Monsoon

It seems we've had a fortnight or so of sticky humidity and light rain - very reminiscent of the monsoon season in Nepal.  Sure, climate change:  a 'theory', like evolution, contested by many right-wing industrial capitalists and their nut-job lackeys; however, considered an anthropogenic fait accompli by the vast majority of heliocentric-leaning scientists.  Which I am sorry to admit is quite the mouthful of a sentence.  Worry not, such polemic is not the direction in which this post is headed.

Our meditation teacher sometimes intones the acronym 'r-a-i-n.'  We are advised, while sitting in meditation (or running about our days), if an emotional storm or difficult mind-state, or set of problematic circumstances should arise - we are invited to recognize, allow, investigate, and non-identify with these phenomena.  (I'll leave the 'non-identify' word alone, syntactically awkward as it may be.)

WARNING: Pointless and mildly droll paragraph follows...

I can think of other helpful acronyms:  non-identify, allow, investigate, let-go (NAIL);  inquire, recognize, allow, non-identify (IRAN);  and while the order of IRAN does actually feel more intuitive to me, the acronym is less alluring than RAIN.

END of distraction.

Eckhart Tolle, latter-day purveyor of Buddho-Christo-Sufist insight, in works such as The Power of Now, uses the phrase 'what you accept, you go beyond' (or something like it).  The idea is not to passively sit back and accept abhorrent conditions, and do nothing about them.  Rather, the pilgrim is instructed to open to the conditions - however beautiful or tragic they may be - just as they present in the moment.  To complain that 'it shouldn't be like this' is to invite suffering, and typically does not lead to wise - and possibly corrective - action.  Accepting the present to be just as it is, allows us to go beyond it, and even sometimes to act wisely.

Saints and monks through the ages have shown such peace and faith in the face of very grave situations.  I read of a Tibetan nun, who, while being tortured, says prayers of loving-kindness for her Chinese captors.  Her mouth is taped shut, but still her lips keep moving.  Clearly, her life of practice in opening to the present moment - come what may - enables her to recognize the dire situation she faces, and instead of wishing it to be other than it is - other than what it simply and irrevocably is at that moment - proceeds instead directly to the only positive action she knows and is able to accomplish.

In our day to day lives, we are generally spared from such harsh or life-threatening situations.  To take a recent commonplace example in my life, I had lost an important piece of jewelry.  You see, our wedding was coming up, only days away, and the evening before, Dwan had asked on the phone - tongue mildly in cheek, though past experience gave her question at least some relevance - 'do you still have your ring?'  I'd said sure - which was technically true - but in fact I couldn't say just then exactly where it was.  Or even approximately.  So I looked and looked and looked, till my eyesight and body were exhausted.  Brushed my teeth, and dropped into bed.

The next morning, I resumed the search, now more frantic, our nuptial event just one day away.  I finally dropped into the recliner, closed my eyes, and a light 'rain' began to fall, almost spontaneously:  Recognize the bodily sensations I perceived due to this loss - a sort of weary tightness in the belly, harshness in the jaw, etc.  Allow the situation to be as it is, for try as I might to change or resist it, this situation was exactly as it was in that moment.  Even my resistance to the situation was just as it was.  Investigate the myriad emotions and mind-states which arose - regret, self-recrimination (how stupid of me!), etc.  Non-identify, or let go of attachment to these emotions, sensations, and thoughts, which you can imagine is much easier said than done.  However, simply opening to such an intention - to see a larger whole in which these stories played themselves out - allowed me to feel just how I was identified with, or attached to, these conditions.  And with such recognition came a release, a letting-go, even if only partially.  As waves and ocean currents rage with a tropical storm on the surface, deep down the fish swim through waters as calmly as ever.

After this little 'meditation,' I dropped to my knees, and crawled over to a sort of hutch/secretary in my bedroom.  I'd already looked in it, so didn't really know what I was doing.  I opened the right cabinet door, and pulled out a small drawstring pouch made in Nepal (there are several other such keepsakes in there).  I could feel there was something in the pouch, reached in, and pulled out a small black velveteen ring sleeve.  Now the warm summer rain felt like elixir.

Though I lost and found one other item this summer in like fashion, I also was unable to find something rather valuable after trying the 'rain method.'  (Fortunately I did accidentally come across it two months after losing it.)  I suppose that two out of three ain't bad, but I think the larger point is, though the process is a rich one, attaching to an outcome - such as locating a lost object - can be perilous.  What we may find instead is a heart that feels, eyes that may cry or smile, and a mind that dreams.  It seems that opening up to our present moment is never wrong.

Six degrees...

of obfuscation?

Many of you may recall the movie, Six Degrees of Separation, in which the theory is posited - and exposited - that all of us are connected by no more than six steps away from every last living person on the planet. Or something like that. (This concept apparently was first espoused by Frigyes Karinthy, a Hungarian author and playwright of the early twentieth century.)

I recall enjoying the movie well enough, and within the framework of its plot, it worked. But having lived and worked in a remote village in Nepal, the basic idea just doesn't add up for me. Unless of course a 'step' of separation (or connection, rather) could be as tenuous as something like: 'I know Peter, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal, and in the village of Khateda where he lived was a widow named Kamala who prepared his evening meal of chapattis each night, the flour for which was ground in a tiny mill by the stream, a stream at which a village child played, by the name of Amar Bahadur who went to school each day with a girl Laxmi, who was married off to a village two days' walk away, and whose mother-in-law was uncharacteristically kind, and was thereby spared her life when Laxmi took up an AK-47 and joined the Maoist revolution...' Actually, this one seems to be 'working.' But what of the other millions of Nepalis who never met or saw a PCV? To say nothing of the billions of villagers across the globe who have little or no contact with the 'outside world'?

It's one thing to feel connected by our hundreds of Facebook 'friends,' and thence to each of their hundreds, etc., but such connections seem to loop in on themselves. Basically, I need to see a study which takes two randomized people and attempts to connect them. Thousands of successful times within six steps. This skeptic doesn't think it possible. With something much more than 'he visited China once, where a small boy in Shang-hai by the name of Ang-li lives' - as a step.

Just saying, doesn't add up for me.

However, I now have a direct connection with an acupuncturist in D.C. The connection - this past Tuesday - did not involve any needles, at least not on my first visit. There was much more talking, and discussing posture (like avoiding that slump which I now exhibit rather acutely), and other strategies to address what she seemed to agree was stress related. (She is also a physical therapist.) Or more to the point, how I carry tension. In this case, largely, at night. I am able to sleep okay, but by morning, my jaw is pretty tense and sensitive. It gradually lessens during the day, yet seems to intensify with apprehension, for example, of taking that first bite, or at the approaching tooth brush. Did this visit do the trick? Insofar as keeping me on a path of betterment through non-invasive means (drugs or needles or worse), I suppose so. Will I go back for more? Depends on how much my insurance picks up of her not inconsiderable fee. (She doesn't submit...)

A dharma teacher invoked the 'Heisenberg uncertainty principle' the other day. Simply put, the principle states that when observed an action will have a different outcome. This principle came out of quantum physics, and has elegantly complex math to support it. (I'm kind of weak here on the hard science bit, correct me if I'm wrong, any math-physicist out there who may be reading this - you know who you are.) I don't recall exactly what the relationship to the dharma the teacher had in mind, but while observing the pain in my jaw, the principle seems rather clear. If I move my tongue around the sensitive areas with an intention to note the level of pain, it is greater if I in fact am hoping for there to be little or no pain. The same is true if I take a bite of food, or put in my mouth guard, or whatever. That is, depending on what the nature of my observation is, the outcome is unique. This is perhaps enough solipsistic navel gazing for now...

I will watch what arises, and what precedes it, and gradually figure it out. I feel it slowly lifting. Also will remain connected to y'all, and beyond, by however many degrees of separation it takes.