Zen Ramblings: Week 12 in the Zen Center

Not much to report this week. We had an all-day sit this past weekend, and I managed to dodge that bullet by volunteering to work in the kitchen. The kitchen crew wanted to sit, I didn't. It all worked out.


An all-day sit is just that. You sit all day. I mean, you take breaks, especially in the afternoon. That's when we do house chores. Hardly a "break", but it's a break from the sitting. I did start and end the day with sitting, but I have to admit, it was nice to work in the kitchen. I'm feeling a little fried these days, plus I sit at my desk at work all day. So it was nice to be moving about in the kitchen. Working in the kitchen requires a lot of mindfulness. I have great respect for the kitchen workers. They are so focused on the task at hand.


We made breakfast and lunch, which was served in the zendo for oryoki. But the crew eats in the dining room in silence. Thank God. You all know how I feel about oryoki. Ugh. Not my cup of tea.


Speaking of tea, I did serve tea in the zendo in the afternoon. It went very smoothly. D, our soku (the person in charge of the serving crew), said it went flawlessly. One of the crew members, R, is a huge San Francisco Giants fan. We talked baseball while we were waiting to serve. R is a great guy. He's in his early sixties, and I never get bored when he tells a story about his grandchildren. And he has a great sense of humor, which is a necessity here at the Zen Center. Not sure if I have already told this story, but I'll tell it again. When the Red Sox were in town last month (and winning), I pulled a wise-ass joke on R. He's a very dedicated practitioner. And he is also the jiko (assistant) of one of our priests. I have great respect for his practice. But he's a Giants fan. And I'm a Red Sox fan.


So when the Red Sox came to town and took two out of three games from the Giants, I had to do something. I'm the door watch person on Monday mornings, which means that I stand by the door when people from the outside are entering into the zendo. R is one of those people. (He's a nonresident, a breath of fresh air for us residents!). I am generally very somber while on door watch duty. I have my prayer shawl wrapped around my shoulders and avoid eye contact with people as is the custom in the zendo. But R, God love him, makes it a point to bow to me, a friendly recognition of my presence. And, naturally, I bow back. Well, on this morning, as he was bowing to me, I bowed back, and gestured him to come closer to me. He was confused. He walked closer to me. When he got close enough, I opened my shawl, and there it was, my Boston Red Sox uniform shirt, beaming in victory. Because we like to maintain silence until after breakfast, and this was well before breakfast, R couldn't say anything. But he certainly did turn several different versions of red in the face. He was beside himself in frustration. I simply beamed. Made my morning. A few minutes later, he subtly tried to trip me in the Buddha Hall, as I was walking in for service. Had he been given more time to rehearse this maneuver, I think he would have succeeded, but he was still in shock from my earlier move down in the zendo, exposing that Red Sox shirt just moments after the poor guy had been sitting in deep meditation. Ah, the element of surprise. This is what we must do to survive.


Of course, R is getting in his digs these days, with the Giants now in Wild Card contention and the Red Sox an agonizing seven games back. Ugh. Humility, humility. R is a good man. I'm very grateful to have him in my life, despite the fact that he's a Giants fan. Could be worse, I suppose.


He could be a Yankees fan.

Eyes Wide Open: Week 11 in the Zen Center

Roo died today. I came home after a fun day of hanging out with a new friend and there he was, eyes wide open, dead, lying on his side, on a plant leaf. I tapped him gingerly, hoping he'd move, knowing he wouldn't. That's so bizarre, to have that perverse sense of hope. I even hoped a few minutes later that he would "wake up", as I was removing him from his fish bowl. I mean, how messed up is that? To cling to that hope that he's not actually dead; that maybe he's just catatonic or really sick. To cling to the hope that he'll "wake up", cute as ever, wiggle his fins, and spin around his bowl a couple of times. To cling to the hope that he'll "wake up" and return me to the normalcy that I'm accustomed to, so that I don't have to feel the sadness of this loss. Because it does hurt. Grief is for the living.

I was actually just talking about him today, about how cute he is. It amazes me how much joy that little four ounce creature brought me. And so briefly. Ours was a short passionate affair, one that lasted a mere ten weeks. But he got me through my transition of living here in the Zen Center. What can I say, I love to love. Is that a crime? It's been great to have something to love, to take care of. Connection. That theme seems to be coming up a lot for me lately.

The timing of Roo's death isn't the greatest, but when is it ever good timing to have a pet fish die?

It was a pretty emotional week for me. I've been given the opportunity to practice compassion - on a deeper level than usual. I received a hostile email from someone in my life. Not worth getting into any of the details. What's important is how I responded to this email. This person has so much anger. The easier response on my part would have been to quickly hit reply and send some anger back. But I have a 24-hour rule. I wait 24 hours before responding to emotional emails/letters/voicemails, whatever form of communication I'm working with.

I sat with my feelings all week - feelings over the content of the email, feelings over the tone of the email, feelings over the history of all of the emotions that formed around the email. I had anger back. Hatred. Then. Compassion. It took a few days to get there, but it was a level of compassion that I've only experienced a couple of times in my life. It was the kind of compassion that popped up in the shower of all places, when I finally found myself crying for this person, not for me. I was crying because it became clear to me that this person is suffering. And that this person may always suffer.

It's easy to practice compassion from a distance, to intellectually understand compassion.  It's even easier to have compassion for a stranger, but when it's personal and in your face, when it's someone close to you who is attacking your self-respect, your integrity, your core self, then to find that place of true compassion is like pulling a whisker off of a lion.

I don't know how it happened. Maybe it's all of this meditating, having not only a calmer mind, but an emptier mind, and an open heart. Maybe I shouldn't even be writing about it because it's not very humble of me to be boasting about my "compassionate skills". But the truth is, I'm a writer. Writing is all I know. And I'm also a Zen student. Zen is something of which I know very little. So I write out my experiences until I have an inkling of clarity by the time these words are posted.

Today, I know very little. That much I do know. I know that I loved Roo, and that he brought me joy. I know that I loved someone once so deeply that I would have taken a bullet for her. I know that love is that strong. And that's probably why I ended up crying in the shower this week.

One lion with one less whisker. Eyes wide open.

It's Not a Buddhist Thing. I Love My Dog: Week 10 in the Zen Center

I shaved my head. It's not a Buddhist thing. I love my dog. It's that simple.



This past week, K, the awesome woman who is fostering my dog, Sadie, told me that Sadie is shedding a LOT down there in New Mexico, and that she decided to get Sadie shaven. It's the healthiest, most mature and responsible thing she can do for Sadie right now. Something I could never do. Because I'm ridiculously attached to Sadie. I know how "sensitive" Sadie is.


According to a professional hairdresser friend of mine, one of his colleagues who shaves dogs for a living, has confirmed that dogs, do, indeed, feel self-conscious after they have been shaven. Sadie looks ADORABLE shaven, albeit completely different from her combined austere/cute self. She looks much younger, which dogs do not care about, I suppose. I don't know how she responded to the actual shaving experience. I know that she doesn't like people fussing over her. Sigh. God, I miss her.


I was just on Facebook, IMing a friend who has moved overseas recently. She asked me what is up with this attachment I have with Sadie. I told her that it's the unconditional love that I miss. Playing with Sadie, cuddling with her, just having her around. Another heartbeat with no conditions. Connection. My friend reminded me that I also need to connect with humans, which I agree with. But there's something about a dog's love that you can't replace with any other kind of love.


This morning, I was walking along Ocean Beach with a friend. We stopped to pet a dog who was on his lead, then watched another dog chasing a ball. They're so content. Then, there were two other dogs, corkies. These dogs were hilarious. They just had their noses to the ground and were moving forward, sniffing at everything and nothing. My friend, D, said that they looked like two large caterpillars. It was adorable.


I mean, everyone has a dog story, right?


Take my father, for example. The man has a tattered, worn sepia photograph of his childhood dog tucked along the edge of his bedroom mirror frame. Do you think he has a picture of his wife, any of his four kids, and his grandchildren on his mirror? Hell, no. But there is Skeeter, circa 1940, dog-smiling at the camera, ever reminding my father of the love he gave my father as a child and continues to emit in memory, sixty years later. My brothers and I have all heard the Skeeter stories. My father tells them over and over again, and, honestly, it never gets old.


The classic Skeeter story has a flare of drama to it that movies are made of. My father grew up during the tail end of the depression. His family struggled financially. They didn't own a car. His father was bedridden for years until he died when my father was only seventeen. When I say bedridden, I mean, his father couldn't make it up the stairs to sleep every night because he was too sick and tired from his emphysema, so he slept on the couch. Yet - he managed, every day, to walk down the stars of his porch, which took forty-five minutes, into his brother's car, to work at the Beverly Shoe, the city's biggest factory and dominant employer. My father's brother would pull up to the factory door and drop my grandfather off at the door. From there, it would take him another forty-five minutes to walk to his work station, which was a lead press over a conveyer belt. And there he stood, all day long, gripping a lead press that he lifted and pressed down for eight hours a day. By the time he got back home at the end of the day, he barely had the strength to make it up the porch stairs and crash on the couch.


Where was my father's mother during all of this? She worked too, but in the evenings, after feeding her family dinner. She would then go to her night job in a smaller factory.


So things weren't a walk in the park. (I remind myself of this when I feel sorry for myself because I can't buy that five-dollar latte).


My father's father was also a very strict man. And a pragmatist, by the way my father tells the stories. When my father was six years old, his first job was a paper boy. He delivered the Beverly Times (newspaper) twice a day. (This was when the newspaper had a morning and afternoon edition). After my father's first week, when he came home from his newspaper job, he sat at the dinner table with his parents and placed his earnings on the table - nickels, dimes, and pennies. His father sifted through the change, taking money for the family, and pushing just a few of the remaining coins back over to my father. It was a painful lesson for my father. But an important one. It taught him that he was part of a family unit, and that money was tight. His money was his family's money.


What does poverty have to do with my father's dog, Skeeter? Everything.


One day, when my father was a little boy, he was in the neighborhood with his father and Skeeter. A local plumber was in the neighborhood, working on someone's house. This plumber had his kids with him. The kids started to play with Skeeter. (This happened often. Skeeter was ne of those soulful dogs who was adored by everyone). The plumber saw the joy that Skeeter brought his kids. He turned to my father’s father and offered him a large amount of money for Skeeter. My father always pauses at this point in the story. It is at this point in the story when he says, in a casual tone, coupled with a shrug of the shoulder, "Well, right then, I just remember thinking, 'oh, he's gonna accept the money'. Because we needed the money. So I just accepted it, right then."


But his father didn't accept the money. He paused long enough to lead my father to believe that he would. By the way my father tells the story, his father seriously considered the offer. But, ultimately, he declined, disappointing the plumber's kids, and stunning my father. Skeeter stayed in the script. And he continues to stay in the script, edged along my father's bedroom mirror frame.


My brothers and I must have heard this story over two dozen times. At least. And it never gets old. It never gets old because who doesn't want to hear about unconditional love? Especially when you've experienced it?


My father's father, the pragmatist, and not the most emotional guy on the planet, knew the joy that Skeeter brought to my father. The act of declining the offer was a beautifully unspoken act of love that he expressed to his son. That triangle of love between father and son, and child and dog was worth way more than whatever the plumber offered. They had managed to get by on what they had up to that moment. In the bigger scheme of things, what would my grandfather have done with that little bit of extra cash had he sold Skeeter? Paid off a couple of bills? Taken the family out to the movies? How could something like that possible replace the love that Skeeter gave to the family? It couldn't. It didn't.


I guess that's why I shaved my head.

With that being said, my father will be mortified when he learns I shaved my head.


Sorry, Dad. But when you look in your own mirror, I know you'll understand.

Gratitude: Week 9 in the Zen Center

So, just for the sake of consistency, and my Virgo desire to remain disciplined, I am quickly stringing these few words together, with the hope that I will have a blog post by the end of it. Is that even a complete sentence?

I'm feeling very grateful today. Why, I don't know. I just see some people around me who are in the throes of some heavy duty suffering, who feel helpless, powerless, and exhausted. I feel like I have this little secret that makes my world a better place. Not even sure what that secret is. Maybe it's the buddha nature, but then I sound like I'm proselytizing. (Did I spell that correctly?).

Trying to grasp this concept of forgiveness these days. It's a tough one. Feeling like a hypocrite when I feel the love of humanity one moment, then this leftover anger swells up inside of me, out of nowhere. But it obviously comes from somewhere. I had a dokusan with a zen priest this past weekend. (Dokusan basically means a private meeting between a zen master and her student). The priest I met with, Fu, is an amazing woman, who also happens to be a lesbian. She's my new butch hero.

Anyhow, we were talking about forgiveness. She taught me that the reason the Belly Buddha has such a full belly is because he breathes in the darkness of the world and digests it for all of us, but only exhales love out to the world. Wish that could be the excuse for my big belly! But my point is that Fu emphasized to me that we need to not try to grab at things, but only give of ourselves. And the Heart of Perfect Wisdom Sutra helps too. (I mentioned this a while back, about Avolakiteshvra, or Quinyan, the deity of Compassion). And if anyone should be crying about life these days, it should be her. Her partner and teenage daughter were in a major car accident two years ago. Her daughter is fine, but her partner continues to struggle. She is now confined to a wheelchair. Their lives have changed fundamentally. Yet, Fu remains optimistic and open. And available. That's what amazes me.

But she said something important. She said that we need to empty ourselves completely before we can take on the dharma (the teachings). And that's where I seem to be struggling these days. Completely emptying myself. I find myself still thinking negatively about a couple of situations in my life. I struggle with "justifiable anger". Sure, I can stay pissed off, but who's benefiting from that?

With that being said, I had an amazing weekend where I did rid myself of some psyche baggage. Cleansed myself in teh river (literally - did that skinny dipping thing again), and purified myself in the hot springs of Tassajara, our mountain retreat center. There was an LGBT retreat, entitled Taking Refuge, there this past weekend. I had the privilege of attending and meeting some amazing people. Very inspiring, refreshing, and replenishing. I'm not the workshop type. I tend to avoid group activities, especially some that may involve touch-feely stuff. In fact, I found myself getting anxious before going there, because it occurred to me that I had never attended a workshop like this before.

I was worried that it was going to be a weekend of talking about feelings and being gay. But it wasn't. It was a lot of meditation, dharma talks, hot tubbing, eating gourmet meals with some wonderful people, and skinny dipping in the river. And now I feel slightly emptier than I did a few days ago. Including my words. Less of them to use in the moment.

There. Strung the words together. A kindergartner making a necklace of lima beans with string. Wearing it now. For all the world to see.