Not Just Zen

A Tendency to Shine (something I'm turning over and over at the moment).

2011-06-05T19:39:00.001-04:00

A Tendency to Shine

by Adyashanti

If you prefer smoke over fire

then get up now and leave.

For I do not intend to perfume

your mind's clothing with

more sooty knowledge.

No, I have something else in mind.

Today I hold a flame in my left hand

and a sword in my right.

There will be no damage control today.

God is in a mood to plunder your riches and

fling you nakedly

into such breathtaking poverty

that all that will be left of you will be

a tendency to shine.

So don't just sit around this flame

choking on your mind.

This is no campfire song

to mindlessly

mantra yourself to sleep with.

Jump now into the space

between thoughts and

exit this dream

before I burn the damn place down.

2010-12-27T13:26:00.000-05:00

Hello.

I am, and have been at for some time, PHL airport. I was going to take the 8:15 to DC, then transfer at 10:45 to their flight coming into RDU.

Oh wait, now it's the 10am flight out.

The 11. The 12. The 12:57.

And now I'm on a direct leaving from 1:40, PHL to RDU.

Supposedly.

It was interesting to watch the annoyance of being delayed again and again - moreso in the angry holiday travelers around me, but certainly in my own mind, too. So I gave it some thought. Here's one.

I think part of what's going on with the frustration here is that incremental changes make it very difficult to pretend to have any sense of control over your life, as you're responding again and again to the next immediate. So, rather than "hmm, my flight is canceled. What will I do?" you're strung on, in a sense. It reminded me immediately of stringing-on relationships, and how annoying that is... AND how amazingly effective they can be at getting you farther and farther down a hole. Progressively shittier relationships that people have a hard time getting out of. But if they knew from the get go it would get that bad, and compared where they were with where it was GOING, they'd probably choose otherwise... it's just that each "slightly worse thing" came on the heels of also not-quite-so-good... so you're decision making is based on what seems like a SEEMINGLY fairer expectation of the future (well, if I wait it out just a little longer). But it's only JUST A LITTLE BIT longer (vs. "I've been at this goddamn airport for a full fucking day!!!"), because you're dealing in a WAY with just the present and the just occurred past.

So yeah, it's an interesting point of consideration to me! On the one hand, you want to be mindful of the present and moving from where you are. On the other, you want to have some perspective in life, and a willingness to break things off when it's really NOT been working for some time. I think that's part of the funny paradox of the Tibetan concept (as I understand it and have heard it) of a kind of "path of accumulation" - accumulating enough shitty experiences, in a sense, to wonder whether there's another way to go about things (or enough mindfulness to begin to notice "emptiness" intellectually/emotionally, in another set of terms).

I think there's a middle way - maintaining a global perspective, but acting locally, as they say in political circles. Don't leave out the bigger picture in your decision making or you may baby-step your way down a deep hole. But don't do the disconnected Principles & Shoulds dance ahd have no patience for what is really going on.

Airports are funny places. Almost like a grand psychology experiment designed to point out the extremes of our culture. I like them.

And I also, very much, dislike them. Next time I'm drivin'.

Ray Nelson's "Eight O'Clock in the Morning"

2010-12-27T13:25:00.000-05:00

So this is in reference to the movie "They Live" and the story from my last post it was based on. If you don't know what I'm talking about, search for "They Live - Obey, Consume, This is your God". It's on the you tooobs.

So: How to do you see this way? It seems like an aspect of it is to not just see the pleasure or emotional experience in an action, but also see what activity and limitations are inferred by that action over time. So: I like the internet and being on Adult FriendFinder or FB. But doing so ALSO means holding my body in an awkward position, staring at a screen for extended periods of time, practicing disembodiment of living, confusing emotions, shortening my attention span, and missing all the other activities I COULD be doing with my time online here - training, learning, being with people more directly. I'm sure there are more limitations, too - that's just an intial scan. And I get to watch advertisements, practice fitting in and reliance on norms... you get the idea. Not that it's inherently bad, but that it often trains something that's hard to see from the outset - you make your decision about something based on how it seems, but the consequences of that decision are somehow harder to include in the decision making. Delusion, in a sense. How do you practice seeing "with the sunglasses on?"

-- Ray Nelson's
"Eight O'Clock in the Morning"
(the inspiration for "They Live.")

At the end of the show the hypnotist told his subjects, "Awake."

Something unusual happened.

One of the subjects awoke all the way. This had never happened before. His name was George Nada and he blinked out at the sea of faces in the theatre, at first unaware of anything out of the ordinary. Then he noticed, spotted here and there in the crowd, the non-human faces, the faces of the Fascinators. They had been there all along, of course, but only George was really awake, so only George recognized them for what they were. He understood everything in a flash, including the fact that if he were to give any outward sign, the Fascinators would instantly command him to return to his former state, and he would obey.

He left the theatre, pushing out into the neon night, carefully avoiding any indication that he saw the green, reptilian flesh or the multiple yellow eyes of the rulers of the earth. One of them asked him, "Got a light buddy?" George gave him a light, then moved on.

At intervals along the street George saw the posters hanging with photographs of the Fascinators' multiple eyes and various commands printed under them, such as, "Work eight hours, play eight hours, sleept eight hours," and "Marry and Reproduce." A TV set in the window of a store caught George's eye, but he looked away in the nick of time. When he didn't look at the Fascinator in the screen, he could resist the command, "Stay tuned to this station."

George lived alone in a little sleeping room, and as soon as he got home, the first thing he did was to disconnect the TV set. In other rooms he could hear the TV sets of his neighbors, though. Most of the time the voices were human, but now and then he heard the arrogant, strangely bird-like croaks of the aliens. "Obey the government," said one croak. "We are the government, " said another. "We are your friends, you'd do anything for a friend, wouldn't you?"

"Obey!"

"Work!"

Suddenly the phone rang.

George picked it up. It was one of the Fascinators.

"Hello," it squawked. "This is your control, Chief of Police Robinson. You are an old man, George Nada. Tomorrow morning at eight o'clock, your heart will stop. Please repeat."

"I am an old man," said George. "Tomorrow morning at eight o'clock, my heart will stop."

The control hung up.

"No, it wont," whispered George. He wondered why they wanted him dead. Did they suspect that he was awake? Probably. Someone might have spotted him, noticed that he didn't respond the way the others did. If George were alive at one minute after eight tomorrow morning, then they would be sure.

"No use waiting here for the end," he thought.

He went out again. The posters, the TV, the occasional commands from passing aliens did not seem to have absolute power over him, though he still felt strongly tempted to obey, to see things the way his master wanted him to see them. He passed an alley and stopped. One of the aliens was alone there, leaning against the wall. George walked up to him.

"Move on," grunted the thing, focusing his deadly eyes on George.

George felt his grasp on awareness waver. For a moment the reptilian head dissolved into the face of a lovable old drunk. Of course the drunk would be lovable. George picked up a brick and smashed it down on the old drunk's head with all his strength. For a moment the image blurred, then the blue-green blood oozed out of the face and the lizrd fell, twitching and writhing. After a moment it was dead.

George dragged the body into the shadows and searched it. There was a tiny radio in its pocket and a curiously shaped knife and fork in another. The tiny radio said something in an incomprehensible language. George put it down beside the body, but kept the eating utensils.

"I can't possibly escape," thought George. "Why fight them?"

But maybe he could.

What if he could awaken others? That might be worth a try.

He walked twelve blocks to the apartment of his girl friend, Lil, and knocked on her door. She came to the door in her bathrobe.

"I want you to wake up," he said.

"I'm awake," she said. "Come on in."

He went in. The TV was playing. He turned it off.

"No," he said. "I mean really wake up." She looked at him without comprehension, so he snapped his fingers and shouted, "Wake up! The masters command that you wake up!"

"Are you off your rocker, George?" she asked suspiciously. "You sure are acting funny." He slapped her face. "Cut that out!" she cried, "What the hell are you up to anyway?"

"Nothing," said George, defeated. "I was just kidding around."

"Slapping my face wasn't just kidding around!" she cried.

There was a knock at the door.

George opened it.

It was one of the aliens.

"Can't you keep the noise down to a dull roar?" it said.

The eyes and reptilian flesh faded a little and George saw the flickering image of a fat middle-aged man in shirtsleeves. It was still a man when George slashed its throat with the eating knife, but it was an alien before it hit the floor. He dragged it into the apartment and kicked the door shut. "What do you see there?" he asked Lil, pointing to the many-eyed snake thing on the floor.

"Mister...Mister Coney," she whispered, her eyes wide with horror. "You...just killed him, like it was nothing at all."

"Don't scream," warned George, advancing on her.

"I won't George. I swear I won't, only please, for the love of God, put down that knife." She backed away until she had her shoulder blades pressed to the wall.

George saw that it was no use.

"I'm going to tie you up," said George. "First tell me which room Mister Coney lived in."
"The first door on your left as you go toward the stairs," she said. "Georgie...Georgie. Don't torture me. If you're going to kill me, do it clean. Please, Georgie, please."

He tied her up with bedsheets and gagged her, then searched the body of the Fascinator. There was another one of the little radios that talked a foreign language, another set of eating utensils, and nothing else.

George went next door.

When he knocked, one of the snake-things answered, "Who is it?"

"Friend of Mister Coney. I wanna see him," said George.

"He went out for a second, but he'll be right back." The door opened a crack, and four yellow eyes peeped out. "You wanna come in and wait?"

"Okay," said George, not looking at the eyes.

"You alone here?" he asked as it closed the door, its back to George.

"Yeah, why?"

He slit its throat from behind, then searched the apartment.

He found human bones and skulls, a half-eaten hand.

He found tanks with huge fat slugs floating in them.

"The children," he thought, and killed them all.

There were guns too, of a sort he had never seen before. He discharged one by accident, but fortunately it was noiseless. It seemed to fire little poisoned darts.

He pocketed the gun and as many boxes of darts he could and went back to Lil's place. When she saw him she writhed in helpless terror.

"Relax, honey" he said, opening her purse, "I just want to borrow your car keys."

He took the keys and went downstairs to the street.

Her care was still parked in the same general area in which she always parked it. He recognized it by the dent in the right fender. He got in, started it, and began driving aimlessly. He drove for hours, thinking--desperately searching for some way out. He turned on the car radio to see if he could get some music, but there was ntohing but news and it was all about him, George Nada, the homicidal maniac. The announcer was one of the masters, but he sounded a little scared. Why should he be? What could one man do?

George wasn't surprised when he saw the road block, and he turned off on a side street before he reached it. No little trip to the country for you, Georgie boy, he thought to himself.

They had just discvered what he had done back at Lil's place, so they would probably be looking for Lil's car. He parked it in an alley and took the subway. There were no aliens on the subway, for some reason. Maybe they were too good for such things, or maybe it was just because it was so late at night.

When one finally did get on, George got off.

He went up to the street and went into a bar. One of the Fascinators was on the TV, saying over and over again, "We are your friends. We are your friends. We are your friends." The stupid lizard sounded scared. Why? What could one man do against all of them?

George ordered a beer, the it suddenly struck him that the Fascinator on the TV no longer seemed to have any power over him. He looked at it again and thought, "It has to believe it can master me to do it. The slightest hint of fear on its part and the power to hypnotize is lost." They flashed George's picture on the TV screen and George retreated to the phone booth. He called his control, the Chief of Police.

"Hello, Robinson?" he asked.

"Speaking."

"This is George Nada. I've figured out how to wake people up."

"What? George, hang on. Where are you?" Robinson sounded almost hysterical.

He hung up and paid and left the bar. They would probably trace his call.

He caught another subway and went downtown.

It was dawn when he entered the building housing the biggest of the city's TV studios. He consulted the building director and then went up in the elevator. The cop in front of the studio recognized him. "Why, you're Nada!" he gasped.

George didn't like to shoot him with the poison dart gun, but he had to.

He had to kill several more before he got into the studio itself, including all the engineers on duty. There were a lot of police sirens outside, excited shouts, and running footsteps on the stairs. The alien was sitting before the the TV camera saying, "We are your friends. We are your friends," and didn't see George come in. When George shot him with the needle gun he simply stopped in mid-sentence and sat there, dead. George stoond near him and said, imitating the alien croak, "Wake up. Wake up. See us as we are and kill us!"

It was George's voice the city heard that morning, but it was the Fascinator's image, and the city did awake for the very first time and the war began.

George did not live to see the victory that finally came. He died of a heart attack at exactly eight o'clock.

Duh. That impatience tastes like greed. Exciting!

2010-09-17T22:10:00.000-04:00

Fucking Duh.

As usual, to borrow a phrase from my brother I really like: this is a long road to a small and obvious house. Then again, I feel like most of my life is a series of long trips to small and obvious houses. lol. also: haven't been blogging cuz I've been busy. I blog every once in a while on a sex-positive site I'm a part of about relationship/sex stuff, but haven't been to blogger land in a while. I been busy.

Been a bit up and down recently. The downs feel better knowing they define higher times. As an example, felt damn overwhelmed a few days back after my previous post. See, I'm sitting in this half-done house, where every room needs another 5-10 major changes... while the backyard buildings going up are getting shuffled like a deck of cards while I haggle with the zoning and permit folks. That, plus school and work has me occasionally riding the overwhelmed train.

Been trying to maintain a steady diet of, um, food (trying to eat more - I'm forgetful with food sometimes, and it's kinda a hassle to eat as much as my body needs) and regular exercise - a bit less than my usual (daily practice, about a hour or two), but a bit more focused (concentrating on a certain tai chi form just about daily). And I love routine. One of those routines is parking my bike at a cheap sushi place on Franklin, running a few miles, doing the routine once or twice, then taking a run back to the sushi place, where I've got a dry shirt on my bike...and have my usual meal of four avocado rolls, two cups of ice to cool down a pot of green tea, seaweed salad, edamame and miso soup. Sweetly, sometimes the folks make the rolls in advance when I park my bike there. I always appreciate it.

Routines hold me together, sometimes. And each time I'm there, a few times a week at this point, whether I'm solo or have a dinner buddy, I say the meal chant quietly to myself before the first bite. That's:

"This food comes from the labors of beings past and present.
From it our body-mind is nourished, our practice sustained.
Gratefully we accept this meal.
We take this food to attain the buddha-way.

Our meal is offered to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha
With teachers and family, with nations and all life let us equally share.
To beings throughout the six realms we offer this meal.

All hungry ghosts! All tortured spirits!
Now we give you this dharma food!
Maybe it fill the ten directions and satisfy hunger in realms of darkness!
All hungry ghosts! All tortured spirits!
Abandon greed and rouse the desire for enlightenment!"

Now, I'm not going to go into all the gorey details here (actually, I've blogged on most of my mindset on this elsewhere, if you can find it), but for now: I always try to generate the FEELINGS behind each word, each idea as I'm saying it. And my mind sort of "echos" from those ideas. For instance, if I feel like I haven't been giving back in a tangible way, when I get to the offering section ("All hungry ghosts...etc.") I'm likely to find myself feeling a touch guilty, and I'll generate the question "what does contributing look like now, in my life?" It's just for a moment, but these mini questions make this regular practice meaningul. They're not judgments... or, at least, don't STAY judgments for long even if that's the manner in which the natural reaction of my mind at the time showed up. And as a side note, I think that's a budding key to practice - crazy, judgmental, wild parts of my brain aren't so bad... just don't get stuck there, believing them. Instead, noticing that's how "I" (ha) feel about something, "I" (which I?) investigate. Take the ball where it lies, in effect, and see what I can do about "this real me" I'm witnessing. Judgments could be easy to stop at... but practice, to me, is just turning the echo of my mind into questions to plumb.

At any rate, so, I'm doing the meal chant in my head yesterday, and what pops in? "What IS greed, anyway? Greed is wanting uncontrollably, compulsively. I guess hate is wanting in a negative sense (wanting the absence vs. wanting the presence). OK, maybe. Which am I moreso, if any? What does this have to do with impatience, or with the overwhelm I feel at my house projects?"

And, screaming, my brain echos "holy shit dude, you're greeeeedy! That impatience at projects undone is the same as greed at wanting all projects finished before you 'feel better.' Impatience at getting things done is a form of greed you've got in spades right now."

And I feel like I've been grinning for the last 24 hours because of it. Won't necessarily last, and I might forget whatever "truth" (ha) is contained in that bit of consciousness excrement, but it's pleasant right now. Why?

Sometimes difficult, confusing parts of my life seem to melt away into a single obvious DUH moment. And more importantly, into a DUH moment I can Practice With. That is, I have a general sense how to practice being less greedy. I sort of know what that sticky attachment, that WANTING, tastes like, and I enjoy letting it go whenever I notice it (which is sometimes), because I recognize that as a form of practice. (Now, don't get me started on the arbitrary line between what is and isn't practice. The duality of practice isn't something I can find either side of when sitting, not at all, but still... I'm going to go ahead and say "practice" and we can pretend it's got an essence here. :-)

So anywho, I feel a bit better about being overwhelmed by my undone house. Because loosening my desires for doneness and its immediacy is practicing non-greed. Which is really coming back to the moment, appreciating... doing, yes, but also NOT doing - sitting a bit of zazen, having some tea, appreciating the occasional breeze coming through my bedroom windows (which I recently trimmed! Miter success!). And that looseness, that doing something small and simple and appreciating the way its simplicity opens me up to unexpected details of experience that enliven me, is really, really nice.

So yeah, duh. Impatience at finishing stuff is a form of greed, a wanting gone all kudzu-ey. And yeah, hate is, in a sense, just the flip of the coin - a wanting the absence of things gone all kudzu. Greedily want all my projects done, or hate their unfinishedness, either way... practices of patience, loosening the grip of those wants I seem to own that, in Tyler's words, "end up owning you"... is nice. But yeah, it's a bit of a duh moment.

That thing you're holding onto is burning you.

Um, fucking loosen your grip on it for starters.

Toward OK Go's contest, and excellent new video

2010-06-15T20:43:00.000-04:00

If I win something, I will throw a party (at my new busted house) that includes some sort of OK Go giveaways.

OK Go on Facebook...

Comment away!

A habit to have less: flow vs. accumulation

2010-06-14T20:06:00.001-04:00

I've been preparing to move into my new house for a few months now. Closing's been delayed by an IRS oversight (who lost my forms, but not my check; been a hassle), but it's just a matter of time now. So while I've been waiting, I've been doing the material belonging review/purge that I like to do at least once a year. After all, "the things you own end up owning you."

I've come across an interesting pattern of holding in my mind I wanted to relate. Some collections of things I want to hold onto because "I used to do that." Specifically, "toolsets and materials" of skills I still have, but don't manifest often anymore, I seem to have had a hard time jetisoning. Examples:

My origimi collection: I've 10 origimi books (culled from the dozens I used to have, but have gotten rid of), tons of paper and probably 50 of my best models. I started origami when I was 5, and the combination of silence, perspective narrowing concentration and action carried my younger self through some stressful times growing up in a messy parental marriage and divorce.

My magic collection: [No, not my Magic: The Gathering collection (I sold that years ago. I was a geek. Who am I kidding; I'm still a geek).] I apprenticed for a few years with a local magician, helping him with some shows, developing magic pieces, and learning the skills of legerdemain, which sounds like a french salad or something. I began developing some of my own magic, mostly up close card magic, and did perform some, sometimes even for bucks. I mostly took it up (after months of "please?" "no." "...please?" "no!") because I thought it would be important for my group anxiety and a good shot at my ego... which it did turn out to be. But I've got these DVDs and books, some of which are on the rare side... and it's very unlikely I'll be using them again.

Networking materials: I volunteered & worked for a time on the side wiring buildings for ethernet - one of the origins of my current consulting business. I have networking leftovers from some of the bigger jobs - switches, a few hundred feet of ethernet cable... but I'm not doing wiring anymore (and recommend most clients get wireless anyway), and I don't *want* to do it anymore anyway. Why the hell do I still have this?

What's that connection to these things? I have some sort of fabricated "indebtedness" to the skillsets. I'm hesitant to give the tools away, since those aspects of my personality would have to work harder to catch up. They're going to be "missing" some of their toolsets, as contained in these material possessions.

But I think it's more than that. I think it's a strange need to acknowledge, appreciate, these experiences...and, by so doing, maintain a certain narrative of a self that I'm attached to... and because of it, I'm still holding onto these representative material possessions. It reminds me a lot of my "personal" box - a filing box of all the personal effects of my life, all representing stories: the suspenders I wore at a national fencing competition in Austin, TX, that fell off during my last bout and my pants fell down; a teddy bear I got from a friend for my 16th birthday; love letters to an early fling. You get the idea.

I'm working on this strange accumulation model - *accumulating stories that I frame as representing personal growth, past personalities on whose shoulders the current I stands.* I remember a particular epiphany when I was much younger as I was trying to figure out what to do with the dozens of tshirts from "being there" - contests, weekend trips, etc. I didn't want to give them away, but didn't wear them, so I started taking pictures of them... and as I was stressing out trying to troubleshoot the struggling early 90s model digital camera I suddenly stopped, stunned, watching myself. I suddenly saw my compulsion, my addition to these past selves.

This stuff is just the same. This time I came across a different model: selling these old things (which now have a worth), so I can afford to do what I'm doing now. So, in a sense, old things are sacrificed to enable new things. That's certainly how the natural world works. And these things have more worth than old used tshirts. Nature works by a flow, the old transformed into the new.

But even though I think this maybe a helpful mind hack for simplicity, in a sense... I seem to still taste the ego with this model. Like the "past stories" are "worthy" of being sacrificed to "worthy" "future stories." Still, as a method that takes advantage of how my karmic, habitual mind seems to work it's decent.

So, bigger picture - I think getting rid of these old "stories" in my mind frees me up to become, well, a different ME. More deeply, I think that's what I want to be practicing as I'm moving into my new house (and going to school anew, changing jobs, etc.).

Two habit changes: first, a functional, "mundane", karmic habit for getting rid of things is to sacrifice old material things for new habits, the flow model, instead of the accumulation of possessions model. Second, a more "ultimate" habit: compost those stories. Just bury them. And you don't even have to grow new ones from them - the empty space is actually capable of living more flexibly than the habitually held self narratives.

An approach to the internet and entertainment that paradoxically makes me unhappy.

2010-05-23T23:03:00.000-04:00

OK, I'm still grinding in here. This feels like, for me, the same old question I've been aiming my tools at (intellectual, intuitive, etc.)... the same question that zazen seems to be pointing to when I don't point my zazen at anything.

Normally, what OTHER people do or don't do doesn't really impact how I feel about myself or how I choose to act that much - I try to work off my intuition and my sense of whether HOW I'm acting... mentally tastes correct. So, I might sense: oh, I'm being mildly compulsive. Oh, I'm being needy; I should answer my own needs. Oh, I'm being distractable/addictive - I should go exercise or move a project forward, or do something that intimidates me to attack that avoidance-needing habit head on. Normally.

But I don't think certain sites, without routine and NO expectations are good for my self-esteem. Maybe the entire internet as a whole.

Many of these sites I head to when I'm feeling "desirous" - not just sexually: I'm referring to the kind of "I want to see something cool" that sends me to youtube, facebook, the sex-positive social network I'm a part of (no links here, ha) or something else. Wanting to see something (implied: ELSE, meaning conceived of as external to me) that's enganging. But they're paradoxically the LEAST effective places at satisfying my desire 99% of the time - like addition without substance. They're dangerous place to go when aroused - I'm somehow less effective at being satisfied on certain more addictive sites. WHY?!

I'm realizing that I need to absolutely hold "balance" ALL THE TIME.

Simply exerting attention, learning, moving forward, leaning INTO life... kinda gets me off. If you've ever heard me talk about something I've experienced, and am still experiencing, I get all jived about not knowing, but investigating, the space where action holds the paradox of learning and still not-knowing. And being on many sites, and often the internet at a whole for me, sometimes does the opposite. This might get extra crazy sounding, but it ends up mimicing trying to interact with people/stuff as if they're this outside experience I could connect with or miss INSTEAD of engaging with myself and my own experience interacting with them. You can't miss yourself when you aim. You can't ever bank on hitting others in the way you want to, or them returning the favor. Reminds me of the new OK Go CD. There's a song with a lovely lyric, which I will quote in full as I listen to it here:

I've been waiting for months
Waiting for years
Waiting for you to change
Aw, but there ain't much that's dumber
There ain't much that's dumber
Than pinning your hopes on a change in another

And I, yeah, I still need you, but what good's that gonna do?
Needing is one thing and getting, getting is another

So I been sitting around
Wasting my time
Wondering what you been doing
Aw, and it ain't real forgiving
It ain't real forgiving
Sitting here picturing someone else living

And I, yeah, I still need you, but what good's that gonna do?
Needing is one thing and getting, getting is another

I've been hoping for months
Hoping for years
Hoping I might forget
Aw, but it don't get much dumber
It don't get much dumber
Than trying to forget a girl when you love her

And I, yeah, I still need you, but what good's that gonna do?
Oh, needing is one thing and getting, getting is another

When?
When?
Why not now?
Why not me?
Why not me?
When?
When?
Why not now?
Why not me?
Why not me?

Anyway. I think, for me, it comes down to this dissonance, this delusion... that I've been trying to name more and more clearly for YEARS:

For me, my habitual mind associates the internet as a place with millions of EXPERIENCES that I would enjoy placing my attention on. But in reality, because computers and screens function almost seductively to dissociate physical experiences of things they take my attention away from EXPERIENCE (even my own mental one) and into millions of presented ideas, inherently dissatisfying (aside: there ARE computer exceptions: coding, certain kinds of research, interacting REALLY with other people in a way that retains real emotions and physical sensations... but it's hard). I enjoy action, preferably embodied, and my reflected learning and introspection born from that embodied experience. But the internet, and entertainment by screens in general, more easily "disembodies me" so even my reactions to what's "enscreened" are harder to connect with and the present stories take more of my attentive energy that normally is more widely absorbed.

And that's just it. Watching the mind closely, I still tend to (to use a tibetan buddhist turn of phrase):

throw my attention to external things as if they primarily exist "at me", generally through the medium of perception leading to experience leading to karmicly generated story about the object coming "at me." And there's something about the placement of attention that this subconscious worldview suggest that is inherently dissatisfying. Whereas action and real embodied experience, and the natural way that my mind reflects experience-action (even if karmic, i.e. laughing with familiarity and ridiculousness of my old voices suggestions, as if their mistaken worldviews are great JOKES), are SOOO PLEASANT, even if all of mine aren't. I was feeling this balance point during my spinal tap, the external really happening and my internal simultaneously creating it, and remember and experienced those moments with great fondness.

There's something about this delusion that feels more and more KEY to me. It's like mistaking the flow of a river and so paddling against it...then being frustrated you're going about things backwards, when your intuitive self, your full body, is getting all these feedback signals you're being a bonehead. I'm still digging into it, but the difference between this certain balance and imbalance defines the presence of disatisfaction and joy. And that there's a meaningful link and paradox between the seduction, the delusion of seeing a certain practice/worldview/habit as entertaining, sustaining and engaging when it is actually the fascinatingly opposite.

Applying "A Pattern Language" to renovating the house...

2010-05-22T16:09:00.000-04:00

I've been up late on more than one occasion excited to get my hands and tools dirty on my new house, starting June 2. I've been reading and rereading the amazing A Pattern Language while mentally redesigning the conventional house in the front and designing my dream cob efficiency in the back. Today my real estate mom and general contractor uncle are driving down from NJ to walk through and talk ideas with me, so I'm trying to get my own thoughts together. So I'm started writing down the major patterns I've got in mind. Here's my first draft, to be used for a walk through today.

(This is all in reference to the house here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mike.dolan.fliss/117Cole# )

"A Pattern Language" design element application at 117 Cole.

General Practices
104 Site repair The whole HOUSE is a site repair pattern! Lol. Aim for the worst spots and renovate them first, indoors and out.

Inside
Multiple room applications
107 Wings of light Light all rooms, at least in part, with natural light. WHOAH, hard. Skylights? Light tubes? Bathroom double windows is a good example…
153 Rooms to rent I'm certainly doing this. :-)
159 Light on two sides of every room More light in family room. Borrom mudroom light through wider opening in kitchen for two. Bedrooms are hard - use high windows to bounce light off back wall.
179 Alcoves Not sure how to apply in all rooms. Family and kitchen at least should be alcoved. Perhaps adding an entrance at family may knock out space for a nook? Perhaps the open stair through kitchen will provide a nookable space?
180 Window Place Hmm. Not sure. In family it might be nice, even in back mudroom. Probably not enough space in bedrooms. Use bay windows, window seats, low sills or glazed alcoves
192 Windows overlooking life Windows should cover a wall area of roughly 25-40% of floor area in each room. This means more windows, everywhere. Small, heavily recessed (for light softening and glare reducing) windows are best, but I may use the huge double in the family room…
193 Half-open walls Use half open wall to enclose entrance space and define window nook; open up family room some; open up kitchen (half wall to stairs may do it). Half wall the whole back porch split between planter boxes with the trellice as the half-roof.
196 Corner doors Corner rooms as much as possible - maximizes space useage. If pass through, use sides or both corners so main space can be tangent.
197 Thick Walls Make some walls thick enough so they can have "wall uses". Consider at least SOME texture besides drywall.

Kitchen
182 Eating atmosphere Heavy table in center of kitchen, warm light over table. Use some different chairs for life.
184 Cooking layout Right sized counter ("uncomfortable if too short or too long"). Critical elements are: no two of four (stove, sink, food storage, counter) are more than 10 feet apart. Total length of counter excluding other elements is at least 12 feet. No section of counter is less than 4 feet long.
199 Sunny Counter LOTS of windows in kitchen. Use open shelves to free up wall-light space and limit or move the cabinetry, even some open shelves in front of windows. Aim light at counter and soften/warm with color. (MAY ALSO APPLY TO MUDROOM IF THERE'S A COUNTER THERE.)
200 Open shelves Use open shelves to display items to actually be used ONE ITEM DEEP. Only use cupboards for bulk storage, when something being behind something else is ok. Use waist high shelf for some things…
201 Waist-high shelf Use waist high shelves for "staging areas" in kitchen and storage, some open. 9-15 inches deep. Interrupt with seats, windows and doors.
Downstairs Bedrooms
198 Closets between rooms Use closets on bedrooms (if not doing the dressing nook pattern) on the DOOR wall as a sound buffer and to maximize windowable walls.
Bathroom
194 Interior windows Small window into the bathroom to catch that light and open hallway?
OTHER Gotta have a window in that bathroom with glazed glass. Should have light on TWO sides, has none.
Staircase
125 Stair seats Flare or make half open to encourage use. Beautiful the bottom stairs in particular to encourage sitting. Hang bikes nearby to liven the space.
158 Open stairs Open the stairs in the mudroom. CONSIDER opening stairs on the cob house on the outside for backyard texture.
195 Staircase volume don't forget the needed volume! :-) Widen the stairs at the bottom so they flare into the mudroom… or at least make them half open in the mudroom (allowing stair seats, 125).
Upstairs Bedroom Loft
164 Street windows Make sure those windows OPEN and can be used. Also use as interaction model on LIVING ROOM WINDOW PLACE.
188 Bed alcove Suggestion: no dedicated bed "rooms." Perhaps I bed alcove the upstairs room and turn another area into a work space up there in the same "room?" The height of the bed alcove should be lower than the surrounding room, and use one of the windows in the alcove. Use the other space for storage.
189 Dressing rooms Use back area of alcove as dressing room instead of closets. Definitely for my room… about 5/6 by 5/6, layout in book.
191 The shape of indoor space Avoid strictly rigid crystalline squares, but don't go crazy. Don't make concave at the expense of a convex. Maintain "vault" (vs. pointed) shape upstairs.
231 Dormers I've got two dormers! Yay!
Upstairs storage
204 Secret place Convert any, even SMALL unused space into "secret space." May be a small nook off stairs, small doors. Texture.
Family Room
112 Entrance transition Carve out a little space for an entrance - half bench, etc. Do the same in the back mudroom. ALSO MARK these entrances with transition spaces - columns, etc.
181 The Fire Does my fireplace work!? I hope so!
185 Sitting Circle Use a sitting circle in the family room around fire/entertainment at least. Perhaps another in kitchen if I move the stairs to make room for it… And another on the back porch out-room. Remember: path must be tangent to sitting circle.
190 Ceiling height variety (Will DEFINITELY use in cob house - double alcoves of different heights and a walkway & open common area). Could use storage in family room or a window seat with a low sill to bring better light in and vary the ceiling height in that room. Kitchen may be able to be raised... Middle bedroom may be able to be raised SOME.
202 Built in seats ALSO USE IN MUDROOM, BACK PORCH HALF WALL.

Outside
Backyard Garden
105 South facing outdoors I wish. Can't turn the house. But will orient the East-facing backyard to the south as much as possible.
106 Positive outdoor space Need to work the walls more on this one… But I'll create some spaces!
108 Connected buildings Will work the cob, greenhouse, coop, pen and shed into a connected space.
111 Half hidden garden south side trellice path should do it.
115 Courtyards which live Courtyards should have good views, two or three doors or entrances open onto/into it (cob, etc; check!), offset with a continuous veranda or porch with a roof (check!).
154 Teenager's cottage Cob house!
155 Old age cottage Cob house!
156 Settled work Convert at least half the shed, if not all of it, into a workshop. Make it comfortable, well tooled, etc.
157 Home workshop Set up a nice home workshop in the new cob house. Also set up a workshop space in the UPSTAIRS LOFT, to the south.
160 Building edge Outside space MUST be positive. Use mini-walls and shrubs to create textured, fractaled edges. (i.e. don't extend the back porch the same width on both sides as the house, so as to create two smaller spaces …
161 Sunny place Use tree spot as sunny place. Look for at least one or two more - maybe south side of facing wall on back porch?
162 North face Will be "dead" space, so use accordingly. Create car connections, compost there, bulk storage. Small, even waist high lime plastered cob wall will help add to life there.
163 Outdoor room Semi-enclose a small porch with half walls and trelliced roof. Texture the walls with planter boxes and benches, semi walls, etc. Consider a half roof… ?
167 Six-foot balcony Make back porch at least 6' deep.
170 Fruit Trees two pears on north wall, blueberries underneath. Peach? Plumb? More figs?
171 Tree Places see 176. Seat by pears. Cob entrance by figs.
172 Garden growing wild Use white clover between rows. Plan "wild" spaces to house micro-climates and -biospheres
173 Garden wall Stumped. Need more relief from noise… partial cob wall on north side and south side at entrance to backyard? Building ring (cob, coop, greenhouse, shed) and trees/shrubs will help lots.
174 Trellised walk Trellise the north side, into the covered back porch/outside room with grapes, flowers, honeysuckle. Make it a path with stone and cracks between stones (247).
175 Greenhouse connecting cob house and chicken run, doors to cob house, chicken run and outside garden, waist high shelves and bulk storage, a special seat there…
176 Garden seat under two pear trees to left, in front of blueberry bushes
177 Vegetable garden Duh. Bulk of backyard, open to south.
178 Compost Not sure where to place yet. Use BSF to process food scraps, larvae to feed chickens. Consider humanure from cob house if processed properly. (or buy an "official" composter
203 Child caves Try to include a child cave SOMEWHERE. 3-4' ceilings, small entrances.

Front yard
97 Sheilded parking Extend parking off north side of house for at least two cars. Partially roof it. Store "stealable" things there - extra gas, bottles, whatever.
100 Pedestrian street Not a huge fan here of the road/house connection.
102 Family of entrances Should be able to visually enter from front door, south garden path, north carpark
110 Main entrance Clean up, clarify, make visually appealing by position and shape
113 Car connection cover the car space, wall it some, make it a CLEAR transition space to front door.
114 Heirarchy of open space apply to BACKYARD as well - spaces should have backs and views into large spaces.
165 Opening to the street Convert small entrance into a small porch, at least 6' feet deep, with some width, planter boxes, etc.
168 Connection to earth Blur the boundary to earth with small terrace and steps into balcony. Use brick/stone steps and stone paths, for instance.
169 Terraced Slope Mitigate rainwater run off and erosion, help separate from street

Unused

183 Workspace enclosure Hmm. I'm not building out people's bedrooms. Perhaps will create a workroom upstairs for myself?
186 Communal sleeping I don't think we're gonna get there in this house.
187 Marriage bed not married! But the "bed" story in The Odyssey is beautiful.
224 Low doorway Will use in cob cottage. Not in house though.
166 Gallery surround n/a
109 Long then house eh. Can't do anything about it now… but will on the cob house!

Green roof frame up!

2010-02-19T15:50:00.000-05:00

New cob house pics! This past week I got really frusrtated with just having a hole in the ground to show for my efforts after months (the ground's been frozen, but still), so I really prioritized getting the green-roof section framed out. Lookin' good!

I had some help (Margo, Josh shoutouts), but did a lot of the (rough) plumbing on my own with quick and dirty winches. Gotta love those knots!

I'm dog sitting Riley, back to her old stomping grounds. She's loving these lumber tarps - she goes in one end and pops out the other. Loves tunnels, this dog.

A view of the make-shift greenhouse/tool storage and roof frame.

A view of just the roof frame. The shape is kinda hard to descibe. See the designs here.

Reflections from day one of Dismantling Racism part 2: Holding Contradictions

2010-01-23T23:58:00.003-05:00

Some context: I’m participating in dR Works second series on dismantling racism. While part one focused on building our oppression/power analysis, part two is focusing on action and personal sustainability in the work with an emphasis on “holding contradictions.” To me, this speaks both to the dominant white supremacy culture value of “either / or” thinking AND to the spiritual significance of the work. These are my take aways from today.

Our day’s activities were great (including our amazing, stage setting opening documents)… the company was incredible. I felt wildly appreciative to share space with folks that already shared a history of holding and a willingness to deepen their power and oppression analysis. I doubly felt appreciative of the trainer/facilitators (Tema, Michelle and Vivette) – it was clear to me how my being there as a partipant (rather than facilitator myself) helped me to have the space I often need to do my own processing…and how without it, I end up processing when I mean to be doing work as facilitator. It really reminded me how I need to do my OWN work so as to keep it from being laid on other people.
The living wisdom was really flowing. People spoke from their heart, from “new” places very alive at the moment. Thankfully (not surprisingly, given the shared analysis we’ve got), there was little theorizing apart from experience. People shared tears and laughter, all the while pointing at personal truths and questions that we helped each other bubble forth.

At the end, we were given some prompts to summarize the day. I’m not going to offer the full context here (since it’s a process that needs one’s presence to really grapple with, I think), but I’ll just offer we were grappling with notions of satisfaction or dissatisfaction, pleasure and displeasure, and what “busy” feels like… especially within the context of doing dismantling racism work or holding an analysis while doing related work. Then we were asked to consolidate these into actionables that we could hold or contribute towards. These are my reflections from that process. They speak to MY experience of the workshop, obviously, not what the workshop necessarily WAS about or other people’s experience.

I decided to consolidate my take-aways into questions to hold, reminders that seemed ‘true’ for me then, and a practice or two.

Questions:

If silence about pieces of our shared culture (experiences of marginalized groups, etc.) corresponds with personal pain, which I believe it does, how does this link work? Through what emotional / community channels? How does this represent our inter-relatedness… ?
Why is it that it’s often easier for those with a “helping” bent to go to great lengths for others than to give even bare-bones self-care to themselves (ourselves)?
How are the valid, intuitive realizations from life coopted by the “should” mindset, thus turning living wisdom into dead, conceptual tools to use against ourselves and others in the form of guilt and self/other flagellation?
An elder there spoke to a wisdom of experience: knowing better in advance what’s worth her time (because it would be satisfying in the end, even if not pleasurable in process) and what’s not (because it wouldn’t be satisfying in the end or pleasurable in the process). What helps increase this intuitive wisdom besides experience? Accountability/community? Practiced memory/reminders/life reviews?
Sometimes dominant culture is “comforting” – even if just because we know the (fucked-up) score, the rules. But how do we continue to "flip that bit" so what was comforting, but dissatisfying becomes uncomfortable?
Time, and beliefs about it, is heavily laden with a capitalist history. Shared time came about because of individual community’s spirit/worship…which was co-opted by capitalist merchants into a universal time for trade. Don’t forget. But what are healthier views of time?

Remember:

Wisdom flows. When I try to hold onto stale wisdom from previous moments, I’m more likely to hold them as conceptual tools to judge self or other. When I let go of judgements/wisdom, and return to what I’m doing (especially within the context of practice) more wisdom appears like a spring.
I need to touch the major projects where I express my highest values often. This represents the practice of “speaking my values” (“practice” because action there must be creatively discovered, and in that process I help define these values I, well, VALUE). After speaking/doing, by experiencing my action and reactions, I can listen to the echo of these actions, taking that experienced echo as wisdom in the moment. It’s nearly a conversation.
“You can do anything for 15 minutes.” Somehow treating the 15 minutes as nearly disposable, “not that big of a thing,” allows me to do 15 minutes of self care. Or sitting. Seems sad. But it points to, I think, some sort of intimidation with ourselves....
The dominant culture, especially capitalism (fuck run-away capitalism!) attempts to privatize, professionalize, commercialize vulnerability… after first creating it in order to sell unsatisfying “needed” products. Sharing vulnerability with each other is therefore a radical, transgressive and liberatory act.
My stress arrives when experiences in my life are experienced as myriad and disparate, coming AT me (‘hither seers’, to use that Tibetan expression). Then I experience the day full of teaching, logistics, resisting, cleaning, learning…all these different activities running me ragged. A sign I’m working in that frame is that my activities feel “incomplete” (reminds me of this Taoism quote on complete actions) and boundaries I need to create to move on to the next thing feels artificial and imposed by the activity, not natural and born from my one practice. This called to mind O Sensei’s saying, “Use the many to strike the one. This is the discipline of the warrior.” My satisfaction comes from the exact opposite experience: instead of many coming at, I sense that I’m doing one thing: practice. Practice carries me, mostly relaxedly, through myriad activities that “awaken me” to the self. This reminded me of Dogen’s famous lines: “to study the buddha way is to study the self; to study the self is to forget the self; to forget the self is to be enlightened by the myriad things/activities; body and mind completely drop away, and no trace of enlightenment/realization/liberation remains; and this no trace continues endlessly.” Of course, the increased capacity to reframe one’s experience coming AT you is both a consequence of spiritual practice AND a consequence of privilege. I’m reminded of the Jane Elliott quote about how difficult it is to reframe challenge as opportunity when dominant culture beats at you, as it does for those that hold multiple marginalized identities. Then again, this is exactly the framing that MLK gave to experiencing oppression for the cause of justice. BOTH AND! Like holding great faith, great doubt, and great determination to reconcile the irreconcilable... Hakuin, I believe. Holding contradictions...
I can notice when I’m falling off the path, getting stressed and run ragged by my “things come AT me” frame by my blinking, among other things. Those microexpressions of wanting to hide or wiggle out of some situation have a mental TASTE. Blinking, a certain kind, is one of my tells.
I was reminded of the David Allen GTD comment about work being most satisfying when it allows you a chance to be competent (skills to contribute and grow in), purposeful (speaking to your values) and autonomous (an ability to make choices) to some degree. But, of course, privilege and our crazy individualistic culture also grants autonomy through privileged access to choices, purpose as access to work selectivity, and gathering skills at a fast rate (through education access). Still… there’s something there!
Knowledge of White privilege and a power/oppression analysis in general seems to move many people to beat themselves and others up. Given that I came to a building analysis through meditation, I somehow didn’t do a lot of this. Instead, I noticed today, the analysis seemed to be the essential counter-point to my crazy meritocracy stories, among others I knew to be false but didn’t have language to fill them to empty, in a sense. It helped me LOOSEN my grip on certain cultural stories, to know less instead of knowing more (or so much more depth that I couldn’t pretend to parse out the full story, sans contradiction, anymore?). The looseness seems like a wonderful consequence of attempting to hold contradictions like these…contradictions that a power analysis (or some understanding of emptiness & dependant origination, I think) really points to. Like, yes, I’ve been practicing for some time and have some fruits of practice…and yes, I have privilege and access and safety nets and neuroses that contribute to the same seeming fruits of practice. I’m the union of goods and bads, of, impossible to divvy up into camps that aren’t interdependent. So then, in that space of holding contradictions, not knowing and knowing, it seems I still have to act with the union of humility and conviction. Hmm. Reminds me of my previous experience/insight about how hard I was trying to understand MY practice.. before I noticed that "MY" practice is heavily contributed to by others. I felt like I was loosening my compulsive and graspy grip on a locked door's knob.
We have a culture that says “go go GO!” This is in muscle memory. I’ve clearly noticed this training and teaching tai chi and aikido over the years. It’s a great reminder why we practice tai chi excruciatingly slow. What in particular is, uh, excrutiated? The muscles, yes, if you’re practicing chen properly… but also the culturally trained impatience in the mind/body. Same with sitting still in zazen, I think. Hmm. Another vote for sitting still as being an act of resistence, transgression, liberation. Like zazen needs more frames to get caught in, geeze.
Satisfaction and dissatisfaction are different than pleasure and displeasure. I think this is where Therevadan texts point to the difference between dukkha, which is invariably here while we’re deluded, and the three flavors of experience: positive, negative, neutral emotions, sensations, etc.
At the dividing line between my friend/acquaintences and close friends are all these emotions and sensations. I often feel like whatever wisdom and faith I have is what people most naturally appreciate. Sharing tools to do emotional work or process conflict/challenge/grief often seems welcome. But equally, for me, is great doubt, with myself and my path. There appreciation and excitement for strange things (like injuries I get, getting Lyme disease, etc.) in almost equal proportion to my enjoyment of little things. But those doubts and stranger appreciations, that to me feel part and parcel with the faith, don't often seem as welcomed by even close partners. That line that I feel I have to hold is marked by embarassment, guilt over bring stress to others (with parts of myself that don't stress me), doubt, excitement about difficult changes... but joy, opporunity, excitement about practice, and a forgetfulness of myself too. But, definitely, only being able to share the experience of life that's palatable to others, a subset of what's palatable to me, gives me some feelings of lonliness or isolation. Thankfully, I have a community/sangha that supports me ... friends of mine that often seem to be in a similar intersecting of aikido, zen buddhism and social justice practices. Whew, I'm glad you all are around.

Remaining Actions:

Pose some of these questions to mentors of mine, close and far, even if in casual ways.
Loosely, as an experiment, try to frame some “ideal” days and practice them in order to take lessons from the experiment… given that I’ve got these ideals anyway.
Intentionally touch my major values (ha ha, sounds so funny) daily if possible, but often at least. Know I did so.

Pile of logs. Big logs.

2009-12-31T16:10:00.000-05:00

At last nights party, folks helped me fell some trees and begin shaving them for posts for the green roof. Hoooray! Today I dragged them around so I could better measure, cut and finish shaving them. Then for some extra exercise, took a run with the dog. Yay! Beautiful wood, to boot...

Mary Oliver: The Gift

2009-12-06T08:52:00.001-05:00

The Gift

I wanted to thank the mockingbird for the vigor of his song.
Every day he sang from the rim of the field, while I picked
blueberries or just idled in the sun.
Every day he came fluttering by to show me, and why not,
the white blossoms in this wings.
So one day I went there with a machine, and played some songs of
Mahler.
The mockingbird stopped singing, he came close and seemed
to listen.
Now when I go down to the field, a little Mahler spills
through the sputters of his song.
How happy I am, lounging in the light, listening as the music
floats by!
And I give thanks also for my mind, that thought of giving
a gift.
And mostly I’m grateful that I take this world so seriously.
Mary Oliver

Gosh, I can relate. :-) Thanks again, dharmafortoday yahoo group.

The Donkey in the Well -

2009-11-10T04:16:00.003-05:00

Thanks to Dharma for Today for the posting.

The Donkey in the Well

One day a farmer's donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for
hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally he decided the
animal was old and the well needed to be covered up anyway, so it just wasn't
worth it to try to retrieve the donkey.

He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a
shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well.

At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to
everyone's amazement, he quieted down. A few shovel loads later, the farmer
finally looked down the well and was astonished at what he saw.

With every shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something
amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up. As the farmer's neighbors
continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a
step up.

Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the
well and trotted off!

Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting
out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is
a stepping stone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping,
never giving up. Shake it off, and take a step up!

Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

1. Free your heart from hatred.
2. Free your mind from worries.
3. Live simply.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less.

~Author Unattributed

This is often posted with snide comments about how the Donkey returned to kick the snot out of the farmer... but I don't know that that came with the story. Not sure who the author is... but I appreciated the five rules, the very real emotional ups and downs of the donkey, and the end result. Not just awareness of what's happening, but awareness of WHAT WITHIN WHAT CONTEXT? Within what world view is the event happening? We talk sometime in social work about those with resilient world views... Food for thought.

Also, aside, I can't sleep tonight. Woke up from one of those dreams from having practice on my mind all the time...end up practicing in my sleep, sort of. At any rate, getting back to sleep would be good....

zen food prayer & social justice (with a six realm sideliner)

2009-11-04T22:08:00.004-05:00

[aside: Hi. Been a while. I've missed writing about things - sometimes helps me develop worldview about a particular thing. Not that thinking and worldview are everything...but occasionally it's nice to have practiced language about a thing.]

I first came across this particular chant at sesshin with Richard Clarke that my instructor Steve Kaufmann invited me to. I took a liking to it immediately, and have been running through it at all my meals for the last few months:

This food comes from the labors of beings past and present.
From it our body-mind is nourished, our practice sustained.
Gratefully we accept this meal.
We take this food to attain the Buddha-way.

Our meal is offered to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.
With teachers and family, with nations and all life let us equally share.
To beings throughout the six realms we offer this meal.

All hungry ghosts! All tortured spirits!
Now we give you this Dharma-food.
May it fill the ten directions and satisfy hunger in realms of darkness.
All hungry ghosts! All tortured spirits!
Abandon greed and rouse the desire for enlightenment.

I thought I'd pass on and clarify for myself my particular practice with this chant at this point. I suppose this is a "commentary," but I think of it more like a snapshot of a practice at a particulra point with a particular person. Commentary shmomentary.

As I chant the lines, I try to "fill them" with a certain emotional and conceptual relevancy to real life. So I'm not just chanting away - I'm trying to work with certain visualizations and emotions. Here's the run down at this point, though it's a bit different every time and a work in progress.

This food comes from the labors of beings past and present.

I think of farm-laborers first and particular injustices. I generally flash on images of migrant, often undocumented workers picking in fields, the "concept" of social injustice in that area, food insecurity with those who provide the rest of us with food, and similar images. My mind flashes to non-human beings and processes in the food flow, animals macro and micro-scopic that provide manure and sustain the life cycle of grown food. In the span of just about that sentence, it's enough to quickly acknowledge the infinite beings that have produced the food. If I know where the food comes from (my garden, local farms, my partner Margo's place), I make those visualizations and emotions more specific - appreciating her and her farm help, or appreciating the mentors and friends that have supported me in producing my first year's garden crop. This is a line to bring up appreciation, acknowledge a debt to beings, and rouse the desire (used to motivate action!) for social justice around food.

From it our body-mind is nourished, our practice sustained.

Here I remember that in the zen worldview, body and mind are one...or at least not discretely "two," separate. I notice that I am not eating food for purely pleasurable reasons, and definitely not to take away stress as a place to "run to"... I am eating to sustain my practice. And while I've had many a sitting trying to find "practice" and not being able to - I often seem to conceptualize my self through the lens of a boundaried, "known" (vs. lived) practice - it's still the case that I *am* participating in a practice here. I'm trying to make my efforts toward the "good." Yeah, that bodhisattva ideal can turn dangerous, heady, etc... but it certainly seems to me, in my life, for me it's important to maintain that direction towards the ideal with a big heaping of a self-critical eye and waryness of the tendency to hide from life by having "life direction." All those admonitions aside, this food is for practice. I have a feeling of practicing acknowledgement that body and mind are not two and a feeling of offering the food to my practice...and reaffirming my (ha!) intention (empty skanda without essence, but still!) to the bodhisattva vow.

Gratefully we accept this meal.

Time to double check my gratefulness, in case I didn't arouse the emotion beforehand and was too conceptual. Emotion of gratefulness...

We take this food to attain the Buddha-way.

Again, a nice double-check on the buddha way. Usually my mind goes to the place of "attain" vs. "realize" - that Buddhahood isn't a state at a distance on attains like getting first place in a race or something you find burried... it's a state that (rumor seems to have it) I've always been and may find benefit in discovering it is so. I remind myself again that food is for practice - though can be appreciated "independent" of my practice... or really, appreciated from my practice instead of just appreciated for my practice. I remind myself that buddhahood doesn't exist as a external concept on the word "attain."

Our meal is offered to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.

Time to remember the treasures. I bring appreciation for teachers and the buddha's particular teaching of liberation from suffering; appreciation of the dharma as a common, "natural law" governing cause and effect (particular what brings suffering and dissatisfaction and what brings pleasure) discoverable by anyone who pays enough attention; and to the community of practitioners (including very much so my social justice community/family of activists pursuing ideals of ending injustice and sufferings of marginalized groups). These three points happen as specific emotional flashes attached to a jumble of images - they're fast, not "stories"... more like memories I arouse or create at the time.

With teachers and family, with nations and all life let us equally share.

I hold a feeling of ever-widening appreciation here. Here's where generic well-wishing that builds and motivates action goes for far away places - developing countries with food insecurity and war, identification of the first-world's unjust practice of gathering profits while outsourcing costs to other coutries, unequal pay... So I have this feeling of moving out of circles of appreciation and need for care from those close to me whom I feel direct appreciation for to those I don't know or I wouldn't "like" (stereotyped categories of those with seemingly uncaring political or personal sensibilities) that I feel sympathy for. Incidentally, there's something about the foursome of "teachers and family, with nations and all life" that's often tricky for my tongue. Sometimes I start with family instead of teachers and get mealy-mouthed.

To beings throughout the six realms we offer this meal.

The six realms are sometimes seen as different planes of existence, almost like how heaven and hell exist and have an external reality in the pop-Christian sense (angels and harps! fire and pitchforks!). Instead of vertical, they're more circular...and unlike pop-Christianity where heaven is better than hell, only this plane is sort of "privileged" above others, including heaven. That is, it's no better (though it feels better) to be in heaven than to be in hell (the animal realm, for instance). In the human realm we have just the right balance of pleasure and pain, dissatisfaction and awareness to generate the notice true dharma and drive a little wedge in the system so we can get out of the cycle of dissatisfaction caused by our own actions (personal and collective) causing consequences. Now, a lot of that seems to happen through a process of karmic, habitual thinking (not what most folks think, in my mind) and consequent conceptualization of events from a certain point-of-view that generates dissatisfaction...but I'm not going to get into that. Anyway, here I'm mindful of how I am in a position of privilege to bumble through something close to practice - when many other states aren't. I specifically conceptualize of the six realms in a human, social justice context instead of a purely mythical context:

Deva/God Realm: The realm of bliss. It's "immaterial" or not one of the "sense" realms, which I conceptualize to parallel a purely conceptual bliss independent from reality you'd actually experience if you related meaningfully to the rest of existence. In the human context, I see this as anyone either too blissed out on false, feel-good-all-the-time spirituality... or the phenomenon of someone having a lot of privilege (money or wealth, race privilege, straight privilege, etc.) that believes life is just so wonderful... but never really gets to know other people's experiences. In the human Buddha story, this is the state Siddhartha Gautama was in before his tour of the city and the four signs that lead him to realize his perception of reality was blinded by his father (and his willingness!). So, stereotypically, some rich, white, male, capitalism-lovin' Republican that thinks life's pretty damn great and just and that working class folks should just work harder and be more ethical (or that we'd a-ok in this environmental crisis) is in this realm. If they came down the real world and spent time deeply listening to the stories of working class people they (after a probably long emotional process) might feel a bit less blissful. This is a realm to have sympathy for, since they can't really develop relationships on our plane - it's all ideas within their own head... but they lose all the real texture of life because of their blinders, necessary to maintain a blissful worldview.

Asura/Demi-God Realm: This is the realm of privilege, but drama and jealousy. A parallel in our human realm, to me, is the upper/owning class experience. Fights about family money and crazy relationship stresses are real for beings in this realm... Watch most episodes of reality TV and the interpersonal drama is 99% composed of (so I hear, anyway; like I have a TV!). Whenever things are really, really good overall but drama seems to pervade we're talking about this realm. Within myself, I find this realm's presence when I lose perspective on practice and start stressing and feeling sorry for myself in some area...whenever relationship stresses get cyclic from too much attention or I start to get too materialistic, I'm rockin' the Deva realm. Check Louis CK's "Everythink's amazing, nobody's happy" skit for a perfect description of this realm. This realm should be sympathized with, as beings can't appreciate what they have or find meaning and peace in relationships...with everything swirling around them in a stress-causing mess.

Animal Realm: This realm symbolizes stupidity, prejudice and knee-jerk reactions. Now, here's where comparison to humans is going to be rough: I think the application of this realm to human existence is as a label for "acting like an animal." Racist violence and hate crimes are symbols of this. In the less "intense" versions in my own mind, my own stereotyping habits and group-think (like cultural brainwashing I'm still trying to shake off) are symbols of me habitually acting like an animal. I also extend this realm to situations where, due to injustice, beings are short on basic needs and driven to compete, often desperately, for those basics. If we could act like a more united humanity, or more united life, we could certainly do away with this - the myth that there is just isn't enough isn't true (according to some engineers doing bigtime conversions and analysis: per person, if we could subsist on the material and energy resources within 4 acres of arable land, all humans on earth could be sustained). There is enough for every man's need, but not everyone's greed, Matatma Ghandhi said. This realm should be sympathized with, as acting like an animal keeps beings from joyfully deriving meaning from our connection to true, wide community - with other humans of diverse backgrounds, with animals and our living earth, etc.

Preta/Hungry Ghost Realm: This realm is symbolized in Buddhist iconography with beings with big stomachs (and hunger!) and pin-hole mouths and represents an inability to be satisfied. The human parallel is not beings who are starving (actually, they'd be in the hell realm, unfortunately) - their hunger is physically real and physically satisfiable. This represents materialism and our run-away consumer culture, as does any sort of desire-based dissatisfaction. Got to have the newest gizmo? Knit the next scraf? Be efficient in the 30 seconds between phone calls you're making in the car? Even "when I get a better cushion, I'll be happier" can be hungry ghost-speak. The idea you'll be satisfied just around the bend is often (1) just not true and (2) symbolic of this particular area of suffering. My mental keystone for this realm is that applying some skill and being capable of being satisfied by its application are two very different skill sets. The capacity to be satisfied, I would suggest, is a single skill that can applied everywhere and practiced (though doesn't mean something won't motivate you to helpful action). Got a free minute between things? Yes, be efficient (I mean, I love GTD, I'm not knocking efficiency here...), but be capable of doing nothing, also.

Hell Realm: Psychologically, hell realm is meant to describe intense states of hatred. It's like being so angry you can't think straight (or practice, or live). In the human parallel, I further extend this realm to describe situations where you're suffering and in threat of your very life to really practice much. So soldiers in wartime, the starving, even some inner city environments seem like hell to me. If you're worrying about your next meal or not getting shot, that's likely to interrupt your ability to see how the mind works and get to deeper realizations about true satisfaction and peace. Not impossible, certainly: great beings have come out of craaaazy situations, but these environments resist that movement strongly. I mentally divide this realm from the animal realm by whether you're furiously competing for basics (animal) or primarily suffering from the absence of basic comforts/needs (hell). Beings in this realm are obviously ones to sympathize with, as their strong hatred or just their absence of food, water and shelter are roadblocks to peace.

Human Realm: Rock on. As rare a situation as a single turtle coincidentally poking its head through a single knothole of a log adrift on the entire ocean, it's said. Rebirth aside, I take this rarity to be: in this life, it seems like the circumstances that have the balance of privileges (like low-level mental and physical ability), environment, opportunity to hear teachings, with just enough experience with brainwashing culture to see the craziness without being drawn into it, able to move through teachings without being caught by their seductive nature... are so, so rare. I have no idea how I'm lucky enough to have happened on teachers (of Buddhism, of community social justice work - especially dismantling oppression work, of bodywork like Tang Soo Do, aikido and tai chi), family and community and enough leisure time to both work and practice. This circumstance certainly leaves me feeling the luckiest person the world. The human realm is characterized by a balance of dissatisfaction and sufferings with opportunities to be aware of their causes and effects, to even hear and karmicly to make some sense of teachings. It's the place where practice transforms bad circumstances into opportunities to see what the natural law is and improve our action's effectiveness and really producing lasting happiness. Older mahayana primary texts like the first volume of Tsong-Kha-Pa's "Great Tretice on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (the Lamrim Chenmo), identify other characteristics of our lives as humans that are conductive to practice, even things like many of us live long enough to practice but could die at any time and live not so long that we become complacent and too patient.

OK, six realms are done. :-) And ultimately as I hope I illustrated some, I think all of these states exist within each of us simultaneously...and sometimes a situation or environment might be characterized by multiple or all realms at once as well. They characterize some of our habitual "voices," they describe some of our unfortunate knee-jerk responses to experiences.

Let's move on! It's getting late and I have to teach in the morning...

All hungry ghosts! All tortured spirits!
Now we give you this Dharma-food.
May it fill the ten directions and satisfy hunger in realms of darkness.

OK, so I conceptualize the idea of beings hungry with desire who are incapable of being satisfied. At this point in the group chant we all hold up a small bit of our food - a nut or something - to place in the offering bowl that goes to the teacher to deal with. I also generate the wish to be satisfied by my food here and now, to actually not act like a hungry ghost myself with this meal. It's dharma-food, to me, in the sense that we're offering teaching as much as we are offering food... but that food, good, simple, local, just (in the sense of "justice", not "only") food is a perfect opportunity to be satisfied, is, in fact, one of the natural teachers of the specific dharma on being capable of being satisfied. Just eating something (now, in the sense of "only!") is a teacher of this truth, with an opportunity to listen to and practice and REALize those teachings a number of times a day. The "ten directions" (gosh, with the numbers... thank you oral traditions!) are the four cardinal directions, the four combos (like south east and northwest) and up and down. Basically it just means everywhere. I visualize it as a ten vectors from a point that can be combined to make all directions (cuz I'm a geek). Technically we only need six orthagonal vectors (four cardinal directions and up and down), but sometimes Buddhism exaggerates when it talks about infinites, like the 88,000 whatevers.

All hungry ghosts! All tortured spirits!
Abandon greed and rouse the desire for enlightenment.

This is a combo - I wish for other beings to be capable of being satisfied in their own particular lives...by noticing how dissatisfaction works at a basic level and then generating the wish to free themselves and other beings (of cultural baggage, of habitual thinking from greed/hate/delusion or non-human realm thinking, etc.) simultaneously through practice and good works. And I wish for myself, again, to abandon greed in general and in the eating of this meal and to renew my own vow for enlightenment.

Whew. Just describing 30 seconds of my head took waay too long. May it somehow be of benefit. Best wishes.

Cob cottage photos: test post from Picasa

2009-10-22T18:45:00.000-04:00

Here's a little test blog of some new designs of my cob cottage in the works...

when will the blog tests end? When picasa finally figures out what's going on.

2009-10-22T18:41:00.000-04:00

another blog test

ooh! Another blog test, this one perhaps working...?

2009-10-22T18:40:00.000-04:00

Test Cob Update from Picasa... FB folks, ignore this.

2009-10-22T18:34:00.000-04:00

Testaroonie.

Appreciated this: Snarky Leviticus. No homosexuality! Or planting corn and beans!

2009-08-18T01:01:00.003-04:00

I have had a number (small, but significant) of great Christians in my life I'm very thankful for. And think religions can be practiced well, to benefit, including Christianity (though rarely, especially in our dominant culture where it's intentionally used to galvanize power in the few at the expense of many working class believers.). Still, I love these Leviticus jokes. Sinners! I'm looking forward to sinning sometime soon by buddy planting beans and cord this year. Oh, and it's truly God's word, not a representation of man's historical justifications, that I can have Mexican slaves (which we sorta do in the way we treat undocumented workers!) But no Canadians? But I wanted a Canadian...

Leviticus 18:22 clearly states homosexuality to be an abomination. (old law)
Since we use the "old law" here, let's see what other old laws there are.

When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15:19- 24. The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?

Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? - Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

A love letter to my cooking collards and red cabbage and all beings

2009-08-08T21:50:00.002-04:00

Dear ones I am cooking (too),

It is my first spring season, as of course you know and have experienced.

Though I have been brought here by infinite circumstances and helped by my farmer friends, I knew I was being so casual with you. You grew underneath the weeds and cover crop in beds I refused to sterilize, without chemical fertilizers I do not understand.

I sewed a cover crop at inopportune times that made your job more difficult. I gave you water when it was too dry sometimes, little-decomposed cow manure and too-little straw. I vowed to make mistakes, all mostly impacting you, in order to begin a path to the most natural way of growing that will take more than my lifetime to learn of. Now, after your lives are over, I have a few lessons; many more I missed and will make again.

I snacked on you as you grew; tonight, to prepare for the fall. I vow in this next life season not to forget the lessons of this one, but instead to take them forward for our mutual benefit. If there is a next “life” (but without an “I”, what is a “life?”) and I should die soon, as you have, I vow to do the same forever.

I vow not to forget how hard you worked - not for me, but for life - and how I am now benefitting from your striving… as all beings identically strive in their own way, with delusion and without, all the same source and end. I vow not to pretend it is I that controls you…. because with negligible help from me you grew as I could never manipulate. I could not place each cell, drink water with your roots or absorb the sun with your leaves. How ridiculous! Just now I had to leave writing because I was beginning to burn you on the stove. My indulgences again! How ridiculous!

Even my joy and appreciation for you can move my mind away to attentiveness… like this poem, just colors, secretions of the mind, just concepts independent of inherent self-existence. All doors are wrong doors, and all lead to enlightenment.

Tonight I taste all of your effort and understood gardening in my life so much more thanks to your efforts. All beings, sentient and insentient, plant and animal, water my life. My great thanks waters my eyes. Through your efforts I vow to awaken.

Much love and appreciation,

Mike

PS: I am having you tonight with wheat pasta, similar to the wheat straw I sewed when I placed the cover crop. Wheat arrives in my life as bread and many other foods. I do not yet understand wheat, how wheat becomes a noodle…though I am capable of helping crushed wheat become bread with great help from yeast and others. I promise to learn more about and be taught by wheat as you all have taught me.

PPS: Oh! Our Sungold tomatoes, which I did not protect from deer and were eaten to a single stem, returned to bear fruit. I ate 10 beautiful ones just today. How sweet you all are to me!

Spinal Tap! (no, not the band) & the metaphor of the Boat to the other shore

2009-07-10T22:09:00.006-04:00

Hey y'all.

I've really appreciated all the well-wishing and questions due to my kinda crazy status updates. Thanks for caring - the sentiment and interest is sweet...though I haven't been able to update or email folks much (more on that later). I thought a quick note with what's been going on might do well to keep my friends updated... and stretching my neck with a heat pad and experimenting with very limited work as part of the healing process is good for me at this point I think. I'm trying to keep it low-key... but testing out the body slowly.

So here's the story

The backdrop: this year I've been in two car accidents - one a year ago and one six months ago - and have been healing from a crazy jaw dislocation/joint damage and whiplash. Awesome. Healing's been slow... but overall feeling pretty good. Nothing was impacting my training too much. The biggest stressor was/is the insurance companies. Ugh.

Three weeks ago I went with Steve (aikido teacher, mentor, friend) to our annual week-long Chen Taiji summer camp with Master Wang Hai Jun. We drove... 15+ hours up to north NY. Why? I forget now - next time I'm driving. At any rate, Steve was sick and by the end of the drive I wasn't feeling so hot myself.

I'd been on a kick of doing at least one run through of long-form each day in preparation - Steve and I planned to concentrate almost entirely on Lao Jia regardless of what extra fancy forms or weapons the other folks wanted... since Lao Jia is the basic long form and we're hoping to work on our basics for the first...EVER years. So when we got there a day early, I pushed hard and did a number of them.

[INTERJECTION here for a point of practice. Sometimes I'm dumb. Often I'm dumb. One of a small handful of my favorite books, "an ongoing lesson in the extent of my own stupidity", I like in part because my life seems so similar to the title. In Tai Chi I've often heard of the "70% rule": not to practice beyond 70% of what you're capable of, but to practice consistently...and so consistently increasing your 70%. The adage that you should practice just like you expect to perform has its place... but all of life isn't a competition. I'm mostly preaching to myself here. ALSO, in Aikido, a teacher that inspires me once said that the nage shouldn't feel the technique at all and the uke should feel everything. It's clearly a habit of the aikido beginner...heck, the aikido non-master to want to feel their own power so they know they're DOING something. I think, in myself, that's tied to the compulsive and ego-centric need to BE somebody, to be someone doing something cool. And I have to sense the coolness to know I'm being someone cool. Laaaaaaame. And so I put too much effort into things at once then burn out, then put effort in again. Mike, learn some sustainability! More on that at the end.]

TMI warning: That same day we got there I accidentally drank some unpasturized OJ...and also managed to get a piece of food stuck in in my mouth in one of the two small holes that lead up to your sinuses, basically blocking the passage. I didn't know this at the time.

So after two days of training, something was up. My throat was mimicking an infection, being all inflamed and stuff, my stomach didn't like me much (though the food was AMAZING), and in the middle of the second night I woke up with a headache and very cold thanks to a hard draft in through the window (it had been hot at night 'til then.). Heck, the headaches (that didn't go away) could have been putting too much internal counter-balancing pressure on myself while practicing, which I'd been doing hard those first few days, could have been postural, could have been this weird lump in my jaw (thanks, car accident #1). Lots of things. Lots of things that don't warrant a spinal tap. But we're almost there.

So I didn't practice for the second half of the week. Lame. And I went to see Dana Turner in NYC (who ROCKS) and didn't get much better. I was planning to see Hal Lehrman and train some aikido....no dice. I went to the NYC Brooklyn clinic and paid $30 to sit in a waiting room with a million other folks for 7 hours and not be seen. At that point the headaches (and my hunger! wtf!) were too strong, so I left and didnt get seen. Dana and I traded massages, which was definitely the physical highlight of how I'd been feeling all week. Thanks Dana.

[interjection: if you don't have health insurance, ... well, don't get me started. Health insurance is such a privilege. Being able to make appointments - also a privilege.]

Home to NJ with the mom and my bro. Normally I hide my ailments from my mom because I have to manage my illness as well as her reaction to my illness...which is TIRING often. She has strong opinions about how to (better) take care of my health, so I try to be intentional about showing symptoms around her.

[Aside, again: for me, and I think for many people, it's really helpful to be as "clean" of a help as possible when someone's sick or stressed. That's hard work, but it's a skill and one I really appreciate. Sarah, thanks for how awesome you often are at this.]

Also, I have a strong hesitancy in seeing western pharma-based doctors. The whole worldview often irritates me and makes me feel unsafe - expensive diagnoses, ignore more sensible treatments... and pills will fix it. Anti-wholistic. Now, not everybody, of course... and I may be on the other side of a line about this... but I consistently have screwball doctor stories to share.

So: I fessed up and asked mom about local doctors (remember, I'm in Jersey). I went to see a doctor, recommended from my mom's brother. Family sidenote: my cousin (this mother's brother's oldest son) just died at 23 from... well, there are theories. Regardless, just know he was on some SERIOUS medications for a long time for headaches. So I went to see this doc and was prescribed crazy meds (the ER doc counseled me NOT to take them, since they have strong, scary side effects and neurological impacts) and a CT scan. Got CT scan done and an "irregularity" showed up. Possible brain aneurysm (WTF!). I mainly wanted to get checked out to be sure I didn't have an infection or Lyme disease (deer ticks were ALL OVER my house) and needed anti-biotics. I just wanted some blood work and maybe some anti-biotics.

Anyway. I was prescribed a follow-up MRI. I went to the ER (like you often have to do if you're without insurance, as I am) on July 3rd and they said the MRI staff was probably not around (celebrating our great nation's whatever). They suggested, if it were an emergency meginitis, Lyme or aneurysm problem, a spinal tap was a faster, surer bet. Though I was warned that there was a 7% chance my headaches might get "worse."

So: went for the spinal tap.

Now let me say at this point: I've GOTTEN an epidural needle before for a knee injury. I've been awake while there were needles in my spine. I've never had a tap. It's like a mother fucking IV into your spinal column. It's like getting knifed and then they wiggle it around, swapping lead needles with other needs and drawing vials of blood. Imagine you're having blood drawn...but instead of a vein the doc/nurse can see it's a small tube of JUICES THAT SUSPEND YOUR VERY BRAIN that trails down the MIDDLE OF YOUR SPINAL VERTEBRAE. Imagine the doc trying to "find that vein" when they can't really see it. There's some wiggling. Wiggling a needle in your spinal column. Supposedly I had anesthetic, but I can't vouch for that.

I was unprepared: It was excruciating. I've never had pain like that in a hospital before.

Then I went home about an hour later. I felt crappy, but ok - went home, hung out with my brother and went to sleep...boarded a plane the next day.

So you know that 7% chance? And that "headache worsening?"

Yeah, ok, nothing I can pull up (now that I can lift my head) says 7%. I've seen 30-40%....higher if you're 20-30 (check), low BMI (check), athletic (check), and got up before a few hours were up. It's onset is 24-48 hours after the lumbar puncture (sounds better than SPINAL TAP, huh?).

And it's not a headache. It's the impossibly painful end of being upright, indefinitely. Check this out:

So the cerebral-spinal fluid is a closed pressure system, basically. There's no blood in there - just pressurized brain juice. (think how a can of pears has that juice the pear's floating around in). There's not a lot of fluid in there to start with, and they took 3 vials. It ends up to just a small percentage of the total fluid... but this is your BRAIN here. If you have a lumbar puncture with this (COMMON!!!) complication, you basically leak brain juices as well as having a pressure change.

So basically, when my spine went vertical, the pressure differential would change and my brain (and more precisely, certain cerebral membranes) would be subtly SUCKED DOWN on by the long tube of the spine. Like a zombie with a big fucking straw. Lay down, don't move.... feeling pretty good. Start to sit up: something's wrong. Then, all at once, a pulling sensation, pressure building in my neck and head, and then nearly blacking out from tension in the neck and head. My post lumbar puncture headaches started creeping in as our plane landed.

And, thusly, I threw up in a bag.

Margaret (love!) was sweet and picked me up. I layed horizontal on her lap as she drove me home. That was last Saturday afternoon. And it wasn't until Tuesday that I could get to the bathroom with enough speed and concentration to make walking possible - so, in order to keep my spine horizontal, most of my bathroom trips were on my hands and knees..or with my butt up in the air like some malformed dog. LOL. Then going to the bathroom with my head as low as possible, then crawling back.

I wasn't really prescribed anything for headaches like this - some light muscle relaxants for the previous minor headaches and some aleve. Nothing did a dent in the suction headaches. Tom (thanks bro!) found that caffeine and TONS of liquids were the best bet - normally caffeine is a diuretic, sucking water from your muscles... but I guess it sucks it into places like: your spinal column! Great. So I'm doing tea... and chocolate and soda, both of which I don't like much and have had more of in the past week than the last year. On, and a constantly refilled platypus/camelbak.

Sarah was a godsend. Margaret helped as well and kept me company a number of times... and my bro did great research from afar. And plenty, plenty of solitary time, which I thrive (and heal best) in.

So that's the story, physically.

Emotionally, however: I feel fantastic. There's nothing like not being able to move or leave your room for 5 days to force some life review. It's like a zazen sitting I couldn't get up from. And there's only so much sleeping I'm capable of. Helped me rethink some priorities bigtime, calm down, burn some lessons (pace yourself you dope!) into my mind...and after 4 days, once I could reliably tuck my chin while lying down without feeling sick (no joke): begin to learn to play the Native American flute I'd ordered and delve into a commentary of the heart sutra I'm LOVING. It was like my own little sesshin. Lots of lessons, more than I'll share here - snag me in person next week for more (I'm only capable of about 20-30 minutes of uprightness without 30 minutes of lying down now. Neck cramps up still...).

I had a bit of a strong experience reading and rereading a certain page of the heart sutra commentary. Those that know me may know the heart sutra is pretty much buddhism and my practice aspirations in a nutshell. I'm kinda obsessed with it actually...pleasantly. Anyway, I'm going to just type out an excerpt here to end on...since that's where my mind is. In closing though: spinal taps aren't fun. Then they get less fun. But if you find un-fun about as fascinating as fun...you're in for a really fascinating experience. My overall take-aways:

pursue the middle-way. The less I feel myself practicing or not practicing the more I may be practicing.
take care of my health as if it were precious...the neck muscles at the base of my skull are precious to me now.
take joy in the small things...sometimes that's all you'll have.
there's always an external excuse in my life not to life with some grace...like being immobile. I'm more capable than that.
my god, how appreciative - of my own practices, of my caring friends and family. I'm the luckiest person ever.

So, Lastly: I think the only Buddhist term context that might be worth sharing is that this is a line-by-line commentary on the heart sutra... the heart of wisdom, the core of the buddha's teachings. This paricular commentator is skilled and well-versed, so is bringing related pieces together often in his pages and pages on each word. He's talking about the word "prajnaparamita" - the perfection of wisdom, and its place in the buddhist worldview. The shorthand: the teaching developed out of the early buddhist practice of the three pillars of morality (sila), meditation (dhyana) and wisdom (prajna). Those three practices could be deepened indefinitely, and began to be referred to as perfections... to which three more were added: the first being generosity (dana), which enabled the practitioner to get to a point where keeping the more generalized morality was something of interest (in a sense, building experiences/"karma"/punya/merit through dana so that one sees deeply enough to appreciate sila), then the aforementioned morality, then perfections of forbearance (sorta like patience, but I think it's expanded) and vigor, then meditation and wisdom. All are meant to be applied within the "wisdom" framework, in a sense: the idea of emptiness of self (which I'm not going to delve into more than that) is to be brought to all of the other practices.

So the six perfections (there's a list of 10 out there as well... breaking some of these up even more) are:

generocity (dana)
morality (sila)
forbearance (kshanti)
vigor/energy (virya)
meditation (dyana)
wisdom (prajna)

Now here comes the quoted section. Ah, the middle way. One of my life theories is that it's the nature of structures, used well, to bound things for us so that we can LIVE in the middle of them. We come alive hunting for the perpetually changing best place to stand between the posts, in a sense. Like the precept of not taking life that is impossible to deeply uphold. To avoid killing animals? even microscopic ones? To reduce waste to zero? But it still sounds out like a bell, saying "practice here! between indifference and impossibility, what will you do?! What are you capable of?! Where is the sweet spot!?"

I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll just end with the metaphor I've been visualizing/memorizing for the past few days with nothing to do by lay down. Reviewing the parts of the boat over and over, thinking of ways to incorporate it into my daily practice...and using it as a lens through which to find my extremes.

"Taken together, the paramitas are also likened to a boat that takes us across the sea of suffering. The paramita of generosity, according to this analogy, is the wood: light enough to float but not so light that it floats away. Thus bodhisattvas practice giving and renunciation but not so much that they have nothing left with which to work. The paramita of morality is the keel, deep enough to hold the boat upright but not so deep that it drags the shoals or holds it back. Thus bodhisattvas observe precepts but not so many that they have no freedom of choice. The paramita of forbearance is the hull, wide enough to hold a deck but not so wide that it can't cut through waves. Thus bodhisattvas don't confront what opposes them but find the place of least resistance. The paramita of vigor is the mast, high enough to hold a sail but not so high that it tips the boat over. Thus bodhisattvas work hard but not so hard that they don't stop for tea. The paramita of meditation is the sail, flat enough to catch the wind of karma but not so flat that it holds no breeze or rips apart in a gale. Thus bodhisattvas still the mind but not so much that it withers and dies. And the paramita of wisdom is the helm, ingenious enough to give the boat direction but not so ingenious that it leads in circles. Thus bodhisattvas who practice the paramitas embark on the greatest of all voyages to the far shore of liberation. [...]

Though, when a person is asleep, they might dream they're in a boat, that they're crossing a river and reaching the other shore. Then they suddenly wake up at home and the river and the person and the boat are gone. When bodhisattvas cultivate the way, they understand that both people and dharmas are empty. And after approaching the end of the path and gaining the forbearanance of birthlessness, they realize that the person (themselves) who cultivates and the path they cultivate are nothing but a dream or illusion."

My hull is often too wide and leans patience into inaction (be more aggressive with my health care). My mast is often too tall so my ship is too often knocked in winds (go slower. drink more tea...). You get the idea.

USA Today article... sharing a bit about our racist past & present

2009-06-23T09:24:00.002-04:00

NOTE: In case you want to skip to the good stuff, at the bottom I recommend this rockin' PBS site with a timeline of the creation of the "race" concept and practice as we know it today.

Hey all. I'm traveling with steve & jesse up to NYC for taiji summer camp...and they've got free USA today newspapers in the lobby. Hidden in the back of the first section of today's paper : "Congress needs to make full confession on slavery."

While that's true, to me what the piece is really about is the importance of education about the actual structures and laws that supported and support racism. In a conversation with steve, he talked about our country as a spooky economic fascist state and related a number of stories about teaching in Oakland. He shared that in his experience, the white-washed history often taught in schools doesn't bring any buy-in for African American students... whereas some political education about the actual machinery of our racist society might have. The anti-lynching bills shot down in congress. The Fugutive slave act that denied slaves trials and the right to testify. The Voting rights act shot down that would have disallowed southern states from illegally blocking Black folks from coming to the polls. This shit still goes on today, in fact, in more subtle but still measurable ways. In my history of social work class through UNC's master's program, the incredible Dr. Iris Carlton-LaNey shared legislation after legislation, informal policies, networks of corruption... and the ways that early social workers both pushed back against and were complicit in racist systems.

But I'm getting away from myself here. What I suggested to Steve is that knowing the history of racism and anti-racist resistance is empowering for everybody - White folks and People of Color. When I was more involved in anti-racism trainings a few years ago (and hope to renew my commitments there in the coming years), I found without exception that learning a deeper and more substantive history wakes people up. It helps name the many destructive aspects of culture and by contrast an alternative vision of a culture we can believe in...providing a sense of purpose and history for those in cultural resistance and a factual legitimizing of an emotional reality people of color (and White folks too) experience that's otherwise denied by our white washed culture and history. Yes, racism was real, was everywhere, was strategic and intentional - and to suggest anything else without knowing the nuts and bolts is ignorance or wishful thinking, protecting an ego that would would so much rather live in a world without atrocity that it would deny reality. Yes, resistance existed and has always existed, has been strategic, has had victories as well as losses... to not really SEE that in our history leads to disempowerment, to separation from a powerful lineage of those that push back against runaway capitalism, materialism and racism.

Steve and I got into this conversation through the lens of food...and how modern culture disables good food choices at so many turns while occasionally tossing bones out to distract from real, healthy, local food. To me, spiritual activism is about being awakened someplace (through the environmental movement, the labor movement, anti-racist resistance, anti-materialism) and bringing that awakening, that new vision of a culture that has good *and* bad, to other areas. If we have a long history of destroying the environment for private gain, of hoodwinking the public for secret ends...and of environmental resistance and Gaiain protection... maybe it's true about the push for more-and-better materialism? Maybe there's a history of

And maybe there's a coherenent ideal of non-patriarching protection and liberation that can be discovered in these histories. Heck, not just discovered, but strengthened by rereading, by learning more, by study. I'm remembering one of the participants in "The Color of Fear" who said, "...and study. Always study." as a suggestion to aspiring anti-racists out there. I think I'm due for more study myself.

If you're interested in a great starter, check this PBS site for links... and particularly this amazing (but truncated, of course) deep timeline of events that helped create the race construct.

Not knowing history, not seeing culture, not awakening to purpose to grow, develop, and assist others in our shared process sucks. But like many things, hot defines cold, high defines low...so it's hard to know what you're missing until you see otherwise. So too I didn't realize how hoodwinked I was until I became more awakened...and don't realize how hoodwinked I am relative to what I'll know later. Strange thing. But again and again, such appreciation to those that have supported me to here.

An anti-racist org's look at Obama's 1st 100... plus ten cool resources.

2009-04-29T17:32:00.002-04:00

Hey y'all. A beautiful day for some gardening... and closing out my MSW internship with a super sweet meeting (Thanks Claudia, Marcie, Rebecca!).

Got this cool graphic passed on to me from the Applied Research Center - an awesome anti-racism group.

Saw this cool article and map on the state of immigration in the US.

And lastly, the ColorLines blog posted a great rundown of ten things you (we!) can do to keep up to date on the fight for racial justice. There's, of course, more than ten things... but hey, here's a start. (One of those ten things could be to go to a dismantling racism training to be held in the Triangle May 29-31. Contact me for details!)

What I miss about non-local food (hint: mints). Also! Weaver cheat sheet.

2009-04-10T12:35:00.004-04:00

Local's goin' fine, mostly... but the fewer choices gets me whiney. I should be cooking more, but I'm not really there yet. I'm mostly constraining myself to products that are mostly 100% grown and produced locally (again, NC, VA, SC...though the bulk of it is within 20 mi), so that's meaning no combined food. Which, again, is just about everything.

I've been maintaining a steady (hopefully not annoying) stream of "where's this from" at weaver st., Hillsborough. My last stay someone gave me this sheet of local food that use in the back. Pretty freakin' awesome. I wish they'd post this online. Maybe I'll make a request...

An initial critique of the (awesome, c'mon) Weaver local support. I'd love to see:

bulk food labeled with where it's mostly grown from and where it's distributed from
a list of localISH products (the isles and stuff) on the website
a quick stamp of "localISH" on the cooked food. Like, if you've got something sweet potatoish goin' on that's local, let folks know!
a map of "local food" right in the front of the store - something semi-changable, but good looking - including produce, bulk, dairy, meat, and the packaged isles. That'd f-in' rock.

OK, maybe it's my job to make the last one.

Um, other than that, I'm really missing stuff like mints. You know, easy, tasty stuff. I totally take for granted that little things like vitamins, quick snacks, cough drops, and yes, even breath mints are oil-power teleported to me from the reaches of the earth.

Breath mints: far off shit.

peace,mike

Local foodin', still: day 6.

2009-04-06T13:36:00.003-04:00

It's been a few! Been staying out with lover Margaret (so cute holding a chicken) at Pickard's Mountain Eco-Institute and mostly eatly local out there, too. Huggin' trees, you know, that good stuff.

Some random lessons from being about a week into it...

Steve Kaufmann's recipe for collards is a quick steam in a half-inch of water and then greens with sesame oil and tamari. Yum. Sesame oil and tamari aren't so local, so... Then he (and I) drink the steaming water - hot, green and sweet as can be.

I love ground peanut butter.

I'm craving grains. Time to make some spelt bread, I think.

I'm getting really appreciative of anything that comes from far away. Things like salt, for instance. Far-away foods are like care packages from strangers.

It hasn't been a "perfectly local" week, at all: Margaret and I were invited out to dinner by two great folks (who f'in LOVE birds. No, really.) and, apart from my local eggs and salad, had olives, hummus and a bit of ice cream (not Maple View). Apart from that, I've been pretty intentional about only local, still. Some of my favorite local products are Maple View's chocolate milk, ground pb, local honey, and VA apple juice. Whoah, so good.

At this point, my overall feeling is that I'm noticing as strange, interesting or amazing how I eat so many foods that are so... well, combined. Food that's really an aggregate of food-parts from everywhere. Food, just like people in one Buddhist conception of them, aren't really self-existant things, separate from other things. They're an aggregate form, made up of other ingredients...and if not that, made up of fertilizers and whatever else that may or may not be all local. So while I think I'm becoming more mindful of the impossibility of perfectly local food, I'm also appreciating how some food and some labor is more local. And supporting my "neighbors," apart from good for our local economy and oil usage and all that, is kind of endearing. Knowing whether my food is local or not is actually just making me more grateful all around.

Local food! I appreciate those who seem like my neighbors and friends.
Far-away food! Like a care package from a far away stranger. How was the food made, by whom, and where? How was it distributed, packaged... miraculous!

And, like most appreciation practices I've done, I'm finding that a little goes a long way when I'm really appreciative. Just a little far away food, when I know a bit about it, is really a nice thing. And hey, I love grains, and we don't always get them direct from neighbors. Like in a recent, non-local meal I had rice and coconut milk - SO special! Where's that even FROM? (I could tell you, having looked at the labels, but still!)

Also, check out the Hillsborough farmer's market, freshly moved to the Home Depot at exit 165 on I-85. I got some great homemade bread there. YUM.

Day #2 of local eatin'.

2009-04-02T18:28:00.003-04:00

ok! A recap of day #1 and some lessons from day #2.

Day #1.

Had eggs and accidentally, unmindfully put on non-local ketchup, like I usually do. Oh well! Perfection isn't the goal... but next time, no catchup. Would have had some potatoes, but I don't know where they're from!

For lunch I meandered around Weaver, was disappointed by the local green selection, and had a chocolate milk from Maple View. Love those folks. I'm going to have a lot of chocolate milk. :-)

Dinner I snacked on some local PB and local blueberries picked by my main squeeze, Margaret. Yum.

Day #2

Early morning breakfast with my friend, Josh Lozoff. He helped me plant my first garden seeds early this morning. Planted kale, collards, carrots, beets, radishes and salad mix. Yum. He was also sweet enough to bring over hay and pine needles for covering the rows and paths. So sweet. We ate some of my homemade wheat bread from Lindley Mills (though the wheat isn't local! I bought spelt, which is probably more local) with local honey and local butter (yum), eggs from hillsborough, a granola mix distributed by someone in Asheville, and local and chocolate milk (again).

For lunch I had this crazy Wholefoods sweet potato thing - the only localish in their case. Still had salt and pepper though - wow, I won't take salt and pepper for granted anymore. And a full quart of chocolate milk. Love that stuff.

And for dinner I cooked a miso (I doubt it's local soybeans... but Mr. Miso is a NC product) soup with my friend/mentor Steve Kaufmann's greens and eggs in it (I would have done tofu, but I'm clueless about local tofu); pure greens on the side, barely steamed; and sweet potatos. Incidentally, a little toaster oven is perfect for baking sweet potatos without using the whole oven.

Also, in related news, I was mad gassey today. I'm usually a big soy milk drinker, and moving to local means moving to dairy. Now if I only ate meat I'd be in even better shape...

Some general lessons learned today: Weaver and Wholefoods have fewer local products than I would have thought - LOTS of organic, which is cool. Did you know Weaver St. codes their purchases in the back as local or not so they can get a sense, store-wide, of how well they're supporting local farms? That's pretty cool (just found that out from a store manager yesterday). Neither do a great job marking their bulk foods as local or not though... I'm going to try to influence that this month.

peace,mike

Eating Local This Month in NC

2009-04-01T18:24:00.006-04:00

Hi folks, whomever you are. Been a while.

I met with someone for a consulting gig that was doing a blog on eating for $1/day. I=intrigued. We ended up enjoyably working together to do a database rehaul. But her project lingered in my mind.

Rebecca Curie's finished now and famous. :-) I asked her about lessons from it, and one of them (apart from her overwhelming experience trying to manage all the media attention) is that quantity of food was still a challenge...even though she ate surprisingly well overall.

I've never done food well, in my mind. At my first dokusan at my first sesshin with Richard Clarke, I told him that I wanted to eat well, sleep well, and sit well... but that my belief that the basics were so important kept those goals intimidating and strange. He related that it was my "genjokoan," from the shobogenzo. I was familiar with it and agreed. (just got back from my second sesshin. Good times.)

I decided to attempt a month of local-only eating and a month of $3/day eating. I live a physical life, as a serious-aspiring martial artist, and train from an hour to 6 a day. I'm a bit intimidated by food (see above), so I thought these projects, with some direction from Rebecca, might be a good way to confront those challenges. Plus I wanted to learn a bit more about the local food movement (food justice!), and thought this'd work for that too.

I've got a garden starting up with the help of some friends (thanks Josh, Steve, Andy, Sarah, Margaret)... so later on "local" will be a bit easier. But the $3/day was more intimidating than local, so local was first. And the first began today!

Some overall feelings, then. I'm not a perfectionist in practice; I like to always move forward, even if it's a small step. That is, a small imperfect step is perfect.

I expect to blog most days with how it's gone. I'd like to explore WHAT I'm eating, lessons learned about local-itude, WHY I think it's worth doing, and the "project process" of moving forward. There's no "perfection" possible, in my mind - everything's tied together, and a person can't be free of holding up oppressive structures of food systems... and food systems aren't separate from other ISMs. All is tied together. But investigating, becoming more intimate with those systems, gives people a chance to contribute to all those systems more meaningfully or intentionally. And so: life practice!

Today I had local eggs at Weaver St. Awesome! I unmindfully put non-local ketchup on it though. Oops.

A late lunch: back to weaver (I'm starting EASY, just hanging out at the co-op. How privileged and lucky to have one of those easiliy around.). I had a bottle of local chocolate milk. Yum. Not enough... but I'm hoping the ache for goood food combines with my project to get me to go shopping.

Back to weaver a third time for shopping (I live a mile from there, so I'm being slack about the driving in the beginning) before Aikido. I'll relate what I bought soon.... But an initial lesson: there are lots of shades of gray for local! For single, uncombined food, it's easier - is it grown near here? (I'm defining HERE as NC, SC and VA for my project). But what about combo food? FLOUR, even Lindley Mill's wheat flour, is still grown somewhere else and milled there. And what about the fertilizer!? Of course, 100% local is silly - we are all bound together, as is food. But for my purposes, I'm working off of two main categories: locally grown food and locally distributed/processed food. With locally grown food, we save transportation money/environmental impact on both big steps of the food cycle (grown food to processing, processing to distributing). AND we keep money within the local economy, which has always been key (made popular by Ghandi! More on that later). With locally distributed/processed food (like the granola I bought), we still keep transportation costs/environmental impact low and money in the local economy.

Just some initial thoughts. I cleaned out my fridge, moving things around to clearly leave my un-local food for next month. I spent surprisingly little - we'll see how it goes. Another big question to keep in mind: is eating local, cheaply, even possible at all?! I'm sure there'll be some overlap... especially cooking/baking more often... but this is one of those environmentalism vs. race/class pieces. Fancy, pro-environment stuff is often run by and associated with white folks of class privilege. Insert integrated food justice movement here. :-)

Buddhists and Mormons! (just saving the record)

2009-02-10T21:23:00.001-05:00

This article was printed up I *think* in the News & Observer a long time ago. Having a hard time finding it, so I'm going to post it now for record's sake. I saw geshe gelek as his weekly sessions on my FAV BOOK, the bodhicaryatara. He's hilarious, great laugh... so this article's extra fun.

Buddhists, Mormons, and grace
By G.D. GEARINO, Staff Writer
Mar 29, 2005

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall the day the Mormon missionaries
knocked on the Tibetan Buddhist monk's door.

It happened recently on a cold morning in a Raleigh neighborhood near
N.C. State University. The monk, Geshe Gelek Chodak -- commonly known
by the honorific Geshe-la -- is a boarder in the house where the
missionaries knocked. No one else was at home, so he opened the door
and invited them in. It was a natural thing for him to do. Geshe-la is
a polite fellow, and it didn't seem right to make the two young men
stand in the cold.

Besides, he says, "it looked like they were trying to give me some
information."

Talk about understatement.

Geshe-la, who entered a Buddhist monastery in India at age 7, had never
met a Mormon. He'd never even heard of them, in fact, and therefore
didn't know that many young adult Mormons spend a couple of years
preaching to gentiles. Furthermore, the whole business of proselytizing
is strange to him. Buddhist monks generally don't go door to door
seeking converts.

In other words, Geshe-la didn't understand that he was big game.

"One guy talks almost 25 minutes direct," he says. "Then the other guy
starts to talk. Takes almost 50 minutes, something like that."

It's important to interject something here: Geshe-la wasn't unhappy
about this visit. It didn't bother him that two strangers had settled
into his living room and -- ignoring the flowing robes and close-cropped
hair that all but shouted "Buddhist monk!" -- proceeded to entice him to
join their team. Just the opposite. He was gratified to meet other
people of faith.

"My desire was to learn how those two young men became so spiritual, so
devoted to their spiritual path," Geshe-la says.

But his questions apparently left the pair with the wrong impression.
Missionaries of all stripes endure a steady diet of brush-offs and cold
shoulders, so it's easy to see how they might misinterpret the rare
occasion when someone is not only polite but even seems interested. I
can imagine the missionaries high-fiving each other as they departed
from the house. A hot prospect! Whoo-hoo!

The two men left behind a copy of the Book of Mormon and a study guide.
They said they would come back with a church elder.

A couple of weeks later, they returned. As it happened, Geshe-la was not
at home, so their knock was answered by Geshe-la's visiting friend --
another Tibetan Buddhist. (Further imagined reaction: "Awright! We're
gettin' a two-fer!") This time, however, the lady of the house was
available to make sure the missionaries understood that Geshe-la was not
a potential convert.

"I asked them if they realized that he's a monk and has trained since he
was 7," says Stephanie Smith, Geshe-la's landlady.

To their credit, the missionaries abandoned their efforts on the
spot. They matched Geshe-la's courtesy with an equal measure of their
own. They declared him to be "very cool," thanked Smith for explaining
things -- and then went home.

Ever the considerate soul, Geshe-la holds out the possibility that a
switch to the Mormons may eventually occur.

"But not in this life," he says. "Maybe next life."

Random Thought: the capacity to be satisfied...

2009-01-17T15:18:00.003-05:00

This'll be short.

Of what use is the practice or application of any skill without the capacity to be satisfied by the application of that skill? For instance, being a doctor - and a good one - relates to one set of skills. But it is a different, unrelated set of skills to find not just meaning, but satisfaction in that meaning.

In the last few months I've noticed in myself this real distinction between the skills I'm trying to build up and my capacity to be satisfied by them. I don't even know if "satisfaction BY something" is possible. In "ending the pursuit of happiness: a zen guide" the author relates his practice of zen with his practice of psychotherapy...and much of that relationship hinges on the human tendency to create curative fantasies for the suffering or disatisfaction in ones life. I'm not in a good place now, but once I've got that new job... that new relationship... those personal organization skills... cook better... meet God on my death... whatever. That the acquiring of an external reality will "save" someone or cure them from a disatisfying condition.

And, of course, it's no less a curative fantasy when it's a seemingly well-meaning buddhist one. Once I become a better student... a better/more frequent meditator... understand emptiness... whatever. In these situations in my own mind, I've started to experience the strong distinction between the practice of any skill - from personal organization to job skills to meditative skills to aikido - and the capacity to be satisfied.

In an unrelated note: this reminds me of a phenomenon in aikido where, as nage your hands tend to make stiff connection with the uke and actually keep your body from moving to the right place. It's "overextension" in a sense - with certain stiffnesses of the shoulders and elbow joints that keep the lower part of the body from moving behind and through ones hands. I was flipping through an abhidharma summary book a few days ago and rereading my notes - and I had this big flipping note on a page that enumerates the aspects of mind that correspond to liberation. One of them is mental maleability - an ability of the mind to be loose with ideas and emotions, not easily STUCK in thinking things are a certain way and holding to that. A grudge would be a kind of mindstate that occurs when this aspect of mind isn't present strongly.... or long-term depression. The abhidharma suggests that mindstate correlates with too-firm beliefs of how things are.

It's a big theory/experience of mind that mind states are translated into physical dyhamics, too - so if you're sad, certain bodily muscles want to do certain things. If you're angry or hateful, the shoulders stiffen, energy rises, etc. I got to wondering if certain physical capabilities in high level aikido practice corresponded to these mental states. In aikido, being free to take a new perspective seems essential: including something as concrete as looking away from the point of attack or letting the head turn freely and naturally as nage (instead of STARING ahead, at the attacker, or overconcentrating with the mind vs. the hara). Just some food for thought. Feeling stuck? Move your body around. Do some yoga, tai chi or aikido. Move muscles and joints in natural ways you may not habitually do.

Again, mind and body are not two, and all that.

Fight Club Homework assignment: League of Revealers

2008-11-24T17:57:00.003-05:00

For those of you that know me, you may know Fight Club is one of my favorite movies. It mirrors much of my life in some scary detail...and of course, it's fiction and kinda ridiculous at times too. But still, I used to watch it regularly to work through some of my own stuff.

Anyway, for those of you that have seen it, there's the "homework" scene. Basically guerilla groups do often illegal "assignments" to pull apart the dominant culture. Here's one of those possible assignments, taken from a book ("the book of pages") I got some time ago that I now can barely find. I think it might have gotten lost in the cave of wonders.

Anyway again, I find this idea compelling - a group of folks that take covers off things, perhaps encouraging participation, knowledge, interest, transparency. There ARE groups like this, of course. But I like the sort of physicality of this example, vs. things like documentaries that Also do a good job.

Anybody wanna start a league chapter? :-)

The 8-fold path broken down; quick cleaning to-do

2008-11-16T10:49:00.003-05:00

A round-about, short story:

Today I'm cleaning and doing various to-dos from my context lists. One of them is to deal with these dance-party CDs given to me as a kind of "thanks" payment for doing the NC Pride book. Thing is, I don't really dig on dance CDs. I had one person in mind for them, but I'm not sure yet if she wants them. Til then I've been using them to raise my monitor a few inches. I've decided to swap them out for a book about the same thickness that I (1) rarely read, and only refer to and (2) would be a possibly helpful subconscious reminder to see it fairly regularly.

I picked "The connected discourses of the Buddha: a translation of the samyutta nikaya." It's thick, I like it, I've read most of it already and will probably only VERY rarely refer to it. Before I swapped it out for the CDs, I noticed a note I left in it a year ago to look at something and take action on it next time I opened the book (which was now). It was to take some sort of note on a few pages (pg 1529-1531) that explained the components of the 8-fold path. So I'll drop it in my blog and on my wall of notes in my bedroom. Here's the outline version of the notes. Maybe they'll be interesting (better yet, applicable) to someone else besides me.

General personal notes on these 8.

These are also, it seems to me, of the angle on Buddhist teachings that are more "relative." So, for instance, while this talks about the knowledge of suffering/unsatisfactoriness and its origin, cessation and path toward cessation... the heart sutra clearly states that in emptiness none of those have an independant essence to "know" in that way. So, like all teachings within Buddhism as I understand it, this is just one FUNCTIONAL angle on the teachings, not meant as a truth to cling to. Also, this list is followed by the parallel of angles of a rice/wheat grain... it can pierce the foot or hand at a certain angle, and its impossible at another. Similarly, without right view...etc. one can't pierce through to the end of suffering.

And I take issue with the use of the word "suffering", though I guess it's the best English has got. My understanding is that it's more that it has to do with the inherent dissonance between conceptualization of life and life itself, more about "unsatisfactoriability" or something. Which has Never been a word. :-) )

Also, much of this is in the "negative"... but striving for understanding what it is to practice these points, to me, means approaching the "positive" side as well as the "negative." Refraining from killing means honoring and promoting life, sustainabile practices, community health, etc. ... and killing is ALSO unavoidable, of course. I'm vegetarian but not vegan. I could be vegan but still would be killing microorganisms and insects all the time. And the farms are clearly killing insects that might eat the food I'll eventually eat. One cannot get away without being part of the killing cycle. But what can one do? The introspective practice of pursuing life and abstaining from killing is a factor which contributes (in one relative sense, at least) to the path... even though, as said before, the ultimate "spot" (here! ha) isn't really so much about relativistic ethics/morals and stuff. And the same, obviously, with all the points in the 8.

8 fold path components

Right View

knowledge of suffering/unsatisfactoriness
knowledge of its origin
knowledge of its cessation
knowledge of the way leading to its cessation

Right Intention

intention of renunciation
intention of non-ill will
intention of harmlessness

Right Speech

abstaining from false speech (lying)
abstaining from divisive speech
abstaining from harsh speech
abstaining from idle chatter

Right Action

abstaining from destruction of life/killing
abstaining from taking what isn't given/stealing
abstaining from sexual misconduct

Right Livelihood

abandon wrong method of livelihood (not mentioned, but other texts refer to selling intoxicants, weapons, etc.)

Right Effort

generating desire for non arising of unarisen unwholesome states
generating desire for abandoning arisen unwholesome states
generating desire for arising of unarisen wholesome states
generating desire for maintaining arisen wholesome states
(characterized by and by means of arousing energy, applying mind, striving/exerting)

Right Mindfulness

body in body
feelings in feelings
mind in mind
phenomena in phenomena
(characterized by ardent, clearly comprehending, mindful, having removed covetousness and displeasure with regard to the world)

Right Concentration

secluded from sensual pleasures and unwholesome states, enter and dwell in 1st jhana (thought and examination, rapture and happiness) (note: jhana is a meditative state)
subsiding of thought and examination, enter and dwell in 2nd jhana (internal confidence and unification of mind, without thought and examination, rapture and happiness born of concentration)
subsiding of rapture, dwells equanimous. mindful and clearly comprehending, experiences happiness in body... 3rd jhana
Abandoning pleasure and pain (and previous "happiness"), joy and displeasure, dwells in 4th jhana (neither pleasant nor unplesaant, purification of mindfulness by equanimity)

Time to swap the book out. How inappropriate to put the nikkaya under my monitor! lol.

Proposition 8: conferences and protests..."I still think marriage is the wrong goal"

2008-11-14T15:57:00.002-05:00

I had an interesting conversation earlier today while interviewing a friend/mentor of mine about Equality NC (www.equalitync.org)'s conference happening at the same time as tomorrow's protest in Raleigh. Without getting into it, there's arguments both sides that what's going down isn't united/strategic - given there's a national protest at a certain time AND a local conference that had been organized for a LONG time in advance at the same time - so folks will have to pick.

But I don't think that means both can't coexist meaningfully. Cuz I think they can - there's a role for lots of things at the same time, and a role for diverse opportunities for engagement. I definitely do NOT feel a protest is always the place everyone should be. I mean, there are some people that have been working on marriage equality (or the greater LGBTQA issues as a whole) for 364 OTHER days of the year, and a protest isn't necessarily their tool or at the right time. I think there's often energy around "protests/marches" that if you aren't there, you're not supporting the work. I don't think that's the case. And I also think sometimes protests/marches aren't planned to be strategic with other work being done - can be a somewhat knee-jerk reaction, even if it takes some planning to do their independant event. It's too bad there can't be more strategy sometimes.

Came across a cool collection of articles suggesting that marriage is a dangerous sticking point for the wider lgbtqa movement (which I agree with completely). Check it out here: http://makezine.enoughenough.org/prop8.html

And for some of the relevance of what REALLY just happened with Prop 8, here's the beginngin of Ian's letter to ENC supporters.

Dear Friends of Equality,

We have all experienced a range of emotions since election night last week. The reality of the passage of the four ballot initiatives hit me when my friend Paul Scott at Equality Texas told me about a couple that walked into a California Clerk's office and asked what their marriage license now meant. The clerk broke down in tears and replied, "I'm so sorry, I don't know." Then, I thought about the children in Arkansas that are going to be removed from their foster parents, and the parents that will not be able to provide a safe home for children needing qualified and loving parents. Four amendments that succeeded on a foundation of orchestrated bigotry, lies, and blatant discrimination...

Sad. I don't think many people really know what they're talking about when they talk about "gay marriage" vs. the HUGE collection of peripheral basic human rights that are tied to it...and many that aren't.

GTD and Flow

2008-11-11T18:41:00.003-05:00

You know, I think "flow" is a pretty important concept...and not just to GTD. GTDers I'm sure will recognize flow as a state to measure against, in a sense... the dynamic tension of things to do and relaxation in doing it... freely moving to the next thing to be done after freely having decided it was the next thing to do in a world where you can only ever do one thing. Flow runs deep to me, and I won't be able to share all my thoughts on it here... but I think flow is enabled, at least in the beginning, by certain best practices. Here's three of them I consider important for me:

* a balance of structure and organic circumstances. In arts, this would be training scales, katas/named techniques, etc... then finding the "life" in those structures. In life, this would be routines, and finding life in those routines.

* a body posture that balances muscle groups along structural integrity lines while allowing the joints to be open and relaxed while moving or not (see aikido, tai chi, zazen)

* a mindset that neither attaches to conceptualizing something (pretending you know it!) nor pretending you have no idea or experience about it (pretending you don't!)... but meeting it fresh with your memory of your experiences and the pregnant newness of the moment.

Just my two cents, I guess.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXIeFJCqsPs

McCain says "Or... " and bugs out over Palin as President

2008-11-10T23:03:00.001-05:00

Holy cow, laugh out loud funny. You GOTTA see 2:30.

http://www.youtube.com/v/4aAYt2kv-qA&hl=en&fs=1

Will.i.am : It's a new day (the "yes we can" guy)

2008-11-10T15:07:00.005-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/v/0xJCaw3Pmf0

You know, the funny thing about this to me is that folks I know appropriately can be skeptical of something really being "new." It's like someone saying, "I was once an addict, but I'm over it now" or "I'm not racist ANYMORE, now that I've gone through that training!" In so, so many ways it isn't a new day at all - social injustice abounds in all its usual forms.

However, this is an important example of balance and of holding contradictions. In Tema & Co's sheet sharing what tools maintain supremacy cultures needing to pick one right way and not being able to hold both/and paradoxes is a symbol of a dangerous dominant culture (and in our racial/classist culture, some trainers refer to it appropriately as a "White Supremacist Culture." - more on that later, it doesn't necessarily mean what you think it does.)

Back to US America: it's been a long time since our country collectively could say "yes, we still have all these problems to work on... AND ALSO it's a new day." For me there are some clear Buddhist parallels too in being an individual... and a product of an infinite stream of causes and conditions. Of the face of the external world being created by my mind (by laying condition conceptualizations of WHAT IT IS (secretly: according to me!) on everything I see AND ALSO having a world exist outside of my head that I'm interacting with. Of maintaining that seemingly delicate balance of what is and what may be as a dynamic tension to create around... not to DECIDE WHICH IS RIGHT. It's like an argument between two children, stuck in who's right... and unable to move to putting both people's valid experience on the table and collectively deciding where to go. To say that yes, yesterday is still here in so many ways. AND ALSO:

It's a new day.

Indy article... party goers not so happy... serving staff very happy. Makes ME happy.

2008-11-10T10:24:00.002-05:00

Check out this indy week article, especially the bottom... where the GOP party's hotel staff cheers. :-)

"Across the room, the hotel staff—a dozen or so African-American and Latino men and women in their 20s—was gathered. Minutes before, in the service hallway that led to the ballroom, the staff erupted into applause, high-fives and shouts of "Obama won!"

One by one, they emerged, smiling and scribbling the name "Obama" onto the small plastic American flags lining the room's tables. By that point, the party was too thin and grim to mind the workers' political insubordination.

One worker rested her hand on the flat-screen TV, over Obama's face. Another talked of her happiness and future. And Stevie Norman, a husky 22-year-old worker in an unflattering hotel uniform, smiled wide and said, "It's just like a dream come true.""

Can it be considered a good thing when folks who are serving others are happy? I think so.

Obama's Acceptance Speech...and McCain's giving up...

2008-11-10T10:16:00.004-05:00

I cried. :-)

http://www.youtube.com/v/FrXkBuWNx88

http://www.youtube.com/v/02BV5Zah1Tw

And McCain conceding... Notice how much more "himself" he seems. Some psychological signs of acting other than you are, like his blinking tics, are much fewer... and how sad that he had to represent people he didn't really agree with. Notice his reaction to his "supporters." Finally connected with him as a person here.

http://www.youtube.com/v/24QdO4TGMYc

http://www.youtube.com/v/peDK_HyXbvo

The Revolution will not be Funded...the nonprofit industrial complex

2008-08-26T23:16:00.002-04:00

Feeling GREAT. I love working at Stone House. I'll post pictures or something later on! :-)

I'm in a marketing and fundraising class (among others) at UNC right now. It's pretty "traditional"...and I'm trying to bring some radical into it (as much as I know). I nabbed this awesome book by a rockin' organization (INCITE!) and I'm photocopying some articles to try to get some debate going about how the whole 501.c.3 thing and fundraising=grant writing to foundations mindset (vs. a community organizing/participation mindset) usurps more radical movement work. Looking forward to it. I'll post some articles later on, but for now check this article for a review.

Body and mind are not two; my jaw hurts.

2008-08-18T21:13:00.003-04:00

Sometime soon after a car accident I was in about a month and a half ago (right before my NYC/FL/PHL trip) I got this weird and painful lump in my jaw. And by painful I mean really annoying, nagging. And you know what's fascinating?

I'm more irritable of late.

Mostly in my head (I hope). But I find myself being much more irritable with the jaw pain going on. It's come and go some, but been around often lately. I've had this experience before...and been on the receiving end of it too. My grandmother has both rheumatoid (??) and osteo arthritis and is in pain continuously - or so she'll admit to in vulnerable moments we've shared. And sometimes she can be...well, irritable.

I know people that are assholes when they're hungry, or get withdrawn when they're sleepy. And, I kid you not, when i was trained in advanced wilderness first aid one of the "by the book" symptoms of hypothermia is "dickhead syndrome" - generally being irritable and aggressive. I dunno what book we were using, but it was really in there, no joke.

What's interesting about this is to me, among other things, is that it has really been reminding me of the importance of mental training, specifically Buddhist training, to recognize experiences as BOTH internally created and externally created... and not be bound to entirely external solutions (which I seem to have limited control over, for as much personal work or organizing I do to change things). I'm getting away from myself though - the experience I enjoy here is that my irritation is clearly, mostly me. People aren't really being dumb, or doing weird aikido, or whatever. I'm just...well, mentally more of a dickhead than usual. "Mentally."

Thich Nhat Hanh once described body and mind as "not two." I really like that. Not "one", exactly, but certainly not two. I think Dogen does call them "one" in the Shobogenzo, but who knows what that's translated from. At any rate, I find that to truly be the case from experience - from training and teaching martial arts for (holy shit: my 20 years mark is coming up!) most of my life I definitely find that shades of aggression, shyness, depression, sneakiness, co-dependency actually have houses in people's bodies. Certain muscle habits and subsequent postural tendencies really seem to be linked strongly to emotional habits. In a sense, when your mom said "don't make that face; it might stick that way" I think she was partly right. Just physically, repeat a "I hate you" face and 1) you're practicing muscle memory, literally strengthening certain patterns in your face, neck, upper shoulders, lower back, etc. and 2) you're practicing a neurological pattern ... or at least an emotionally practiced response. Research shows (heh: "they" say...) that if you just smile a lot, you'll feel a bit happier.

But that means that the situation as is in your life can be addressed from "two" angles, in the duality sense. Yes, get adjustments, stretch and do yoga, take care of your body, eat well (heck, do Aikido and Tai Chi)... because it does effect your mind. Being vegetarian for around a half dozen years now and I can tell you that if I don't get a generally right balance of nutrients it impacts my mood in precise ways. But also doesn't that mean you might be able to effect your posture, musculature, etc. by doing mental exercises? There are certainly a lot of them: Buddhist literature I've read, Japanese zen and Definitely Tibetan, has a ton of Bodhisattva practices to take up. I don't know if the mind can cure cancer or fix your busted foot, but I can't say it's unrelated from these things.

In fact, in my own practice, I can often feel my body take different positions in aikido, more weight underside and extension for example, when I have more of a sensation of open-mindedness and seeing a situation as a whole ... rather than fixating on the attacking hand or some such thing. If this "not two" distinction is true, that's some good news, to me... or at least has seen like good news lately. It means that I have to change a bit less about my external world, and can do a bit more with "what I have" to bring about change.

Though, all of this is kinda bunk, in another way. I feel I came to my practices (mental and physical) through a sense of suffering and wanting to change it, improve my life, etc. (In Tyler Durden's words: "self improvement is masturbation.") But at this point, the whole pursuit of happiness thing seems like ... well, maybe endless. And if you don't enjoy walking an endless road... uh. Maybe try something else if you're interested in enjoying something.

Also, as a related aside, I have a sneaking suspicion my need to be doing "the right thing the right way" is a hiding mechanism. I'm interested in sustainability, mindfulness, etc... but at heart, lately (and especially post-training intensive) it feels like all the "good" stuff is really feeding the same sense of hiding from "life as is" (with questions and unknowns, greater responsibility and openness) as what looks less Buddhist/celebratable/healthy/whatever. I think this is part of why I have a hard time believing something that someone does that seems shitty is very different than what a do-gooder does... as much as I often prefer to be around do-gooders at this point. But that might change. It's kinda a weird preference: if delusion or attempts to hide can take the form of good or bad (which I feel strongly about that they can) then preferences for folks that feed me in a way I "enjoy" seems ... eh. .

Initial self-reflections from my uchi deshi trips...

2008-07-24T16:29:00.006-04:00

I'm still finishing up my trip and have a few more weeks before I'm back home in NC. Still, the bulk of my heavy training is over: just a few more low-key days in NYC with Hal Lehrman Sensei, meeting up with my bud/relationship partner and heading to FL, her stomping grounds, then back to NJ to see friends and family before heading home in August. But I'm finding I'm in a touch of training shock from the experiences of the last few weeks, training 6-8 hours a day most days. Toward processing that experience, I'm gonna reflect some on some things I enjoyed from my trip.

I like some free time each day for “personal” things at this point..but not too much. Staying at Brooklyn Aikikai with Savoca sensei's dojo/monastery was very enjoyable, but there's very, very little personal time for errands, work or reflection. It's pretty "go-go-go", at least as I was there. Not having personal time makes for great training space - there's kinda nowhere to hide, literally and figuratively, and I found that very cleansing.

I like a minimum of personal space. Not much. But sleeping on the mat isn't fantastic. Still, I can see its merits, and think I'd benefit from it in a "lifestyle training" regimine. I think I'd like less personal space than I have at home, but more than, well, zero.
I like community where I can eat well and maintain a healthy lifestyle. I lucked out: both dojos had a group of people very interested in being healthy. I know that's something I sometimes take for granted at my current dojo - we're practically a dojo of vegetarians. Being overweight seems to be pretty common at many aikido dojos, but I enjoy the culture that corresponds with a healthy eating lifestyle that we have at Open Sky. New York Aikikai had a vegan, vegetarian and raw foodist eating there with me (I'm vegetarian and eat a little eggs and milk each month). We could cook for each other, taste each other's food, etc. Very pleasant. And while the uchi deshi Brent and sensei Savoca and his wife all ate meat, they ate VERY little. Everybody drank, but I was never pressured (well, not much anyway) to try some. The great folks at NY Aikikai suggested I try some non-alcoholic beer just to get a sense of the flavor...I had no idea there was something like that! While I may take it for granted that my awesome housemate/friend is vegetarian, it's very pleasant for me to eat with folks who at least have healthy eating (whatever it looks like) on their radar.
I like a LOT of training a day. I was just starting to get over the hump training 6-8 hours a day, getting used to it that is, and it felt great. I like having to reserve my energy for the next class and not being able to be, well, lazy with my technique. Wasting energy is generally not a great idea, I'm sure, but it's barely an option training that much. I like it.
I like NOT music all the time...just errands maybe? Especially at Brooklyn, I listened to music almost never. Electronics weren't really allowed on most of the time, and my long projects had no accompanyment. In the beginning it was kinda jarring, in that I often supplement activities with tunes...but eventually I found it really enjoyable. Though, I think, I might not feel that way about the roar of the subway - not a fan of that noise. I think I should just use my earplugs on future trips. Anyway, taking a walk for errands, when very occasional, was a nice moment to enjoy some music. I got to listen to sensei's music some (a mix of old school hip hop and traditional chanting), which was nice... but overall I think "less is more" with my enjoyment of music. Going to pare down.
I like a garden to water/care for. Both dojos had rooftop gardens. I liked it, a lot. It took a bit of growing on me at Brooklyn, and I'm still not used to it, but if I were to live at a dojo having fresh mint for the tea is very compelling...
I like working hard – building things, doing things, investing in spaces daily, not just myself. I often get really self-centered in my personal spaces, so much so that I can't even see how it would be of benefit to me to better serve my space around me. Improving spaces, simply but solidly, is a comforting practice. I'd like to bring that back to the house in NC. Plus, they're physical actions - using my hands, which often don't get used as much as I'd like.
I do things “nice” for people to get them to like me as a protection mechanism. This is lame. I appreciate Savoca sensei's willingness to not be liked by people watching class. I'm finding in myself more and more a coping strategy that's waaay unnecessary at this point, and keeps me from life: Trying to be beyond reproach and then adding a helping component will keep me from being heckled. After being chastized by Savoca sensei for forgetfully leaving the sound on my phone/alarm clock, I spent much of that zazen period witnessing the voices in my head defend myself primarily through my working hard otherwise. Like I somehow earned not getting negative feedback by deeds done elsewhere. How dangerous! Especially in training, to get harsh feedback is exciting for me, essential even.
I like combination of busy days and NOTHING time. At Savoca sensei's I had so much to do...that when I got 45 minutes off it was VERY pleasant. But just taking a few hours here and there throughout the day is nowhere near as satisfying. Lesson: earn my rest. Not earn from someone else, or even earn from some set of "shoulds" in my mind, but that rest, like many things, seems to be best enjoyed by me in moderation. It's enjoyable in contrast to, not independant of, work.
I like consequences for basic things (water on my head, alarm clock). After getting locked out of the dojo I got water dumped on my head - as did the other live-in training student. And as mentioned before I got chastized for leaving my alarm on, "embarassed" in a sense in front of everyone siting zazen. But all those things were appropriate. In a training context, I'm lucky to get strong feedback on minor points. Now, it's important to find an ethical teacher, and dangerous to have these dynamics in a non teaching relationship...but I felt very lucky to have been chastized in these ways.
I like some routine and form. Doing something often and regularly allows me to better see my self and my habits. Everything new all the time makes it hard for me to witness my own differences within those circumstances. Lesson: bring back more routines, especially personal routines.
I like enough time to do things completely (sewing, leaving things out, washing the table afterwards - completely!). I've mentioned this before, but this requires a mostly simple life. To have time to do everything that needs to be done well and fully can be hard when you have a billion things. Sensei was kind enough to make it clear that, while I washed my dishes, said my thanks, and put everything away, I didn't wipe the table after myself. Not wiping the table (when it's a natural, handmade huge wooden table like they use at the dojo) shortens the life of the table and stains it. Leave time to do it well, and you have time to investigate what it IS to do something well.
I like pristine ownership, storage systems. The storage, especially at Brooklyn, was prinstine. There were inventory lists, etc. Things kept were clearly being cared for and their relationships aware and maintained. Another vote for having few enough things that you can 1) care for them and 2) have the time to track them.
I like caring for the kamiza. Regularly honoring the spirit of the place is pleasant for me. I had some minor epiphanies while doing so that I wouldn't have had if I were just "there" and not in acknowledged sacred space. Amazing, too, how I have a tendency to want to take care of others things because of insecurities but not to have routines like caring for a place of my own that no one else sees. I'd like to develop regular, committed caring practices that only I am accountable to as an antidote to my dependant mind. Check this blurb by Suzuki roshi posted in Brooklyn as food for thought on that.
I like bowing when I enter sacred space. The experience for me is one of noticing when I'm rushing. I run past and give a half-assed bow....good to recognize!
I like clear shoes on and off areas (carpet? Mats? Wood? Something to CLEARLY say “shoes, not shoes). We do have a system for this at our house, but it is not so clear. It was nice to have a pristine system for shoes...
I like routine cleaning tied with certain times. It just gets done. After each class, cleaning got done. That's it. If I had home routines, I'd be able to tie on cleaning to them as well. The possibility excites me.
I like a morning wake up routine (tea, whatever). When up, it's nice to have something to do immediately to get you out of bed and moving. At both dojos there was something to do right away. Some were chores, some were relaxing moments of tea... regardless, it was time to get up!
I like leaving sayings up around the place... I used to do this, but haven't as much anymore. Having gathas, poems and sayings posted in key areas is pleasant for me.
Being aroused all the time is annoying. Instead, searching for meaning, learning, is more enjoyable most of the time. I'd rather spend time wondering about aikido, or my life, or my habits, than being aroused again and again by others or fantasies and my ideas of them. Moderation, please!
I like having physical to-dos during the day. Not just emailing, but actual, hands-on stuff. Big fan. Gets me out of my head and back in the present.
I like leaving things clean. This relates to doing things 100%, as well, but it also creates a pleasant habit of leaving things "dones."
I like limited electronics time. I'm on the computer way too often. Specific time to work, study, etc. is helpful for me. I need more physicality!
I like some spaces to be arranged to feel meaningfully. The basement at Brooklyn had a scary mask when you turn on the light. What are my reactions to spaces, and how can their layout suggest meaning?
I like clear ON/OFF energetic times, doing or non-doing. Knowing whether I'm absorbed in doing or not doing is nice for when I'm training. I handle middle spaces by getting off track, so in a sense it's cheating to either be busy or busy with absolutely nothing. But I'd rather creep up on those challenging multi-tasking or meandering task times. I like clarity.
I like bringing tea to class after aikido. I'll consider this as a habit to start at our dojo, if I can!

That's it for now. I'm still brainstorming what systems I'd like to take back. I'm leaning towards moving into an uchi deshi program at the end of the year, so I'll try to keep these things in mind while I plan. And in the meanwhile, while I live in a house and train, I'll try to remember to do the things I enjoy! Delusion's a funny thing.
IMG_0096.JPG

Training in NYC Day 1: Arrival at NY Aikikai

2008-07-01T21:33:00.003-04:00

After a stay at home with my bro Tom and my mom (and a visit by Natasha) where I trained at Center City Aikido (no Donovan around - he was in chile and argentina teaching a seminar... but his senior students Pete, Fred and teacher Dana pushed me and were kind in training!), I'm off to NYC. Arrived around 1 and spent most of the afternoon in NYC at the Colombia dental clinic to get a wisdom tooth checked out. I've a follow-up appt next Monday.

Then it was class time. From there I showed up late for Yamada sensei's class. Whoops - couldn't be helped, I suppose. Took his class, then Harvey Konigsburg's class (got to take a little ukemi for him - w00t), then another beginner's class. Good times. Left shoulder's a bit sore from kayaking with my brother, but otherwise...good stuff.

Spent an hour post class walking around the dojo's neighborhood and landmarking significant stores. I've been here... maybe two months at this point total (in short spurts, usually a week or two over Dec and summer), but I've never really made a concerted effort to figure how I'd best like to eat, shop and live while here. Tonight I had sushi... and learned some of what to order and what NOT to order - like blowing $2 on a single piece of inari. Here I was, thinking I'd be spending $2 on a few inari pieces, but no luck.

Another perk of being vegetarian showed up tonight: there's often fewer choices. I LOVE fewer choices in restaurants and menus. Let's me get a system down faster. I suppose that reminds me of precepts in zen, in a way, in that you sort of "opt out" of some really difficult to balance stuff - like intoxicants, killing, whatever. Some folks maybe HAVE to do those things...maybe, I dunno...but balancing them without danger to self or others seems tricky. I like following them as best I can. Even the ones I do take challenging positions on (like being in open relationships, etc.) seem tricky enough without worrying about the other 8 or 9. Ultimately, though, I think I don't feel it's particularly useful for myself to be considering which I do or don't follow in spirit... but more find value in investigating their spirit. I guess I'm just saying that looking for the spirit in "rules" like that, while simplifying, let's you make some headway. Walking a middle way versus walking an untrammeled field, I suppose. For me, having an "external" marker like a precept or rule demonstrates the ultimately internal nature of those rules - the "road" is really created, conditionally, by my interpretation of it - so I end up just walking on myself, wondering where my middle is. Adherence to an external, for me, is really about adhering to whatever it is that is natural for me...with all its investigations and whatnot.

I still like being vegetarian though. And, for instance, not being interesting in shopping for new clothes - that meant I only marked a select FEW "important spots" for me - like mostly vegetarian friendly restaurants, the UPS, and the Rubin museum of Buddhist Art - a personal fav spot for me. Good times!

Now a touch of consulting work, a lil' GTD reviewin', and night time before the 6am wake up call and cleaning! Tomorrow: 5 classes, eating, a to-do or two and connecting with friends. Awesome.

peace,mike

My Birthday: Smiles!

2008-06-18T14:02:00.004-04:00

I'm enjoying my day of reflection and giving thanks! Here's some songs and clips that may put a smile on your face. They certainly do for me!

Whoops! Busted link. Here's that testicular self exam.

2008-06-17T12:24:00.001-04:00

Hooray for Google Webmaster tools - found a sneaky broken link. In this post on men's health, I referenced this missing file for how to perform a testicular self exam. Check it out!

a rare Buddhist talk... and the movie we watched last night

2008-06-15T14:19:00.004-04:00

First off, here's the movie we watched last night while making bread and pizza with ingredients from the Anatoth garden, care of Zac Hackney (thanks Zac!).

In it is a section of a talk given by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, author of "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" among others. Here is a longer clip of that talk I found. I feel lucky that any footage of him teaching exists, so I want to pass it on. This relates to my understanding of the concepts of "emptiness" and "dependent origination" in the Buddhist context.

A Tribute to Free Hugs

2008-06-10T12:50:00.003-04:00

Someone once said that there are few things as powerful as an idea whose time has come.

Juan Mann (amazing name!) started something of a worldwide craze. FYI: international hugging day is coming up. I'll be in NYC. Looking forward to participating, if I can. Anyone want to play? It's a Saturday. :-)

Here's the initial video:

The Wikipedia entry, and the worldwide phenomenon:

Great Pranksters, good for culture

2008-06-01T19:20:00.005-04:00

A small collection of current great pranksters. Click around. Envision guerilla hilarity that expands consciousness of people...limited by the choice-maze defined by cultural norms and advertising. Walk all over the damn place, hither and thither.

Hopefully this'll infuse some creativity and fun into you...and perhaps give you a hankering for similar free awesome events in your area.

http://improveverywhere.com/
http://www.newmindspace.com/
http://www.cockeyed.com/pranks/prank.html
http://www.alltooflat.com/pranks/
http://www.cartsofbrooklyn.com/

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring

2008-05-31T16:28:00.006-04:00

This is one of my favorite clips from one of my one or two dozen favorite movies. It's almost wordless. I carry stones in my heart for times I was careless with the lives of others... important, those stones, I feel.

I imagine it would be a meaningful practice to make a list of all the people who we were hostile/vengeful, careless or unkind to... out of ignorance of what we were really doing. Then taking that list, and meditating deeply on the possible damage those sufferings may have caused in later experiences for that person. All the ways prior carelessness with people enables more danger to them later, like the snake killed by the other animal. This seems like an important thing to remember and carry.

My website just planted a tree (moving to ThinkHost)

2008-05-28T17:12:00.003-04:00

FYI, I'm moving my dns registration and hosting to ThinkHost. They offset carbon emissions for their server usage, which is cool. And they literally "plant a tree" for me. Might be bunk... but it's a neat stamp. And offsets are cool, even if not long-term perfect. Better than nothing, to my estimation.

I got the idea to offset my consulting biz's website's carbon footprint through a few cool initiatives I'm working on as a consultant currently, namely PlanItGreener, GreenSlam (still redesigning now) and FullCirclePlanet EcoWare. So if there's a blip of service on or off, or my website looks BETTER (good time to fix it up), that's why.

Men's Health: Scary stats and how to do a TSE

2008-05-18T10:40:00.004-04:00

Know what a TSE is? Testicular Self-Exam. ( see attached)

Turns out it's the most common cancer for folks in my age group. Unlikely, but possible. At a recent health clinic check-up at SHAC (free, since I'm off insurance), folks ran through a battery of helpful areas of concern. (I even saw some of my fellow social work students there, and we met to talk about finances and other things. Great place.) At any rate, one of those notes was a bit on how to do a testicular self-exam. In essence, you roll your testicles around between your fingers and look for lumps - like a breast self-exam but with smaller lumps to hunt for lumps on. But ESSENTIAL to having it be of any use is an intimacy with the current and "usual" shapes of your testicles...meaning to actually develop a relationship with that part of your body. What struck me is how, in a culture where "touching your balls" in a non-sexual context might bring out homophobic fears - this is gross, I'm no F-word, etc. See, to notice change you have to know what it would be changing FROM, so you've got to regularly (monthly) check your balls for lumps sensitively...and masturbation doesn't count here.

A second note of importance were some SCARY stats from that sheet that speak to the sad state of men's health. I feel male culture encourages men to be so afraid of asking for help, so pressured to do whatever the fuck they want (including diet, exercise, whatever) and so weirdly sexualized that "health" means "looking hot to women" and not "feeling great in your own body)... that we're SCREWED health-wise. Check this out.

Men die at higher rates from the top 10 causes of death.
Males between ages of 15-19 are five times more likely, and between ages 20-24 seven times more likely than females to commit suicide.
Over 31,000 men die of prostate cancer each year.
Men are increasingly isolated from their families due to work or divorce.
Men suffer 92% of the fatal workplace injuries.
Boys are far less likely than girls to complete high school.
Over 80% of suicide deaths are men.
80% of the homeless on America's streets are men.
Men are more likely to suffer Psychological Problems and Mental Illness and 25 times more likely to be sentence to prison.
Over 75% of all homicide victims are male. 50% of domestic violence is committed against men (I really question this stat).
Life expectancy for men is 6 years less than for women.
Between ages 45-54, men are 3 times more likely than women to die of heart attacks.

Now, I think a lot of that is our own damn fault. And a lot of those stats are heavily inflated due to cultural and institutional (vs. personal) racism - like the chances of a man in prison being a person of color vs. a white person. And I'm not saying comparatively to women (or LGBTQ folks), men have it worse. I am saying that the aspects of our culture that are BULLSHIT impact men, too. Advocating men be violent, take-charge and in-charge, pretend to be invincible and run everything at their own (and others') emotional expense takes its toll on men's health. If you're a man, best wishes to avoid these physical maladies by liberating yourself as much as possible from this crazy culture...and helping other men do similar. And, of course, being an ally to others in that culture jamming process (women, LGBTQ folks) helps them and us all. We're all in this together.

And touch your testicles once a month, for goodness sakes.

Line rider - to create in an invisible world....

2008-04-26T21:25:00.005-04:00

It's a funny thing how people like to produce art/meaning/excel at....well, almost anything. It's kinda beautiful, actually...though I'd add to that it'd be great to get everyone with what they need to have the leisure time to produce art as they wish. Ending explotation and oppression, let alone providing life basics, are always connected with art I see. Art is obviously produced in that space, but I dunno if I'd say I'm glad suffering exists so all this cool art is produced.

But on the subject of fun, and of fun art, and of seemingly "meaningless but beautiful" things...watch some line rider. :-)

http://www.youtube.com/v/SASjlj5R4U4&hl=en

http://www.youtube.com/v/UYoX47qpoAc&hl=en

amazing, amazing independent games

2008-04-26T12:31:00.005-04:00

Oh my gosh, how beautiful is this? May the most beautifully simple art take over the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsTqspnvAaI

(if you wanna play some, go here for a non-deluxe version. just lines, squares and rectangles and circles, but still wonderful)
http://www.pixelrage.org/downloads/Crayon-Physics-Deluxe-3246.html

Check it out, this guy releases a new game a week. A WEEK.

here's another funny one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4X4foelQJk
http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/tafb

also check out world of goo for similarly beautiful stuff.
http://www.2dboy.com/games.php

I'm happy with my (just-finished) last paper of this semester: wanna see?

2008-04-25T13:11:00.007-04:00

Yeah, ok, I'm done. My last paper of the semester, and I'm pleased with it. A touch rambly, but that's a-ok with me. It's an analysis of a project I'm a part of to potentially create some kind of local community-based school for liberation/anti-oppression training and practice in Durham using tools from macro social work which is kinda like community organizing.

I'm particularly happy to have incorporated at least a minor discussion of how measuring program cost-benefit analysis against dollars has big dangers and advocated some crazy stuff, like translating all costs (financial, emotional, etc.) into environmental acreage needed to sustain it and personal life energy expenditures. And then there's the talk about abundance vs. scarcity models. Got some of my favorite new references in there two, including a few movies. Cool.

Anyway, for those interested, feel free to check it out.

Brokennesses of our system. Did clerical errors enable Eve Carson's death?

2008-04-13T20:32:00.003-04:00

insane.

We live in a truly broken world. There's so much in this posting that are unspeakable. I'll name just two things from this story posted on a UNC Masters in Social Work discussion group for a Macro / systems class. You may want to scroll down and read the story first.

First, it shows the impossibleness of creating a system to track our broken system. That is, some way to keep track of the injustice represented by huge numbers of people, particularly black men, in prison - without changing the underlying structures, the way those fucked-up structures manifest finally in tracking people's parole cannot be adequately captured. This is good, actually - although a contributing cause to another person's death. But if it were possible, in a complete and perfect police state, to adequately process paperwork so that people can be captured and disappeared almost 100% effectively (see movie: Brazil), we wouldn't feel the pains of that system. It would be totally anethetized.

But also, on the flipside, how heartwrenching of a sentence is this:
"When Atwater appeared in court March 3 – two days before Carson was shot to death near the UNC campus – the date was rescheduled to March 31 because of clerical errors."

The potential meaning of this sentence is that clerical errors enabled the death of a human being. That happens, I'm sure, both when clerical errors enable someone who has/will kill to kill...but also the death of those more "obviously" in need of human services. Seniors, those with mental health struggles, ... many, many people I'm sure (and have heard, and have experienced) are impacted by underkept systems and the consequence ranges, but includes death. Just because of out of date computer systems. Why are fun technology tools available for many meaningless things, but human services which protect people sometimes from death have out of date, ineffective systems? What about our culture allows this?

====

Since this was so prevalent in the news a while ago after Eve Carson's murder, I know many of you have read about this, but I wanted to post it here because of the many macro issues identified in this unfortunate story. I have copied the entire story below, which tells of oversights in the probation systems of Durham and Wake counties where the two suspects lived. I wonder about all sorts of things in the two suspects lives and the unfortunate truth that there are so many more black men in the correctional system.

-Paula, UNC MSW Discussion group

UNC Murder Suspect Was Overlooked by State
Posted: Today at 3:35 p.m.
Updated: Today at 8:26 p.m.
Raleigh, N.C. — A suspect charged in Eve Carson's homicide was overlooked by the state's probation system and was allowed to remain out of jail for months until his arrest this week in the University of North Carolina student leader's shooting death.

"We did not provide adequate supervision. We did not do things timely," Robert L. Guy, director of the Department of Correction's Division of Community Corrections, said Friday.

Guy has launched an internal investigation to determine what policies were broken and how the oversights could have been detected. It's possible, he said, that some staff members could be fired, based upon what the investigation finds.

In February 2005, Demario James Atwater was convicted in Wake County of felony breaking and entering and larceny. A judge sentenced him to three years' probation. That included nine months of "intensive" probation, which required Atwater to be in contact with a probation officer five times a week – at least once in person.

It wasn't until last month, on Feb. 20, that he was arrested on a probation violation from June 2007, in which he pleaded guilty in Granville County to possession of a firearm. Paperwork for that violation had been filed in November.

"Why did it take until November to issue the paperwork from June, and why did it take until February to have him actually arrested?" Guy asked.

According to court records, there was no address listed on the arrest warrant issued in November, and authorities didn't know where to find Atwater. His probation officer contacted him in February and arrested him.

Another mistake uncovered by WRAL Friday: Contrary to state probation policy, the oversight of Atwater's parole was never transferred to Durham County, where Atwater lived.

When Atwater appeared in court March 3 – two days before Carson was shot to death near the UNC campus – the date was rescheduled to March 31 because of clerical errors.

Atwater and his probation officer appeared in a District Court courtroom, but his file was sent to a Superior Court courtroom where the case was to be heard. When a clerk of court checked his case status in a statewide computer system, it showed the 2005 case had been disposed.

"I don't think you can point to one person and say that they were at fault," Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby said. "Much of this is symptomatic of the fact these were non-violent offenses."

The clerk didn't have the information she needed to understand the facts of the case, Willoughby said.

"Our system is very fragile. We don’t have a good information system, and this is a byproduct of it," he said.

Guy said probation officers must periodically search court records on their clients to see if they have violated parole

"I think everybody in the public thinks that we have these automatic red flags in the criminal justice system that when a new crime occurs … we're automatically notified," Guy said. "Our system's not that good."

Records show about 117,000 convicts are on probation in North Carolina, meaning each of the 2,000 or so probation officers must handle 58 cases.

In 98 percent of cases where someone on probation commits a violent crime, all policies are followed, Guy said.

"In most cases, we've done our best effort, despite the tragedy, but these things do happen. I'm not trying to make light of things," Guy said. "This is a horrible tragedy."
In the case of Atwater, Guy admitted the case should never have gotten to the March 3 court appearance and that his department should have intervened sooner.

"In fairness to Mr. Willoughby and (Wake County Clerk of Superior Court Lorrin) Freeman, he should not have been in Wake County court," Guy said.

But Willoughby and Guy said it's impossible to say whether any of Atwater's criminal acts and alleged criminal acts, including Carson's death, could have been prevented with earlier intervention.

"There are a lot of opportunities along the way for something to have happened, but to be able to look back and say that any one of them would have changed the course of events, it's probably not fair for anyone involved," Willoughby said.

exercise and die a healthier person!

2008-03-23T11:46:00.001-04:00

A quick note.

Some time ago I went to a conference on Alzheimer's...and one of the
pieces of research suggested clearly that one of the best things you can
do for increasing direct and indirect resiliency against Alzheimer's
(apart from not having a certain gene which increases your chances of
getting it) is exercise.

Exercise is good. Personally, I don't like exercising for health's
sake, really (as in "necessary chore" mind). At this point, since I've
been "exercising" (training?) almost daily since I was wee it's just
FUN, a part of my life. I thought I was pretty set on my perspective
about it, but really appreciated a side comment/joke made by someone at
the Alzheimer's conference. During a piece on exercise, the trainer
said, jokingly,

"Exercise...and die a healthier person!"

That's a key line to me. In a world where lots of folks are engaging in
lifestyle activism, eating organic, taking weird pills, it's important
to remember you're STILL gonna die. And, potentially die, in some pain
and sickness. That is, eating well, sleeping on a hypoallergenic
bed...whatever, doesn't mean you're not going to get really sick and
die. Maybe you'll be "lucky" and die in your sleep...but maybe you
won't, in spite of a lifetime of exercise, eating healthy, not smoking,
whatever.

However, I'm not bashing eating healthy, exercise, etc. They've got
great benefits that increase, often dramatically, one's moment to moment
quality of life. That's good! But the idea of it being effective
protection against the vicissitudes of life is just not true.

Whenever someone suggests that I'll live longer and happier engaging in
all this healthy stuff (which I STILL do, for other reasons), I think of
Suzuki Roshi, who just turned 100 and lives on Cold Mountain. I've
heard rumor he's the happiest, most baby-faced person those who met him
have met...after a lifetime of extreme simplicity, a shit-ton (metric)
of just sitting, and probably NOT the fanciest food.

He probably kept a pretty healthy lifestyle, too...but I doubt he used a
lot of moolah and fancy skin products to protect his body against life.
Food for thought, to me.

Boredom rocks (in zazen and relationships), and it isn't boring.

2008-03-16T14:48:00.006-04:00

Fun, I just wrote that while listening to a talk by Brad Warner, and immediately after I wrote it I heard him say "Boredeom is good." Doesn't mean we agree on anything, but cute lil coincidence to start with.

I've been enjoying listening to this podcast by Brad Warner from his visit to Atlanta. I often REALLY enjoy his stuff - and by "enjoy his stuff" I think I'm referring to an experience of positively enjoying and gaining language for my own experience. Not necessarily his language... but it often feels like a good conversation.

So something came up in his talk on his blog I wanted to briefly mention. He chats for some time about boredom's relationship to zen, and references one of his first written pieces for the web as "Zen is boring."

I sit some zazen, still. Previously while sitting (and it still comes up now) I realize I sit with this expectation of sitting's goodness for me. Not only will sitting zazen solve all my problems and insecurities, fix my bad posture and improve my health, I'll concentrate better and improve my relationships...but I'll know that it's happening at the time. I'll recognize the taste of that process while sitting.

Yeah, right.

Instead, my thoughts are often more like: "Is this that magical experience? It doesn't feel like it. It feels like I'm just fucking sitting here. I'm not sitting in some magical way, some enlightened process where I recognize my own enlightenment in the process... I'm sitting all wrong! Instead of sitting "correctly," I'm just fucking sitting here, well, just like I would sit here (how horrible). However that is. Well, how is that again? Oh, I guess that is this. This is it."

Often that experience seems pleasant - somewhere between transitioning "actively" and being transitioned, where I seem to drop off knowing not only whether I'm doing it or it's happening to me, but the difference between the two. I dunno what it's really about.

I've started dating someone (Natasha Salazar, if you know her) recently, and there's a lot of wonderful things about that experience. But I feel, at this point, there's some link between something I'm really enjoying about that experience and something I enjoy (but is not necessarily comforting in the "knowing" sense, sometimes) about zazen. She and I often seem to not know what's going on at all. Everything from "how do we kiss?" to "what will we do when she moves to Florida?" Nearly every sentence, it efels, we're meeting in this place of not knowing. The alternative's interesting: pretending to know, or perhaps more accurately, to just go ahead and "cheat" the depth of the experience and "believe" something, or go with something. "I don't know how to kiss her, so I'm going to go with THIS." Moving away from not-knowing mind...because it's uncomfortable, in a certain sense! I mean, the prospect of dating her intensely for two weeks before she moves to Florida's brings up feelings of "holy crap, this may be BIG missing feelings really soon!" The 'alternatives' to not knowing are many, in a sense...but none of them really appeal to me.

In part, they're not really appealing because, well, they're kinda boring. I mean, she and I "decide" our personalities, our stories, and how we will interact with each other... and they perform those roles, roughly knowing what we're doing...maybe adding or taking away something here or there. Ugh, no thanks. In a sense, though, it seems I'm pretty conditioned, in that it seems I have habits to "cheat" and move away from not knowing.

Knowing is kinda boring, really. Not knowing, but still "having to say/do something," is actually quite empty of idea and enjoyable. I don't mean to suggest that for me the experience dating Natasha is the same as sitting zazen... because, in large part, that would mean I'd be able to put a finger on either of those two experiences, which I have a hard time doing. There something very enjoyable about the funny process of trusting and getting to know each other - and our MILLION differences that in a sense seem to create opportunities of not knowing. And there's a similar feeling in sitting.

What is our relationship "supposed to be" given our situation, our feelings, etc.? What is sitting supposed to feel like, moment to moment, given my experiences, "spiritual ripeness" (whatever the fuck that is), etc.? In either case, pretending to know something would be to assume I could also know a HUGE number of other things... What precisely are my feelings (especially given that they seem to be changing all the time)? What IS our situation, really (especially given that they...you guessed it!)? And how ripe am I and how would I know that?

A fun question to end with, in a very concrete and physical sense: How long can you kiss someone with a mind of "not knowing how" before you settle on "like THIS?" How long can you sit zazen with a mind that doesn't settle on a boxed description and plan? Quantity of time is a kinda ridiculous question in a lot of ways... but it seems very interesting and full of meaning as a lens to point out how I can become "dissatisfied": seemingly by experiencing life through a series of plans and good ideas about the next moment or next year, carrying the plans with a mind that purports to know, and then comparing where I am/will be with my idea of where I am.

Not knowing, moment after moment, often has a flavor for me of ... deep, gross and unexpected like forever digging in really fertile soil as it teems with life.

The newest "entertaining" story or plan about life never seems to taste as good as the newest, living, unboxable moment.

How to end someone's homelessness in one week...?

2008-03-08T19:22:00.005-05:00

Provacative title, but Erik Daubert is a provocative person.

Friend and mentor Calvin Allen was the executive director for Public Allies when I was an ally, and is now currently of SRDI hailings. I worked with Cal as an ally, then as an alumni in fundraising drive from alumni of the program. Through him I met Erik Daubert and had the luck to work with him in his direction of the initiative. He also lead the training on fundraising given to allies that year... so I had the blessing of hearing a seasoned fundraiser for the triangle YMCAs describe fundraising theory.

Here's an email - one from Erik, one from Cal, and one from me - that explains this project. There's one day left in it, so we'll see where it goes... but it's a fascinating possibility, especially as someone in social work grad school who works with folks who do this for a living. A week turn-around might not be possible with everyone...but what if it were? Can homeless be ended like this? Personally, I don't think so... but I think it's ESSENTIAL for communities to actively try like this. This project is a joint one of Genesis Home and Erik.

So here's some emails.

My email:

Erik, Cal, (Sarah,)

Erik, you once told me something that changed me significantly. In a conversation about fundraising at PANC, I don't know how it came up... but I think you said something offhand to this effect: if you can't even raise $1 from people who benefit from a program's services, you have a serious problem. Also, you impressed on me the importance of fund raising as a community building activity - a chance to reconnect people with a program's mission, a chance to get much needed feedback, to build relationships between people. Knowing you REALLY helped me add important language for community work I've used with MANY people to talk about community building.

I don't know all of what you're doing here. Part of me wants to know where the money's going, questions sustainability, etc. As someone in social work school, I have professional acquaintances that are supposed to do this as their jobs. To do it in a week blitz seems impossible.

But I believe you in. I'll give $100, and whatever other strength's I can spare toward the event (what's the situation?). Tell me where to send it.

peace,mike

PS And I miss you both, on the side. :-) Erik, did you do the fundraising training for PANC this year? If you have time, do you have interest this year... or if not this year, can you next year? I've been organizing some trainings for them because I care DEEPLY about certain values, and getting this email from you touched some sensitive and important values to me around training about community work - specifically the importance of measuring investment in community's served (even if, literally, folks being served are homeless - the ask is ESSENTIAL - $.50 from everyone still MEANS something and DOES something).

I'm CCing Sarah Kaneko who knows of the Genesis Home as well. Sarah, if you know anyone who might be interested in this, please feel free to forward.

...in my response to Cal Allen's:

Hey Friends-

I'm asking for your help to assist a family, prove the power of community, and to help my bold friend, Erik.

Erik Daubert is a great friend I've known since 1994. My Public Allies friends know him as "my friend who is the best fundraiser I've ever met --" and he is. I know him as a human of tremendous heart and love for action. Erik likes challenges, and he's taken on a big one this week.

While watching "Oprah's Big Give," her new reality show where people have to give away money, Erik thought "why can't a person do this without a million dollars in a week?" So, he went to a local nonprofit for homeless families, asked them to recommend a family for support, and Erik is attempting to find them long-term housing, jobs, and vital things they need -- IN A WEEK, or as close to it as possible.
He's found possible long-term housing on the busline and is working on down payments, etc. He's found a donor willing to match other donations. He's even got leads on jobs. He's working on long-term solutions, not just short-term support.

While I know this is about the family, I have to mention that Erik has full-time work that usually takes him out of town for weeks, so he's also giving a tremendous gift of time.

One of the reasons I will give money, time, and treasure to this is that this is a way of proving that we don't have to have homelessness in the US. We have the resources, we just don't have a system for supporting long-term equitable distribution and supporting ALL our people in all the ways that matter.
Can a community really help move a family out of homelessness in close to 7 days?
If you have time, talent, or treasure to offer, read Erik's specifics below and give as you can.
Thanks!
Calvin

...which was in response to Erik Daubert's email:

Cal –

I don’t know if you had a chance to watch “Oprah’s Big Give” on
Sunday but if you did, you will see aspects of that show’s concept
in the email below. Feel free to forward this as appropriate to any
network you have if you are willing to play along J Let’s talk SOON!

This is one of my effort’s to change the world this year. Know that
I appreciate you very much and thank you for all that you are doing
to make the world a better place! *It has been a fascinating
experience for me thus far working on this project…but I need your
help to make it work…thanks for anything that you can do **J***

* *

*3.5 million people will experience homelessness in a given year –
About 41 percent of homeless were families *

IMAGINE raising YOUR family without a home or in a homeless
shelter. It is not something that any of us want or hopefully will
ever have to think about.

*This week, I am working with ONE FAMILY who is homeless but with
your help, I plan to change that and have them set up with a
permanent residence by Sunday. *(I have been working on this for a
couple of days now…)
I plan to take a mother (43% of the homeless population are women)
and her four children under the age of 11 (1.35 million of the
homeless population are children) and set them up for permanent
housing by Sunday evening. The mother is a hard working (25% of the
homeless nationwide are employed) victim of domestic violence (22%
of homeless women claim domestic abuse as reason for homelessness)
who is just trying to make a hard equation work. She has fallen on
hard times and needs someone to pick her and her four children up so
that they can get back into something that they can afford that is
safe for her and her children. (Children under the age of 18 make up
39% of the homeless population. 42% of these are under the age of 5.)

I am working with a shelter who hand picked THIS FAMILY as one
deserving of a hand up out of all of the families they are currently
serving. This is a woman who is working hard (full time - 40 hours
a week hard…) to try to give her children a better life. When I
interviewed her to identify wants and needs, her list was so simple,
it was almost embarrassing. A safe place to live…A training potty
for her 18 month old child…safe and affordable day care for her
children…educational toys for her children…_ _They have been
homeless for about eight months…_ I am going to get this family a
place to live by Sunday night._

Here is where I am so far. I have a donor who will match everything
that I raise in pledges and/or contributions by Sunday. I have
located housing in a good school system and on a bus route so that
she can go to work and her kids can go to good schools.
I NEED YOUR HELP TO make this work…I NEED YOU TO GIVE WHAT YOU CAN
(that feels good J) knowing that this money will be managed by a 501
c 3 charity (The Genesis Home) and put into action to help this
needy family. I NEED YOU TO _PLEDGE_ AN AMOUNT TO HELP ME HELP THIS
FAMILY...and I NEED the pledge BY SUNDAY IF AT ALL POSSIBLE - that
will help with the match! Pledge $50 or MORE IF YOU CAN knowing you
are taking four kids and getting them out of the plight of
homelessness and into a neighborhood where they can survive and
thrive. All contributions are so appreciated and are fully tax
deductible. THANK YOU for anything that you can do!

Erik J. Daubert MBA, ACFRE

Financial Development Consultant

YMCA of the USA

Bottled Water Sucks.

2008-03-08T11:57:00.004-05:00

the part that gets me is this. It's like gentrification, in a sense: stop advocating and giving a shit for the safety of tap water in communities, and that water's safety will go down the drain (ha). Individuals who can't then PAY to have water - which, given scientific and infrastructure resources should be a right at this point in humanity - get stuck with the environmentally dangerous stuff. That's going to be historically marginalized, less powerful groups - like people of color or working class communities - that bear the burden of a water system that the folks with money and power don't give a shit about. It's like public vs. private education, or any other resource...it comes down to how much we care about access for ALL and act on that, or pull interest because the wealthy folks with little concern about environmental (etc) impact are enabled to by their privilege.

I wouldn't advocate chastising people for not understanding how privilege and bottled water connect, but I would certainly advocate for education and action when possible. "Lifestyle activism is not enough" in my mind - advocate for clean water in your town! Heck, build a well if you have the resources! I think technically this could be termed a kind of "environmental racism" if you check out the definitions used in that movement's work.

Anybody seen Total Recall? It's going to be like that with air, eventually, if folks don't spread understanding of how systems disenfranchise folks. (in Total Recall, on Mars, clean air was at a shortage because of a similar dynamic of rich folks not giving a shit about sustainability, but being able to buy their survival during broken systems. They made everyone pay for air (which, scientifically, could have been given to all as a right in that world), and districts that couldn't pay got their air pulled. Then Arnold's eyes popped out. :-)

A hilarious Penn & Teller BULLSHIT on bottled water
http://youtube.com/watch?v=XfPAjUvvnIc

Bottled Water Taxes...
http://sustainablog.org/2008/01/08/groundbreaking-bottled-water-tax-raises-dustup-in-chicago/

Good programming and community organizing follow a similar principle...

2008-03-01T19:17:00.004-05:00

With all the community change literature I've been reading for my macro social work class, it's hard not to see whatever I read within that lens. Well, that, and ultimately I think I read almost everything and wonder how it applies to Buddhism, Aikido or Social Justice. So on reading one of my favorite technical blogs, Coding Horror, I found an exact parallel to creating good social work interventions and programs: UsWare.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001066.html

The gist of it is that it's always best to get input from others at a huge level...and ideally, create programming that folks can use together so there's vested interested in the creators as well as the consumers. Check out the post, and think about neighborhood organizing. Might be food for thought.

Queers! Don't Misuse Sex! - blogpost by one of my fav zen teachers

2008-02-26T02:48:00.001-05:00

Hey, here's an article I really enjoyed much of by one of my favorite
authors and zen teachers, Brad Warner. I love the precepts, and I love
lgbt communities, and spiritual practice/social justice lines together.
Check it out if you're interested.

You're going to have to navigate to a "porny" site for the article.
Fair warning, in case you... well, wouldn't want to.

http://suicidegirls.com/news/culture/23007/

"One of the biggest hurdles for anyone of non-standard sexual
orientation interested in Buddhist practice is the Buddhist precept of
not misusing sexuality. Just for reference to those of you who may not
know, in Zen Buddhism there are ten precepts, or standards of moral
behavior, which are:

1) Not to kill 2) Not to steal 3) Not to misuse sexuality 4) Not to lie
5) Not to cloud the mind with intoxicants 6) Not to criticize others 7)
Not to be proud of oneself and slander others 8) Not to covet 9) Not to
give way to anger and 10) Not to slander Buddha, Buddhist teachings or
the Buddhist community.

Other forms of Buddhism have somewhat different precepts. But the first
five are more-or-less standard throughout most forms of Buddhism.

People who are of variously "queer" sexual orientations – gay, lesbian,
bisexual, transgender, BDSM and so on – are often especially troubled
when they find out that as Buddhists they should not misuse sexuality.
Given what we usually hear from teachers of our own Western religious
traditions, it's easy to imagine that anything outside of strictly
vanilla, monogamous, one-on-one heterosexual relations in the standard
missionary position might constitute a misuse of sexuality in the eyes
of religious authority. And, unfortunately, there are those in the
Buddhist community, including some of its teachers, who do seem to hold
something akin to this belief.

..."

Do you do ANY community work of any sort? Know your ABCDs.

2008-02-25T07:36:00.002-05:00

I'm in a pretty good Masters in Social Work "macro" class (the social work version of community organizing - activating folks for change, basically). The teacher's great, the conversations are pretty good...and the readings are consistently great.

Social Workers at UNC hear "use a strengths-based approach, not a needs or deficient based approach" enough to make it ring in our ears. That's a good thing. But we've gotten very few actually tools (well, to this point - maybe cuz I'm only half-way through?) to practice that. This week we got one of our first, and I'm a fan. If you do community work, this is a good "checklist" to help you brainstorm assets.

The folks at Northwestern are somewhat famous for their program and theory of ABCD: Asset-Based Community Development. Public Allies (alum '04 baby!) uses this model very explicitly in their community organizing work, so I became familiar with Northwestern then. I'm sure it's not new to them (though perhaps the term is), but it's good stuff nonetheless.

If you do community work - which I define loosely as anything from volunteering, organizing, even working in your neighborhood - I highly recommend a quick peruse of this. If you are explicitly involved in defining or deploying projects that impact communities positively (you hope! they hope!), definitely check it out as a FREE PUBLICATION from the ABCD institute at Northwestern:

http://www.sesp.northwestern.edu/images/kelloggabcd.pdf

Use the (ABCD) force, and use it wisely!

A lil' blogger system in Thunderbird for the tech savvy.

2008-02-24T20:32:00.001-05:00

This is fun!

So I was tired of some weird blogger errors with mysterious characters, logging in took too long ("took too" looks weird, huh? anyway), and I like to do things I do a LOT in a few character strokes. I love autohotkey: http://www.autohotkey.com/ (warning, not for n00bs! lol). I use it every single day, all the time. So that creating a new categorized task (GTD "Next Action"), a waiting for with a reminder date, whatever is a single key stroke.

For blogging, I'm using this:

;============BLOG EMAIL==================
#b::
Run C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe -compose
Sleep 600 ;cuz Thunderbird doesn't always catch keystrokes on start-up
Send !rmm{Tab}{Tab} ;specific to the number of accounts I have, obviously (heh, obviously if you read autohotkey script! lol)
Send aspiringbodhisattva.secretword@blogger.com
Send {Tab}{Tab}{PgUp}{enter}{#}end{PgUp}
;Send ^a
Send !s
return

To give me my correct sending smtp account, my secret sending account (not "secretword", but you get it), the termination set so it doesn't pick up my signature, and set me back on the subject. I like it, though you'd have to modify it obviously.

I also added blogger.com to my "text only" domains, cuz I was tired of the weird formatting. Not great for links, but I'll just post 'em in like I did with the autohotkey link.

And if you DO use blogger and you've got weird stuff in your text, try this: http://www.stevemiller.net/puretext/ . I love it.

A test of my new blog system: questions

2008-02-24T20:03:00.003-05:00

So I've set up a macro on my computer to make writing a blog a 1-step process for me. Just press it and start typing, then press another key stroke and it's sent to the blog. No more logging in and toolin' around. I hope this'll make me more likely to do it.

I've been thinking about posting questions every once in a while. Questions of a specific flavor, actually. This statement came to my mind (after a thought train) when I was sitting in a class on internalizing racist inferiority or supremacy:

Questions point to an experience people have had, but haven't named themselves (because they hadn't a language yet, mental space, etc.) are very, very powerful. In essence, questions that name the already existing question of "what is this?" are a spiritual practice and good for community...especially in a culture that emphasizing knowing IMMEDIATELY with no effort and an unwillingness to hold not-knowing. (and at this point I laughed at how quickly KNOWING that came to me. lol)

And here's the first, out of a conversation with Dana Turner, a rockin' person in NY who's becoming even awesomer.

"If you were the kind of person that really, really liked yourself and was happy with what you'd been involved in in your life (like you took time to go do all the awesome things you might be putting off), how much cooler would that make you to people who ALREADY think you're cool? What would your honoring your interests deeply do for them and their ability to be more that way themselves? What would that do for community?"

Well?

On being really sick.

2008-02-22T19:42:00.004-05:00

Apart from "ugh, this feels horrible," there's not a lot for me to DO when I feels sick. And when I've got a case of flu in the top three worst sickness of my life to date, there really nothing to do apart from wondering if I can drink water without vomiting. Well, that and think, between "ugh, this feels horrible."

So yesterday I managed to somehow get Really, really sick. I found my thoughts entertaining though, and wonder what it's like for other folks to get sick.

A part of me was concerned about becoming so sick and dehydrated than I'd have to go to the hospital in some way. After violently vomiting for the 8th time in 6 hours, clearly unable to keep water, I was, well, a bit concerned. See, I don't have insurance at this point - haven't for about 6 months now - and generally keep really healthy. I've a number of social justice minded folks that don't keep insurance, and certainly can see both sides of the issue there... but regardless, I don't. I probably could afford it... but again, I didn't have it. That reminded me of an important article on classism (a fun thought to have while vomiting) called "can't afford to get sick." I knew I'd probably skip my grad classes friday morning, reschedule hanging out with friends, and reschedule or say I can't attend the community meetings I was going to attend today. And if I had a more traditional "job", I'd probably be able to call in sick.

But not everybody can reliably do that. Some folks, especially with lower paying jobs, with no health insurance available or affordable, can't afford to get sick the way I can (and am). It's a lucky spot to be in, and I have responsibilities associated with being in that spot (this as I was dry vomiting into the toilet).

Another thought I had - isn't the body amazing!? Some of my upper core muscles actually developed cramps from all the throwing up, so that they just seized up and added to the queasiness. After vomit number 7 or so, I had this strong feeling of needing to do some full body chanting to kinda vibrate some of the tension out. I hadn't really been able to speak for hours without throwing up, but pushed through a round of "om" and "gam" for about ten minutes, then a loud chant from Ashtanga yoga, then sat on my cushion and paced a very loud and vigorous heart sutra. For me, loud chanting really vibrates my core... I threw up pretty soon after that for the last time, and have been at least able to walk around and talk yesterday. The chanting seemed to generate a dramatically different kind of energy than I had had to that point,particularly adding some specific aikido body relaxing techniques that helped concentrate the vibrating feeling in my body like really relaxing my "outside" - stuff I'm still learning myself, but specifically the idea that the outside must hold shape, but not be rigid to let ki flow out. In a less airy sounding sense, stiff muscles retard internal muscle movement flow and connectness. Just like it would be hard to breath with a stiff stomach and shoulders (or a cramped diaphragm, in my case last night), moving intentionality and muscle energy through the body to translate it into someone else takes a certain kind of relation as well. Anyway, those practices (not perfections, for me, but things I practice) were really helpful to "shake out" some of the flat-out dead feeling I had from throwing up so much.

More on the subject of the amazing-ness of the body, as well - vomiting (as well as chanting) is pretty amazing. The body really takes over and realigns the musculature to push things out. I'm pretty body aware, so my body and I had a very intentional "conversation" about me trying to breath, and it trying to vomit, using very specific tensions and relaxations to communicate. Fascinating! And Really Really crappy, but still interesting.

Also, it's nice to have friends. Steve & Jesse have both been very helpful, as has Sarah. Being sick by yourself would be much more difficult.

Also again, with the kind of sick that I was last night, I can see how a violent flu can be deadly dangerous to seniors. Doing work with aging issues this year definitely has brought that population (which I may be of someday!) to my mind more often... which is good! Until this year, when I'm sick I haven't thought about older folks and how dangerous illness can be. That's telling in a more general sense: without experience, contexts that SHOULD "ring a bell" reminding you of other people's experiences don't. If you don't have any experience with folks who have physical disabilities, you're not going to think twice or appreciate being able to do something like walk to the phone, or reach a high shelf. Knowing intimately and valuing as essential each other's experiences allows the mind to see the wider contextS (plural!) that all situations represent. A dark street is dark to me... but is moreso a dangerous, potential sexual assault context to many women. Not that it isn't dangerous to men, but that the context has a special particular meaning for many individuals from one group in a very different way to another.

And if that isn't a reason for democratic, diverse leadership, I don't know what is. A powerful, simple comic I really like had a cartooned George Bush and a bunch of men signing an abortion bad treaty. No women involved. Either that's because those men understand women's issues around abortion and choice deeply at the same level as women (doubtful), or they feel there is nothing to be gained from the perspective of those women and their perspective on abortion is enough to make a "right" decision.

And actually, I think there's a third aspect, also on my mind. I think many folks feel that situations aren't essentially experienced based on perspective, but exist inherently, instead. In essence, this is an aspect of the core Buddhist teaching of emptiness - situations (and people, things, etc) are devoid of any inherently existing "self" apart from karmically determined perception of it. Knowing this deeply, if you value the lives and experiences of others (and yourself), making good decisions means doing so in a way that accountable to the experiences (and perceptions) of many. To me, that can actually help sidestep some of the karmic conditioning of being only one person and making less than great decisions based on that. Collectivity, diversity, and valuing an intimacy with each other's experience can really can help protect all of us, to me.

Lastly, having not felt this horribly in a long time, I actually went through some significant life-review. While feeling horrible and chanting the heart sutra, I had this strong feeling of needing to recommit to my practices and training, recommit to those things I value. While distractingly sick, it would be hard to practice. As the lines in the Bodhicaryavatara say, this moment is a precious opportunity. Here as a human, particular a human with the temporary privileges of health, means to practice, enough time for meaning in my life... I would be short-sighted to put off practices I can only do when healthy, etc. One day I'll be dead - and before that I may be incapacitatingly sick as I was yesterday... or just distractingly unable to eat, queasy, light-headed, etc. as I am now. Truly, the moment of opportunity for meaningful activity when we are capable is so precious in the light of illness or other inevitable and incapaciting things.

Still sick and these things are on my still mind.

Calculating my Overextension

2008-02-12T22:43:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I have to prove to myself I'm doing too much. :-) Here's a good way for me to do that.

I was motivated by this question, in a few forms: what would it take (how much time) to do a SOLID job with all my commitments, per week? So, if a project is due in two months and will take 8 hours, that's about 30 min/wk... etc. If I totaled all those per week, is that possible? What HAVE I committed to?

I started with this estimate:

I wake up around 6 or 7 sleeping in at this point (but have gone through VERY late morning times...), and go to bed around 10 or 11. That's 16 hours about per day, or 112 hrs/wk (hereafter h/w).

Now I'm totaling my project categories, which are roughly my areas of responsibility. Here's that layout.
(nice that it's SO easy to do, since I have an up to date - well, at about 95% - project list!)

[project list as of Feb 12]

That gives me about this:

_	4
_Aiki-Doing	9
_Aiki-Doing Radar	1
_Basic Personal Stuff	16
_Body Training	26
_Community Engagement	4
_Community Radar	1
_Education	14
_Family	2
_Friends	4
_Home	2
_Homework	3
_Magic	5
_SAS	16
_Zen	7

	114

114 hours per week to do my commitments well. That would mean I'd have to work on SOMETHING or "be productive" from 6am to 10pm with no breathers and then find two more hours. I shouldn't be surprised that sometimes I feel behind in an area! lol. Time to cut back. And some of these things are going to INCREASE, not decrease - when the Beyond Belief magic show starts up in earnest, practice times plus show times are going to be around 20 hours per week. I'll be cutting out some aikido...

Oh, and here's how I did my calculations, which I consider important. Whatever it takes to do the project is included. So, for instance, body training includes my aikido classes and teaching, as well as my yoga cross training twice a week and my tai chi practice. It ALSO includes transportation and getting ready time - the REAL numbers.

And it turns out I'm doing too much. lol. Time to make some adjustments!

Do you have an updated full project list? Could you group them by areas of responsibility and tell if you're having to shortchange things because of your commitments? This isn't the only way to do it, of course (a lil' thing called intuition would do, too!), but sometimes having numbers helps job the mind with what you are and aren't spending wherever. That sentence made a WHOLE lotta sense, I'm sure! :-)

My friend helped graffiti the Washington Monument (w/ pics)

2008-01-30T22:41:00.002-05:00

I love Amy Faulring.

We met in college through a circle of wonderful socially radical folks (many of which have gotten radicaler. Which is a rockin' word) and dated for some time. I remember the first email she sent about her exciting and proud arrest as part of GreenPeace. Now I got this one. Check the links for some Really cool photos of the Washington phallic monument.

And "graffiti" isn't really the right word. Strategically and creatively liberate. lol.

PS Check out the billboard liberation front for more creative uses of existing structure for social justice pro-community messaging idears. http://www.billboardliberation.com/

====

Hi folks,
Just wanted to share with you a little project I was involved with on the
national mall last night.  About 60 GP activists successfully blocked the
massive flood lights and projected an image on the national monument calling
out the US inaction on global warming.  Luckily, no arrests (and I was not
in an arrestable position as I'm on probation until november).

It was hella fun & we have some great images!

In between giving our truck a few citations, the police pulled out their
personal cell phones and snapped some photos.   :-) 

Enjoy!
Amy


Photos are available
at:http://usaphoto.greenpeace.org/wash_monument_01_29_08/

For Immediate Release                    January 29, 2008

GREENPEACE TURNS NATION¹S MOST ICONIC LANDMARK INTO MEMORIAL TO
FAILED BUSH LEGACY ON CLIMATE
Bush Plan Portrayed as a Disaster on Eve of U.S-Led Climate Change
Meeting

WASHINGTON Responding to the Bush administration¹s continued
obstruction of international efforts to address global warming,
Greenpeace activists turned one of the nation¹s most iconic symbols
into a memorial to Bush¹s failed legacy on climate change.
Greenpeace projected on the Washington Monument the message: U.S.
Global Warming Plan: Hell and High Water accompanied by an image
depicting rising sea levels at the base, a predicted consequence of
global warming.

"President Bush¹s policies on global warming are a disaster,² said
John Coequyt, energy policy analyst at Greenpeace USA. ³His
international meeting on climate change in Hawaii slated to begin
tomorrow is a rogue process to deflect attention from the
administration¹s insistence to maintain America¹s dependence on
dirty and dangerous energy sources while failing to address the
growing climate crisis. As the Washington monument has long outlived
the president it was built to honor, so too will Bush¹s legacy on
climate change stand as a memorial to his neglect, obstruction and
destruction.²

Greenpeace¹s projection served to call attention to Bush¹s global
warming policies a day after his State of the Union address and on
the eve of Bush¹s international meeting of the world¹s largest
emitters of global warming pollution, called the ³Major Economies
Meeting,² which takes place in Hawaii on Wednesday and Thursday.

After being roundly rebuked in December in Bali at the UN¹s
International Conference on Climate Change, the Bush administration
continues to push its alternative Major Economies process that seeks
to replace the Kyoto Protocol¹s legally binding emissions reduction
targets with a completely inadequate voluntary approach.  ³If the
President were serious about leading on climate change, he would
stop obstructing the U.N.¹s process and endorse a cap on U.S.
greenhouse gas emissions,² Coequyt said. The United States stands
completely isolated as the only industrialized country on the planet
not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

³The Bush administration continues to push a climate-destroying
agenda and to obstruct all meaningful efforts to address global
warming by the international community,² said Daniel Mittler of
Greenpeace International. ³Its role was so negative at the global
negotiations on climate change in Bali last month that the U.S.
delegates were literally booed by other participants. It was a
stunning and well-deserved rebuke. This meeting is a charade and has
no legitimacy at all.²

Greenpeace is calling on the countries attending the meeting to
maintain their commitments to substantive action under the Kyoto
Protocol. Participating countries include: Japan, France, Germany,
Italy, the United Kingdom, China, Canada, India, Brazil, South
Korea, Mexico, Russia, Australia, Indonesia, and South Africa, as
well as the United Nations, the EU Presidency and the EU Commission.

CONTACT: Jane Kochersperger, Media Officer Greenpeace USA, +1 202
680 3798 cell
John Coequyt, Greenpeace USA energy campaign, +1 202 669 7060
Daniel Mittler,Greenpeace International Policy Advisor, +1 49 171
876 53 45
Photos are available
at:http://usaphoto.greenpeace.org/wash_monument_01_29_08/
Notes: A major emitters briefing memo is available upon request. For
further information on the outcome of the Bali negotiations, go to:
www.greenpeace.org/bali-meeting

Social workers discuss ideal job characteristics

2008-01-20T10:58:00.001-05:00

Cool. Last Friday in my macro social work class (organizations and groups - basically a community organizing type class) our intro activity was to tell the prof our name and one or two aspects of our ideal job. I went first and realized I cared much more about what other folks were going to say than saying my piece - which is a great place to be. I quickly whipped out a pen and took notes.

So, this list is provided as is. It's a powerful checklist not just for getting a new job... but advocating for changes for whatever you're already doing to make it more sustainable as an activity. Some of these things seem to contradict and some are duplicates, but again: as is.

I've seen lists like this in the past...but as a list created entirely by helping professionals, I thought it might be interesting. For me, as someone that wants to do program management (really, I want the executive director position of a PA site, preferrably PANC... very specific!), this would be a great checklist to measure how a job is doing at providing culture for staff.

Without further ado, the list.

The work is values driven, everything from projects to menial tasks. Everything done connects clearly (or can be connected) with the answer to the question : how is this an important action that fit my values and the organization's values?
It's local and bikable/walkable... it's almost neighborhood work.
(1) There's little bureaucracy and (2) measurement of outcomes to improve meaningful services is joyfully participated in vs. used as impossible to meet expectations to measuring how lacking everyone is.
Flexible work schedule to allow for necessary personal life commitments
Comfortable pay - not too high (unethically so, money begins to complicate life), not too low (basics to life comfortably with a balance of occasional fun purchase).
Dynamic job with a great deal of self-determination in both what gets done and how to do it within the team context - individual values are valued.
(1) No random hours, like working 9-10, then 6-8, then...etc. If you're "working 8 hours", it's an efficient 8 hours - no huge and repetitious commutes or transition times that make working 8 hours have a 14 hour toll on your personal life (2) Working directly with folks served.
(1) Be challenged and (2) to reach someone and make a meaningful benefit
(1) Goals for job are actually achievable or "winnable. (2) Everyone in the organization, from clients/consumers to staff to community members has a voice, a say in what's being done and how it's being done.
Variety! Working independently and as a team.
(1) Have a personal voice in the organization. (2) Make a visible difference in the eyes of consumers and staff.
(1) Flexible and challenging. (2) Client's issues come first, billing comes second.
(1) Collaboration with a team. (2) Keeping the client/consumer at the core.
(1) There's time for reading and reflection, and that time isn't frowned on but given value. (2) Listening is appreciated as well.
Opportunities to learn from colleagues, make a difference and advance in the job.
More dialog with decision makers so up and down are connected.
(1) Make a difference and (2) Personal life and job are balanced.
Co-workers and self have a passion to do the job.
Flexible schedule and flexible in how to get things done (self-determination).
You can SEE the impact you're making.
Flexible in what you do during the day, not just non-stop routine and schedule.
Be one's own boss - make what you want to happen happen.
(1) Strong leadership and (2) agency security.
(1) New ideas are respected and (2) You know you're making a difference
You've got time w/ family... you can work from home or at a distance sometimes.
It doesn't overwhelm you.
Your supervisor's available (but not micromanaging).
Leadership has clear communication.
You can advocate for yourself AND your clients/consumers.
There' s a line between work and life... work does not EQUAL life. (other folks felt otherwise.)

GTD: My Implementation part 3: Organize through Views

2008-01-19T19:38:00.000-05:00

Continuing with the GTD theme, here's how I organize. Though I think I covered "organize" somewhat in the previous process post, here's a recap: I've got a buncha lists. :-) Besides lists, I've the requisite files (one sheet of paper = one file), online and offline... but once it's all procesed into the system I use an organized way of seeing what I've able to do. Here's where my views come in.

Outlook: Customized Views

I love how easy it is to customize outlook's views (or I wouldn't be using it anymore. Well, there's syncin', too). Calendar-wise, I like to have a quick view of whether I'm gettting a balance in my areas of responsibility, so I color code them based on category. Some quick hotkeys get them set up, so it's pretty painless. Here's what I use for my calendar:

And here's what I use for my tasks:

This nabs me some really nice views when I'm at my computer, which is where I do my processing thanks to some rockin' autohotkey help. Basically, I don't want to have to touch my mouse for processing... MAYBE if I'm scheduling a meeting, but even then, as little as possible.

That brings me to my PDA, a used Dell Axim x30 gotten through the wonders of eBay. I've assigned the message key to Agenda Fusion (SUCH a great program)'s task view... one of the few views I really benefit from in that program since it's a touch slower than the native handling of tasks.

And home is also tricked out a touch using TasksPlus. Free and worth every penny.

Think that's about it! This system's great for me, since I'm a happy tech user, but fast enough that it gets the heck out of the way when I want to get things done.

Things in a closet: zen/gtd in a nutshell

2008-01-02T13:23:00.001-05:00

A quickie post while I get my next GTD post together...

For the bulk of my mom's bday present in Dec, my brother and I installed a new closet organizer in the very messy laundry room. While I was cleaning it out, I took stock of what was in there. That's because I follow a pretty straightforward cleaning scheme. See, I like to clean once, and know I won't really have to do it again. To get that feeling of satisfaction, my process uses a few motivating questions to create lists of things and spaces.

First: what does the space look like right now? what is being put where and why?
This means taking stock of, for instance, the flat spaces and what's being put there. What's on the floor? Here you'd create the initial lists of things that are currently being put in the space and the various subspaces. In this laundry room's case, I've got the list at the end.

Next: Take everything out of the spaces and put similar things together.
This gets me to a principle I believe is very important. I don't think people make bad decisions about stuff or other things; I think people (including myself) make the best decisions they can given their perspective. So if you see a few shoes here and there, not knowing you have 30 or 40 pairs of shoes in various spots, you won't make a decision about buying another pair of shoes with the real deep truth of the experience of owning another pair. And that goes for seeing deeply into what you see: seeing the origin of the object, its maintenance costs, and its disposal costs - for you and for others. Seeing the full lifespan costs (physically, emotionally, etc.) of the thing is essential for good decision making.

Last: match spaces and collections by creating intelligent systems that would keep the previous mess from occurring because the system would be easier than not doing it.
It's like the 1 minute filing rule (30 seconds, to me) in GTD. It should be easier to file the thing than not. With very little forward thinking, by comparing the small, systematized/ritualized action to the haphazard tossing of something you should come up with the system each time.

Really, Really Last: See it from all altitudes.
This isn't really about cleaning a space, per se, but more about an attitude to bring to than and other things. Let's say you're making decisions about systems for your shoes... or rubber bands or something. At some point, your OCD warning flag should go off if you're spending too much of your life energy trying to maintain something of little importance. Perhaps it's better to simplify. That doesn't mean, to me, shirk responsibility for the things you have (everything from paper clips to family and friends, seriously); it means acknowledging the cost of the thing and asking deeply whether it's worth it. Hopefully, everything you are willing to touch should be worth it. But no body wants the poetic "life measured in coffee spoons." Donate the coffee spoons, my god. I DO have a place for rubber bands, for instance. But I just toss them in particular corner of my office supply drawer - precisely, but not too precisely. I'm not going to realistically unroll some ziplock bag and put them in. If I get too many of them for my system, I should evaluate why the hell I'm having to deal with this many things. There's a balance between caring too little and not taking responsibility and caring too much and being tunnel visioned. If you were maintaining a zen garden, you might rake your stone walk carefully and lovingly...but you'd probably not get down on your hands and knees and place pebbles with your hands. You've got trees to trim, leaves to rake, food to prepare! Get a life! But not much of a life that you don't care for the thing. The way you care for anything, to me, is the way you care for everything. This would apply to thinking deeply about the green origins of your owned things, your social justice commitments, whether you buy locally or not... the whole system and your place in it. As manifested by your laundry room.

Rambling aside, without further ado, the list. Here's what I found seemed "unsystemed" in the laundry room. For you, some questions: how do you know when you have too many of these things? Can you tell, visually, when that happens? Do you know what to do with the excess when it happens... and do you know how to adjust your system so that, gradually, the excess (which you have to then deal with) doesn't even happen in the first place? Ultimately, how can you take responsibility for what you have, your relationships, and your boundaries so that your life takes a balanced amount of maintenance energy allowing you to actually LIVE?

coats
shoes
vacuums
tools
appliances
dog toys, leashes, etc.
small kitchen appliances
clothes (clean/dirty)
detergent products
hangers (extra, in use)
coupons
extra bulk food
gloves
hats

So? How'd you do on your mental walk through? If it wasn't 100%, it'll happen again in your head. Is it worth tasting the trust in a system for these things so that there's no excess, no lack, and the balance sits strongly? How might that taste? Not perfection, but dynamic, relaxed balance.

Happy New Year! (wonderful morning, comments whoopsie, etc.)

2008-01-01T07:31:00.001-05:00

Happy new year, everyone!

It's 7:30 and I've had a wonderful morning so far - an exciting way to start the new year for me. I woke up from a dream/nightmare about worries I have with MLK day events at NCSSM I'm helping to plan - wonderful! Very exciting to me to start my year off with worries about diversity education being done well. Then I did some zazen and did one of the morning chants I really enjoy:
Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to awaken with them.
Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them.
Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them.
Buddha's Way is unsurpassable; I vow to become it.

Did a bit of brainstorming on MLK to get those worries out of my head into actionables... something I might not have been able to as clearly do last year. I've made progress in being "cleaner" with my GTD implementation, which is really progress toward, to me, directly facing myself and my worries, interests, capabilities, etc. Also, got up to get my two hakamas and Sarah's hakama out of the washer for hanging. We wash them about once a year (kinda like belts - I was told not to wash mine because of damage to certain parts), and they must be hung dry - so got to hanging them in my room with the space heater on high.

Social justice, GTD, Aikido, Zen all on my mind before 7:30 in the new year. Who knows what this year will bring, but a very pleasant start!

Also - Crapzola, my comments settings were all askew! Til now, only folks with blogger accounts could comment. LAME. Fixed that yesterday, so folks can comment away on my ramblings. :-)

peace & justice in the new year! Ring it in with all you've got!

mike

How to listen to a teacher: simile of the six stains

2007-12-31T14:56:00.002-05:00

...and here's those six stain similes for proper listening, also from The Nectar of Manjurshri's Speech. Don't do these. :-)

It is said in the Vyakhyayukti:
To be puffed up with pride, to have no faith,
To have no yearning interest,
Outwardly distracted, inwardly withdrawn,
To listen with despondency: These are all impurities.

The commentary also says:

This refers respective to the pride of thinking oneself superior to the teacher and to one's spiritual companions. It refers to a lack of confidence in the Dharma, the teacher, and one's fellow disciples. It refers also to an absence of keen interest and endeavor in the Dharma, and indicates distraction when the mind runs after the outer objects of the senses and is not concentrated, or when it sinks into a state of dullness and torpor. It refers too to the dismay one might feel at the length of the teaching session, or at the discomforts of hunger or thirst, or of heat or cold, on account of which one does not want to listen or else listens with displeasure. [...] one must control one's behavior, have an attitude of utmost respect, and listen to the teachings in the proper manner.

Good "ideas" like these, to me, are only useful when they can be appropriately applied. Even outside of Buddhism, specifically in Aikido or GTD or even social justice motivation, it seems these could be used as checklists for one's perspective. So, in GTD, one might ask:

Is my thinking I'm awesome at GTD keeping me from learning?
Am I unwilling to trust that GTD has any merit whatsoever? (recognizing that some faith can only be realized by familiarity, meaning you've gotta do SOMETHING to get the flavor of it)
Do I think that being organized isn't that important? (i.e. not recognizing the strain on other important parts of life, however subtle yet insidious)
Am I tooling around with the GTD implementation specifics, like fancy handhelds or other external manifestations of a system, and not really practicing?
Am I navel-gazing, thinking about the perfect GTD system and how I'll implement it...someday?
Am I wallowing in how hard implementation will be, how long it'll take, how much money/time/resources, without applying GTD to This Right Here? Am I stuck on the overwhelmingness of the big picture than I can't see managable chunks of projects and completable next actions?

Seems these stains have lots of applications! Can you see the aikido or community change making parallels?

GTD: My Implementation part 2: How I process

2007-12-15T20:14:00.001-05:00

Onward and upward! Or something.

For those that know GTD, you know what process means: take something, put it where it belongs, and leave an intelligently (and quickly!) filed reminder in a list system that I trust. Folks use lotsa things for lists... but for me, this seems to work really well. First, the lists.

Lists are of a few types in GTD. First, you've got your "next action" lists. This is stuff that you're able to actually do (meaning it's a single activity, physical, envisionable, etc.) when you're in the right context. These lists are kept by context (like "At Phone" is the list of the phone calls you could make), and (to me) ideally cross referenced by date IF something has to be done on that day from that list. Still, many of these to-dos might not have dates. The scenario this list is used? You've gotten everything done you "need" to do today by checking your calendar and dated next actions... and you feel like a-workin' ahead or on something that needs to be done, but doesn't have to be done today. So you whip out your context list.

Here's my context next action list and how I use it.

@ - My GTD next action reminders. This is a cheat - I put some fake tasks in here that remind me of how to DO stuff. Cuz, no joke, I sometimes forget. Here's those tasks, actually:

GTD Workflow Mastery: Collect, Process, Organize, Review, Do
GTD Choose Action: Context->Time->Energy->Priority
GTD Daily Work: Do predefined, do as it shows up, defining it
GTD Weekly Review (w/ notes so I can do my weekly review wherever - recurs Thu)
GTD Monthly Review (same deal - recurs 1st sun of the month)
GTD @: single, atomic, physical, seeable, context, committed, action verb

@Aiki-Doing - I have a part-time consulting company (you're on its webpage right now!) I know that the only time I'd do these next actions is if I'm at the computer AND online AND in "makin' extra $" mode.

@Brainstorming - Stuff I could do anywhere. And do! If I'm catching a quiet dinner by myself, I might pull out one of these. Then again, I might just have a quiet dinner.

@Email - Emails! It's all lumped together, my work and personal, since I'm doing it from the same place. I've had these split (the way phone is currently split) into work and personal... but I found that since my minutes are charged differently, I like to be intentional about separating my personal and work calls.

@Home - Stuff around the house. This might be "vacuum & mop the floors" on the weekend (which it is today, for example) or "take a look into the attic" referring to our house's attic project.

@Meeting - Agendas. Each agenda starts with the person's name, like "Cal: Talk about heterosexism and racism training day for PANC for ideas."

@OfflineCPU -Things to do when I'm, gasp, offline.

@OnlineCPU - Things I need a net connection for.

@Phone-Personal - Duh! I make most of these calls on weekends or after 9. Cha-Ching.

@Phone-Work - Usually make these during the day when I'm in the car. I know that's naughty... but I find I need less emotional energy when I'm talking work. Or I just do it when I park the car someplace I get early.

@Reading - Stuff I've actually committed to reading

@Running Errands - A great list. I get in my car, I check it. I go in a store, I check it. It might have "Durham: Thrift Shop: Get a crappy bag with a nice zipper" so I can put it on my yoga bag. So I'll be in Durham, getting in my car (or planning my day), and realize "oh, I've got a few Durham errands, lemme tack that on here and here...

@SAS - My UNC internship is at SAS, and I'm religious about not bringing work home. I'm only going to do these things at my desk there, whether emails, calls, research on eldercare, sorting, etc.

And two ESSENTIAL categories that relate..

Suspended - tasks with a date set for them to be active. They do NOT show up on my lists daily, but will pop up on the day I need them on either my outlook today or my nice PDA today screen.

Waiting For - again, dated. If I send an email to someone, while it's sending (2 seconds or so?) I use the hotkeys for a new waiting for task and put a date on it. Literally, takes about 2-3 seconds. But that way, in a week if they haven't gotten back to me, I know to check in.

My projects list is also in this system. I've worked literally for years to try to find out how to best watch projects, and came up with this. Each of the "areas of responsibility" for my life is a category with projects under it.

_ Same as above - GTD project reminders for how to work the system

GTD Natural Planning: 1.Principles 2.Vision 3. Brainstorm 4. Organize 5. Next Action
GTD Priorities / Reviews

_Aiki-Doing - Got a list of the clients I'm working with and the work I'm doing for them.

_Basic Personal Stuff - My eating

_Body Training - Specific Aikido, yoga, tai chi goals. Treating injuries, good eating, sleeping, this goes in here.

_Community Engagement - My active community projects. I don't know if it's good or bad that this is often my largest list.

_Community Radar - Community projects I'm not active on, but I want to keep on my mind.

_Education - Projects for each of my UNC classes, upcoming seminars, etc.

_Family - Folks on my mind, so I can keep track of what's going on with them.

_Friends - same thing - notes on folks I'm close to. This isn't ALL my friends - just the folks I want to stay more regularly connected with.

_Home - Home projects, like "Clean Attic" or "Beautiful Walkway to large tree"

_Magic - my magic training projects. Stuff like "think about transitions between this routine and this one..." And Josh's upcoming Magic show at Man Bites Dog, that I'll be a part of again...

_SAS Project - Again, big picture SAS stuff.

_Zen - Basically says "meditate." lol.

Lastly, my maybe someday list. Here's where stuff goes that I might get around to someday... and maybe I wont.

~ - Misc. I don't care about sorting these as much...lol.

~Blog Ideas - I've amassed about 200 things in this category. I've written 5. That's ok. lol.

~Community - Neato community project idears

~DurhamCET -

~Education - seminars, etc. I might like to go to.

~Friends - stuff I might do for friends if I have the time down the road.

~Fun - fun ways to play I can pull from whenever

~Home - hare-brained idears for the dojo house.

~Magic - Routines I might like to add, but won't commit to right now.

~Net-Browsing - go look at this neat thing when you have time... or not!

~Organizing - stuff that might be perfectionism... so by putting it here I give myself permission NOT to do it.

~Personal - eh, I might gt some black pants that wick...but I think I have enough clothes as it is. I'll leave it there for later or never.

~Relationships - folks not quite friends at this point, but if I've got time I'll reach out and send somebody a CD or something.

~Tech - again, doodads I probably don't need. Just get it off my mind already!

~Work - Brainstorms to increase consulting advertising, etc.

That's WHERE I process. Here's HOW I process.

I'm a techie. Not quite at heart, but in training. I've got this neato thing called AutoHotKey (google it!) that let's me create Outlook tasks in a heartbeat. Let's say I'm sending an email and need to create a waiting for.

I'd type
(win-t)wfMandy re: lunch(tab)wed(alt-s)
while the email's sending, and that would

(win-t) : open up a new task window for outlook (no matter what I'm using at the time).
wf : deletes "wf" text, types the short-cuts for the categories list (alt-g) and selects waiting for, then gets me back to the subject
Mandy email re: lunch : who I'm waiting on and for what
(tab) wed : drops me to the due date and gives me the next wed.
(alt-s) : saves and closes my new task. It'll then show up in my few task views, my PDA, and my today screens.

Processing, in practice, looks like emptying my inbox (which I usually do as I get things, it's just so fast), emptying my paper inbox at the end of the day, and emptying my PDA of voice recording notes. All of those things I quickly use some hotkeys for and turn into tasks. Processing into Outlook nabs me some pretty nice views, which is what all this processing is for, in a sense: to give me snapshots of what I need, when I need it, so I can make good decisions and not drop any balls.

And I'll do a view showin' soon!

How to listen to a teacher - the simile of the vessel

2007-12-15T19:50:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I enjoy a reminder of what it takes to really listen to a teacher. As both a teacher and (moreso) a student in martial arts, and a student at UNC's MSW program, I enjoyed something I found (for the second or third time!) on listening and wanted to share.

So today I took some time to read a new book - commentary on one of my favorite, if not my favorite Buddhist teaching: Shantideva's Bodhicaryavatara - The path of the Bodhisattva - available online or in paper format in my current favorite translation. I've read it often, maybe about 50 times through at this point, and I enjoy commentaries on it. For those not familiar with that term, it's pretty common in Buddhism for sutras or teachings to be commented on and have those commentaries get famous in their own right. So, back to what I'm reading: the Nectar of Manjushri's Speech: A Detailed Commentary on Shantideva's Way of the Bodhisattva.

In the introduction to the commentary, the author reviews a few Buddhist reminders about listening. First, the three defects of a vessel:

Concerning the three defects of a vessel, it is said:
Inattentive, you are like a vessel overturned.
Forgetful, you are like a ruptured vessel.
Stained by the afflictions, you are like a poisoned vessel.

So: don't do those! :-) In Aikido, that seems to parallel as well. I notice these as a student and teacher, but prefer to share my experience embodiing the listening "whoopsies" myself.

While sitting in seiza listening to Steve Sensei or another teacher, if I find myself with a wandering mind on what I'm going to do after class, or some situation from my "outside" life, that's me as the vessel overturned. If I'm watching, but not really taking in what he's saying and then miss basics like footwork or handwork clearly off, I'm like a ruptured vessel. If I'm of a "peace ninja" type mind, thinking how Awesome I'm going to be when I get up and do that technique myself, I'm like a poisoned vessel (maybe it's got mold in it or something, I don't know). So the antidotes, from aikido, seem to be:

To deeply and ravenously search out the energetic relationship being demonstrated. What is sensei's core doing? How is his spine moving, what are his internal movements? I sometimes lean forward and try to drink in the situation. That keeps me from feeling as "overturned"
To ensure that I'm also looking at the basics. If all else fails, "forward foot goes back, then step" or whatever. If I can't even lock down on the rough hand and foot movements, how will I hunt down the internal movement that the structure enables?
To watch humbly, mindful of the non-competitive spirit of aikido. I am not in class to become a dangerous martial artist, a dangerous man. I am there to clean up my spirit and not roughly pull someone all over the place. To me, it should feel like guiding their energy around, making sense of the uke/nage relationship.

So, food for thought!

I'll follow this up eventually with the six stains - another simile for bad listeners!

GTD: My Implementation part I: Overall guidelines and Collection Buckets

2007-12-07T20:30:00.001-05:00

OK, time for the often-done "how I work GTD."

First, here's what I DO (which guides how I'm implementing my system):

I'm active in around 10-20 community projects at a time, and "track" about another 10 that I'd like to stay on my radar
I'm going to school for a masters in social work and two certificates (one from UNC and one from Duke) in nonprofit management
I train a lot in Aikido and Tai Chi (and yoga cross training)
I like hanging out with friends
I teach a few martial arts classes at Duke in the PE department
I have a part-time nonprofit/social justice technology consultant practice with about ten clients at a time.

And apart from what I do, here's some specifics of how I like to do it which impact my implementation:

I'm tech savvy, very much so, but don't like living off my computer
I live in a wonderful house with a housemate, and have a small "work area" that I don't want to be in my room.
I like to be able to capture things both on paper and verbally.
I've lost large amounts of data on paper or otherwise before - a stolen planner, etc. - so I wanted a system that backs itself up.
If a tech system, I'm big on speed - I want spend my time BEING organized, not organizing.
I want my stuff protected by duplication, but not have to do anything twice. I want as much at my fingertips as possible
Some investment is ok, but I generally don't have good experiences with fancier tailored systems. I'll tailor it, thanks.
I want to be able to see my tasks by due date AND by category, but have filing be Fast

So given those things, here's the big overall for my system. I'm going to measure it based on my favorite three GTD measurement tools: the Workflow Mastery assessment at Matt's Idea Blog, David Allen's belts, and GTD Mastery 100.

My essential tools:

Microsoft Outlook, with some customizations
Autohotkey for some select but very tactical hotkeys (I love you!)
Thunderbird
a tricked out used PDA (Dell Axim x30 - I've had eGenio for a while, but I love this axim)
a black purse with pockets ("man bag?" C'mon, it's a purse.)
a buncha notecards, two black pens and some colored pens for brainstorms, meeting notes or whatever.
a big old 4 drawer file cabinet and manila folders (Hanging files is for the birds)

I'm going to go with the Workflow Mastery rubric (Collect, Process, Organize, Review, Do) to talk about my system, then do my tools one by one.

Collect
According to David Allen, there are three success factors in collecting. I like Matt's extended list though, so I'm going to go with that

“Stuff” enters my life via a small number of collecting points (physical in-basket, email, voice mail, etc.) ____ YUP
I regularly do a mind sweep to empty my head of nagging thoughts that have my attention. ____ YUP
I use my email in-box only for collecting; it does not mix collecting with action or reference. ____YUP
I empty my collecting points (including paper and email) every 24-48 hours. ____YUP
I have collecting points set up both at home and work. ____YUP
Fellow workers and family use my collecting points for notes, memos, etc, instead of leaving in unexpected locations. ____YUP
I always have a Ubiquitous Capture Tool (notebook, PDA, etc.) nearby to capture things that are on my mind. ____YUP

My three buckets are thunderbird email inbox, my physical inbox on my desk (for whatever, including my paper notes that I could take during meetings if I wanted to), my PDA voice capture list which syncs with outlook in the "notes" section as recordings. I can ubiquitously (?) capture by voice, paper, or just dropping a thing into a spot - and so far, I haven't been able to get to fewer than this since I LOVE the voice capture piece. :-)

Thunderbird Email
Nothing stays in my inbox long - and by long I mean a day at max, usually just a few seconds. Inbox represents something NOT processed - anything processed gets quickly taged as work or personal (by pressing a single key) and filed into a respective folder filing system, which I'll go over later. All in all, each email takes no more than a few seconds to process into a trusted reminder that'll show up in the few views I want it to by category and by date both on my computer and my PDA - a tiny bit of processing up front with a high pay off makes processing that collection bucket to zero easy.

My Physical Inbox
This is easy - whatever notes (if any) I've taken during the day I'll just stuff in my pocket. When I change at the end of the day I just dump them into my inbox at home - or have already processed them in the last 15 minutes of my day which I religiously reserve at work for processing my work tasks (note: turning your notes into next actions and project brainstorms is billable, folks). They go into the inbox, then they go out. If I took a picture with my camera that day, it gets tossed (nicely!) into my inbox. Articles I clipped? Inbox.

And that inbox stays EMPTY. To me, if my inbox is getting stuck, it's because my filing system doesn't rock (as in less than 30 seconds to get it to where it belongs) or my decision making on something is stuck. By working on fixing those systems over the last few years (though nobody's perfect) my inbox stays about 95% zero like my email - and if it doesn't get cleared in a day, it certainly will in another. My housemate drops stuff (mail, notes, etc.) into my inbox (or on my chair, which I put in my inbox) and I put stuff in hers.

PDA Voice Capture
I LOVE this. I like to ramble... or leave myself short messages. It's faster than calling my answering machine and then having it sent by email, as is now possible - I rummage in my bag one handed, even when driving (whoops! I mean, both hands on the wheel!), and by feel can get the sleek silver of the protective case on my PDA. I pull it out, and with my pinky squeeze the voice capture button. PDA turns on, a little beep, and then "add eggplant to the grocery list" or "brainstorm about writing a children's book someday about social justice and anti-racism stories...." - whatever. Those notes sync with my outlook and drop themselves into the collection bucket of "notes" where I speedily turn them into next actions, waiting-fors, project notes, suspended actions, calendar, whatever - with my outlook organization system, processing (as I'll go over) is a snap.

The Rest
I'll do Process, Organize, Review, Do later, yo. Just felt like starting these GTD postings right!

Getting Things Done...Fast!

2007-11-26T17:33:00.001-05:00

In honor of my recently getting my hands on a copy of the ever elusive Getting Things Done...Fast! tapes, I've decided to do a few posts on my GTD implementation. These'll be coming around in the next week or two, and by the end, it'll be a complete "How I GTD" for my personal system. And mine's workin' pretty darn well, so I hope it'll be helpful and "food for thought" for those implementing GTD themselves.

An interesting note here I noticed. I'm quite happy to have gotten my hands on GTD...Fast! It was mentioned on Merlin's Blog some time ago, among other places, and its rarity was not far off. I called libraries all over the US, tried to interlibrary loan it through a few institutions... etc. In a funny catch-22, I attribute my having my hands on it to...can you guess? ... my existing GTD system. Having the reminders pop up in the right context regularly helped me keep concentrated on it (and other) tasks. Without a strong GTD system, I think there'd have been no chance of finding it. Of course, there are probably many folks with great GTD systems that didn't nab it and may have wanted to - I'm not saying it's purely earned here - but I am saying GTD has a strong impact on one's ability to get information, and good information, about GTD. Funny thing.

There's a line in Siddhartha (I'm thinking of the enjoyable movie here) that reminds me of what an effective GTD system can do for long-term projects.

"When you throw a rock into the water, it will speed on the fastest course to the bottom of the water. This is how it is when Siddhartha has a goal, a resolution. Siddhartha does nothing, he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he passes through the things of the world like a rock through water, without doing anything, without stirring; he is drawn, he lets himself fall. His goal attracts him, because he doesn't let anything enter his soul which might oppose the goal. This is what Siddhartha has learned among the Samanas. This is what fools call magic and of which they think it would be effected by means of the daemons. Nothing is effected by daemons, there are no daemons. Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast."

I'll end with this, for now: a gem from the GTD ...Fast! series. When talking about actions, David Allen remarks that things are on your mind not because they are unfinished, but because...

1. The outcome is not clarified (Project vision of success unclear) and/or
2. That next action has not been definied (next action not identified and meeting solid next action criteria) and/or
3. The reminder of the project and/or the action item is not parked properly in system that you'll see at the right place (context) and time.

Therefore, there is no system better than your mind able to keep track of it, so it pops up.

This, to me, is one of the holy grail blips of GTD. WHY did I just think that? What is the real, basic measurement of a GTD system that keeps that open loop out of the mind? Well, it's a problem with the clarity of project's successful outcome/vision, the simplicity and atomicity (physicality, contextualizedness - not a word, the very next thing, etc.), or the reminder system.

Ding!

Hilarious! Dalai Lama laughing about year 2000 worries

2007-10-14T09:49:00.001-04:00

This is SO funny to me.

The Dalai Lama (HHDL!) on year 2000 worries

Of special notes in this short clip (pulled from the audio of 8 verses for training the mind):

* after his quick answer at 0:12 seconds, his "hmm!" at 0:14.
* after the English description by his translator, they have a short back and forth in Tibetan... and he laughs to himself at 0:44.
* then, of course, his three hilarious answers. :-)

Having met a Tibetan Geshe or two so far in my life and heard teachings, there's this kind of high pitched, belly laugh that seems to accompany an important kind of spiritual understanding. Who wants to understand the world and not have anything to laugh about with friends?!

Community Project: MLK Day at NCSSM

2007-09-30T16:47:00.002-04:00

Purpose/Principles/Values
I feel strongly that MLK day is underused and shows a lack of appreciation for the importance of education about the current state of diversity issues... I believe a powerful MLK day at NCSSM that can be used as a model for other high schools is something I can help make happen that would be movement building.

Vision/Success/Mission
Develop NCSSM's 2008 MLK day to be not just history, but creation of dialogue about the intersections of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and other ISMs founded on race-aware staff and student feedback and priciples of dismantling oppression.

Brainstorm
Much of this has already been done for the basics... see the history section. Still need to brainstorm with a group at NCSSM.

Organize
Not there yet! Gotta do more meetings...

Next Actions
W/F hearing back re: meetings from Letita and Dr. Barber

History:
When I started my previous job as Student Life Instructor and Service Learning Coordinator at the North Carolina School of Science and Math, I made an early call to Mandy Carter (who rocks) at Southerners on New Ground, asking how I could help as a volunteer for SONG. I feel lucky to have met Mandy in a number of contexts when I was an ally at Public Allies, North Carolina (class of '04! Shout outs to staff: Cal, Amoke, Dionysios and Dan), like when she was part of an inspiring panel on heterosexism with a number of other awesome folks. At any rate, as part of that conversation, I offered a number of random skills and asked questions about what SONG was doing. Turns out a pet project of Mandy's at the time was to get Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin shown at high schools... heck, I lived and worked at a high school! The gist of the project was to incorporate the movie into MLK days at high schools in the south region. The reason? Bayard Rustin was many things, including an incredible quaker pacifist, the chief organizer of the march on Washington where Dr. MLK delivered the "I have a Dream" speach, a long-time civil rights activist and organizer, and an out, gay Black man. Because of that, while he was a key player in many, many civil rights struggles around labor and race, he frequently played a backstage role to other leaders. His sexual orientation was used as a tool to discredit the movement... his story weaves sexual orientation and race together powerfully to give a deeper picture of civil rights besides just "race." By showing the movie at high schools, it begins to weave an awareness of the interrelatedness of civil rights issues. Showing it is super strategic! By playing my part to try to get it shown, I was excited to be part of an organized and strategic effort in the region. Mandy really gave me an opportunity to feel like part of a movement. In 2007, MLK day was put together for perhaps the first time with choices - movies like The Color of Fear and Brother Outsider were shown as part of the official programming of the day, as well as facillitated activities by student leadership. That year, I designed a survey to measure student feedback about the different events, divided by race and gender identification. It could use some clean up, but it was the first measurement of student interest in MLK day activities to date (for those interested, see the overall results and the spreadsheet breakdowns by program). What rocked was that we were giving choices to students, and that went over Very well (which we had the data to demonstrate, as well). In conversations with Letita (who, again, rocks and is inspiring to me), we both felt energy from the movie initiatives and the very positive shifts in MLK day presentation still has room to grow to be more inline with the non-stereotyped vision of Dr. King, including his stances on labor and militarism. So this coming year, I'm hoping to support the school from the community in developing MLK day even more - with choices for students that acknowledge and honor folks of various backgrounds...leaving no one feeling unmotivated or unactivated (whereas, before, white students, especially white men, felt unmotivated and unincluded in the "history lesson). NCSSM is a pretty strategic place for these kinds of changes, since it serves, in many ways, as a model school for both the region (since students come from all over the state to attend) and the nation (since it's one of the premiere public, residential high schools in the nation). Positive changes to the way dialogue is done around MLK day, changing it from one of passive hero-worship to active education, celebration, and movement building can easily make waves.

7/22/2007-I have a task to contact 5 folks to help organize early a diversity committee at NCSSM with superstar Letita Mason. I've been lazy though, and haven't done it this week because the next action of the project is intimidating to me somehow. I think it was knowing how to write a fancy, nice email... so I've changed the next action to "write 5 sentence email to 5 people to 'ping' the project. It doesn't always take perfection, just consistency. Hopefully that'll do it this week.

9/30/2007 - I've put some effort into this and organized a buncha ideas. Here's a recent email:

Letita! (Dr. Barber!)

Here's a thought on the ongoing discussions about providing award-winning, and student empowering MLK programming. I thought it would be cool to get movies and tie them with diverse speakers, too.
Since I just got back from Highlander (again, which has a STONG connection to past and current social change and civil rights), they mentioned this movie coming out describing every day social change activists and the history of civil rights in the south: http://www.milestonefilms.com/movie.php/ygtm/

Also, I personally know two Highlander co-directors who ran the youth organizing program I could ask to speak after the movie about being young and engaged. I think it would rock. :-)

Just food for thought! Some more brainstorms, given that choices went so well last time and we could build a day of activities (maybe 3/4 at a time, 2-3 groups of activities):

* Show Bayard Rustin and ask Mandy Carter (a friend of mine) to come speak about intersections of race and sexual orientation (http://www.classicdykes.com/mandy_carter.htm)

* Show Blue Eyed or Color of Fear and ask Tema Okun (and/or myself) to come speak about being white (http://www.cwsworkshop.org/resources/ARAgenda.html, http://www.pubpol.duke.edu/centers/hlp/about/faculty/okun-tema/index.htm
l)

* Show a movie on the use of Gospel/Black Spirituals to galvanize spiritual energy during civil rights, follow with Colours leading some "campfire" singing...?

* Have Durham CAN come to talk about local organizing (they're a group that organizes churches and groups to move for specific changes - they helped raise the minimum wage in Durham, for instance: http://www.durhamcan.org/

* Coordinate a number of afternoon service projects through United Way (since it's recognized as a Day of Service), and through Chasity, the new service learning coordinator.

* Have someone come (I have two contacts in mind) to talk about downtown Durham's history, Parrish street and Black Wall Street and how economies and local history impacted civil rights. Peter Coyle is in the public art department in downtown Durham and knows just about everything's that's happened in Durham with civil rights and buildings. There's also a new Parrish Street history museum that celebrates Parrish Street, and I know someone there too. (http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2007/01/parrish.html, http://www.durhamnc.gov/departments/eed/parrish/)

I am energized about this and can help make these things happen, but I'd love to be in conversation with other folks about more ideas, too. I feel like we don't acknowledge multiple racial identities that well yet (chicano/latino, asian american, indian american, native american), the link between economics and civil rights, immigration, and some other issues that we could still delve into.

Anyway, since MLK day's on my mind ... well, a few times a week, and I've been collecting ideas (especially when I was at Highlander), I thought I'd pass them on! I wanna help make it the best, most motivating and student celebrated MLK day on record. And I really think I could help do that this year.

looking forward to it! MLK day's right around the corner, to me!
:-)

peace,mike

So hopefully we're going to meet within a week or two...

Community Project: Shunryu Suzuki Roshi Video - goin' public?

2007-09-30T16:32:00.001-04:00

7/22/07 - I emailed back and forth this week with David Chadwick, author of the biography of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, a very well-known zen teacher (author of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind and others), about a video I once saw at the Chapel Hill Zendo of Suzuki Roshi. Some of the video is posted online in a great interview with David that Brad Warner talked about. I'd LOVE to be able to see that video again (which has a hilarious exchange with Reb Anderson Roshi and Suzuki Roshi, as well). After going to a zen and breadmaking workshop with Ed Brown at 9th St Bakery a few months ago, I emailed him about it as well. I also emailed the presenter of the video, Taigen Dan Leighton, about two years ago. Basically, I haven't forgotten about it! :-) So the weekly check in here is that I asked David if I could help in any way getting the SFZC to release the video for we newer students who got into zen practice after Suzuki Roshi died. I offered to help video edit or design covers, whatever's in the way of it getting out. He suggested I keep pestering folks, and remembered my emails (and that of local Abbess Taitaku Pat Phelan, whom he said emailed about it as well) from two years ago to other folks. I'll keep following up every once in a while with someone new and the folks I've talked to already. So I created a 1 month from now suspended task in my electronic tickler (heh, sounds funny) to remind me to email my current list of contacts saying "hey, how cool would it be...". I can imagine many zen students wanting to have public access to this great video. I certainly do.

9/30/07
Purpose/Principles/Values
- I feel comfortable with the previous summary describing my values on this...

Vision/Success/Mission
Success looks like having a purchasable or (ideally) public video record of Shunryu Suzuki roshi. His contribution to US Zen seems too great to not offer up to be widely available.

Brainstorm
Well, I've contacted a number of teachers already about this. I already have a suspended reminder task to pop up and remind me to remind them again that I'd be willing to help.

Organize
It's organized, at this point - organic is ok on this, and what's capturable is captured.

Next Actions
Suspended email task to check in with a few folks.

Community Project: Public Allies North Carolina Alumni Network

2007-09-30T16:24:00.002-04:00

Cal Allen mentioned this week he wanted to start up an initiative to bring the wider alumni network back in to PANC. We've ideas (and I'm sure many other alumni do too)! He and I are going to get lunch this week to talk about it.

...which we did! I miss Cal - Cal, come over for breakfast! lol.

I'm going to see him again tomorrow for a consulting project. I'll make a "meeting note" dated tomorrow to remind me to check in about this.

Next week I hope to know more and project plan it specifically - right now, it's just to find out what Cal's got in mind and if I can do anything. I have faith in his values...

Community Project: Rape of my Loved One

2007-09-30T16:20:00.001-04:00

As I occasionally mention, I've had the sad and meaningful experience of supporting both friends and lovers through the ongoing healing of sexual assault. I find, lately, that *I* need support as well. On a drive this week, I realized how powerful it would be to have a book of testimonials of men and women (and other genders) who have supported others through healing ... what their emotions and experiences were. I would be willing to edit a website or book to put this together... so I've added it to my projects list and I've created a next action to research books or websites already written on the subject this week. In general, I want to look into resources for secondary survivors like myself (which help us both to support assault survivors AND support ourselves... since coping with the deep hurt of a loved one is difficult in and of itself, with its own special challenges and long-term impacts).

Update
10/30/07:
I'm going to be a bit more structured with this, so will GTD Project plan this now.

Also, I've been in contact with Orange County Rape Crisis Center support group coordinator Sage (who seems to rock) about a secondary survivors group and related resources. She's going to organize one this winter (if you need contact information for that, please let me know and I'll pass on information to her). Also (again), I passed her information on to the awesome dudes at MARC - Men Against Rape Culture - who I've always had great experiences with. Come winter, we should have some great stuff going on, and I'm looking forward to that supportive time.

Since the original post, I've looked around and not found much on supporting secondary survivors like myself. What I find, I'll post.

Purpose/Principles/Values
Almost every woman I've had a close relationship with has been assaulted in one form or another, and almost exclusively by men. I believe men are hurting deeply as a culture, and manifest it either by violence themselves or having to cope with the violence of others to their loved ones. I believe if men particularly, but secondary survivors in general, had more resources around how to support the loved ones in their lives who have been impacted by sexual assault, we'd end up with a different culture where women aren't the objects of regular assault (though it certainly happens in the LGBTQ community too). This is in keeping with some principles in a great article on sexual education for men: More than a few good men: strategies for inspiring boys and young men to be allies in anti-sexist education by Jackson Katz. (which I recently passed on to some folks at the OCRCC).

Vision/Success/Mission
Success would look like some collection of resources for secondary survivors in general and men in particular in supporting themselves and their loved ones. That might be a popular book of stories... or a website... some artifact that is of benefit to many.

Brainstorm
To get there, I've got to first find out what's been done... and to be honest I've found VERY little. But in supporting myself, I'll keep looking up stuff.
I've got some relevant connections and certainly experience already, but organic and community driven is often the best way. I'll hopefully get more involved in MARC and the secondary survivors group that comes together...

Organize
This is mostly organic as an idea at this point, so the organization is just to track opportunities as they come up.

Next Actions
Few - just to suspend a reminder task to check back in about the support group as the spring comes close, and to occasionally look for resources myself (a maybe/someday online browsing task should do).

Community Project: Downtown Durham Public Art / Social Justice History

2007-09-30T15:56:00.001-04:00

Purpose/Principles/Values
Wanting to support explicitly anti-racist material in downtown Durham; finding out about public projects so I'm more educated.

Vision/Success/Mission
A downtown Durham that integrates interesting progressive imagery and art into its landscape

Brainstorm
So I've met with some cool folks, (as previously blogged), but right now I'm waiting on a friend to send me my notes on people... do I really want to commit to this?

Organize
Not much to organize - just keep exploring I think.

Next Actions
W/F envelope of meeting notes so I can do some follow up.