As some of you may have noticed, I've been pretty slow to post here as of late. Not for lack of trying, I assure you. I've got two longer, more dense pieces I've been working on, and am in the process of applying to the Path of Engagement program out in California. I'm also absolutely slammed with paid and non-paid work right now, which doesn't offer much in the way of the sort of free time one needs to write in any meaningful way.
However, recent events in Gaza, namely the Israeli shelling of of a home killing some 18 sleeping civilians, and the US veto of the UN Security Council resolution denouncing it, saw me going back to the journal I kept during my time in the Occupied Territories. Reading it over, I almost feel like I've somehow grown intellectually and spiritually dulled since. It highlighted questions I seem to have forgotten, and cast a different light on things I've grappled with more recently (especially in my spiritual life).
So, I've created a separate blog, where (for the next few weeks) I'll be posting the entries from that journal. Hopefully, they'll offer some of you something; not necessarily in terms of insight about the Occupation (much has changed in three years), or the politics of solidarity or whathaveyou... But perhaps in the way of what it means to be present in this life, what it means to be still enough to observe exactly what we don't know; what's at stake in our relationship to suffering, perhaps.
Joshua in Palestine (2003)
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Taking Refuge, Pt. 2
I had such a tremendously shitty afternoon; I've been so slammed with work-related tasks for the last month, and between unforeseen technical glitches, and my own inability to acknowledge when I've over-committed myself... I'm fucking up, left and right. And it's embarrassing, and it hurts, and while it prevents me from really being present, it also metastasizes into a sort of paralysis (which just makes everything worse). And in turn I have to fight even harder to catch up. It feels like it never stops.
And tonight, I had the opportunity to listen to a friend talk about how she's considering checking herself into a hospital for clinical depression; how she catches herself sabotaging her relationship with her partner, how she can't understand it, and can't forgive herself for it. Ultimately, how helpless she feels, and how sick she is of having it dismissed by friends as mere "stress." I feel like I'm the worst person ever, she said.
Nearly six years ago, at the outset of what would turn out to be one of the worst periods of my life, I turned back to the Dharma practice in which I'd dabbled since I was about 15, but I wasn't prepared or ready for the real work of it. I sat in my livingroom, and began a Metta (lovingkindness) meditation, aware as I was of my steadily escalating anger and lack of forgiveness for certain people and events in my recent life (a fact that was beginning to swallow me alive, and would continue to for a few years). Most Metta practices involve quietly offering compassion to various people, usually beginning with oneself and as one becomes comfortable, moving outward to people further and further removed from oneself. It's a practice, it's not like hitting an inhaler to diffuse the onset of an asthma attack. But I didn't care. I just wanted to stop being angry, I wanted to stop being swallowed whole.
Within just a few minutes of working with that meditation, I was sobbing. I'd discovered that merely quietly offering myself the hope of being happy, being free from fear, being free from harm... I discovered that in some really deep, hardened place, I didn't believe I deserved it. And I was crushed by the feeling of being unmasked as that liar, that person that hated himself so thoroughly. I quickly abandoned the entire practice, and wound up opting instead for dialectic of sleep and eating disorders and an utter refusal to allow myself to uncover that self-hatred again. Six months later I was 35lbs thinner, hypo-glycemic, had doubled my cumulative count of sexual partners, and quit a job of four years to move to the other side of the country.
Then I read Audre Lorde's, The Cancer Journals, in which she wrote of her own struggle:
I must let this pain flow through me and pass on. If I resist or try to stop it, it will detonate inside me, splatter my pieces against every wall and person that I touch.
Tonight, I was able to listen, and offer a few suggestions for how to think about that pain, how to offer it compassion and know that it need not swallow us whole. How it merely needs us to acknowledge that it's happening, and not try to shove it out the door or hide it or compensate for it or externalize it (or our reaction to it). Or, in the case of my friend, to "fix" it.
In the Suttas that temptation to distraction and control is personified as Mara (illusion), and during his enlightenment the historical Buddha never made attempts to repress or or otherwise manhandle Mara. He simply said, "I see you." What was fascinating about tonight was not that what I understood (intellectually) about my practice was arguably helpful to someone else. In fact, I wasn't even terribly sure that was on the table. Rather, in attempting to offer that attentive, compassionate presence to her, I was able to realize how ridiculous my attitude toward myself has been all day. I emerged from the conversation audibly chuckling to myself: "I see you, Mara. Hang out as long as you like."
Goodnight.
And tonight, I had the opportunity to listen to a friend talk about how she's considering checking herself into a hospital for clinical depression; how she catches herself sabotaging her relationship with her partner, how she can't understand it, and can't forgive herself for it. Ultimately, how helpless she feels, and how sick she is of having it dismissed by friends as mere "stress." I feel like I'm the worst person ever, she said.
Nearly six years ago, at the outset of what would turn out to be one of the worst periods of my life, I turned back to the Dharma practice in which I'd dabbled since I was about 15, but I wasn't prepared or ready for the real work of it. I sat in my livingroom, and began a Metta (lovingkindness) meditation, aware as I was of my steadily escalating anger and lack of forgiveness for certain people and events in my recent life (a fact that was beginning to swallow me alive, and would continue to for a few years). Most Metta practices involve quietly offering compassion to various people, usually beginning with oneself and as one becomes comfortable, moving outward to people further and further removed from oneself. It's a practice, it's not like hitting an inhaler to diffuse the onset of an asthma attack. But I didn't care. I just wanted to stop being angry, I wanted to stop being swallowed whole.
Within just a few minutes of working with that meditation, I was sobbing. I'd discovered that merely quietly offering myself the hope of being happy, being free from fear, being free from harm... I discovered that in some really deep, hardened place, I didn't believe I deserved it. And I was crushed by the feeling of being unmasked as that liar, that person that hated himself so thoroughly. I quickly abandoned the entire practice, and wound up opting instead for dialectic of sleep and eating disorders and an utter refusal to allow myself to uncover that self-hatred again. Six months later I was 35lbs thinner, hypo-glycemic, had doubled my cumulative count of sexual partners, and quit a job of four years to move to the other side of the country.
Then I read Audre Lorde's, The Cancer Journals, in which she wrote of her own struggle:
I must let this pain flow through me and pass on. If I resist or try to stop it, it will detonate inside me, splatter my pieces against every wall and person that I touch.
Tonight, I was able to listen, and offer a few suggestions for how to think about that pain, how to offer it compassion and know that it need not swallow us whole. How it merely needs us to acknowledge that it's happening, and not try to shove it out the door or hide it or compensate for it or externalize it (or our reaction to it). Or, in the case of my friend, to "fix" it.
In the Suttas that temptation to distraction and control is personified as Mara (illusion), and during his enlightenment the historical Buddha never made attempts to repress or or otherwise manhandle Mara. He simply said, "I see you." What was fascinating about tonight was not that what I understood (intellectually) about my practice was arguably helpful to someone else. In fact, I wasn't even terribly sure that was on the table. Rather, in attempting to offer that attentive, compassionate presence to her, I was able to realize how ridiculous my attitude toward myself has been all day. I emerged from the conversation audibly chuckling to myself: "I see you, Mara. Hang out as long as you like."
Goodnight.
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