Misery, Inc.

-- for Mark

Of all the world's religions, Buddhism made sense to me in its fundamental idea that suffering (dukkha) forms the axle around which the human condition rotates. The purpose of life, as I came to understand it, is to take action every day to eliminate desires to cling to things. I once thought that the principle applied only to material possessions, but later realized it also referred to clinging to other people or to expectations for the future, the wellspring of my own misery. But, that's now.

Eerily enough, when I was in treatment for addictions in 1991 I heard the message for the first time, although I perceived it as a shaming remark. In recovery, you assess your life up to the moment, listing things that people had done to you, the things you had done to them, the things you did to yourself, and all the things in-between that you only imagined took place. The latter of lists held the greatest number of items.

At the end of my stay, I was to share my discoveries, along with my deepest secrets with the treatment center priest. I had never deliberately taken my soul secrets to a priest in my life and, aside from accidentally working my way to the front of a communion line at a friend's funeral service only to escape ahead of the ritual, I had never even spoken with one. But I craved for the fresh expanse of a new beginning, so I told the priest everything.

"You decided at a very early age to be miserable," he said, summing up. He shook my hand and that was that.

If you don't know the location of the source of your misery, you can spend a life rummaging around your mind in search of it. The mind likes this, since it helps preserve the illusion that the mind is the remedy. And as I walked the verdant lanes of the treatment center after my housecleaning, I fumbled insanely for the magic bullet to remove the blood stains from my hands.

Avoid the deliberate manufacture of misery, says the recovery literature, based on Christian doctrine. Nirvana, the Buddhist tradition says, is the act of blowing out the mind like a bad holiday candle so that the wind of eternity can waft through. It is in dying to self, St. Francis says, that we are reborn. It felt as if every faith I encountered prescribed the same solution.

What a rub. After treatment ended, I drove back over the Cascade Mountains to my little cabin in the Olympic forest and pondered my navel. My brain rushed forward with useless remarks. I was so troubled, I couldn't stand my own flesh. I planned a trip to the coast.

The road to La Push spun out of the Quimper Peninsula beneath the snow-capped peaks and wild river valleys, flattened across the Sequim highlands, dove into serpentine loops around Lake Crescent and the darkened lanes where loggers had clear-cut the old growth forest, leaving a few rows of pines along the highway to block the view of stubbled fields.

I stopped along the way to sit beside Ray Carver's grave overlooking the Straights of Juan de Fuca. I had come to love Carver after all. His later stories contained a gracious expanse of love that burst from the mean figures of early prose. He had found recovery, too, during the last years of his life before cancer claimed him. A small temple bell fitted into his headstone jangled in the wind as I sat quietly viewing his last poem, etched into the concrete:

Late Fragment

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.
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I couldn't sit more than a moment, my thoughts racing. I looked at Ray's grave. I said some things to him. I asked him to help me learn some things. I looked out where a freighter from the Far East turned into the center of the shipping lane. I looked across the straights to the whited strip where Victoria lay on the belly of land. Then I said goodbye to Ray.

At the coast, I took the turnoff to the second beach at La Push. There was a wood-plank trail through towering, dripping old growth forest, ferns that seemed to burst out green and wide, and white fungus clinging like bright ears to the sides of trees. And then descending the wet stairwell to the beach, I gazed out at the mist where it spread between the hanging branches. Red and purple sea stars held fast to the sea mounts and kelp drifted freely in the surf.

I walked without stopping the length of the beach to where it narrowed into spray at the southern end where the rocks blocked the way. Then I turned and walked my way back, my heart pounding, and took the steps back into the forest, gasping for air at the incline, wiping the light rain from my forehead. And then, finally at the parking strip, I climbed into the car and sped home.

I had driven several hours to get to the coast, spent less than an hour walking, and several hours driving home. There was no way I could sit quietly at the coast with all that brain noise and, back in my cabin, I lay in the sleeping loft, listening to the wind in the trees and the critters stumbling around outside in the dark until I finally drifted off.

It was Easter morning. And when I rose, I blew on the coals to get the wood stove going and boiled water for coffee. Friends had invited me over for supper after the noon recovery meeting. I had no sense of what Easter was about after the burying of eggs and the people who dressed up and went to church and the ham afterward. And I really didn't want to fit in. It was all fine the way it was.

But I set out for my morning walk along the Egg and I Road, heading north toward West Valley Road and the wide fields of horse farms between the ridges of fir and madrone. The road was wet and icy in patches and my breath came out in frosty pillows. I wore my blue mittens that I had bought in Fairbanks.

When I came to the bluff, I looked out at the Beaver Valley with its quilt of trees and fields dotted by cows and horses, and the whited crests of the Olympic peaks beyond in the sharp rising sunlight. You'd hardly know people lived here, save for the string of telephone lines that came up behind me and dropped down the long hill into the valley, then stretched out across the valley and up the hills on the other side.

They looked like so many crossed tees to me, strung up for all the ills, the black thoughts I had entertained for so many years, the lies, the rage (and I'd be damned if I'd buy into any of that Christian symbolism), but for a moment it all made perfect sense to me that I didn't need to call it anything if I let my mind drift away and welcomed the warm thrill that started around my knees and spread out like wings across my chest.

Humbug Dharma

It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust! -- The Ghost of Christmas Present.

It may have been the oddest search for man's soul undertaken by a Jewish man in a Northwest mill town. But I was new to the realm of the spirit and was fanning through the arcana of world faiths that year in search for the puzzle piece that settled my doubt. In our Victorian seaport the mill filled the mornings with the sour aroma of soggy paper. I had little work, so spent my days reading spiritual poetry--Rumi, Kabir, Al-Muntafil, Li-Po--and walked along North Beach where the straits fanned out between Whidbey Island and the cloudy crown of the Mt. Baker volcano.

Rumi advised that when parading through the dizzying aisles of the spiritual supermarket it was important to come home with something. So I crossed the peninsula in search of a meal that would fill me, spending hours sweating in lodges of S'klallam elders, bashing drums at the men's wisdom councils in Seattle, sitting the nervous wreck through an Episcopalian Christmas mass as the priest advised that "we were unfit to eat the scraps that fell from His table", squirming in my seat in synagogues where I remembered the pre-gnostic chants but had no sense of what they meant to me. A year passed and I had yet to find my way.

Christmas was coming again and, pudgy with a heavy beard, it appeared I'd renew my role as local Santa, visiting public places and private homes where I'd issue my hearty chuckle as kids sat in my lap. But the holiday loomed as yet another occasion where I'd feel exiled anew from my Christian friends in town. Instead of feeling alienated, a friend advised, why don't you dive in headlong and see if you can have fun with it? So I auditioned for the town players' production of The Christmas Carol and won the part.

It was the perfect role for an over-the-top guy like me. The Ghost of Christmas Present wore his striking velvet robe and garland, spoke with an overwrought West-End accent, and boomed out grim speeches about doom and destiny and karma. I could relate. Plus, he had two spindly children hidden under the robe that, at the perfect opportunity, I'd sweep open to reveal the shuddering denizens of spiritual failure. How sweet was that?

I had taught theater at the university, but all notions of theory had apparently been lost on me the moment the lights caught my eye. Aside from several stand-still roles, I had never really acted. But as we neared opening night, I had waxed fully into the role, skyrocketing beyond the mark at times that made the director wince. But it was all in good fun--community theater, for chrissakes! And the message, that gluttony and pride goeth before the fall, meshed with my recent readings in eastern poetry. That I was embellishing myself more as a symbol of the very deadly sins rather than a herald of their dangers escaped me the moment the curtain rose.

All my friends and well-wishers packed the front rows on opening night as I paced nervously outside the dressing room, running my lines. I looked fantastic in those robes! The words would flow as nectar from my trembling lips. As Scrooge and I took our places behind the curtain, he tapped me on my shoulder and smiled. It will all be fine, he said.

We were to enter center stage in the dark, I would announce my opening lines, and the spotlight would find The Ghost of Christmas Present, dashing glittering dust over the front rows of audience as we proceeded down left. But the spotlight never came on after my opening, and Scrooge grabbed my elbow and steered me across the boards in the dark. I sprinkled glitter that no one could see and spoke in a frightened monotone, sounding more like a weak recording of the play on an old phonograph record than the boisterous ghost I had been for weeks.

We had traversed the stage fully when I completed my speech and the lights came on behind us, brightening on Tiny Tim's crutch where it lay in the fireplace.

"It may be," I said, "that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child." And instantly I was transported to the pew in the Episcopalian church where I was unfit to eat the scraps from God's table. I felt confidence draining from me like so much foul air and finally, went up on my lines, committing the unutterable sin of silence. Scrooge picked up and improvised like a pro as I stumbled along until, at last, I could open my robes to reveal the girl of "Want" and the boy of "Ignorance" clinging to my legs. It was over.

Afterward, Scrooge joked backstage. It was all good fun. He was a true saint in humbug's clothing. And my friends said I had been fabulous. I was sure they were snowing me. The stage was not for me, nor was Christmas. Let those better equipped to handle it revel in the hour!

It would take another decade before I found my calling in Buddhism and the truth that my friends had loved me, had indeed witnessed a stellar performance--just not the one I had planned for them. To believe that I am powerful enough to control the unfurling of days and nights is to create my own misery. That ignorance and want are my demons. That nothing needs to happen. That between the indelible past and unwritten future there is infinite grace where I am fully fit for all the crumbs--and for the banquet, too--so long as I take loving kindness down from the shelf, tote it home, and wear the world as a loose garment.

From Small Things Big Things One Day Come

This is a very short story. After all that's happened I am amazed at days when I am fully alive here on the blue planet. In Buddhism the experience of loving fully without attachment is called metta. The word has so many near misses when translated to English, by turns suggesting unconditional loving kindness, good will, friendship, non-violence, unbridled warmth for others and self.

In even a long life, it can take forever to cultivate metta. I owe my understanding of it to E--, who appeared one night in response to a selfish online ad I placed after months of sober living. Our rules were simple, though I complicated them at every turn. But staying as present as possible was a challenge for two lovers who were addicted to self-erasure.

One night, E-- came by very late, rang the buzzer to my apartment building, and I let her in, then waited in the darkened bedroom, my giddy heart pounding. But she came in my room as a total stranger, dark with brooding. We lay together in bed, separated by thought, and I rummaged my mind for the clue to what I could have possibly done wrong.

Suddenly she bolted from bed and pulled on her clothes. I was disappointed...frightened. But she smiled, kissed my forehead, and said, "Let's try this again."

She went out of the apartment and I could hear the elevator going down to the lobby. Moments later, my phone rang as E-- buzzed me. I heard the elevator rising, my front door opening, and in the darkness of my room my lover came back to me. I felt her hair on my face in the dark and as I opened my eyes, I saw her smiling above me.

We went on through the winter and into spring. Months later, she seemed distracted again. And one night, after we went dancing, she broke into tears and said she could no longer love me.

I was devastated. Pulled angrily to the side of the road. We were miles from the nearest town. I said some angry things. Then a highway patrol car pulled up and the officer came to see why we were stopped.

I put on my stone face, said all was well, and drove E--- home. I followed her into her living room, thanked her for all that she had given me, and drove off. I wish I could say that it was what I wanted, or what my mind was telling me to do, how I could make something awful immediately worse, but I found myself automatically doing something quite against my nature.

When I wrote E--- recently to tell her that I had discovered Buddhism -- a practice she had been following for years -- she was delighted. She told me that the evening we parted her heart had simply been exhausted. She signed her email, "much metta." I think of that some days when I sit and try to quiet my mind. I remember that I can change my trajectory at any time by stepping out, taking the elevator down, then buzzing myself back in.

Not long ago E-- took a research position on the plains of eastern Montana. It's raw and cold there and I know about deep cold. I still had my rabbit-fur hat from my days in the heart of Alaska. I dug it out of a crate in a storage locker and packed it in a shipping box. The chinstrap is broken, the ear-flaps hang loose, and some of the fur is falling out. But I know you are a whiz with a needle and thread.

Stay warm.

Same, Same

Meet Jampa Lobzang Negi, born in the hills of Himachal Pradesh in northern India in 1974. He looks more like he's 20 years old in person. I first set eyes on him at a White Tara empowerment ceremony led by visiting Tibetan monks near my home in California. I instantly considered him the Shaquille O'Neal of monastic devotions. He's pumped, buffed, cut, hewn out of muscle and, despite his height, looks more attuned to a World Wrestling Federation arena than walking around a temple with a smoldering pot of incense.

The moniker fit when I next found Jampa, standing on an outdoor basketball court with six other monks, shooting hoops in his flowing red robes. They all tossed up bricks, but laughed at every shot. One of the monks prayed for acuracy. Playful as a kitten, spiritually fierce as a tiger, Jampa spent the better part of a week with me, showing me how to blow the long temple horns or suddenly laying his head in my lap during a break in the ceremonies. Monastic austerity and impulsive expressions of joy seem like odd bedfellows until you realize that each facilitates the other.

Jampa was ten years old when he entered the Gaden Sharste Monastery in south-central India. The monastery was founded in Tibet in 1426 by the Buddhist Mystic Je Tsong Kapa, but relocated in exile to India in 1959 when less than a handful of monks were able to survive the onrushing slaughter of the Communist Chinese.

It would be a simple thing to let Jampa's boyish looks and manner decieve you into believing he was born yesterday. He was born much earlier, and several times over. In this incarnation, he undertook 16 years of intensive study of chants, tantric rituals, and rites, including several teachings under the direction of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. Only after he left our small community here in the northern foothills did I learn that Jampa was credited with healing many sick in the streets of Dharamsala and aiding the poor.

When I met him I was new to Tibetan Buddhism and was taken by his chanting, which emanated from someplace deep inside him, impossibly low pitched and booming. He seemed dwarfed by his own powers. After the ceremony, I asked if he would bless my prayer beads and he took them in-hand, murmured a sutra, then blew over them. I thanked him, and wanted to say more, but his English was poor and my Tibetan limited to the names of a few meditative deities.

Jampa stood up, wrapped his beefcake arm around me, and tapped my chest. Then he tapped his own. "Me," he said, tapping his chest. "You," he said, tapping mine.

"Me, you," he said...."Same, same."