The Road Less Traveled

There was an airplane crash in Lexington Kentucky Sunday. The press is reporting the cause of the crash was pilot error. The pilot took off from the wrong runway, one half the size of the runway assigned, and as a result the plane was not able to reach the speed necessary for successful liftoff. Forty-nine of the fifty people aboard died.

I often feel like I have taken the wrong road. Sometimes I can't find the road. Sometimes I don't know a road is ending and that I need to turn off onto another road. Sometimes I don't even know I am moving, what to speak of whether I am on the right road or any road.

The spiritual practice I follow is called a path. Movement again. Movement in a direction. Like a road, a path insinuates a direction prevously traveled. In the case of a path, it is a less frequently traveled narrow direction...a road conjures images of a wider, faster, more traveled and established direction.

The road is often used as a metaphor. The internet is called the "information super highway." Practicing eastern philosophies is referred to as "being on the path," and regret is often depicted as "the road not taken." No wonder we get tired by the time we reach our 50's and 60's. We've been in motion physically, mentally and spiritually, from the time we were born. It's exhausting.

Meditation is a good way to stand still and be still long enough to rest the spirit and the mind. But if you do it right your meditation will gradually move you deeper into yourself. Again, movement, regardless of how slow.

We live in constant motion on an orb that turns in place one full rotation every twenty-four hours. We move so constantly we don't even realize we're moving. Our heart beats, and our lungs expand. If we are alive we are moving. When we stop moving, we stop being alive, and then the living move us out of the way.

I'd rather be on a path than a road. Roads are too crowded and move too fast. It's too easy to get caught up in the direction of the traffic. It's too easy to miss your exit ramp. It's much better to be on a less traveled path so you can stop and rest along the way, enjoy the sights and see who is on the path with you. It's also much easier to ask for directions when you get lost.

Remembering Crow

Last night our friends Christy and Sue took us out to dinner. As usual, we had a wonderful time. Laughing, talking, more laughing, enjoying food together. The laughter always feels so good. In the course of the conversation Sue told a story of her daughter, Andrea's, puppy getting out of the fence and running down the block. It was a funny story, but also a scary one.

While listening to how the dog ran away from and then chased Andrea, I was reminded of Crow and how she loved to bolt out doors or fences and run. I learned early that if Crow could see me she would keep running. As long as she could hear my voice or see me she felt safe enough to keep going. One time she got away from a friend of mine who let her out the door and watched in horror as she ran down the street. My friend ran after her, and ran after her and ran after her. By the time I got in the car and searched the neighborhood for them they were 1/2 a mile away and both exhausted.
I adored Crow. She was sweet, sleek, beautiful. She was, even at almost aged 10, playful as a puppy. I always felt safe with Crow. I felt safe with her and how she felt toward me and I felt safe in the world with her by my side. She was a good friend, a good pet.

A month before Crow's 10th birthday she got out of our fence and went through a hole in another fence onto a very busy street where I live. She was killed on that road on February 17th, 2004. I still miss her so much.

I have other little buddies now. Noodles, a/k/a dachshunds. Frankye and I have 3 of them. An old girl named Alice, and 2 young boys named Ben and Yeshe. They are the cutest little dogs. They're playful and loving and fun to watch. They can be maddeningly stubborn if you're stuck on having it your own way. In that way they are an exercise in patience and live and let live. I love them. Different than I loved Crow, but I love them all the same.

Toosday

This past week I feel like I'm walking through life in a dream or a fog. I'm there, but nothing is clear. While that's happening I'm also very busy at work, making art in my journal, reading two books, doing a crossword puzzle daily, watching TV, playing with the dogs, talking with Frankye, cooking, spending time with friends and family, web surfing, meditating, listening to NPR, and feeling sad for the state of the world.

At work I've planned out my major projects for the next 9 months, with stop and start dates for each leg of the project. I do this every year at this time since a few of my projects are step intensive and need to occur several times throughout the school year. Aside from a trip to my parents for Labor Day and a vacation in West Virginia in November with Frankye's brothers and sister, my personal life is not that planned or specific. I know I will be going to work most days.

There are some things up in the air. Our cat Dolly is really winding down. She is old and frail and slow. She's hanging in there, and doesn't seem to be uncomfortable at all, just not energetic. There's a possibility of our best friends moving away. If Christi gets a job she has applied for they may be out of Jax by December. Their good fortune would be our loss and sadness. Of course, there are no guarantees that I will even survive long enough to complete this post, what to speak of living to experience anything on my calendar to date.

The other day I was listening to NPR and Wolf Blitzer was talking with people to get their opinions about the terrorist plot the British discovered and prevented. People kept saying, "this is a different world now," or "the world is no longer safe." The only thing different is that Americans are now experiencing the same fear the majority of people in the world have experienced for a very long time. We now live like the third world. Not economically, but in terms of the rule of law, the unpredictability of mass violence and horror or catostrophe being perpetrated against us. All this is how several billion people on the planet have lived for a long time. It's an oxymoron, but we are less free because we are in less control.

I have started an adjunct page to this blog called, My Sketchbook, which will feature doodles and drawings from my journals. It's only for visuals. I'll continue using this blog for writing.

So that's Tuesday in my world here in Jacksonville.

Hooked - again

I was thinking about the Pema Chodron interview again. It's not been far from my mind since the first time I saw it. That's something I do often when I hear something that either makes sense or seems as though it will with some effort on my part. Pema Chodron mentioned an article she read by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche called, "Working with Negativity," as being instrumental in her journey to becoming a Buddhist nun. Here is the first paragraph:

We all experience negativity -- the basic aggression of wanting things to be different than they are. We cling, we defend, we attack, and throughout there is a sense of one's own wretchedness, and so we blame the world for our pain. This is negativity. We experience it as terribly unpleasant, foul-smelling, something we want to get rid of. but if we look into it more deeply, it has a very juicy smell and is very alive. Negativity is not bad per se, but something living and precise, connected with reality.

The article (actually a chapter in the book: The Myth of Freedom) "hooks" you right away. It's very good. Trungpa Rinpoche was a very advanced Lama, well versed in western culture and so his writings are filled with metaphors and parables relevent to a western audience. I have read a few of his books, but there are many more available. Sometimes I need to catch up to what I consider my lagging teachability. I am often exposed to more than I can understand at the time I am introduced to it and need to grow into being able to learn from it. Trungpa is often that way for me. All of Buddhism is very often that way for me. It takes a while for each morsel of information to trickle down into my inner core.

NEWS Hooked

The news is just about the same - different but the same. The Israel-Lebanon war proceeds, more civilian deaths than military deaths (not that that should matter), a large portion of which are children (that does matter!). It's such madness. The war on Canal View Drive seems to be subsiding, but as pride dies slowly, so does the rift between the married siblings.

I watched Bill Moyer on Faith and Reason on PBS Sunday afternoon. Pema Chodron was the sole guest. I've watched it 3 times so far and will probably watch it 10 times before we erase it.

At one point during the conversation Pema Chodron talked about Shenpa aka "being hooked, as in addictions". She said you can see it physically happening in people. You can see the escalating anger and how the eyes glaze over. You can see that on TV when Bush talks, or the Israeli P.M., or Hezbollah leaders. They are hooked into what they are doing. They are hooked into their anger, into being right. They are so hooked they are killing children and somehow seeing it as worth it. Israel is allowing how many of their citizens to be killed by bombs because they are angry about 2 abducted soldiers? That is not clear thinking. That is emotion driven shenpa.

It is so easy to see shenpa in the world and in others. So difficult to see it in myself when I am in process. When I am in full blown hooked behavior I am at my stupidist. I am oblivious to the most obvious and as ignorant as can be. It is blinding.

Given my own blindness I can understand how leaders with armies can cause so much destruction and death when fully engaged in their escalating anger. They can't see the hundreds of dead children lying in front of them, they only see the 2 soldiers who were kidnapped 3 1/2 weeks ago. They can't see the pain and suffering their bombs cause, they only see that they are justified in causing the pain. It's really quite sick, and frightening. Frightening because that anger can erupt anywhere at anytime in the world. I can only wonder when and how the tide can turn or be turned.

One of Pema's points was that we can only unhook ourselves. So if I unhook myself and no longer allow my anger to escalate, will that make the world a safer place? I think the answer is yes and no. The world as a whole? No. But my world, my little local world can be made safer for me and others known and unknown if I learn to not be hooked in my addictions.

No Words

Watching

The War, The War

Searching for the Middle Way

Buddha taught the middle way. From today's Buddhist Beliefnet:

Let me tell you about the middle path. Dressing in rough and dirty garments, letting your hair grow matted, abstaining from eating any meat or fish, does not cleanse the one who is deluded. Mortifying the flesh through excessive hardship does not lead to a triumph over the senses. All self-inflicted suffering is useless as long as the feeling of self is dominant.

You should lose your involvement with yourself and then eat and drink naturally, according to the needs of your body. Attachment to your appetites--whether you deprive or indulge them--can lead to slavery, but satisfying the needs of daily life is not wrong. Indeed, to keep a body in good health is a duty, for otherwise the mind will not stay strong and clear.

This is the middle path.

-Discourse II, From "The Pocket Buddha Reader," edited by Anne Bancroft, 2000.

I don't think the Buddha would have spent a good deal of his life teaching the middle way if it was something most people around him were doing. In that way, I am not different. I am also not different in that I need to be told over and over again, reminded, told in different ways, different parables, within different contexts.

My impulse is toward extremism. I have often thought, and feared, that I would probably have been ripe for the Nazi youth movement had I grown up in Germany in the 30's. I fear that I would have been susceptible to that kind of extremism. Not because I am anti-semitic, but because I would let myself get caught up in the intensity, drama, and energy of the extremism of nazism. I hope not, but it has passed my mind on occassion.

In the current climate of violence that we live in, there are all kinds of extreme ideas going around. Last night on CNN there was a report on how conservative Christians are believing that we are on the verge of armageddon. There are millions in this country who believe in the rapture, in armageddon, in a 1000 years of peace after Jesus returns. That's a pretty extreme thought. There a extreme Muslims who believe that if they commit suicide by killing infidels they will go to heaven and be gifted with 37 virgins. That's a pretty extreme idea, too.

My own sense of facination with the morbid is related to extemism. I'm facinated by stories of serial killers. I've watched countless films and news footage of the holocaust. I watched videos on the internet of 4 Al Qaeda beheadings. If it is fiction, Stephen King, horror movies, I won't watch it or read it. It has to be real.

I remember when the movie Gremlins came out. I went to see it with friends. It was a completely fantasy based film and it frightened me so much that I kept having to leave the theatre and walk out into the lobby. There I was, me and a group of 4 year olds, waiting for the scary parts to end so we could go back into the theatre. Yet I watched the beheadings, with sound, and while cringing, watched every second of the video. That's pretty extreme and my own impulse to see humans at their worst, whether it be executioner, serial killers, or genocidal dictators, is also extreme.

I'm not sure why I have this impulse. Perhaps it is my way of seeing my own life as the middle way, between psychopath and saint. But if I need to go to those extremes to see the middle way I don't think I will make much progress on the eightfold path. So I search on to find the middle way.