Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Contact

So much of the way I behave and manifest towards others is automatic, habitual, that I rarely bring enough of my presence to the exchange to really honor them. I repeatedly see in ordinary life that I don't look at other people and don't value the contact with them enough. There is something inside me that turns away, even when interacting with people I really love, or people I am in regular relationship with- at work, for example.

I was talking with my teacher about this last night. She is 86 years old and still encountering precisely that same set of habits in herself- and still questioning it. I think no matter what we do, no matter how old we are, there may always be parts of us that just outright fail to make the effort to be in relationship. As Gurdjieff said, "Man cannot do."

Certainly this can improve over a lifetime, but only if I see it and study it.

Back in the years when I was, supposedly, an artist, I put art in front of people. That is, doing artwork was more important than being in relationship with other human beings. As though the canvas and sheets of paper somehow transcended life and breath. I finally put the artist thing behind me, at least for the most part, and now I spend more time with people and value them more- yet I still have this question about whether or not I am really there with them.

It seems to me to first take a more fully formed inner connection to myself if I want to be there with and for others. My lack of interest doesn't start with my lack of interest in other people; it starts with my lack of interest in myself. There are a lot of very interesting things going on inside this environment I call a mind and a body. I could pay a great deal more attention to them if I wanted to.

So why the indifference?

I think it stems above all from a disbelief in my own mortality. Whenever enough of me gets together to perceive anything real- after there is an organic sense of this state called Life, and Being- one of the first intuitions I receive is a tangible sense of how impermanent everything is, of how this moment will not come again. When the energy to sustain that kind of vision arises within me, there is a greater appreciation of the uniqueness of each moment- a uniqueness which is denied by the disconnected state I usually live in. That translates directly into a compassion for the other person.

None of us is here for long. A new understanding of value emerges.

What is it? In-formation. To form an inner connection so that one can perhaps welcome and entertain a guest by the name of deep appreciation.

That guest introduces me to a more three centered kind of work: the active, gritty physical act of seeing; the effort of intelligence to comprehend it; the feeling of gratitude that values it.

Here, within this formerly fallow earth of Being I can begin to reclaim a more organic experience of my life. A more ordinary experience which is extraordinary in the sense that I live so much in denial of it.

And- if I am fortunate enough, today or tomorrow, or the next one, to awaken to this sensation of inhabiting my life, then perhaps I will find you there with me.

In all other situations, my sheep are perpetually lost in a wildness of my own construction.

Horizontal and vertical

There's a passage in Dogen's Shobogenzo I liked a lot when first I read it:

"[Someone asks] "...What can a person who has already clarified the Buddha’s right Dharma expect to gain from Zazen?"

I say: We do not tell our dreams before a fool, and it is difficult to put oars into the hands of a mountaineer; nevertheless I must bestow the teaching." (Bendowa, P. 11, Nishijima &Cross, Dogen Sangha, 1994)

At first I thought this reply was quite humorous. "Ha, ha," I gloated. "What an idiot this guy is to ask the master such a question."

As if I'd know any better. Eh?

After thinking it over for a few weeks it suddenly occurred to me that Dogen's reply- of which I have cited only the very first line- contains an unexpected depth.

He may perhaps be indicating, in a uniquely clever way, that the questioner is clumsy and lacks understanding. That does not really matter. More importantly, in this one simple line, he is expounding an extensive commentary on our nature and what is needed in our work.

What are mountaineers like?

Mountaineers climb heights. They are brave and well meaning people, perhaps, but they are concerned primarily with the vertical- always looking upwards, reaching for the higher. They don't feel like where they are is adequate; only a higher point with a greater view will do. They are desirous and willful and grasping; ambitious in the face of challenges, arrogant about their own abilities; confident of their superiority, urgent to prove their mettle against seemingly insurmountable obstacles. They take unnecessary risks for no obvious reason. They have, to be perfectly blunt, pretty huge egos- in many cases, approximately bigger than Mount Everest, as it happens.

Maybe they feel this is the only way to create a value for themselves; I don't know. For those who are interested, the journalist and mountaineer John Krakauer has written several fine, questioning books about this type, including "Into the Wild" and "Into Thin Air."

I think the overall point is that when our gaze is always directed upwards we fail to see what is around us. Like yesterday's blog, that's the story of my whole darned life.

With a single wry comment, Dogen points us instead to the oarsman, whose work is fundamentally and irrevocably horizontal. The work of the horizontal is broad and tangible; the oarsman spreads out his effort though the entire span of the level he lives in and is crossing.

He's not reaching for heaven. The oarsman is diligent and ordinary; under most circumstances, no one is going to see him as amazing for rowing across a lake. Rowing isn't glamorous or heroic, charismatic or amazing.

It's just practical.

If this isn't a picture of work in life, I don't know what is. Dogen says elsewhere we cannot separate practice and experience; they are one. Our experience of life is our practice. Our practice is our experience of this life.

The oarsman inhabits his environment. The mountaineer tries to conquer it. Perhaps if we look inward- and around us- instead of upwards, we may catch a physical glimpse of ourselves in ordinary life:

An oarsman afloat between heaven and earth, seeking the place of the heart.

I will leave you all to ponder on that further. I have to descend vertically from the blogging loft to deal with the more horizontal aspects of dinner.

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