In particular, I often remember a comment one of my root teachers made during dokusan when I asked for his thoughts on my decision to go into the navy:  "being a warrior isn't buddhist."
     As I said in that early post, the way my mind responds to the activity of the moment is what makes the difference between the activity resembling a fanciful image of zen practice and the activity being tedious and frustrating.  I know, tedious, frustrating activity is the quintessential stuff of zen practice.  It's the best zen practice of my life in terms of providing frustrating, aversion-inspiring experiences to hold in spacious awareness and activity with with to engage fully having no gaining idea, and I'm sure it is quite healthy to be engaging in activity which does not resemble a fanciful image of zen practice.  Also, I suffer and my shit surfaces in very unhappy ways both in the navy and at Tassajara.  If I cannot awaken under these circumstances in the navy, what makes me think I could do it at a monastery?
     Perhaps if "the marketplace" was sufficient to support awakening and studying dharma, then monasteries would not be a thing.  At Tassajara, the other people actively support me (and I them) in cultivating wisdom and compassion.  In the navy... not so much.  While many of my shipmates are pretty righteous individuals who (though they may not realize it or phrase it with buddhist language) do a fine job encouraging me to continue with the struggle of right action both by their example and through conversations, for the most part it's a cruel, careless environment. It is full of distractions.  And there is not nearly enough zazen.  The mind needs space.  Life needs space.  As Brad Warner says, a person needs to let their mind become very, very quiet to see the way things are.  There is far too much noise, literally and figuratively, in the navy and the marketplace for a student to become settled enough to get a glimpse of the bright pearl, even if all things -- marketplace, navy, airplanes, propulsion plant spaces -- are actually phenomenal manifestations of the bright pearl.
     Another key feature to a monastic setting is the intention of the people there.  I only recently realized how much intention matters.  Through conversations with guys and gals I work with, I have observed a consensus that the reason we are doing something affects how we feel about it.  If we are "cleaning for time," (i.e. just cleaning because there isn't anything else our leadership has for us to do but they just don't want to let us go home yet), it is a lot more frustrating than if we are helping to organize maintenance paperwork to support the upkeep of our equipment.  So even though I could in theory control my own intention in whatever activity I engage in, the fact is that activity at a monastery is intended to support awakening and activity in the navy is intended to support war (and bureaucracy).  The intention of the students at Tassajara is different than the intention of the other sailors on USS Carl Vinson.  This affects my attitude, and the attendant feelings affect my follow-on mental activity.  This may be a wrong notion, but that's where I am at, currently.  Or at least that's one reason I feel that getting out of the navy and practicing at Tassajara will be more supportive of seeking the way.
     The last thought I wanted to explore regarding my teacher's admonition was that there is more to being a warrior than just being in the military.  I used to envision that there was a way I could be a bad-ass and buddhist, or at least a bad-ass buddhist.  But attributes commonly associated with being a bad-ass include a lack of empathy and a disregard for rules.  I seek to cultivate empathy, and even though I do bump up against the forms of zen from time to time, I appreciate them for what they are.  So being a bad-ass in this way is incompatible with buddhist training.  Similarly, even though I am in the military, I wouldn't dream of calling myself a warrior.  Plenty of people who are not in the military are more warrior-ish than me.  Being a warrior means drawing a hard line between allies and enemies.  Rather than seek to identify with one's enemy, a warrior seeks only to understand their strategy in order to out-maneuver them.  I have been like this in very small ways from time to time, but it is not a mentality I can maintain for a while.  It kind of reminds me of a Darlene Cohen talk in which she discusses her past nature of vindictiveness.  A warrior seeks to destroy the opponent.  In a warrior's world, the fight is never over.  I think that for a bodhisattva, a warrior analogy can fit: seeking to understand suffering in order to lessen it, never giving up the effort to save all beings even if that effort has no attainable end, etc.  My teacher is right that being a warrior is anathema to being a buddhist.  I don't think that I qualify as being a warrior just because I am in the navy, but I do think that being in the navy is so different from being in a monastery that I may as well be trying to be a bad-ass, warrior-buddhist.  And there's no such thing.  Is there?

Hope is a four-letter word -- Or, a pessimistic look at optimism

     The events of this post happened quite some time ago, so "today" doesn't literally mean the day I posted this but rather the day that I started writing it.  And even though my attitude has shifted since I started writing this, I still wanted to explore the thoughts that were coming up and finish this post.  It has been a while since I wrote anything substantial in this blog.  Enjoy.

     Today at work, I was the maddest that I have ever been, I feel.  I had to walk away from where I was to the loudest area of my work center's space, scream "Fuck this place!" at the top of my lungs, and then yell "Fuck!" multiple times while jumping up and down.  The root cause of this outburst was hope.
     Our work center recently got a new divisional officer.  I know him from previous interactions, and I had gotten the impression he was a reasonable person.  Before we left for lunch, we worked for several hours completing a cleaning "hit list".  Our spaces looked pretty damned good already, mind, but we worked those hours nonetheless because we had to.  As we left for the mess decks, one of the senior guys told us he was going to try to get us cut out early because we had done a good job.  But I resisted the impulse to become hopeful.  I ate lunch with my work mates, thinking how nice it would be to have most of an afternoon off.  But still, I reminded myself not to expect anything good just because someone had suggested it might happen.  I finished my food, I took my dishes and silverware to the scullery, and I headed back to the propulsion plant.  As I walked down the ladderwell, the thought bubbled up without restraint: "yay! I'm about to go home!"  But as it turned out, that thought couldn't have been farther from the reality I encountered when I got to our space.
     After gathering us together, the divisional officer proceeded to start walking around, running his finger over the surface of various components in our space as if he were head butler at Buckingham Palace.  Both his face and demeanor would be well-suited for that job, but that is beside the point.  He looked into every nook and cranny, making a note of each instance he found of cleanliness being less than immaculate.  The hit list he generated was even longer than the one we spent all morning working on.  And he was being a total dick the entire time.  He finished his tour, gave the list to the enlisted guy in charge of cleaning, informed us that the list must be complete to his satisfaction before we can go home, and left.  I was devastated.
     This story is not really unusual.  At work, we often comment to each other that hope or happiness is secured (means not allowed).  Starting back at prototype, some of us started using an acronym which we would mention when we needed a reminder not to get our hopes up: MAHALARA (maintain all hope as low as reasonably achievable... it's a reference to guidance for exposure to radiation).  Basically, even going home at the normal time must not be taken for granted.  Someone in charge could deal a blow to morale at any moment for any reason, and there is nothing anyone can do.  Work in general is pretty harsh for morale as it is.  Leadership likes to demand perfection.  With all the cleaning I do, I feel like an overpaid janitor a lot of the time.  Tasks get dropped in our lap last-minute a lot.  I am sick of people telling me "it could always be worse" by way of motivation.  And almost worse than that is leadership acting like they are doing us a huge favor by hooking us up with a day off here or there on a weekend which other departments normally get just because it's a weekend.  Since when is a two day weekend a hook up?  A great man once told me not to confuse a better deal for a good deal.  In other words, just because something is better than it could be doesn't mean it's not still shitty.  Even for normal privileges and freedom, I become hopeful at my own risk.  Having to continually resist the impulse to become hopeful is a stupid, stupid practice, I feel, but I have to because I couldn't take the near-constant disappointment otherwise.  Still, I must persevere and study my suffering.
     My teacher told me that it is not a bad thing to become hopeful.  Actually, it can be quite good.  But as I so clearly illustrated above, hope puts me at risk of great inner turmoil.  Doesn't it?  After reflecting on this for a while, I thought that maybe I did not suffer because I was hopeful but rather because I was very attached to a certain outcome.  It is fine to become hopeful in a spiritual sense, optimistic, in other words.  But the type of hope that my work mates and I have come to regard with suspicion is more materialistic.  We have colloquially been referring to attachment to a certain outcome as hope, but really they are not the same.
     So I think that the right way forward is a balance of spiritual optimism and cynical pragmatism.  I will allow myself to hope all over the place as long as it is uplifting and not greedy, but I will hold in check my impulse to dwell on good future events to the extent that their failure to manifest would result in excessive suffering, maintaining all attachment to a particular future as low as reasonably achievable... MAATAPFALARA

Navy Koans: Case 1

The Case:

     A sailor was cleaning a horizontal surface with a sponge and a bucket of water.  His chief walked up to him.  The sailor said, "Chief! I cleaned this horizontal surface yesterday.  It is clean.  Why am I cleaning it again?"  The chief whacked the sailor with a foxtail.  The sailor was greatly enlightened.

Verse:

     Bucket, sponge, water, horizontal surface
     Cleaning something that is already clean
     Abiding in non-duality, one does not suffer

Commentary:

     Careful, sailor, not to drown in your bucket of water! That horizontal surface was never sullied, nor will it ever be clean.  "Again," is spoken, but therein lies delusion.  If Dogen could hear this lie, he would drive him from the Propulsion Plant Space with a whisk!  Though we are already enlightened, still we must practice.  With no gaining idea, we all must clean a clean horizontal surface.  

Flushing Underwear Down the Toilet -- Or: Empathy Sympathy Sadness & Suffering

     Earlier today, I hugged a coworker of mine (I needed a hug) and told him, "you know that part in The Green Mile when John Coffey says how the hate and meanness of other people feels like bees stinging him?  I feel like that all the time."  It's true.  I don't mean to be overly dramatic, but one of my biggest challenges at work is being around rampant free expression of hate and negativity.  Whether I am weak of character, or whether I have subconsciously decided on a "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach, or whether some natural social mechanism has merely run its course, I have started expressing hate and negativity more freely, too.  Back at prototype, when I told one of the staff instructors that I aspired to ordain and train as a buddhist monk, he advised that I get out of the navy as soon as I could.  "It might change you," he said.  He's right.  It's hard to say which causes me more grief: the anger and vitriol from those around me or the anger and vitriol from me, myself.  Whichever it is, I definitely struggle with both every day.
     I do often feel that either through birth or upbringing (or some combination), I am endowed with a deep-seated, abiding empathy which (and I didn't realize this until recently) A LOT of people lack.  It seems like most people do not have feelings in response to negativity, whether others' or their own.  It seems like many people just don't consider others' feelings a factor in their decision-making process.  Not to toot my own horn, but I often ask the question "how will this impact others?" when choosing my actions.  But (just to pick one example) on numerous occasions, the toilets in the bathroom for which reactor controls division (of which I am part) is responsible have gotten backed-up and even overflowed because someone has flushed underwear.  Such a person is obviously anti-social, just wants to watch the world burn, gets a fucked-up thrill from causing trouble for other people.  I fantasize about catching someone doing this red-handed: I would kick them with my steel-toe boot using my full strength square in the gut, then proceed to bash their head into the hardest, closest object to us.  Now, of course, if I ever did do such a thing, my navy career would be over.  Would I feel enough satisfaction from such violence to justify it?  I doubt it.  Would this individual "learn a lesson"?  I really think that if they aren't already considering the impact they have on other people, getting the shit beat out of them wouldn't help.  So actually, all this hatred and negativity is just festering inside me, causing me pain.  But I yearn so desperately to do SOMEthing about this situation and others like it.
      I feel like I got some small peek into how buddhism fits into all this at dinner this evening.  I went out to a nice-ish restaurant.  It had a sort of industrial, rustic décor, with the standard fare one might expect for such a place: a pork dish, a steak, some appetizers, some fish, lots of wine...entrées priced around $18-42.  After considering the various options, I decided to get the "Catch of the Day."  I liked the preparation described by the menu, and none of the other options seemed as appealing. I was going to ask what the "Catch of the Day" was, but then I realized I didn't care.  I had already made up my mind.  All that that information could serve to do would be to make me feel better about my decision.  I overheard a guy at another table asking questions about the fish.  At first, I thought about how all life is chaos and that people like that guy were desperately just trying to feel like they had some kind of control over it.  Then I realized I had been about to do the same thing.  Wouldn't it be something if we could both just be happy we had $20+ to spend on one fish meal that evening?  I passed a few homeless on the walk to the restaurant and another couple on the walk back.  I gave them nothing.  Whether it's fish or flushed underwear, life is constant chaos.  A lot of suffering results directly from ignorance of this truth.
     When I realized that I was doing the same thing as that guy, when I realized that the fish and the underwear were different manifestations of the same phenomenon, that's when I felt like I might have an inkling of what it means to practice buddhism.  We are all trying to control chaos, and we all suffer for it.  Rather than be a judgmental prick, I should endeavor to stop trying to control it and just sympathize with others for their suffering and suffer in my own way along with them.  I heard that equanimity was the willingness to endure whatever is arising.  That's a really good way to put it.  And even if whatever is arising isn't exactly what I imagined as something I could endure, still I must try to endure it.  It's a struggle.  But, as my teacher Jane Schneider said: "The struggle is the only real.  Success is nothing."

Motivational quote of the damned century...

Suck it up, Buttercup -- Equanimity, Navy-style

     If there is one lesson I am grateful to have learned from the Navy, it can be summed up in the phrase I used for this post's title. When I first heard a chief say this to me, I almost laughed aloud I was so delightfully surprised by the direct wisdom of this playful yet stern catchphrase.  I really feel that this is pointing to a lesson I have learned time and again through zen practice.
     I have a lot of problems. They range from macroscopic (how will the human species avoid destroying ourselves?) to trivial (fucking assholes don't know how to merge!). Quick aside: it seems like those two problems are really just different iterations of the same underlying frustration. But anyways... At work, I sometimes delay my own progress out of frustration with some such issue or another. This only hurts me. At times, doing this even adds to my frustration. The resolution I imagine will fix everything will never come to be. The resolution I should instead put my efforts toward realizing is essentially equanimity: the willingness to experience any mental state (nod to Darlene Cohen for that phrasing). When I am unwilling to be frustrated, I am unwilling to deal with my frustration in a constructive way.
     Getting all butt-hurt about stuff is useless. Whining about it and ruminating only make it worse. The buddhist guidance of right attitude is not something I will eventually obtain after practicing at Tassajara (though I may benefit in other ways). I can practice the noble eightfold path (or whichever spoke is applicable) here and now. Sometimes, though, I need a verbal smack on the head to remind me of this.

Three Soda Cans -- Or: Pragmatism, not idealism

     I frequently get really upset over what appear to be small issues. I felt like writing about this one for some reason. The other day on board the ship, we did a ceremony to commemorate "crossing the line" -- when a ship crosses the equator. It is a tradition steeped in maritime history. For our ship, it involved a lot of water and no small amount of dirt... and also some tuna. In any case, it was pretty messy. I lucked out and got to the showers before a long line formed. A couple guys waiting in the berthing area asked if I would get sodas for them. I agreed. Then I did my laundry. Later, I got back to the berthing and the three empty soda cans were just left out... on my locker no less. There were three because one of the guys asked me to get him two sodas. Some different guys were talking about this. It was not the only example of littering that day; they recounted an exchange with another guy in berthing who left his soda cans out, too, in which he gave the excuse that the berthing was going to get cleaned up later, anyway. It didn't seem important to him that he might not be the one to clean it. I told one of the guys I bought a soda for that I didn't appreciate him leaving his can out. He gave me the same retort. There wasn't even a hint of apology, even though he must have been able to tell I was upset about it. When I was venting about this to a friend, I said something to the effect of, "I'll think really hard before I do something nice for someone again." I was upset because I hate the pathologically pragmatic attitude I encounter so frequently on board this ship which excuses indecency and makes work for others. I pick up a lot of soda cans and other trash because people leave it laying around in the classroom, head, berthing, pretty much everywhere.
     It is not hard for me to understand that people often don't clean up after themselves because there is a compulsory period of cleaning every day during which this trash gets picked up. Knowing that one's soda can will be cleaned up by someone else because it is part of the routine, one would be hard-pressed to make a convincing argument why one SHOULD throw away one's own soda can. Now, I estimate the percentage of people that behaves this way is small. Most soda cans and other trash get thrown away with no problem. And I think that is because common decency is still pretty common. But today it occurred to me that such motivation is idealistic rather than pragmatic.
     I hate the frustration I feel when I am challenged to convince someone of something with pragmatic logic when I myself believe it because of my personal ideology. I was also upset because I don't like feeling like being idealistic is a bad thing (and by the way, I really don't think I was being that idealistic!). But lately I have been reading a book which suggests that buddhism is not an idealistic religion but a pragmatic one. The happiness that is said to come from buddhism is a result of living according to the dharma. So we live buddha's teaching and naturally are free from suffering. Bam! That's pragmatic. Interesting. But I was still upset -- maybe most of all -- because if buddhist practice is supposed to yield happiness, then why wasn't my good deed from an hour ago making me happy in the face of this wretched selfishness? Well, I thought it over and here's what I came up with: The spontaneous generosity was buddhist practice. When I projected retroactive expectations onto those guys, however, that was not buddhist practice. They played Pirates of the Caribbean on the ship's TVs that day, and a quote from Jack Sparrow sums it up best: "They done what's right by them. Can't expect any more than that." Even when evaluating the past, to attach to a certain outcome will create suffering, e.g. anger. And yes there ARE some things worth getting angry about in order to change... Maybe littering is one of them. But I have to be willing to experience the anger that arises and channel it. If I am not willing, I fall victim to the ravages of my own mind's karma.
     I sometimes doubt the purported pragmatism of buddhism. Maybe that is because I am mistaking an idealistic notion of buddhism for actual buddhism, and I am mistaking a rough, common idea of pragmatism for the way buddhism actually works. It's not magic, it's just the cause and effect of the mind and body. And though buddhist pragmatism may be too subtle to explain in a convincing, materialistic way, that is not the same as being idealistic. But then what's with all that flowery, universal compassion stuff? And IS "common decency" an ideal?

By the way, there were nine uses of "pragmatic" or forms of that word, including the title, in this entry.

My Tattoos

     My first two tattoos ever are a pair that I have thought about getting since I was at Tassajara. It's been a decent amount of time since I got them, and I am still happy that I got them. I talked a little about them on Facebook when I got them, but I wanted to expound on the small blurbs I typed when I posted pics.
     Style-wise, I like that there is symmetry (they are both short phrases, one on each arm), but there is also asymmetry (the one on my right arm has a little wave shape to the text). Here's what they say: on my left arm, "Breathe through it"; on my right arm, "Turn the light inward". The lettering is basically my own "fancy" print. They are advice -- notes from myself, to myself. The first one, "Breathe through it", was said to me by a practice leader at Tassajara when I asked about what to do when I feel overwhelmed by negative states of mind. For some reason, the power of the utter simplicity and truth of this made a huge impact on me. I want never to forget this simple advice. Even though I know what I got tattooed on my arm, I like that I can look at it from time to time and remember that I at one point heard a piece of advice that I wanted to never ever forget. In some ways, it is like summarizing all the lessons I have ever learned from zazen in one sentence. Am I feeling physical discomfort? Breathe through it. Am I frustrated at work and cannot wait to get home? Breathe through it. Am I feeling such intense anger or sadness that unwholesome desires or daydreams manifest ceaselessly? Breathe through it.
     Especially now, onboard my carrier, deployed, trapped with a lot of people who are less enthusiastic than I am about being considerate of others, it is vital that I remember many things. First, my practice is for others. That is something that my teacher has said, and it is important not to lose sight of the fact that I practice for the benefit of others. While it is true that I suffer less through buddhist practice, my goal is to benefit those around me. Second, now is never forever. This "now" will always become another "now", complete with its own mind states and possibilities. Maybe it is really, really similar to the one right before it. But it is not the same. Whatever is happening in the present WILL change, sooner or later. I have only to focus on my breathing and remember the transient nature of reality. And hey, maybe I can learn something. Third, when I respond to negativity with more negativity, I am effectively taking on another person's bad karma. When someone lashes out at someone else, it is because they are suffering. Sadly, expressing that negativity leads to more suffering. I can either engage that negativity skillfully and help both parties suffer less, or I can engage it unskillfully and both parties suffer. This may be overly simplistic, but it is more or less the truth in interpersonal conflict.
     That third thing that I must remember ties in to my other tattoo. The phrase "Turn the light inward" comes from Dogen. I don't know which fascicle, but I bet it's one of the essays in Shobogenzo. The whole sentence is something like "Turn the light inward and take the backward step," but just the first part caught my attention. It's got a few meanings which I want to remember. One interpretation is that when I look at others' faults and judge them, I am shining a light on them -- like a beam of investigation, I find out their flaws and hunt for the causes of their behavior to solve their problems (or just feel superior). But I really need to take that beam and turn it on myself. This interpretation reminds me of a quote I heard attributed to Confucius: "When I see virtue in others, I vow to emulate it. When I see evil, I look within." Rather than waste energy critiquing the behavior of others, which not only doesn't help anything but is also a shitty habit in terms of personal growth, I should examine my own life and look for the ways I can be more skillful, compassionate, and wise. Besides, as another Dogen quote goes, "Only a fish knows a fish's heart." I have no idea what's going on for that other person over there. So it is not for me to judge. Another meaning of this phrase for me relates to learning truth, to finding a solution to a problem. I think it is fair to say that the root of every problem I have ever had, the source of all my suffering, lies within myself. But the good news is that inside is also the source of the end of suffering, the source of wisdom, the source of the solution. So there is no need to look for the truth anywhere beyond my own experience. This ties into the third meaning. This meaning is much more vague, and I only feel a sense of this meaning so far. It is something like, investigating within is the way to realize the truth. I feel like I maybe already said that, but this time I mean it more generally. Dogen says, "To study Zen is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. Forgetting the self, one is actualized by everything." So the first step in the great endeavor of realizing the truth of zen involves looking within and seeing exactly what it is that's there. I should do that. But I forget to do that. So I got a reminder tattooed on my right arm.

What I'm Running From

     It has been nearly a year since the last time I wrote in this blog. As luck would have it, a big reason I haven't been writing in here is the subject of this entry: laziness. I am probably not going to spend a lot of time developing the thoughts behind this bit of writing because I'm worried that if I do I will overthink and ultimately not write it. And since this is the most effort I've made in writing on here for quite a while, I want to go with it and get it out there rather than let it die.
     Recently, during indoctrination training onboard the carrier I'm assigned to, it was suggested that in one way or another, all of us joined the Navy because we are running from something. Perhaps we're running from bills, drugs, a dead-end job, a bad neighborhood... After I considered this for a second or two, it occurred to me that perhaps this person was making a good point. Maybe it is not true of everyone in the Navy, but at least I could say honestly that I joined the Navy because I was running from many things. Among these things is one of the five hindrances to buddhist practice: torpor, or laziness.
     I want to digress for a second and say that I dislike calling this quality "sloth". The sloth is a noble creature. It lives a wonderful life, and I feel that to shame such an awesome animal by associating its name with a negative characteristic (in fact one of the seven deadly sins in Catholic teaching) is to say God erred when he created that marvelous thing. Back to my entry.
     When I decided to join the Navy, I was almost 27 years old. I had been living in Los Angeles for just over four years. Now a lot of people, and I was one, would say that making it past even one year in that city is a big deal. But the more I thought about it, the less I felt like I had accomplished anything just by BEING there. After all, my parents had subsidized my gas and food and car insurance (and I was driving a car they purchased... and which they took back at some point leaving me to get around exclusively using public transportation) for most of those four years. I was living paycheck to paycheck. I nearly got kicked out of my apartment at some point by my roommates for being late in paying the rent. I was miserable, and I wanted to change my situation, but I felt trapped. I felt like I was spinning my wheels and going nowhere, so I didn't put forth a lot of effort towards acting or comedy... and I therefore perpetuated a self-fulfilling prophecy of going nowhere. I was lazy. I smoked a lot of pot instead of working hard after finishing my shift at Starbucks to realize the dream that had brought me out there in the first place. One night after my enlistment paperwork was signed, while a coworker and I were closing up the store, I actually blurted out, "I think I joined the Navy because I needed an excuse to quit smoking pot."
     I had considered a few alternatives. I could move somewhere cheaper and work at a different Starbucks until my debts were paid off and then just go live at Tassajara. I could apply for scholarships for grad school. I could re-double my efforts in acting and comedy and work to justify my existence out in the City of Angels. But these didn't motivate me in the same way that joining the Navy did. To my mind at that time, the Navy represented the opposite of everything I was doing wrong. I felt like I was being selfish to try making money in popular media. I felt like it would be a scam to go directly into monastic life and monk training. I felt like I wasn't contributing. I felt like nothing I did mattered. And most of all, I was tired of feeling so fucking lazy. So, I felt like I could join the Navy and solve all of that. I felt like I could get away from those feelings if I was a United States Sailor.
     It's funny how the mind will play the same tricks on itself over and over again. It had barely been a month after I finished my summer at Tassajara -- where I clearly learned that I can never run from any of my problems since I am always the root cause of them -- before I was trying to run again. But that's no matter. Really, as I explained in my first couple entries, there were many reasons that inspired me to join. For now, though, I'll finish exploring the silliest of them.
     I haven't been completely wrong. I am doing more, earning more money, than I was back in Los Angeles. I am constantly accelerating... no more a victim of stagnant inertia. And, of course, I don't smoke pot these days. But now, it seems, I see more laziness in and around me than ever before. And now, too, I have another hindrance to battle: ill will. I see some garbage laying around the classroom or the head, and the laziness of the people who left it there infuriates me. I hear someone talking about the studying they are doing, or see two guys going off to the gym, and I fume inwardly that I am heading to bed instead of doing those things, too.
     These days, laziness is a special trigger for me. I often feel torpor is humankind's worst sin. It is the biggest hindrance to us all. We could soar like angels, but we are too lazy to use our wings. Giving up our prejudices takes too much work. Putting aside our comfort for the greater good is counter-intuitive to our species. I am no exception. And so it goes. Ironically, to stop running and face the aspects of myself and others that I would rather not with radical acceptance rather than disdain is too great a task for me right now. Or at least that's how it feels. But as my teacher Greg says, perseverance is the way to practice with this. I'll try.

The Conservation of Happiness

     So I don't know if this is a thing all throughout the Navy or just concentrated in the nuke community (or perhaps it is known far and wide, and I am only just now hearing about it), but a phrase that keeps popping up in conversations with instructors and students is "Conservation of Happiness."  It is a reference to the conservation of energy (energy can neither be created nor destroyed, merely altered in form -- also known as the first law of thermodynamics) except this version states that happiness can neither be created nor destroyed, merely transferred from one person to another.  Basically, if I want to be more happy I have to make YOU less happy, thus taking some of your happiness.  Now of course I know this is not true.  From my experiences, I can say with certainty that a person can become happy or unhappy without affecting others either way.  What's more, I feel sure that few (if any) people I have encountered who would invoke this pseudo-principle sincerely believe that it is true.
     This idea gets brought up a lot, though.  And even if nobody who brings it up believes that it is true, it has a strange sort of reality which has real effects.  For starters, it does astutely describe a phenomenon which seems to be deeply embedded in the culture I am now a part of.  I witness a troubling amount of spite and bullying.  I want to take a moment and clarify that I am not talking about bullying in the sense of malicious, ongoing torture.  This is more like aggressive ribbing, comprised of short encounters where one person will put down another person in order to feel better.  I also hear about such instances anecdotally, like "when I made that guy cry I got sooo happy."  I was bemoaning the unkind nature of my classmates to someone who has been to sea, and he told me that I should grow a thicker skin because it is even worse on the ships.  One story I heard which perfectly illustrates this warning involved one sad crew member who was talking about wanting to cut himself.  His crewmates' response was to find all the knives they could and stash them in the sad crew member's rack.
     Even if the wording which describes this phenomenon is unique to the Navy, I realize that putting others down to feel better is nothing new.  But most people grow out of it by the end of high school.  So far in the Navy, though, it seems like this systematic schadenfreude is not only tolerated but encouraged.  Why might this be?  I cannot know for sure, but I have a few thoughts I'd like to share.  For starters, the whole military resembles one giant frat.  Back in college, this was a culture that I had a strange love-hate relationship with.  On the one hand, pack mentality, group-think, cult of personality bullshit repulses me on so many levels.  To suppress creativity and novelty in favor of primitive ideals which appeal to the lowest common denominator stymies progress, and all the frat activities I witnessed around the U of A campus seemed to be demonstrative of this kind of retardation.  On the other hand, though, I did not like feeling like an outsider.  I longed to bond with fellow males on that intensely basic level of understanding which seemed to come naturally to that crowd.  After all, fraternité means brotherhood in French.  So now, in the Navy, I am learning a thing or two about male bonding on a basic level.  Case in point, another comment from a sea-returnee was something to the effect of "It's when people stop messing with you that you should worry." 
     I am still puzzled by this.  All my buddhist training on kind speech seems to be non-applicable.  I mean sure, there are exchanges of good-natured barbs, but that's not what I'm talking about.  To really improve one's mood in keeping with this "principle," one must genuinely hurt someone else.  And people do derive some form of pleasure from upsetting others, particularly subordinates.  Maybe that's one reason for this behavior: by using one's position of authority to hurt those beneath them, even in ways with no lasting ramifications, one reenforces their place in the pecking order.  But upon even further analysis -- and this is what makes this issue really fucking crazy to me -- it is apparent that the person who is trying to take the happiness from the other person doesn't actually want or need the other person to be unhappy for very long.  What they want is a temporary transference of happiness and then subsequently a recovery and resurgence of their victim.  Because we all are, in fact, on the same team.  We need to know the people we are working with are strong, emotionally, because in a crisis situation our own lives depend on the strength of our crewmembers.
     So apparently this behavior kills two birds with one stone -- improving the mood of one person by practicing mild sadism and/or underscoring their authority (if a power dynamic is at work) while simultaneously testing the emotional fortitude of their teammates, perhaps building it up in the process.  I submit that it is possible to improve one's mood and increase people's emotional stability without resorting to behavior rife with potential for negativity.  But such alternatives must necessarily encourage empathy, and in a culture devoted to the vanquishing of one's enemies, empathy can be a dangerous luxury.  Now I posit, based on my experience and understanding, that even empathy towards one's enemies can be possible without undoing the goals of a military.  But perhaps my understanding is flawed.  Perhaps I am coasting on an ignorance masquerading as understanding, and I am really all fucked up.  But anyways, I will keep inquiring into this and other issues that arise and try not to settle too comfortably into an answer or explanation.
     I kind of lost any sense of thesis in this entry.  This sort of thing defies understanding.  There is a continuum of messing with people.  It runs the gamut from ribbing for the sake of camaraderie to malicious, sadistic sociopathic bullying.  I think mostly, the discussion I attempted can only serve to scrutinize my own motives.  Any more than that is beyond the scope of buddhist examination.

Tassajara Journal Review 1

     I have wanted to write something in here for a while, but I have been both bothered by too many ideas and bothered by too little motivation for any one of them.  So to appease my longing to contribute to this project and to express something that is going on for me right now, I am posting a journal entry from my time at Tassajara. 

     At times, I feel like the mouse in this next story.  And what I symbolize in the story, the ogre, the oaf... Well that could be a number of things.  No need to name them.  Anyways, here it is:

Monday, June 13 -- Day 65 (10:30 pm)
     Just now, in the bathroom, a large mouse or smallish rat was surprised by my arrival [in the lower barn bathroom] and had no way to escape.  So what he did is find the corner farthest from me and make himself as small as possible.  When I went closer to get a good look at him, he dashed past me to a different corner (inset of sorts, on the step up to the stalls) and hid behind the broom/dustpan.  I was able to sit on the step and see him closer, but as I reached to tap his tail he made a break for it across the room and this time behind the container for hair clippers.  Again, I went closer.  I kept this up for a little bit; partly to see this creature closer, but also partly to observe his method of self-preservation...and...it wasn't much, really.  I mean, without an escape all he could do was put some object between us or just bury his face in a corner and hope that I would leave.  If I got too close for comfort, he would make a break for it.  Watching him at one point, cowering, whiskers aquiver, I realized, "he's more scared of me than I am irritated by him."  Then I brushed my teeth.  While brushing, I went up to him in a new spot behind the plastic bin the toilet plunger is kept in and pinned him against the wall with said bin so I could give him a tiny stroke on the back in a last attempt at comprehension, on my part, of the reality of this creature, and communication of peace as well, no matter how unlikely it was that it would be understood.  Then I thoroughly washed my hands (who knows what diseases it might by carrying in his fur?) and finished brushing my teeth. 

Guilt

     I've heard it said that Catholics and Jews tend to be more guilty than most.  I don't know why, but that's the accepted stereotype.  Well, I was raised Catholic.  And whether or not that has anything to do with anything, I am noticing a lot of guilt lately surrounding my buddhist practice.  Guilt is a useless emotion if it isn't serving to motivate improvement.  For example, when I feel guilty about not practicing the guitar I paid $200 for (or when I feel guilty for paying $200 for something I don't practice), when I feel guilty for not working out or exercising when I have plenty of free time, these are opportunities to act differently, to do the things I have objectively deemed worthy of my time instead of being idle.  I feel like the best scenario would involve doing these things without the guilty feelings serving as motivation.  But the guilt is there, largely because I don't do these things way more than I do, and so I usually just end up feeling guilty.  This brings up the question of whether I actually WANT to do these things, or if there is something else going on -- some neuro-peptide addiction which is gratified by guilty feelings, perhaps.  It's difficult to say.  But if I'm feeling guilty and NOT taking action to fix whatever I am feeling guilty about, then the guilt just ends up being somewhat masturbatory -- I get to continue being shitty but still feel kind of good for being tortured over my shittiness.
     Often, though, I feel guilty about stuff that is much more subtle and nuanced than simply going to the gym vs sitting around in my room.  Sometimes I feel guilt over something no rational person would feel I should have to change, like not returning the feelings of someone, for example.  I have noticed I will feel guilty BOTH for giving a homeless person money and for holding back from giving a homeless person money.  I feel guilty when my practice doesn't resemble that of people I look up to.  That last one is really a bit silly; I mean isn't it the point of "looking up to" someone to emulate the qualities in someone more developed which one hopes to cultivate in themselves?  So while it's good to feel motivated, there's no reason to feel guilty about not being a particular way NOW.  I struggle immensely with this.
     I still get angry, upset, or otherwise worked up -- quite often, actually.  I feel guilty when I get like this.  One reason is that I feel like I am misrepresenting buddhism, zen specifically.  I (perhaps erroneously) feel like meditation practice should help a person be calmer, more collected.  I mean, it probably does... A common fear for me (which I touched on in an earlier blog entry) is that meditation really only helps keep me at mostly-normal levels of irritation -- that without it I would be a raging psychopath or something.  That's most likely not true.  What IS true, maybe, is that I was more angry or prone to getting worked up before I started zen practice, that I am less so now, and that in the future these traits will be even smaller.  I do need to keep reminding myself that the fruits of practice (as Darlene Cohen mentioned) are best measured in degree rather than in order of magnitude (that phrasing was co-opted from an NPR article I can't now recall).  It takes more than four years to turn an intense young man into a sage, cool cucumber.  In the mean time, I will persevere in noticing my failings, feeling guilty about them (if it's a failing I can rectify, like judging people or being unkind, or clinging to a small sense of self) and using that as motivation to work continually TOWARDS the idea of buddhism.  If I notice masturbatory guilt, I will try to let it go.  And if I can't, well at least I will do my best not to feel guilty about it.

How do you end the suffering in the world?

     So a week or so ago, one of my classmates asked me, "How do you end all the suffering in the world?"  My response was something like, "Well that's the $64,000 question, isn't it?  I would say the answer is to have everyone in the world practice buddhism.  But of course, you can't force people to practice buddhism.  So I guess there isn't really a way."  They looked at me for a second in confusion, then were like, "No, man! Kill everyone!  That's what everyone else has been saying."  Apparently this question had been asked of a few people that day, and the common response was to kill everyone.  He asked a classmate the same question right after, and that's the response he got then, too.  (Granted, that classmate in particular had just overheard our conversation and was giving that answer as a joke.  Also, I found out later this question was inspired by the end of the video game Final Fantasy 9 in which an evil robot or something comes to end the world's suffering by killing everyone and you must defeat it.)  I really liked this exchange.  Folks unfamiliar with buddhism would likely not know that that question is central to Shakyamuni's story of awakening and the inspiration for seeking the way in countless devotees that followed.  So I got really happy when he asked me this.  I was excited to talk about something that I have considered for a while.
     But in a way, the answer he got from everyone else is more accurate.  After all, I have seen first-hand how difficult it is to end one's own individual suffering, even with continual practice and reflection.  The answer of killing everyone reminded me of a Norm Fischer talk in which he submits that really the only way a person can end their suffering is suicide (if I remember correctly).  It reminded me of a Linda Galijan talk in which a story of buddha is recounted where someone asks him about troubles with his wife, his business, etc. and buddha says, "There are eighty kinds of suffering.  I can only help with one of them."  To which the person asks, "What's that one?" and buddha responds, "Dealing with the other 79."  [paraphrase].  Numerous times at Tassajara, I was reminded that buddhism is called a practice for good reason; no one picks up a guitar and can instantly play like Eric Clapton.  Similarly, simply practicing buddhism is not a way to end one's suffering -- at least, not instantly.
     So, I still like my answer better.  I do believe that the more I practice, the more adept I will be at not suffering.  The more I examine the small self that suffers, the less energy this small self will have to keep suffering going.  When I am clear-headed, it becomes very apparent that each instance of suffering is an opportunity to practice non-clinging, non-aversion, and to awaken to dharma.  So each opportunity I actually seize to practice really does represent a moment in which practice ends suffering. And because of this, I find it very important to continue, and (when I am able) to show others how to do so as well.  It's a marathon, though, not a sprint.  If I don't remember that, well... I suffer.

Drinking the Kool-Aid

     So I know that this phrase was originally used to reference the Jonestown Massacre, as a way of describing the "buying in" process it takes to think along the lines a cult wants you to, but lately I feel like its usage has broadened to mean a more general "buying in" of all kinds of ideas, lifestyles, attitudes, etc.  And even if this phrase is not so general these days, well that is still how I have been thinking about it.
     I have been thinking about it with regards to my experience in the Navy and what I want to do with my life afterward.  Recently, I have felt particularly out of place; a round peg trying to fit into a square hole.  I look around and see a fair amount of kool-aid drinking.  "He's a dirtbag." "Don't be that guy." "You're talking to a chief.  Of course you're wrong."  Stuff like that.  I would say the Navy is kind of cult-ish in many ways.  There seems to be a conflation between being a good team member and giving up your personal identity.  I know it is not truly this way, but the catch-phrases often seem to promote a subversion of critical thought in favor of aligning to military culture.  By the way I just noticed that "culture" starts with the word "cult."  Interesting.  But in any case, I get it.  It is important to follow procedure without questioning it, to trust that it has sound reasoning behind it, because in an emergency situation lives do depend on following one's training.  And I feel those of us in the nuclear propulsion training pipeline have an exceptional degree of instruction in the rationale behind the procedures we will be following.  The specific application of "Ship > shipmate > self" I feel is very important.  It is the extraneous personality traits that I could do without.  It is the attitude that I see many around me adopting that I feel is causing tension inside me, since I am not adopting it as well.  I don't want to drink the kool-aid, I just want to do my job.
     Funny enough, I had similar fears about zen buddhism at first.  As Brad Warner writes in his blog, Tassajara (really any zen center, or similar type of place) can be kind of cult-ey in its own way, too.  At first, I was really turned off by the apparent ethos of subverting thoughts of oneself as an individual, since "ego" is bad and we are all trying to awaken to "the true self," or whatever.  I wondered (and asked) what the end goal was -- a totally homogenous bunch of zen zombies with no preferences or even the instinct of self-preservation?  That's seriously how it seemed in certain lights.  But I realize that is not true.  Which is not to say there's no kool-aid at zen centers, either. 
     It occurs to me that whatever the thought process, narrative, or conceptualizations we are buying into in order to interact with the world around us, it still entails "buying in" -- it's all kool-aid.  There is "Defend freedom! Kill the bad guys and terrorists!" and then there is "All experience is part of one buddha body."  And then there is reality.  But with our minds being what they are, concepts do arise and (maybe this only applies to a beginner like myself) narratives can be helpful in doing whatever we are doing.  In a practice discussion while at Tassajara, a practice leader told me that we are always telling ourselves a story; but some stories are helpful and some are not.  I like that.  So here, I would say I think it is important to realize that one is always drinking kool-aid of some kind or another and to be careful about what kool-aid one drinks.  I felt so happy when I found the narrative of zen because it just seemed so damned rational.  I think the narrative of the Navy is useful, but it does not resonate for me in the same way that buddhism does.  So for the time being I am sipping from my cup, smiling at the other nice people in matching track suits, then spitting it out and sipping from my zen flask.  And I am doing this so I can learn more about the phenomenon of drinking kool-aid.

"Hell is other people" -- or -- Obstacles in walking the path of a bodhisattva

     So there's this guy in my class... Let's just call him "Alex."  Alex and I have a fair amount of static between us.  A big part of that is because for whatever reason, he seizes every opportunity he can to be derisive, rude, or just plain mean to me.  I don't understand why, but it really pisses me off.  On top of that, I find most every other thing about him annoying beyond belief.  He repeats the same jokes, the same TV show or movie quotes, day in and day out, and they're not even clever!  Judging by his mannerisms I am 100% sure he is homosexual, yet he maintains he is straight.  As a queer individual myself, this irritates me to no end.  In summary, he possesses all the worst personality traits of a spoiled, eighth-grade girl.  Because of this, it is extra infuriating that he has the gall to put me down. 
     It has occurred to me to pity him.  After all, most people only put others down because they themselves feel weak or insecure.  If he is in fact "in the closet," I should be understanding of the internal struggle that must be going on, having gone through it myself.  It has also occurred to me not to judge him at all; reenforcing stereotypes, limiting what others can be based on the small ideas I maintain about life, well that's just plain shitty.  And the extra suffering I experience from his mean-spirited comments is a direct result of my attempt to feel superior.
     I am reminded of a talk Darlene Cohen gave where she talked about a woman at the weekly sangha meeting who would irritate her.  What she had to do was practice letting go of the irritation when the meeting was over, and let the woman irritate her anew each week.  I should try that.  It's not just this one guy, though.  Lots of stuff that lots of people do bothers me.  Like when I vent about Alex to someone else, and they just calmly reply that we just have to not let small stuff bother us, cause we'll be in the same class for the next five months.  It frustrates me when other people seem much more adept at letting small stuff slide... I'M the one meditating and chanting! Surely I should be the best buddhist in the room!  Why are they so good at being collected if they don't even meditate?  Why am I so bad at it?  Would I be even worse if I didn't meditate?  Is that all my practice is good for -- just being not-quite-as-shitty as I would otherwise be?

I confess I am guilty of wanting something from practice.

     There's countless examples of other people bothering me, no point in trying to list them all.  At Tassajara, at some point it became abundantly clear to me that I am always the only source of my suffering.  Not my circumstances, not what happens to me, and certainly not other people, no matter how much it seems like it.  I have always tried to remember this lesson.  Well, as we can see from my experiences with Alex and other people, I am pretty forgetful these days.
     Jizo Bodhisattva vowed to go to the hell realms in his mission to save all beings... As he is one of the guiding inspirations for me, perhaps I can be inspired to be more enthusiastic about finding myself in hell (i.e. around other people, per Sartre's quote) and continue towards my goal of saving all beings as well... Starting with myself.

Dry Spell

     It has been just over three months since my last blog entry.  I am disappointed in myself.  I really intended to write more regularly when I started this blog, even if the posts were short and banal, but instead I have succumbed to torpor and let the practice of examination through writing stagnate somewhat.  But the title of this post is actually not a reference to the gap in blog posts; it is a reference to my sitting practice.
     Around April 10, I injured my right foot while playing frisbee, and eventually I had to get a cast put on.  At first, I used this as an excuse to take a vacation from zazen entirely (since I disliked sitting in a chair -- lower back pain being one reason).  But I eventually did make myself start sitting again; at first in a chair, then I even gave my pillow/zafu method a try with my right leg extended out.  My practice is still rather haphazard compared to the trend I was on before the injury, however this experience has yielded some insight into my approach to practice.
     I have often wondered why I try to do zazen every day.  I mean, I practically jumped at a chance to stop doing it, guilt-free... If it is such a burden then why do it?  Like, even if I would sit every day for a week, I would still have bad days and good days; I would still snap at people sometimes; I would fall easily into greed, hatred, and delusion.  Well, after my vacation, I noticed that when I wasn't sitting regularly, my bad days were worse and I would fall into the three poisons more often.  This is one observation which got me back on the wagon, if only by one hand and jumping to keep up.  I'm guessing the effect that I observed is akin to that which I have heard Brad Warner, among others, describing; like brushing one's teeth, daily zazen shakes up some of the stuff which has settled in the mind, allowing it to drift along its way and yielding more clarity.  With this additional clarity, one is less likely to be tricked by deluded thinking and fall into negative patterns.  Okay, so I sit zazen in order to suffer less.  Oh, I also remember my dreams much more.
     It bugs me to think that I should be so transactional about this (see "Thank you for your service"); in other words, I give up the time every day it takes to meditate and I give up some degree of comfort while I am meditating in exchange for less suffering.  It further bugs me that I should fall into comparing mind to motivate myself back on the cushion (I am MORE calm and aware when I do zazen than when I don't).  But all this hemming and hawing is just silly!  I am forgetting that practicing zen is really for the benefit of all beings (including myself), and there is no reason to be bugged by the natural fruits of practice.  I feel discouraged when I think that there is no way sitting on a cushion can affect the countless hearts of people I will never meet and therefore can't end the world's suffering... but that is silly too because I am forgetting the ways in which I benefit people with whom I interact on a daily basis; when I am calmer and more aware, my actions are more skillful, and I am thus beneficial to others.  One of the vows I chant after sitting goes, "Beings are numberless; I vow to save them."  It doesn't say "all of them."  Over the course of one life, the beings one can "save" or more practically "benefit" are indeed numberless.  And so I practice for the beings I CAN benefit, and pray for the ones I can't.
     As a final thought, and a further turning of this dharma wheel, I just wanted to say that all of this angst and justification are totally unnecessary, and they are even avoidable if I were to just do the practice of just sitting.  It occurs to me that "shikantaza" means not only "just sitting" when on the cushion, but "JUST SITTING!!!" when approaching the cushion as well; not rationalizing, not comparing, not scrutinizing... Just... Sitting...  Letting thoughts that arise fall away whether I am on a zafu or a chair, in my room, in a zendo, or in the Rickover building listening to a complaint from a classmate... 

     Damn... this practice is so hard, but so important, too...  I suppose if I suffer less, if I am more skillful with others, so much the better...  But just sit, Burnham, okay?  Okay.

Perception is Reality

     One quote I've heard a lot since joining the Navy is, "perception is reality."  It started in boot camp: our Recruit Division Commander(s) would shout it back to us if anyone argued that they weren't talking in the galley, sleeping, or doing whatever they were accused of doing when they got called out for breaking the rules.  It meant that simply giving the appearance that you were doing something out of line means a petty officer or chief is well within their rights to harp on you for it.  For the record, I mean sleeping anytime between reveille and taps (during a presentation, for example, when it is necessary to stay awake.)  This phrase has persisted into nuclear field training, where the following scenario plays out fairly often: Chief: "SN So-and-so, go stand at a podium in back for the rest of class."  SN So-and-so: "But I wasn't sleeping."  Chief: "Perception is reality."
     This phrase continues to strike me as enormously profound.  I know, I know, all the petty officers mean by it is, "Look, you were laying your head down on your desk.  As far as I am concerned, that's as bad as sleeping.  Stop quibbling about whether or not you were literally asleep and do as you're told since you were obviously not sitting up and paying attention like you should have been."  Younguns, as it turns out, are remarkably prone to argue with authority figures.  Catch phrases go a long way to convey proper military behavior.  But still... it's pretty zen, I think.
     Perhaps that sounds like a contradiction.  Zen, as I understand it, instructs us to set aside our perceptions, not to believe in them, and instead remind ourselves that perception taints reality, colors it as something different than it is.  All means of perceiving are empty.  But going further, perhaps it dawns on one that such tainted input, flawed though it may be, is the only means of interacting with reality afforded to this body.  While it is important not to get carried away by the thoughts we form about what goes on around us, while satori may be a beautiful experience of truth, a smack in the head from a teacher's kosu still hurts.  And that is very naturally true.  As the Pink Floyd song goes, "...all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be."
     So perhaps "perception is reality" is inaccurate.  Maybe "perception distorts reality" is more accurate. 

     Maybe, "our perception, flawed though it may be, is the closest experience of reality we get." 

     Maybe, "the reality of interdependent co-arising is comprised at least partially by one's own flawed perception and the flawed perception of all beings." 

     Yeah.  That one has a nice ring to it.  And as zen would have us face reality, I feel we would do well to face the perceptions of others as well as our own.
     For example:  Is zen a religion or not?

...

     One day in boot camp, the setting sun was shining in brilliantly through the fogged windows.  Several of my shipmates were trying to see the sun.  Then they complained about their eyes hurting.  I don't remember what exactly the words I shouted at them were, but it was something like, "Holy shit! Of COURSE your eyes hurt you fucking dumbasses!  You've been trying to stare at the fucking sun! There's a REASON you're not supposed to do that!"  I had been having a bad day.  Probably.  In any case it's the response that sticks with me the most:  One guy went, "Wow.  You want to be a zen buddhist monk and you use words like that?"  A lot of responses went through my head, like pointing out how it takes a while for reality/practice to develop towards intention, or how his idea of "monk" is too limited, but I think all I said was, "yeah." or something.  But that issue has remained in my memory, illustrating as it does what peoples' perceptions of religion are.
     I wholeheartedly endorse Brad Warner's position as he states in this blog post.  It really speaks to me.  However I also have noticed that people tend to look at the incense, statues, candles, chanting, austere silent sitting, and perceive "religion."  That is human nature.  The military chaplain corps offers the following options to service members: Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist.  As much as I shuddered to hear "worship" used to refer equally to the various "religious needs" of Christian/Jewish/Muslim sects and buddhist meditation together (since for me there is no aspect of "worship" in my buddhist practices*, though it did occur to me that several branches of buddhist practice are much more similar to some Christian practices than they are to zen), I also had to acknowledge that until people hear otherwise they are bound naturally to perceive any religious practice as just a different flavor of what they have experienced for themselves.
     So in the spirit of the Middle Way, with respect to perceptions about religion, I try to eschew my own perceptions while at the same time accepting the perceptions of others as being a part of reality, part of the "where I am" in the dictum "start where you are."  To use peoples' perceptions as a jumping-off point, not trying to "correct" them, that should be my focus.


*I suppose "homage" is pretty close, all things being equal... but I still don't like the word "worship."

The Power of an Apology

     Last week on Friday, our class had lab exercises all morning.  I partnered with a person who sometimes rubs me the wrong way with their brusque manner.  Long story short, it wasn't too long before I felt that I was getting my intelligence insulted, that I was being rushed, that I was being viewed as incompetent, and it got me angry.  I let my anger show.  Then, I regretted it.  But no matter how nice I tried to be the rest of lab, I could feel the other person had withdrawn behind a wall, and there was nothing I could do to make the tension go away.
     Well, almost nothing.  It occurred to me during lunch that regardless of how I felt from my interactions with this person, the way I responded was negative and unhelpful.  And I can always apologize for my actions.  And furthermore, I can always forgive others for theirs.  So I resolved to forgive the perceived slight and I apologized to that person when we returned to class.  And I felt a LOT better.  The tension between us melted, and the weight of the negativity that I had been carrying around in my heart vanished.  In its place grew a sense of well-being and equanimity.
     Now this positive sense was not to last long, as an interaction with another classmate shortly thereafter put me once again in a foul mood.  I don't think I reacted angrily in person (as I did that morning), but I sure gave them a big piece of my mind in my imagination.  And inside, the outcome was just as destructive: my equanimity had left me and the ball of tension was back.
     I don't know whether karma has a metaphysical aspect or not, but within an hour something uncanny happened: the second person apologized to me.  And I felt a lot better.  And it made me think that maybe that's how I affected the person from that morning.  And it really drove the point home that apologies are powerful.  It made me think of a day at Tassajara...
     That morning, my friend said something really bitchy to me.  And it really hit me hard; my emotions were really raw almost all summer.  My mind took me for a pretty bad trip... like REALLY bad, really fraught with negativity.  I tried talking to him about it later but it just made things even worse.  And I had to get to work for guest dinner.  But while I was going about my business, he came up to me and offered me a sincere apology, and all that negativity just went *woosh* ... gone, gone, gone really far away... It was like seeing a dark storm far away over the ocean, on the horizon.
     And all this makes me think of a quote I saw in a meme on facebook:

Forgive.  Not because the other deserves forgiveness,

but because you deserve peace.

     Well I think in general most all of us do deserve forgiveness, but I don't want to labor that point.  It's a good reminder that the action of forgiveness, the action of an apology, the harmonious dance between those two complimentary actions, really has the power to put out a furnace of emotion inside us and to let us move on to a calmer, happier state.  So give it a try next time you think of it.  It works for me!

Search for a Story

     Lately, I've felt enormous difficulty in practicing buddhism, a lot of confusion.  In order to counteract this, I have been trying to settle upon a succinct expression of my practice that I can remember, like a mantra perhaps, and with which I can re-focus my attention and motivate myself in following this path.  So I wrote down some that came to mind, and wrote down some thoughts, and hopefully something comes up.

My practice is:

Like having a molten iron ball in my throat, which I cannot swallow and cannot spit out.
     This is a koan that I found very helpful in times of difficulty during my summer at Tassajara, and it is an immensely accurate metaphor for my life and practice.  I miss Tassajara dearly.  Dear: (from the free online Merriam-Webster dictionary) "highly valued : precious ... affectionate, fond ... heartfelt," (from Google) "regarded with deep affection".  Yes.  All of that.  And lately I have experienced a profound tension between my longing to return to Tassajara to study and ordain as a monk and my duty to complete the military service I agreed to.  Truly, it is beyond duty, and I know it.  For all the reasons I have already mentioned (and some I haven't, and still more that I have yet to uncover), I do freely undertake my military service.  My perception that it somehow stands between me and somewhere I would rather be is so quintessentially indicative of my susceptibility to greed, hate, and delusion as to be laughable.  So I make peace with my desire, I make peace with my aversion, and I make peace with my delusion.  I remember that being a sailor is merely a step on my way to becoming a monk.  Serving in the Navy will end up serving me, allowing me to return to Tassajara (or anywhere) under my own financial steam.  And my experience throughout is actually the flesh and bones of practice, rather than some ceremonious activity in the mountains of California.  Really, I think the tension I feel about my term of enlistment and my aspirations to follow thereafter might be viewed or interpreted as actually tension between my idealistic and practical natures, or as difficulty in resolving acceptance of the world for what it is with the hope to improve it.  And that is never going to go away; there will always be people, for example, who feel that an attitude of living for the benefit of all beings is foolish because ending the suffering of the world is an impossible task.  Well I would be very foolish indeed to believe it were actually possible to save every person from their greed, hate, and delusion.  But it is not my wish to throw my hands up and stop trying to live an awakened life.  So without spitting out the molten iron ball in my throat, and without swallowing it, whatever else I do is practice.

Non-clinging and non-aversion
     This is a good companion to the last one.  My practice is striving to accept what is, as it is... not getting caught up in wishing I was at Tassajara instead of in the Navy.  Because as I explored earlier, such wishes are useless.  My practice is also throwing away my ideas of what it means to be in the Navy as fast as they crop up.  In this way I cultivate being not "sticky," and what I can experience in place of my ideas and daydreams is actual dharma.

Living by vow and not by karma
     If I had continued living by karma, I would still be working at Starbucks -- staying up too late watching TV, putting off house chores and neglecting my first true aspiration of making a living as a comic/actor.  Instead, I formulated a plan based on new goals that shows real potential to enable me in living a more meaningful life.  I am "engaged to be engaged," doing the Navy thing in support of my aspiration to ordain and train.

Seeing one thing through to the end
     This phrase comes to me from another Suzuki-Roshi quote, in which he is answering a student's question about what Nirvana is.  In a dharma talk I listened to recently, Jaime Howell said that this phrase shouldn't be interpreted for something like the military.  Well, so much for that admonition.  Ironically, I joined the Navy after seeing from my experience at Tassajara in the summer of 2011 that I DO have the ability to see something through to the end, even when it is difficult.  And so I remember this description of Nirvana in times of difficulty, when thoughts of giving up come slinking seductively up my arm like a waif in a dive bar (as they did numerous times at Tassajara, and again in boot camp, and occasionally here at nuke school) because it is true.  I received no glorious dose of supreme radiation as I rode in the passenger seat of my friend James's rental car as he drove out of the valley and back to Los Angeles when I was finally finished with my 5-month stay.  Rather, I just felt peace.  Later, it occurred to me that what I did NOT feel was more important: regret (at leaving prematurely), anger (at whatever caused me to leave), lust (for the comforts I had been living without).  And I suppose that is more what constitutes Nirvana anyway: absence rather than content.  So again, I practice seeing this thing through to the end.  And then the next thing, and then the next thing...

The best practice I've had so far
     This phrase came to me from my good friend Evan Casler, who actually introduced me to zen back when we were roommates in Tucson.  He said it in describing what things were like for him as a member of the board of directors for Zen Desert Sangha in the wake of Pat Hawk Roshi's death.  It's a very poignant observation; it is when practicing becomes difficult that it is most important.  For me, that time is right now.  I am mostly surrounded by people who are at best unfamiliar with buddhist concepts (and at worst downright hostile to them) -- a far cry from the support offered by an intentional community.  I am employed all day every day by an organization whose sole purpose is to kill people and sow destruction, when instructed to by government leaders.  So I can throw "right livelihood" out the window (for now).  The culture of this organization is downright psychotic: on the one hand acknowledging over and over that we are people and people make mistakes, but on the other hand fostering a merciless conviction in notions such as that people either ARE or ARE NOT "dirtbags," that perception IS reality, and that being in charge means being right.  The effect this has on many people that I have seen (including myself) is subtle and worrisome.  My teacher was right to try to dissuade me from taking my practice into this environment.  Indeed, it sometimes seems impossible.  But as stated above, it is in those times that practice becomes most essential. 

And with that, I come to a phrase that occurred to me that I quite like. 

My practice is...      

...like carving a path in solid rock.