september 2

by maggie nelson, from shiner

dragging around some miserable wife
on a real hike, straight up a cliff
of corn, holding onto silk husks
for dear life -- it's a little odd
to vacation as your mistress, and as
the only one licensed to drive, but
no one seems to mind. a little
disturbed but making it through
swelling up before noon, i dreamt
my abalone ring came apart
live fish and shell peeled off
my finger, in a retail store
of which you were the owner.
this day smells like toast.

invisible labor

from the afterlife by donald antrim

"most all of my mother's stories - the angry tales she told me, before and after she got sober - about her life with my father contained, i think, a notion of self-improvement as a process of gathering insights into other people: if we name the faults of those who have hurt us, we will be shielded from pain; if we can collect evidence to justify our anger, we will overcome shame; if we pity our betrayers, we will not have been betrayed, mishandled, misunderstood, or left abandoned. but what happens when the ordeal of abandonment is - as i think it was for my mother, and for me with her - life itself?"

"nonetheless i was attracted by my grandfather's patience, by the care he took with this broken house. it wasn't that i suddenly understood the value in a job well done. far from it. it was that for a moment - a romantic moment destined to resonate and grow in magnitude over the years - i hoped (and this may have been a fantasy that i wanted to have about the man) that my grandfather had something to pass on to me, to teach me. and i imagined (because it did not occur to me to ask him) that what he had to teach me concerned the beauty in labor that is invisible to others, work that seems superfluous but isn't, and that no one except the worker will see or even necessarily appreciate."

the buddha

excerpt from comfortable with uncertainty by pema chodron

when people decide to become buddhists, they participate in an official ceremony in which they take refuge in the three jewels - the buddha, the dharma, and the sangha. i've always thought it sounds theistic, dualistic, and dependent 'to take refuge' in something. however, the fundamental idea of taking refuge is that between birth and death we are alone. therefore taking refuge in the three jewels doesn't mean finding consolation in them. rather, it's a basic expression of our aspiration to leap out of the nest, whether we feel ready for it or not, to go through our puberty rites and be an adult with no hand to hold. taking refuge is the way that we begin cultivating the openness and the good-heartedness that allow us to be less and less dependent.

the buddha is the awakened one, and we too are buddhas. we are the awakened one - the one who continually leaps, who continually opens, who continually goes forward. being a buddha isn't easy. it's accompanied by fear, resentment, and doubt. but learning to leap into open space with our fear, resentment, and doubt is how we become fully human beings. there isn't any separation between samsara and nirvana, between the sadness and pain of the setting sun and the vision and power of the great eastern sun, as the shambhala teachings put it. one can hold them both in one's heart, which is actually the purpose of practice.

taking refuge in the buddha means that we are willing to spend our life reconnecting with the quality of being continually awake. every time we feel like taking refuge in a habitual means of escape, we take off more armor, undoing all the stuff that covers over our wisdom and our gentleness and our awake quality. we're not trying to be something we aren't; rather, we're reconnecting with who we are. so when we say, 'i take refuge in the buddha,' that means i take refuge in the courage and the potential of fearlessness, of removing all the armor that covers this awakeness of mine. i am awake; i will spend my life taking this armor off. nobody else can take it off because nobody else knows where all the little locks are, nobody else knows where it's sewed up tight, where it's going to take a lot of work to get that particular iron thread untied. you have to do it alone. the basic instruction is simple: start taking off that armor. that's all anyone can tell you. no one can tell you how to do it because you're the only one who knows how you locked yourself in there to start.

renunciation

by kazim ali from the far mosque

                        "the sailor cannot see the north -- but knows the needle can --"



the books were all torn apart, sliced along the spines
light filled all the openings that she in her silence renounced

still: her handwriting on the papers remembered us to her
the careful matching of the papers' edges was a road back

one night muhummad was borne aloft by a winged horse
taken from the near mosque to the far mosque

each book likens itself to lichen,
stitching softly to tree trunks, to rocks

what was given into the prophet's ears that night:
a changing of directions -- now all the scattered tribes must pray.

wonder well foundry, well sunborn, sundered and sound here
well you be found here, foundered and found

annunciation

by marie howe, from the kingdom of ordinary time

even if i don't see it again - nor ever feel it
i know it is - and that if once it hailed me
it ever does -

and so it is myself i want to turn in that direction
not as towards a place, but it was a tilting
within myself,

as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where
it isn't - i was blinded like that - and swam
in what shone at me

only able to endure it by being no one and so
specifically myself i thought i'd die
from being loved like that.

opal

from there there by tommy orange

"opal is on her route. same old same old one. but she's paying attention to where she steps. opal doesn't step on cracks when she walks. she walks carefully because she's always had the sense that there are holes everywhere, cracks you can slip between -- the world, after all, is porous. she lives by a superstition she would never admit to. it's a secret she holds so tight to her chest she never notices it. she lives by it, like breathing. opal drops mail in slots and in boxes trying to remember which spoon she'd eaten with earlier. she has lucky and unlucky spoons. in order for the lucky ones to work, you have to keep the unlucky ones with them, and you can't look to see what you're getting when you pull one out of the drawer. her luckiest spoon is one with a floral pattern that runs up the handle to the neck.

she knocks on wood to cancel out something she's said she wants or doesn't want to happen, or even if she just thinks it, she'll find wood and knock on it twice. opal likes numbers. numbers are consistent. you can count on them. but for opal, certain numbers are good and others are bad. even numbers are generally better than odd ones, and numbers that have some kind of mathematical relationship are good too. she reduces addresses to a single number by adding them together, then judges the neighbors based on their reduced number. numbers don't lie. four and eight are her favorites. three and six are no good. she delivers mail on the odd side first, always having believed it's best to get the bad out of the way before getting to the good.

bad luck or just bad shit happening to you in life can make you secretly superstitious, can make you want to take some control or take back some sense of control. opal buys scratchers and lottery tickets when the jackpot gets high enough. her superstition is one she would never call superstition for fear it would lose its power.

opal is done with the odd side of the street. when she crosses, a car stops for her - the woman inside impatiently waves opal across like she's doing all of humanity a favor. opal wants to lift her arm, lift a single finger as she crosses, but instead she slow jogs across in answer to the woman's impatience and feigned generosity. opal hates herself for the jog. for the smile that came to her face before she could stop it, turn it upside down, straighten it out before it was too late.

opal is full of regrets, but not about things she's done. that damn island, her mom, ronald, and then the shuffling, stifling rooms and faces in foster care, in group homes after that. she regrets that they happened. it doesn't matter that she didn't cause them to happen. she figures she must deserve it in some way. but she couldn't figure it out. so she bore those years, their weight, and the years bored a hole through the middle of her, where she tried to keep believing there was some reason to keep her love intact. opal is stone solid, but there is troubled water that lives in her, that sometimes threatens to flood, to drown her -- rise up to her eyes. sometimes she can't move. sometimes it feels impossible to do anything. but that's okay because she's become quite good at getting lost in the doing of things. more than one thing at a time preferably. like delivering mail and listening to an audiobook or music. the trick is to stay busy, distract then distract the distraction. get twice removed. it's about layers. it's about disappearing in the whir of noise and doing. . .

the boys are afraid of opal, like she was always afraid of her mom. something about how brief and direct she is. maybe hypercritical too, like her mom was hypercritical. it's to prepare them for a world made for native people not to live but to die in, shrink, disappear. she needs to push them harder because it will take more for them to succeed than someone who is not native. it's because she failed to do anything more than disappear herself."

the world of our emotions

excerpt from beyond religion by the dalai lama

interestingly, in the classical buddhist science of mind in which i am trained, there is no concept of emotion as a single category that precisely corresponds to the understanding of emotion in contemporary western psychology. indeed, there is no word in either sanskrit or classical tibetan that exactly translates the word "emotion." instead, all mental states are understood to include both cognitive and feeling dimensions to some degree, and to contain five omnipresent mental factors, of which "feeling" is one. the other four are discrimination, volition, attention, and contact. so even a cognitive mental process as simple as counting from one to ten is regarded as having some kind of "feeling" or "feeling tone," which naturally is related to context.

there are also various ways of categorizing our emotional states. for example, in contemporary psychology the main distinction is often drawn between emotional states which, on the one hand, are pleasurable or joyful and are described as positive, and those which, on the other hand, are unpleasant or painful and are described as negative.

in classical buddhist psychology, however, the distinction is rather different. instead, the primary distinction is not between those states which are pleasurable and those that are painful, but between those that are beneficial and those that are harmful. "afflictive" mental states, known as nyonmong in tibetan or klesha in sanskrit, are those which undermine our long-term well-being, while "non-afflictive" mental states are those which have no such destructive impact.

given these different ways of categorizing emotional experience, it is important for readers not to confuse those emotions which are afflictive - that is to say, harmful to our long-term well-being - with those which simply don't feel good. of course, sometimes these overlap. feelings of hatred, for example, are both destructive and unpleasant to experience, but there can also be experiences which may not be pleasant but can nevertheless be beneficial, and in the same way there can be feelings that are pleasant which nevertheless can be destructive. for instance, feelings of sadness, grief, and remorse are certainly not pleasurable, but they need not in themselves be afflictive. when faced, say, with the death of a loved one, feelings of grief and sorrow may actually be quite constructive in helping us come to terms with our loss and move on with our lives. in the same way, emotions which may initially seem pleasurable can nevertheless be destructive at a deeper level by undermining our mental peace and stability. one example might be lust, or excessive longing for a particular object. such longing may in some sense seem pleasurable. but eventually obsessive craving will erode our capacity for genuine contentment and undermine our mental equilibrium, and should therefore be considered destructive.

in the context of secular ethics, this distinction between those mental states which undermine well-being - our own and that of others - and those which promote survival and well-being can be very useful, since it is directly relevant to our pursuit of happiness and an ethically sound way of life. given that people come from many different backgrounds and cultures, which states are to be considered destructive and which are to be considered beneficial may vary in particular cases. generally speaking, we can define destructive emotions as those states which undermine our well-being by creating inner turmoil, thereby undermining self-control and depriving us of mental freedom. within this, it is also possible to distinguish between two sub-categories: those emotional states that are destructive in themselves, such as greed, hatred, or malice; and those states, such as attachment, anger, or fear, which only become destructive when their intensity is disproportionate to the situation in which they arise.

from a biological perspective, all our basic emotions evidently have evolutionary purposes. for example, attachment helps bring us together and enables us to create bonds, anger helps us repel forces that are detrimental to our survival and well-being, fear enables us to respond to a threat with vigilance, and envy prompts us to compete with others so that we do not overlook our own needs. scientists have demonstrated that these basic emotions have clear biological dimensions. when we face an immediate danger, for example, and fear arises, extra blood rushes to our legs, and with increased adrenaline and our hearts beating faster, the emotion of fear literally prepares us to flee. in contrast, when anger arises, more blood goes to our arms, preparing us to confront the threat. so the important point to bear in mind is that these feelings are not destructive in themselves; they become destructive only when their intensity is out of proportion to the situation, or when they arise in situations that do not call for them.

as for attachment, which after all is the feeling that holds families and communities together, we do not usually think of it as destructive. however, when this basic emotion becomes excessive and wants to control its object, it does become destructive. this is true also of desire. in itself, desire is not destructive. after all, without desire, the human race would cease to exist altogether! in fact, desire is the emotion that drives many of our day-to-day activities -- from getting up in the morning to eating, working, and pursuing our immediate and long-term goals in life.

similarly, even anger is not always destructive. for example, in some situations strong compassion may give rise to an equally strong sense of outrage -- that is, anger -- about an injustice. again, feeling angry can, in the short term, make our minds more focused and give us an extra burst of energy and determination. in these ways, anger can, in certain situations, make us more effective in getting things done and in obtaining what we seek. however, when anger extends beyond this practical function, most of the energy it brings us is not helpful at all. since all of us have probably, at one time or another, been on the receiving end of other people's anger, we all have experience of its unpleasant consequences.

however, while anger may sometimes have a constructive element, hatred never does. hatred is always destructive.

like anger, fear is not destructive in every situation. fear makes us more attentive and guards us against danger. it is also a powerful motivating factor, forcing us to be cautious and to take care of our well-being. but when fear is obsessive, it can paralyze us and become a very destructive mental condition. furthermore, excessive fear gives rise to a persistent state of anxiety, which is harmful to our health. i therefore often distinguish between reasonable fear and unreasonable fear. the first kind is not only legitimate but actually necessary to our survival. if a mad dog comes running at us, we need to respond to this danger with fear. this is obvious. in contrast, unreasonable fear occurs when the source of threat is largely our own mental projection. we need to keep this kind of fear in check, for it is totally useless and often destructive. what we need to counter unreasonable fear is a better understanding of the situation at hand.

this dual aspect of emotions -- that all of them have destructive and nondestructive sides -- can also be seen in other mental states such as doubt, shame, grief, competitiveness, and even our sense of ego itself. doubt is the mental factor that enables us to inquire and seek out understanding. indeed, i always say that a dose of skepticism is quite healthy in that it opens our minds to questioning and new knowledge. however, when doubt becomes pathological it can paralyze us and prevent us from taking any decisive action. the same is true of shame. at the basic level, shame is an important social emotion which has a constructive function; nevertheless, when shame becomes extreme, it can lead to low self-regard and negative self-judgment, which are clearly not constructive. with respect to grief or sorrow, in some situations this emotion is constructive and has a positive effect. but when it becomes something like a habit of mind, divorced from any realistic cause, it may be destructive, as when it manifests as self-absorbed grief or as depression.

competitiveness, too, can be constructive, as when our competitive urge motivates us to strive to achieve something better or higher. however, when competitiveness acquires an aspect of wanting to put others down or hold them back so we can out-achieve them, it then becomes destructive.

in egoism, too, we can distinguish between two kinds. a strong sense of self can be constructive, the basis for generating self-confidence -- the state of mind that allows us to feel, "yes, i can do this." but another form of egoism is evident when, in pursuing our own self-interest, we become totally oblivious to others' welfare and even willing to exploit others to benefit ourselves. this type of egoism is clearly destructive.

so, when we are dealing with matters as subtle a human mental processes, it is important not to be too dogmatic. it is difficult or impossible to determine whether or not a given mental state is destructive without knowing its context. often we can make this determination only by taking into account the underlying motivation, the specific object of the emotion, the consequences of the emotion, and so on. in the area of the human mind, therefore, we should always maintain an attitude of open-mindedness, pragmatism, and flexibility.

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one feature that characterizes all destructive emotions is a tendency to distort our perception of reality. they cause us to narrow our perspective so that we fail to see a given situation in its wider context. for example, when we are feeling an extreme form of attachment -- such as intense desire, lust, or greed -- often we are projecting a level of attractiveness onto the object of our desire which far exceeds what is really there. we become blind even to quite obvious shortcomings and in our obsessive clinging we create a kind of insecurity in ourselves, a feeling that we need to obtain the object of our desire and are incomplete without it. excessive attachment tends also to involve a desire to control, which can be very suffocating when the object of that desire happens to be another person. because of this, extreme attachment is by nature quite unstable. one moment we may feel great affection for something or someone, but when, for example, our desire for control is thwarted, this feeling can easily turn to resentment or hatred.

a similar loss of perspective characterizes extreme of intense emotions of aversion, such as anger, hatred, contempt, or resentment. when we are gripped by intense anger, for example, the object of our rage will always appear one hundred percent negative, even though in moments of calm we may recognize that the same person or thing has many admirable qualities. the overly strong emotion causes us to lose our capacity for discernment. we cannot see the long- and short-term consequences of our actions, and as a result we are unable to distinguish between right and wrong. we literally, for a moment, become almost mad, incapable of acting in our own best interest. and then, after the event, when the emotion cools, how often we regret what we have done or said in anger!

. . .

the point about all these afflictive mental states is that, in one way or another, they obscure our vision by clouding our capacity for discernment. they make us incapable of rational judgment, and thus we might say they steal our minds.

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one helpful approach to understanding our destructive emotions is to view them as related families distinguished by the kind of underlying state of mind they involve. for example, as i have said, the emotions of the anger family, such as hatred, enmity, and malice, are characterized by an exaggerated repulsion, while those of the attachment family, such as greed, lust, and craving, are characterized by an equally exaggerated sense of attraction. the other main families of afflictive emotions -- envy, pride, and doubt -- involve mixtures of excessive attraction on the one hand (such as the excessive attachment to a deluded self-image in the case of pride) and excessive repulsion on the other (such as the excessive sense of enmity toward a rival in the case of envy). as we have already seen, in addition to this element of excessive revulsion or attraction or unhealthy mixtures of the two, all afflictive emotions are further characterized by an unrealistic or deluded perspective.

envy is a somewhat complex family of afflictions, since its root lies in attachment and attraction yet it also has a strong element of anger, hostility, and repulsion. recent scientific research on happiness has found that one of the primary sources of discontent in today's world, especially in the more affluent societies, is our human tendency to compare ourselves to those around us. fundamentally this comes down to the problem of envy.

the afflictive family of pride or conceit, which includes destructive attitudes such as arrogance, prejudice, and even obsessive or unrealistic embarrassment, also involves a mixture of attraction and repulsion: attraction, for example, to an unrealistic or deluded self-image, and repulsion or disdain toward anyone or anything that threatens that cherished self-image. this attachment to an inflated self-image, whether based on social status, accomplishment, or the circumstances of our birth, may prompt us to actions that are disrespectful of others, and such actions are destructive both to the welfare of others and to ourselves.

finally, there is the family of afflictive doubt, which encompasses such destructive emotions as anxiety and obsessive guilt. these are grounded in habitual fear and in unrealistic self-loathing, which are very damaging to our ability to be compassionate. emotions of the afflictive doubt family can therefore be highly detrimental to our own sense of well-being.

these then are the destructive emotions which i consider the main obstacles to human well-being -- not only our own individual well-being, but also that of those around us, and ultimately that of the very world we share. these emotions fundamentally undermine our capacity to put positive ethical values, such as compassion, into practice. only when we fully recognize the negative repercussions of such destructive emotions and expose their futility and impracticality as responses will we be able to go about tackling them effectively.

our inner development with regard to regulating our destructive emotions calls for a two-pronged approach. one the one hand, we must seek to reduce the impact of the destructive potentials that are inherent within us; on the other, we must seek to enhance the positive qualities that also naturally exist within us. this two-pronged approach to mental training is what i consider to be the heart of genuine spiritual practice.

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in order to go about dealing with these destructive emotions, it is first of all necessary to adopt a general attitude or stance toward them: a stance of opposition.

such a stance involves recognizing that the law of opposition -- whereby positives cancel out or neutralize negatives -- applies not just to the physical world but also to our inner or mental world. in the great wisdom traditions we find clear lessons both on the mental states that are to be tackled and on the need to cultivate and deploy their antidotes. if no opposing forces exist for our destructive emotions, then there is nothing we can do about them. however, if opposite, positive forces do exist, then they can become powerful antidotes. for example, the main antidote for anger is forbearance, for greed is contentment, for fear is courage, and for doubt is understanding.

tax-free relationship

excerpts from gorilla, my love - short stories by toni cade bambara

"what happened was this, to make a long story short. not only had he called cool, but he'd also put up bail a couple of times for some of the star pupils miss ruby called herself rehabilitating. one of these stars split, but punjab didnt go after him. not only that, punjab had also stomped a few heads by the subway garage on account of them staring too hard at miss ruby's hips and saying things. all in all, miss ruby was making puppy tracks in punjab's books. so that fall when she was knowing everybody out to set up an election to pick community leaders to represent us on the poverty council and all over the place, we figured punjab for a natural. we figured he was going to get paid off finally. hell, let's face it, anybody in position to be calling themself doing good is always doing well, if you know what i mean. and there was a whole lotta long bread coming into our area." -from "playing with punjab"

"she had wanted to speak of other things, things one spoke of in the kitchen while getting your hair braided, while someone made biscuits and commented from time to time, while the radio was on 'wings over jordan' and the conversation was put on hold when one of your favorites came on. but family ties no longer knitted close and there was no one to say let's get our wagons in a circle when someone was in crisis. so she'd come to m'dear, miss candy, the last of that generation who believed in sustaining, and come to speak about this man and his distances. she wanted to tell her about the years of penance as he forgave piece by piece

lying there sweaty, her legs still in a tremble, the nipples still erect, she felt him moving away, traveling great distances. when just moments before they'd jumped the waves, and no undertow, no drowning, no dangers on release. for the first time in a long time he was not dying or forgiving or withholding, but loving her and giving himself over to pleasure. just a split second ago she had felt him against her again and touched him then felt him retreating, the arm muscle flexed under her back, alert for ambush, then flabby, then gone. he rolled over and switched on the radio and disappeared into the music. she snuggled against his back and tried to tangle her legs in his. and he became a chinese box" - from "the survivor"

"bound and gagged she struggled through the scene and when he called finish, disgusted, she had ripped off the dress right on the spot, trying to explain about the tyranny of the cloth she'd been forced to wear as though it were the dressmaker's fault her spine was paralyzed and the several layers of splendid costumes just beneath the skin were being shredded. of course she had gone on much too long about it. and he had laughed that laugh. the laugh they all laughed which meant if you weren't careful you would be destroyed. then he told her her pacing was off, erratic, lousy. and she'd answered that pacing was a director's duty and the editor's craft. that's what triggered off the argument in the car. and why she was in the back seat (thinking on this rhythm, for the past few months she was being propelled by a rhythm other than her own. as if a malaria parasite was clocking her body to its own reproductive cycles. and she'd been dumb enough to think this out with the mouth open. and he had told her that he'd been right in the first place. she should've gotten rid of the kid in the beginning. it was driving her crazier than she already was and it was ruining his work). which is why he hadn't kept his eyes on the road." - from "the survivor"

"inez lean way back in the chair and cover her eyes like she thinkin on this pressure and maybe rejectin the motion. cause she always maintainin that she offers a tax-free relationship - no demands, no pressure, no games, no jumpin up and down with ultimatums. and it's usually gail that spews steam at that juncture, pointing out that this is the heaviest damn pressure of all. and inez sayin 'sheeeet' and goin on about her business." - from "the johnson girls"

a transparent envelope

from swann's way by marcel proust

"but then, even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is a creation of the thoughts of other people. even the simplest act which we describe as 'seeing someone we know' is to some extent an intellectual process. we pack the physical outline of the person we see with all the notions we have already formed about him, and in the total picture of him which we compose in our minds those notions have certainly the principal place. in the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice as if it were no more than a transparent envelope, that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is these notions which we recognise and to which we listen."

". . .'she's only an actress, if you like, but you know i don't believe very much in the 'hierarchy' of the arts.' (as he spoke i noticed, what had often struck me before in his conversations with my grandmother's sisters, that whenever he spoke of serious matters, whenever he used an expression which seemed to imply a definite opinion upon some important subject, he would take care to isolate, to sterilise it by using a special intonation, mechanical and ironic, as though he had put the phrase or word between inverted commas, and was anxious to disclaim any personal responsibility for it; as who should say "the 'hierarchy,' don't you know, as silly people call it." but then, if it was so absurd, why did he use the word?)"

"i loved her; i was sorry not to have had the time and the inspiration to insult her, to hurt her, to force her to keep some memory of me. i thought her so beautiful that i should have liked to be able to retrace my steps so as to shake my fist at her and shout, 'i think you're hideous, grotesque; how i loathe you!'"

summer night

by louise gluck from the seven ages

orderly, and out of long habit, my heart continues to beat.

i hear it, nights when i wake, over the mild sound of the air conditioner.

as i used to hear it over the beloved’s heart, or

variety of hearts, owing to there having been several.

and as it beats, it continues to drum up ridiculous emotion.

so many passionate letters never sent!

so many urgent journeys conceived of on summer nights,

surprise visits to men who were nearly complete strangers.

the tickets never bought, the letters never stamped.

and pride spared. and the life, in a sense, never completely lived.

and the art always in some danger of growing repetitious.

why not? why not? why should my poems not imitate my life?

whose lesson is not the apotheosis but the pattern, whose meaning

is not in the gesture but in the inertia, the reverie.

desire, loneliness, wind in the flowering almond --

surely these are the great, the inexhaustible subjects

to which my predecessors apprenticed themselves.

i hear them echo in my own heart, disguised as convention.

balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary,

imperial joy and sorrow of human existence,

the dreamed as well as the lived ---

what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death?

that thing we want to name but can't

from there there by tommy orange

"dene walks to the next train car. he stands at the doors and looks out the window. the train floats alongside the freeway next to cars. each of their speeds is different: the speed of the cars is short, disconnected, sporadic. dene and the train slither along the tracks as one movement and speed. there's something cinematic about their variable speeds, like a moment in a movie that makes you feel something for reasons you can't explain. something too big to feel, underneath, and inside, too familiar to recognize, right there in front of you at all times. dene puts his headphones on, shuffles the music on his phone, skips several songs and stays on 'there there,' by radiohead. the hook is 'just 'cause you feel it doesn't mean it's there.'"

"the trouble with believing is you have to believe that believing will work, you have to believe in belief. i've scraped out the little bowl of faith i keep by the open window my mind has become ever since the internet got inside it, made me a part of it. i'm not joking. i feel as if i am going through withdrawal. i've read about residential internet rehab facilities in pennsylvania. they have digital-detox retreats and underground desert compounds in arizona. my problem hasn't just been with gambling. or gambling. or incessantly scrolling down and refreshing my social media pages. or the endless search to find good new music. it's all of it. . .

this edwin black, me here on the toilet, can't get there, on the internet, because yesterday i dropped my phone in the toilet, and my computer froze, same fucking day it just stopped, not even the mouse cursor moved, no spinning wheels of promised load. no reboot after unplug, just a sudden and mute black screen - my face reflected in it, staring first in horror at the computer dying, then at my face reacting to seeing my face react to the computer dying. a little part of me died then, seeing my face, thinking about this sick addiction, all this time i've spent doing almost nothing. four years of sitting, staring into my computer at the internet. i guess if you don't count sleep, it's three, if you don't count the dreaming, but i dream of the internet, of keyword search phrases that make complete sense in the dream, are the key to the dream's meaning, but which make no sense in the morning, like all the dreams i've ever had."

"i type 'the brain and constipation' and hit enter. i click on several links, scroll through several pages. i read a lot and come away with nothing. this is how time skips. links just lead to links that can lead you all the way back to the twelfth century. this is how it can all of a sudden be six in the morning, with my mom knocking on the door before she goes to work at the indian center -- where she keeps trying to get me to apply for a job. . .

lately i've become a little obsessed with the brain. with trying to find explanations for everything as it relates to the brain and its parts. there's almost too much information out there. the internet is like a brain trying to figure out a brain. i depend on the internet for recall now. there's no reason to remember when it's always just right there, like the way everyone used to know phone numbers by heart and now can't even remember their own. remembering itself is becoming old-fashioned."

"for how many years had i been dying to find out what the other half of me was? how many tribes had i made up when asked in the meantime? i'd gotten through four years as a native american studies major. dissecting tribal histories, looking for signs, something that might resemble me, something that felt familiar. i'd made it through two years of grad school, studying comparative literature with an emphasis on native american literature. i wrote my thesis on the inevitable influence of blood quantum policies on modern native identity and the literature written by mixed-blood native authors that influenced identity in native cultures. all without knowing my tribe. always defending myself. like i'm not native enough. i'm as native as obama is black. it's different though. for natives. i know. i don't know how to be. every possible way i think that it might look for me to say i'm native seems wrong."

"'what i'm here to talk about is how our whole approach since day one has been like this: kids are jumping out the windows of burning buildings, falling to their deaths. and we think the problem is that they're jumping. this is what we've done: we've tried to find ways to get them to stop jumping. convince them that burning alive is better than leaving when the shit gets too hot for them to take. we've boarded up windows and made better nets to catch them, found more convincing ways to tell them not to jump. they're making the decision that it's better to be dead and gone than to be alive in what we have here, this life, the one we made for them, the one they've inherited. and we're either involved and have a hand in each one of their deaths, just like i did with my brother, or we're absent, which is still involvement, just like silence is not just silence but is not speaking up. i'm in suicide prevention now. i've had fifteen relatives commit suicide over the course of my life, not counting my brother. i had one community i was working with recently in south dakota tell me they were grieved out. that was after experiencing seventeen suicides in their community in just eight months. but how do we instill in our children the will to live? at these conferences. and in the offices. in the emails and at the community events, there has to be an urgency, a do-whatever-at-any-cost sort of spirit behind what we do. or fuck the programs, maybe we should send the money to the families themselves, who need it and know what to do with it, since we all know what that money goes toward, salaries and conferences like this one. i'm sorry. i get paid outta that shit too, and actually, shit, i'm not sorry, this issue shouldn't be met with politeness or formality. we can't get lost in the career advancements and grant objectives, the day-to-day grind, as if we have to do what we do. we choose what we do, and in that choice comes the community. we are choosing for them. all the time. that's what these kids are feeling. they have no control. guess what kinda control they do have? we need to be about what we're always saying we're about. and if we can't, and we're really just about ourselves, we need to step aside, let somebody else from the community who really cares, who'll really do something, let them come in and help. fuck all the rest.'"

"'getting fucked up seems like the only thing left to do,' harvey went on. 'it's not the alcohol. there's not some special relationship between indians and alcohol. it's just what's cheap, available, legal. it's what we have to go to when it seems like we have nothing else left. i did it too. for a long time. but i stopped telling the story i'd been telling myself, about how that was the only way, because of how hard i had it, and how hard i was, that story about self-medicating against the disease that was my life, my bad lot, history. when we see that the story is the way we live our lives, only then can we start to change, a day at a time. . . i get that shame too. the kind that's made of more years than you know you have left to live. that shame that makes you wanna say fuck it and just go back to drinking as a means to an end. i'm sorry to all the people i hurt all that time i was too fucked up to see what i was doing. there's no excuse. apologies don't even mean as much as just. . . just acknowledging that you fucked up, hurt people, and that you don't wanna do that anymore. not to yourself either. that's sometimes the hardest part.'"

"we are indians and native americans, american indians and native american indians, north american indians, natives, ndns and ind'ins, status indians and non-status indians, first nations indians and indians so indian we either think about the fact of it every single day or we never think about it at all. we are urban indians and indigenous indians, rez indians and indians from mexico and central and south america. we are alaskan native indians, native hawaiians, and european expatriate indians, indians from eight different tribes with quarter-blood quantum requirements and so not federally recognized indian kinds of indians. we are enrolled members of tribes and disenrolled members, ineligible members and tribal council members. we are full-blood, half-breed, quadroon, eighths, sixteenths, thirty-seconds. undoable math. insignificant remainders."

 "dene convinced blue to let calvin do his interview for the storytelling project during work hours. calvin keeps crossing and uncrossing his legs and pulling at his hat by the bill. dene thinks calvin is nervous, but then dene is nervous, he is always nervous, so maybe it's projection. but projection as a concept is a slippery slope because everything could be projection. he is regularly subject to solipsism's recursive, drowning affect."

*                                *                                  *

"'long time ago they didn't have a name for the sun.' she pointed up to the sun, which was in front of us. 'they couldn't decide if it was a man or a woman or what. all the animals met about it, and a badger came out of a hole in the ground and called out the name, but as soon as he did, he ran. the other animals came after him. that badger went underground and stayed there. he was afraid they would punish him for naming it.' fina flipped on her blinker and switched lanes to pass a slow truck in the right lane. 'some of us got this feeling stuck inside, all the time, like we've done something wrong. like we ourselves are something wrong. like who we are deep inside, that thing we want to name but can't, it's like we're afraid we'll be punished for it. so we hide. we drink alcohol because it helps us feel like we can be ourselves and not be afraid. but we punish ourselves with it. the thing we most don't want has a way of landing right on top of us. that badger's medicine's the only thing that stands a chance at helping. you gotta learn how to stay down there. way deep down inside yourself, unafraid.'

i turned my head. looked down at the gray streak of road. it hit me somewhere in the middle of my chest. all that she'd said was true. it hit me in the middle, where it all comes together like a knot. . .

'so? we all fuck up. it's how we come back from it that matters.'

'i don't know what the fuck i'm supposed to do then. i can't get him back, i can't get them back. i don't know what the fuck any of this is about.'

'you're not supposed to,' she said. 'you're not ever supposed to know. not all the way. that's what makes the whole thing work the way it does. we can't know. that's what makes us keep going.'"

to use life

from on the shortness of life by seneca

"people are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy."

"how stupid to forget our mortality, and put off sensible plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth years, aiming to begin life from a point at which few have arrived!"

"finally, it is generally agreed that no activity can be successfully pursued by an individual who is preoccupied - not rhetoric or liberal studies - since the mind when distracted absorbs nothing deeply, but rejects everything which is, so to speak, crammed into it."

"the greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today."

"it used to be a greek failing to want to know how many oarsmen ulysses had, whether the iliad or the odyssey was written first, and whether too they were by the same author, and other questions of this kind, which if you keep them to yourself in no way enhance your private knowledge, and if you publish them make you appear more a bore than a scholar. but now the romans too have been afflicted by the pointless enthusiasm for useless knowledge. recently i heard somebody reporting which roman general first did this or that: duilius first won a naval battle; curius dentatus first included elephants in a triumph. so far these facts, even if they do not contribute to real glory, at least are concerned with exemplary services to the state: such knowledge will not do us any good, but it interests us because of the appeal of these pointless facts."

"even their pleasures are uneasy and made anxious by various fears, and at the very height of their rejoicing the worrying thought steals over them: 'how long will this last?' this feeling has caused kings to bewail their power, and they were not so much delighted by the greatness of their fortune as terrified by the thought of its inevitable end."

"so it is inevitable that life will be not just very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil. they achieve what they want laboriously; they possess what they have achieved anxiously; and meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return. new preoccupations take the place of the old, hope excites more hope and ambition more ambition. they do not look for an end to their misery, but simply change the reason for it."

"there will always be causes for anxiety, whether due to prosperity or to wretchedness. life will be driven on through a succession of preoccupations: we shall always long for leisure, but never enjoy it."

"every great and overpowering grief must take away the capacity to choose words, since it often stifles the voice itself."

"the body's needs are few: it wants to be free from cold, to banish hunger and thirst with nourishment; if we long for anything more we are exerting ourselves to serve our vices, not our needs."

"for to be afflicted with endless sorrow at the loss of someone very dear is foolish self-indulgence, and to feel none is inhuman callousness."

"he will live badly who does not know how to die well."

"inevitably the mind can cope more easily with the distress arising from disappointed longings if you have not promised it certain success."

"there is also another not inconsiderable source of anxieties, if you are too concerned to assume a pose and do not reveal yourself openly to anyone, like many people whose lives are false and aimed only at outward show. for it is agonizing always to be watching yourself in fear of being caught when your usual mask has slipped. nor can we ever be carefree when we think that whenever we are observed we are appraised; for many things happen to strip us of our pretensions against our will, and even if all this attention to oneself succeeds, yet the life of those who always live behind a mask is not pleasant or free from care. on the contrary, how full of pleasure is that honest and naturally unadorned simplicity that in no way hides its disposition! yet this life too runs a risk of being scorned if everything is revealed to everybody; for with some people familiarity breeds contempt. but there is no danger of virtue being held cheap as a result of close observation, and it is better to be despised for simplicity than to suffer agonies from everlasting pretence. still, let us use moderation here: there is a big difference between living simply and living carelessly."

hybridity

from new world border by guillermo gomez-peña

"i also oppose the old colonial dichotomy of first world / third world with the more pertinent notion of the fourth world -- a conceptual place where the indigenous peoples meet with the diasporic communities. in the fourth world, there is very little place for static identities, fixed nationalities, 'pure' languages, or sacred cultural traditions. the members of the fourth world live between and across various cultures, communities, and countries. and our identities are constantly being reshaped by this kaleidoscopic experience. the artists and writers who inhabit the fourth world have a very important role: to elaborate the new set of myths, metaphors, and symbols that will locate us within all of these fluctuating cartographies."

"people with social, racial, or economic privilege have an easier time crossing physical borders, but they have a much harder time negotiating the invisible borders of culture and race."

"in reaction to the transculture imposed from above, a new essentialist culture is emerging, one that advocates national, ethnic, and gender separatism in the quest for cultural autonomy, 'bio-regional identity,' and 'traditional values.' this tendency to overstate difference, and the unwillingness to change or exchange, is a product of communities in turmoil who, as an antidote to the present confusion, have chosen to retreat to the fictional womb of their own separate histories. even our so-called 'progressive' communities are retrenching to a fundamentalist stance."

"my version of the hybrid is cross-racial, polylinguistic, and multicontextual. from a disadvantaged position, the hybrid expropriates elements from all sides to create more open and fluid systems. hybrid culture is community-based yet experimental, radical but not static or dogmatic. it fuses 'low' and 'high' art, primitive and high-tech, the problematic notions of self and other, the liquid entities of north and south, east and west."

"the artist who understands and practices hybridity in this way can be at the same time an insider and an outsider, an expert in border crossings, a temporary member of multiple communities, a citizen of two or more nations. . . s/he assumes the role of nomadic chronicler, intercultural translator, or political trickster. s/he speaks from more than one perspective, to more than one community, about more than one reality. [their] job is to trespass, bridge, interconnect, reinterpret, remap, and redefine; to find the outer limits of [their] culture and cross them.

the presence of the hybrid denounces the faults, prejudices, and fears manufactured by the self-proclaimed center, and threatens the very raison d'etre of any monoculture, official or not."

"the borders keep multiplying. it just doesn't cut it anymore to pretend that the enemy is always outside. the separatist, sexist, racist, and authoritarian tendencies that we condemn others for perpetuating also exist within our own communities and within our own individual selves. we can't continue to hide behind the pretext that 'straight, white men,' or the all purpose 'dominant culture' are the source of all our problems. every community must face this fact: dominance is contextual. we all, at different times and in different contexts, enjoy some privileges over other people and perform the ever-changing roles of victim and victimizer, exploited and exploiter, colonizer and colonized."

"the absurd premise behind this belief is that if we are truly committed to our communities, we must be marginal, poor, angry, and anti-intellectual. . . this is contemporary america: a land of diversity where no one tolerates difference; a land of bizarre eclecticism where everyone must know their place."

"spanglish poetry reading in a public bathroom (cal arts, 1979)
this piece was another attempt to bring performance and language into unusual contexts, and to disrupt people's sense of the quotidian. for twenty-four hours, i sat on a toilet and read aloud epic poetry describing my journey to the united states. whoever happened to come into the bathroom - for whatever reason - experienced the piece. through this and other experiments of its kind, i became interested in the notion of performing for 'involuntary audiences.'"

"performing for the media: the cruci-fiction project (1994)
in early '94, roberto and i crucified ourselves for three hours on sixteen-foot-high crosses at rodeo beach (in front of san francisco's golden gate bridge). the piece was designed for the media, as a symbolic protest against the xenophobic immigration policies of california's governor pete wilson. inspired by the biblical myth of dimas and gestas (two petty thieves who were crucified alongside of jesus), roberto and i decided to dress as 'two contemporary public enemies of california': i was an 'undocumented bandido,' crucified by the INS [immigration and naturalization service], and roberto was a generic 'gang member,' crucified by the LAPD.

our audience of over 300 people each received a handout, asking them to 'free us from our martyrdom as a gesture of political commitment.' however, we had miscalculated their response. paralyzed by the melancholia of the image, it took them over three hours to figure out how to get us down. by then, my right shoulder had become dislocated and roberto had passed out. we were carried to a nearby bonfire and nurtured back to reality, while some people in the crowd rebuked those who were trying to help us, saying, 'let them die!'"

everywhere or nowhere

from there there by tommy orange

"in 1621, colonists invited massasoit, the chief of the wampanoags, to a feast after a recent land deal. massasoit came with ninety of his men. that meal is why we still eat a meal together in november. celebrate it as a nation. but that wasn't a thanksgiving meal. it was a land-deal meal. two years later there was another, similar meal meant to symbolize eternal friendship. two hundred indians dropped dead that night from an unknown poison. . .

in 1637, anywhere from four to seven hundred pequot gathered for their annual green corn dance. colonists surrounded their village, set it on fire, and shot any pequot who tried to escape. the next day the massachusetts bay colony had a feast in celebration, and the governor declared it a day of thanksgiving. thanksgivings like these happened everywhere, whenever there were what we have to call 'successful massacres.' at one such celebration in manhattan, people were said to have celebrated by kicking the heads of pequot people through the streets like soccer balls."

"getting us to cities was supposed to be the final, necessary step in our assimilation, absorption, erasure, the completion of a five-hundred-year-old genocidal campaign. but the city made us new, and we made it ours. we didn't get lost amid the sprawl of tall buildings, the stream of anonymous masses, the ceaseless din of traffic. we found one another, started up indian centers, brought out our families and powwows, our dances, our songs, our beadwork. we bought and rented homes, slept on the streets, under freeways; we went to school, joined the armed forces, populated indian bars in the fruitvale in oakland and in the mission in san francisco. we lived in boxcar villages in richmond. we made art and we made babies and we made way for our people to go back and forth between reservation and city. we did not move to cities to die. the sidewalks and streets, the concrete, absorbed our heaviness. the glass, metal, rubber, and wires, the speed, the hurtling masses -- the city took us in. we were not urban indians then. this was part of the indian relocation act, which was part of the indian termination policy, which was and is exactly what it sounds like. make them look and act like us. become us. and so disappear. but it wasn't just like that. plenty of us came by choice, to start over, to make money, or for a new experience. some of us came to cities to escape the reservation. we stayed after fighting in the second world war. after vietnam too. we stayed because the city sounds like a war, and you can't leave a war once you've been, you can only keep it at bay -- which is easier when you can see and hear it near you, that fast metal, that constant firing around you, cars up and down the streets and freeways like bullets. the quiet of the reservation, the side-of-the-highway towns, rural communities, that kind of silence just makes the sound of your brain on fire that much more pronounced.

plenty of us are urban now. if not because we live in cities, then because we live on the internet. inside the high-rise of multiple browser windows. they used to call us sidewalk indians. called us citified, superficial, inauthentic, cultureless refugees, apples."

"urban indians were the generation born in the city. we've been moving for a long time, but the land moves with you like memory. an urban indian belongs to the city, and cities belong to the earth. everything here is formed in relation to every other living and nonliving thing from the earth. all our relations. the process that brings anything to its current form - chemical, synthetic, technological, or otherwise - doesn't make the product not a product of the living earth. buildings, freeways, care -- are those not of the earth? were they shipped in from mars, the moon? is it because they're processed, manufactured, or that we handle them? are we so different? were we at one time not something else entirely, homo sapiens, single-celled organisms, space dust, unidentifiable pre-bang quantum theory? cities form in the same way as galaxies. urban indians feel at home walking in the shadow of a downtown building. we came to know the downtown oakland skyline better than we did any sacred mountain range, the redwoods in the oakland hills better than any other deep wild forest. we know the sound of the freeway better than we do rivers, the howl of distant trains better than wolf howls, we know the smell of gas and freshly wet concrete and burned rubber better than we do the smell of cedar or sage or even fry bread -- which isn't traditional, like reservations aren't traditional, but nothing is original, everything comes from something that came before, which was once nothing. everything is new and doomed. we ride buses, trains, and cars across, over, and under concrete plains. being indian has never been about returning to the land. the land is everywhere or nowhere."

"'how can i not know today your face tomorrow, the face that is there already or is being forged beneath the face you show me or beneath the mask you are wearing, and which you will only show me when i am least expecting it?' - javier marías"

"one time she used the word devastating after i finished reading a passage from her favorite author - louise erdrich. it was something about how life will break you. how that's the reason we're here, and to go sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples fall and pile around you, wasting all that sweetness."

giving and taking

quotes from sadness love openness by chokyi nyima rinpoche

"whenever we don't feel like sharing with others, we are narrowing the scope of our minds. stinginess makes us feel tense and unnatural. it's painful to be that way; our lives become rigid. on the other hand, whenever we are able to share with others or give something away, this immediately frees the mind. it's almost like magic. sharing and giving create an immediate sense of spaciousness, joy, and freedom. in fact, the mere intention to share is as powerful as the act itself.

there is a meditation practice known as giving and taking. in this meditation, we mentally give away all our most cherished possessions and accomplishments, offering them to all beings. at the same time, we take upon ourselves all their problems -- all their sadness, confusion, and suffering. this is a very powerful practice. if we engage in it sincerely and with an open mind, we naturally develop all the wonderful qualities that come with being generous. training in that kind of exchange will enable us to realize the nature of reality and the wisdom that lies at the core of our being."

"if we can avoid causing other beings any kind of pain or distress, then we are keeping the vows of the foundational vehicle, which are focused on achieving freedom for ourselves. next, if we not only avoid hurting others but also work for their benefit and happiness, then we are keeping the vows of the great vehicle, which is committed to bringing all beings to the awakened state. finally, if we additionally acknowledge the fundamental purity of all things and if we are capable of living in accord with that realization, then we are keeping the vows of the vajra vehicle that bring complete awakening in this very life."

"the buddha tells us that we shouldn't accept his words just because they are his. this sets buddhism apart from many other religions. some religions consider it a sin to question anything at all that is taught in their holy scriptures. other religions may encourage their followers to investigate things a bit more closely, but only up to a point. and if we happen to cross the line, we'll soon find out. . .

however, in buddhism there is no limit to what we may question. there are no dogmas that must remain unchallenged. this is a special feature of the buddhist teaching and the buddhist path. practicing the dharma is a hands-on, concrete activity that begins by observing the world and ourselves."

"news comes to us about people falling ill and dying. we learn that suddenly people can't seem to get along. we find that things have been destroyed, broken, and torn apart. in such cases, the underlying reason is always impermanence. and impermanence hurts. but we need to recognize life for what it is. that's the only way we can develop an approach to life that is realistic as well as constructive. in fact, if all the pain and sorrow seem paralyzing, we haven't quite gotten it yet. getting stuck is getting it wrong. getting stuck means getting depressed, and becoming depressed just makes a tough situation worse. so, we need an approach that recognizes the fact of impermanence but uses it as an opportunity to develop the qualities of love and insight."

"we'd rather not consider or talk about impermanence. we'd prefer to forget all about it as soon as possible. we certainly don't want to look at death, deal with death, or talk about death! when something is unpleasant and painful, we want it to disappear instantly. nobody wants to hold on to a source of pain. on the other hand, whenever we find something that is enjoyable and gives us pleasure, we want to keep it as long as possible, preferably forever. we pick flowers and arrange them in a vase, but when they are no longer fresh and beautiful, we throw them away because their ugliness turns us off. we wish only to enjoy their beauty and lovely scent. but ugliness doesn't suddenly descend onto the flowers. ugliness, decay, and the smell of rot are just as intrinsic to the flowers as their beauty. all are equally the results of impermanence."

"people who are not religious often regard religious beliefs and convictions as mere superstitions, and they feel a kind of pity for those who subscribe to them. meanwhile religious people pity nonbelievers, thinking of them as lost souls. so, everybody pities each other, back and forth.

faith in a buddhist context lies between these two positions. buddhist faith arises through understanding, and what we need to understand is dependent origination and impermanence. it can be very simply put: buddhist faith arises as one becomes clear about the links that constitute these processes."

"six aspects of bodhisattva training -

1. generosity: generosity is the practice of giving. it's the training in being generous with things, food, money, protection, and care. generosity is born from love. we are already generous toward the ones we love, so generosity is a natural expression of love. but unlike ordinary people, a bodhisattva is generous toward everybody.

2. discipline: discipline is the next quality, but what is discipline for a bodhisattva? it means living in accord with the wish not to harm anyone, and to do all that one can to be of benefit. that kind of discipline also springs from love. all excellent qualities blossom when a bodhisattva maintains this discipline in thought, word, and deed.

3. patience: love is patient, and the love of a bodhisattva endures all hardships, disappointments, pain, and hurt. patience is the ability to accept adversity and not be discouraged. patience opens our minds to the dharma.

4. enthusiasm: enthusiasm is the joy of doing good deeds. a bodhisattva is deeply engaged in developing the qualities that are essential to the spiritual path -- the wish to be free, loving-kindness, and insight. that process is fueled by great joy.

5. concentration: concentration refers to training the mind through meditation. bodhisattvas have a balanced and composed mind. when the mind is calm and at ease, it also becomes agile and capable of wonderful achievements.

6. insight: insight arises from training in the first five qualities: generosity, discipline, patience, enthusiasm, and concentration. insight is twofold: awareness of things as they appear and awareness of things as they really are. insight dawns when the mind has achieved composure and agility by means of practice."

"all sights are visible emptiness.
all sounds are audible emptiness.
all sensations are blissful emptiness.
all concepts are thought-free wakefulness."

"produce nothing, suppress nothing. just let your mind be, exactly as it is, right now, in this very moment, completely free from hopes or expectations."

side of the road

hadn't listened to lucinda williams for years... but shoog and nell brought her back this spring 💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚
my favorite song of hers, covered by first aid kit

craving and clinging

from be an island by ayya khema

"having a self-image is detrimental to insight, because it is based on the illusion of permanence. everything constantly changes, including ourselves, while a self-image presupposes stability. one moment we may be a sensual being, the next moment an irritable one. sometimes we are at ease, at other times we are restless. who are we? any permanent image of ourselves can never have a basis in fact. such an image will block our insight into the underlying tendencies, blinding us to those that do not fit."

"next we come to clinging to existence (bhavaraga). that is our survival syndrome. we cling to being here, unwilling to give up, not ready to die today. we must learn to be ready to die now -- which does not mean wishing to die but rather accepting death as an ever present possibility. wishing to die is the other side of the coin of clinging to existence. it is trying to get rid of 'me' because life is too difficult. but being ready to die now means seeing the fallacy in clinging to being someone, and abandoning it.

clinging to existence leads us into dependency. we want everything to work out well for us, and we resent it if that does not happen. this creates irritation and sensuality. we often forget that we are only guests here on this planet. our visit is limited and can be over at any time. clinging to being alive projects us into the future, so that we cannot attend to the present. there is no life in the future, it is all ideation, conjecture, a hope, and a prayer. if we really want to be alive and experience things as they are, we have to be here now, attending to each moment. this entails letting go of clinging to what will happen to us in the future, particularly the question of whether we will continue to exist. existing in this moment is enough. then there will be strong mindfulness, real attention, and clear knowing."

"there is no way that a relationship can work unless heart and mind are both involved. there must be a loving feeling and an understanding. unless both arise in meditation, real concentration cannot happen. we may sit on the cushion year after year, yet our practice will not flourish. the deliberate mind movement of giving up has to precede the meditation. otherwise ego will get in the way. it will rear its ugly head and say, 'i know better. there are other ways to meditate.' the ego will insist on comfort: 'i don't feel comfortable, so this must not be right. i'd like something more pleasant.'

unless we learn to renounce all wanting and resistance every time we sit on the cushion, the spiritual path will remain an utter mystery. the buddha's teaching leads in one direction only -- the total elimination of self-delusion. to get there, we have to work on ourselves, little by little, all the time.

renunciation means letting go of ideation, letting go of the mind-stuff that claims to be the one who knows."

"but rites and rituals are not confined only to religious activities. in our relationships we have certain prescribed ways of acting towards our parents, our children, our partners. how we relate to coworkers, friends, and strangers, how we want to be affirmed by others -- all are connected to preconceived ideas of what is right and proper in a certain culture and tradition. none of them contain any basic truth, all are mind-made. the more ideas we have, the less we can see reality. the more we believe in customary, traditional behavior, the harder it is to abandon it when it is not skillful. if we imagine ourselves to be a certain kind of person, we relate to all situations in that way. so ritual is not solely about the way we put flowers on a shrine. it can also dictate how we greet people, if we do so in a certain stereotyped manner rather than simply with an open heart and mind."

******

"freedom is often misunderstood as the ability to do anything we want. we have probably tried that already and found that it doesn't work. even if we were to follow only our desires, we would soon be satiated and then feel unfulfilled.

freedom means nonattachment, which is not indifference but rather the penetration of absolute truth. to see that clearly, we let go for one moment of anything that we call our own, anything that we like or consider important. we examine it until its fleeting nature has become quite apparent. then the moment comes when we can say, 'i don't have to have that, i can do without it.' that is a moment of truth. having a moment of truth is always possible, but such moments don't come automatically. we have to inquire into our clinging and work at loosening it. letting go sounds easy, and it is, but only after it has happened. before that, it entails much self-examination.

a moment of signless liberation can be experienced in another way. suppose, for instance, there is an unpleasant feeling in the body that creates a reaction of 'i don't want it. go away now!' when we really penetrate into the impermanence of that feeling -- when we see how it has no basic reality or significance and, for just a moment, let go of our rejection and say, 'it's all right, it is only a feeling' -- we get a taste of signless liberation. when we see that there is nothing that really lasts, that all is fleeting, flowing, moving, and changing from one moment to the next, we have a moment of freedom. we can practice that with our thoughts, our feelings, or our physical sensations.

as a first step we can become aware of our attachment to the body. usually, we are concerned whether the body looks good, is dressed appropriately, feels well, eats right, and is comfortable enough. but when we consider the body's fleeting nature, our attachment may wane. we may experience instead a feeling of equanimity. we have no preference whether this body of ours exists or not. this is a moment of real peace, but it doesn't happen by itself. we have to remember again and again that life is not guaranteed but merely supported by kamma-vipaka (the results of one's intentions) and that it may run out at any time. that's the reason why the buddha recommended the daily recollection 'i am of the nature to die.' we are of this nature all the time, which means right now, not twenty years from now or whenever we feel ready.

everybody knows they are going to die -- there's nothing new about that. the buddha did not teach anything inaccessible. he asked us to investigate the known in a new way, to get a deep-down feeling that this body cannot remain, no matter how hard we try to keep it. it's a foregone conclusion that we are fighting a losing battle. of course this doesn't mean we shouldn't look after our bodies. the body has to be washed, fed, and given medicine. that's all we have to do. and if we can't keep it going indefinitely, that's all right.

one moment of real inner seeing is liberating. the experience of relief and release is totally convincing. it arouses a sense of urgency to practice to the end -- to be deterred no longer by the opinions of others or external situations. liberation is not so difficult that an ordinary person cannot experience it. were that so, the buddha's teaching would be in vain.

to get a glimpse of wishless liberation, we can notice the dissatisfaction - the [suffering] - that arises in the heart and mind whenever we want something. when we drop the wish, we experience relief. the [suffering] does not necessarily arise because we can't fulfill our wish; most likely we can. it's an old axiom that if we want something badly enough, we will get it. the problem is that most people don't know what will bring them happiness. the [suffering], however, lies in the desire itself, which creates tension, a feeling of expectation tinged with worry.

the desire also creates a thought process that is no longer concerned with the here and now, but with the future, with the hope of gratifying the desire. a mind preoccupied with the future cannot attend to the present moment. it lives in the imaginary delusion of what might happen when its desires are fulfilled. of course, the future hardly ever turns out the way we hope, but, since the real [suffering] lies in the wishing itself and not in the outcome, freedom from this kind of wishing is called wishless liberation.

when we deliberately drop our wishes for things, the release and relief generate a feeling of strength. the mind obeys, abandons its old patterns, and a feeling of self-confidence ensues. the more often we drop our wishes, the more powerful the mind becomes. the word 'power' has the connotation of power over other people, but here it means power over ourselves. it explains the sort of vibration that emanated from the buddha and why people flocked to him. we could compare such potential to a powerhouse from which energy can be drawn.

it is useful to aim for a moment of wishless liberation. our wish could be related to eating, to entertaining ourselves, wanting to go somewhere, buying something, getting information, or talking to someone. whatever it may be, we can drop it deliberately, knowing that we don't really need it. letting go of something we want requires willpower. but as soon as the mind has dropped its wishes, we can experience the ease of contentment.

to get an inkling of voidness liberation, we can deliberately empty the mind of all it contains, realizing that it has no absolute significance. the less we carry in the mind, the less tired the mind becomes. usually our minds are full to the brim, which is a great burden for us. voidness liberation means that there is an absence of all formations (thoughts and reactions). when, for a moment, we have let them go, we can notice how relieved we feel, and we get a taste of voidness liberation. then we let thoughts and reactions return and realize the difference. immediately irritation arises, which usually escapes our awareness because we're used to a mind full of formations. we experience the heavy, debilitating, burdensome nature of thoughts only when we are able to compare our usual mind states with momentary emptiness. this may be the first time that we notice the constant sense bombardment we commonly experience.

the most insidious irritations arise through thinking. thought is a constant process with which we identify and then act upon. we can't act upon everything we see or hear. if we see a beautiful sunset or hear some great music, there's nothing to do about it, except to like it. no need for a reaction, which may easily result in new problems. even the most innocuous situations can cause friction if we identify with our thinking process. once we express our views, hopes, and beliefs, the argument starts, and tears start flowing."

ANTI-LOVE POEM

by grace paley from fidelity

sometimes you don’t want to love the person you love

you turn your face away from that face

whose eyes lips might make you give up anger

forget insult    steal sadness of not wanting

to love    turn away then turn away    at breakfast

in the evening    don’t lift your eyes from the paper

to see that face in all its seriousness     a

sweetness of concentration     he holds his book

in his hand     the hard-knuckled winter wood-

scarred fingers    turn away   that’s all you can

do    old as you are to save yourself    from love

names

excerpts from the short story collection sour heart by jenny zhang

(from "the evolution of my brother"):

i look at the poem again and then go through some other files, including one called "fight on dirt," a painting of magenta, lime-green, and teal-blue stick figures on brown mud. i see another file named "power rain," which i remember seeing a long time ago but never opened. i wondered briefly back then what "power rain" was -- massive droplets of rain, each one fat enough to contain an armed soldier ready for combat, hitting the ground, causing tremors in the earth?

i open up the file and realize the full name is actually "power rain jurs." sour tears well up in my eyes and fall into my mouth. i feel self-conscious and stupid crying for myself -- for my shame, for my regrets, for how quickly a childhood happens. i wish i had acted better. i wish i had been the kind of sister who was patient enough to show my brother the proper spelling for "power rangers."

whenever i'm home for a few days, i start to feel this despair at being back in the place where i had spent so many afternoons dreaming of getting away, so many late nights fantasizing about who i would be once i was allowed to be someone apart from my family, once i was free to commit mistakes on my own. how strange it is to return to a place where my childish notions of freedom are everywhere to be found -- in my journals and my doodles and the corners of the room where i sat fuming for hours, counting down the days until i could leave this place and start my real life. but now that trying to become someone on my own is no longer something to dream about but just my ever-present reality, now that my former conviction that i had been burdened with the responsibility of taking care of this household has been revealed to be untrue, that all along, my responsibilities had been negligible, illusory even, that all along, our parents had been the ones watching over us - me and my brother - and now that i am on my own, the days of resenting my parents for loving me too much and my brother for needing me too intensely have been replaced with the days of feeling bewildered by the prospect of finding some other identity besides "daughter" or "sister." it turns out that this, too, is terrifying, all of it is terrifying. being someone is terrifying. i long to come home, but now, i will always come home to my family as a visitor, and that weighs on me, reverts me back into the teenager i was, but instead of insisting that i want everyone to leave me alone, what i want now is for someone to beg me to stay. me again. memememememememe.


(from "my days and nights of terror"):

my father said they needed "american" names on their resumes when applying for jobs; they had to have names that were pronounceable to white american english speakers because they already had faces that were considered vile to look at and who was going to hire someone with their faces and their names? i thought my mother and my father had beautiful faces but my father corrected me, not in america. we're ugly, and it's that simple. they look at us and think we're cretins. you think they like us going to their schools? you think they're okay with us working in their offices? taking their jobs? you think they're happy to pick up laundry and takeout from businesses we've opened up? you think they want to go to the corner store and see our eyes and our teeth and our skin looking back at them from behind the counter? no! they don't want us here. they don't want to look at us and they sure as hell don't want to have to try to pronounce our chinese names. x-u. q-u-i. they don't want to see that! the more my father went on about how much they hated us, the more i started to suspect maybe he was the one who hated us. on the first day of school in america, i was so frazzled and fearful of everything that i accidentally left off the second e and i became mande with one e and so i started my first day of school in america with a mistake. i was a failure right from the start.

*      *      *    

i had prayed for this kind of soft joy, this kind of contentment, a day like this followed by more days like this, and finally having it was like being born, only instead of not remembering what it was like to be born, i was fully cognizant and participating in my own creation and suddenly it was clear to me why we don't remember what it was like to be born -- because it would give us too much insight into what it will be like to die. to be present for your own birth was suicide. to know the true wonder of suddenly existing was to know the true fear of suddenly ceasing to exist. they had to occur together and there was no prayer for what i knew in my flaky soul -- that there was no way to escape the fear. it would always be there, amplifying joy and stealing from it. still, it was tempting to sink into it, to roll around in its outer rings where occasionally the fear converted to a kind of happiness that turned an entire afternoon into an image that would stay forever, loom forever, return forever.

be nobody

chapter from be an island by ayya khema

being happy also means being peaceful, but quite often people do not really want to direct their attention to that. peacefulness connotes 'not interesting' or 'not enough happening,' the absence of proliferations or excitement. yet peace is very hard to find anywhere. it is difficult to attain, and very few people really work at it. peace seems to negate life, to deny our personal supremacy. only those who practice a spiritual discipline care to direct their mind toward it.

our natural tendency is to cultivate our superiority, which often falls into the other extreme of inferiority. so long as we have our own superiority in mind, we cannot find peace. all we find is a power game: 'anything you can do, i can do better.' or at times when it is quite obvious that this is not so, then it's 'anything you can do, i cannot do as well.' there are moments of truth in everyone's life when one sees quite clearly that one can't do everything as well as the next person, whether it's sweeping a path or writing a book.

a feeling of superiority or inferiority is the opposite of peacefulness. a display of one's abilities, or the lack of them, will produce restlessness. there is always the reaching out, the craving for a result in the form of other people's admiration or their denial of it. when they deny it, there is warfare. when they affirm it, there is victory.

in war there is never a winner, only losers. no matter who signs the peace treaty first, both sides lose. the same applies to a feeling of being victorious, of being the one who knows better or who is stronger or cleverer. battle and peace do not go well together.

one wonders in the end, does anybody really want peace? is anybody really trying to get it? we must inquire into our innermost hearts if peace is what we really want. such an inquiry is difficult. most people have a thick steel door in front of their hearts. they cannot find out what is going on inside. but everyone needs to try to get in as far as possible and check their priorities.

in moments of turmoil, when we are either not getting the supremacy we want or we feel really inferior, then all we desire is peace. when our unrest and feeling of inferiority subside, then what happens? is it really peace we want? or do we want to be somebody special, somebody important or lovable?

a 'somebody' never has peace. there is an interesting simile about a mango tree. a king went riding in the forest and encountered a mango tree laden with fruit. he said to his servants, 'go back in the evening and collect the mangoes,' because he wanted them for the royal dining table. the servants went back to the forest but returned to the palace empty-handed. 'sorry, your majesty,' they told the king, 'the mangoes were all gone, there was not a single mango left on the tree.' the king thought the servants had been too lazy to go back to the forest, so he rode out to see for himself. what he saw instead of a beautiful mango tree laden with fruit was a pitiful, bedraggled tree. someone had broken all the branches to take the fruit. as the king rode a little farther, he came upon another mango tree, beautiful in all its green splendor, but without a single fruit. nobody had wanted to go near it. it bore no fruit, so it was left in peace. the king went back to his palace, gave his royal crown and scepter to his ministers, and said, 'you may now have the kingdom, i am going to live in a hut in the forest.'

when one is nobody and has nothing, there is no danger of warfare or attack, and there is peace. the mango tree laden with fruit did not have a moment's peace; everybody wanted its fruit. if we really want peace, we have to be nobody. neither important, nor clever, nor beautiful, nor famous, nor right, nor in charge of anything. we need to be unobtrusive and have as few attributes as possible. the mango tree with no fruit was standing peacefully in all its splendor, giving shade. to be nobody does not mean doing nothing. it means acting without self-display and without craving for results. the mango tree had shade to give, but it did not display its wares or fret whether anyone wanted its shade. this ability allows for inner peace. it is a rare ability, because most people vacillate from one extreme to another, either doing nothing and thinking, 'let them see how they get along without me,' or being in charge and projecting their views and ideas.

being somebody, it seems, is so much more ingrained and important than having peace. so we need to inquire with great care what we are truly looking for. what is it that we want out of life? if we want to be important, appreciated, and loved, then we have to take their opposites in stride. every positive brings with it a negative, just as the sun throws shadows. if we want one, we must accept the other, without moaning about it.

but if we really want a peaceful heart and mind, inner security, and stability, then we have to give up wanting to be somebody, anybody. body and mind will not disappear because of that; what subsides is the urge to affirm the importance and supremacy of this particular person whom i call 'me.'

every human being considers [themself] important. there are billions of people on this globe, how many will mourn us? count them for a moment. six or eight, or twelve or fifteen, out of all these billions. maybe we have a vastly exaggerated idea of our own importance. the more we understand this, the easier life is.

wanting to be somebody is dangerous. it is like playing with a fire, and it hurts constantly. and other people will not play by our rules. people who really manage to be somebody, like heads of state, invariably need a bodyguard because they are in danger of their lives.

among the countless things in our world -- all the people, animals, and natural and man-made objects -- the only ones we have any jurisdiction over are our own heart and mind. if we really want to be somebody, we could try to be that rare person who is in charge of his own heart and mind. becoming somebody like that is not only very rare, it also brings the most beneficial results. such a person does not fall into the trap of the defilements.

there is a story about achaan cha, a famous meditation master in northeast thailand. he was once accused of having a lot of hatred. achaan cha replied, 'that may be so, but i don't make any use of it.' an answer like this comes from a deep understanding of one's own nature. it is a rare person who will not allow himself defiled thought, speech, or action. such a person is really somebody. he does not have to prove it to anyone else because it is quite obvious, not to mention that he has no desire to prove anything. there is only one abiding interest and that is one's own peace of mind.

when we have peace of mind as our priority, everything in the mind and all speech or action is directed toward it. anything that does not create peace of mind is discarded. we must not confuse this with being right or having the last word, however. others need not agree. peace of mind is our own. we can all find it if we make the effort.