Monday, March 11, 2013

After waking from a night's sleep after Day One of the work week, I feel a bit of separation from the tenants of Buddha.  "What you actually do for a job is what counts in this world," the thought goes.  So how much purpose can I have when I'm up at 9, will be at work at 4:30, will be there for eight hours.

Well, look on the bright side.  At least you were too tired to even bother with a glass of wine when you got home after your shift last night.  That is good;  you didn't stay up late staring at the TV, and you slept solidly.  The sound of the upstairs neighbor going out the front door woke you, and you were brave enough to get up out of bed, retrieve the ceramic tea pot with yesterday's green tea out of the fridge.  Maybe there will be some yoga at some point, well after breakfast, maybe read some Iyengar, delve a little bit back into the Threefold Lotus Sutra, or read about the monk Nichiren.  How any of that will add up to anything to do with 'a career,' who knows, but you have to admit, it satisfies.  Nichiren put up with a lot, endured deprivation and exile to snowy isles, in the name of reforming societal view of Buddhism.  Maybe that is an avenue to pursue, lest the restaurant's duties take up more importance and energy than they deserve.

"Don't give up on yourself," the neighbor has said.  "Protect your talent."  An educator once.  "You can be a teacher without having to go in and stand in front of a classroom."  That is the rub, having come from educators, that strange world, as if it were aloof, separate from 'the real world,' the economy, the empire with its drone work feeding its own self-perpetuating unrealities.  And of course the emphasis is now on "Math and Science," stuff that will help create engineers and industry and economic value.  Who is left to protect the humanities, the arts, the things that give meaning to our lives, make them worth living, aid our moral compasses?  My father has passed away.

In the distance, the sound of fossil fuels being burned, the low grind of a truck engine, perhaps a dump truck, then a city bus, hums as if from leaf blowers, a general woosh or roar of airplanes lifting off reverberating off of low grey clouds, the city a reflection of such sounds, and I can even feel the rumble of heavy vehicles passing over the hollows beneath the roads.  I need a monastery, it seems, out in the country.  But what would I eat?

A few daily missions to attend to, to go out to the Rite Aid for some allergy pills, maybe do a 'hand wash,' clean the compressions socks and a pair of work slacks.  Walk to work for exercise?  Semi-begin to prepare for the coming road trip north to get away for a week and see my mom for her birthday.

Where, in it all, to find deeper direction?  Where to go about remembering the seeking of the That-Which-Is within, besides eating spinach and doing the dishes?  Well, I guess you read.  That's maybe all you can do.  And look on the bright side.  Were it not for having been written down, a lot of teachings would escape out into thin air.  It's not like we have the Buddha himself who lived so many years ago to come and instruct us, to conduct little seminars or give a TED talk.  We have to open up things like books and actually read, and then absorb.  Learning is not so complicated after all.

I made it out to Sunday brunch yesterday, I remember, was a part of the normal rhythms of life for a bit, before I had to go home and get ready for work.  I mentioned the Myoho Renge Kyo mantra as we passed by the SGI International building on Massachusetts Avenue across from the Russian Orthodox Church there to my lady friend, and she mentioned an interesting study.  Talk kindly to a plant and it thrives.  Even talk to kindly water, and its molecules respond in turn.  That must be an element, then, of That-Which-Is.  No wonder then, the pain of harsh words sticking with you.

No wonder then, that a lot of the world today isn't exactly thriving.

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