Precious Things

“There are things you can’t reach. But

You can reach out to them, and all day long.”

-Mary Oliver

The most precious things are the hardest to hold onto because they’re moments.

I’m experiencing this a lot lately. I’m in a weird no-man’s land between excitement for a future that hasn’t arrived and grieving a life I haven’t yet left behind. I’m left with a Now that is almost painfully sharp and breathtakingly clear.

Last night, for example, I went for dinner with the guys from the band I used to play in back in the nineties. It’s been years since we’ve all been in the same room at the same time.

It was a heck of a thing.

I want to write everything about it. About the way these men still seem so familiar to me in the way they talk and act and move their hands. In the easiness of the conversation. In the sound of the pizza place around us, clinking silverware and raised voices.

And none of it seems write-able. I can write around it. I can write about it. But I can’t write it.

There have been many moments like this over the past weeks. Watching football with my dad and cheering for opposite teams. Watching Mixed Martial Arts with a group of friends in a basement with the taste of Dr Pepper on my tongue. Moments with my nephews and family. Moments at work. Moments on my futon with someone I care about snuggled tight against my chest.

Each moment feels meaningful. Each moment feels like it deserves to be written down, documented somehow.

I want to write these things down on this blog so I can share them. I want to write them on my heart so I can keep them forever. I want them written in the stars so I can look up and read them on cold monastery nights.

Other writers have said things like this better than me. I’ll let them.

The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.

-Stephen King

Where Does The Temple Begin, Where Does It End

-Mary Oliver

There are things you can’t reach. But

you can reach out to them, and all day long.

The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.

And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily,

out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing

from the unreachable top of the tree.

I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.

Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around

as though with your arms open.

And thinking: maybe something will come, some

shining coil of wind,

or a few leaves from any old tree--

they are all in this too.

And now I will tell you the truth.

Everything in the world

comes.

At least, closer.

And, cordially.

Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake.

Like goldfinches, little dolls of goldfluttering around the corner of the sky

of God, the blue air.

Meeting Expectations

Sunday the meditation group I’ve been attending had an impromptu meeting on revising how we give meditation instruction.

I can be impatient at meetings. I get frustrated because it often feels to me that people are far more generous with their opinions and ideas as to how things should be done than they are with the time and energy it would take to make those ideas a reality.

This phenomenon isn’t exclusive to the meditation group. The world seems filled with those who--whether the subject is the outside world or their inner lives--would choose talking about the mess for thirty minutes over cleaning for three. As a quieter person, I find it baffling, and yet enough people do it that I sometimes feel as though maybe I’m the crazy one.

That’s what I tell myself, anyways.

In this specific case, I’m also annoyed at the meditation group’s steadfast refusal to quit their jibber-jabber, read my mind, and then do what I want them to do the way I want them to do it.

This isn’t something I’m going to have to worry about much longer.

I’ve bought my bus ticket west; I’m leaving for the priory in just under a month. I’ve been helping with meditation instruction for six years, but the next session or the one after that will probably be my last.

Meanwhile, the group is going ahead and working out new ideas for doing instruction. Don’t they realize I’m going away? Haven’t they noticed that I’m feeling guilty about leaving and wondering how instruction is going to go without my being there to help? Here I am, renouncing the world to save all beings, moving to a cabin in the mountains to Not Have Sex and be eaten by mosquitoes and they’re just going to keep going on and be fine.

Unbelievable.

 Can you believe they’re abandoning me like that?

Pilgrims

Yesterday, after cake, our family went for a walk in the woods.

My oldest nephew and his dog led the way, pulling my mother along in their wake.  Four-year old nephew is eager to show his aunt the woods and the park near my grandmother’s house. The dog just wants to chase something.

My father is next with his hands in the pockets of his denim jacket. My former sister-in-law and her husband follow. It’s been a weekend of visiting relatives in the city and they have a long drive home ahead of them.

After that comes my sister and her husband. They are walking arm in arm, gently bickering about the logistics of their upcoming week.

There’s a significant gap in the procession after that.

Birds sing. The sun shines. The bare trees reach for the cloudless blue sky.

Finally, my youngest nephew and I appear. We are not moving quickly. Perhaps it’s because at three months shy of his second birthday, my nephew is still adapting to walking in snow. Or maybe it’s because of everybody in the family, my nephew and I are the only two with no particular inclination to be anywhere other than here.

My nephew walks slowly, but his slowness doesn’t come from hesitancy. Instead, his movements are filled with a deep completeness, as though the only thing that needs doing is the thing he is doing right now.  Face forward, he makes his way through the trees and snow, taking the world in anew with each step. When the hills get too steep or the ground under the snow becomes too uneven he reaches out with one navy mitten for my hand.

When I breathe in, my lungs fill with sun and snow and sky. Is this what I sit around in darkened meditation halls waiting for?

I emerge from the trees and my family is waiting at the top of a hill. Mom is sitting on a toboggan and bursts down the hill in a cloud of white while my oldest nephew shrieks in delight.

Side by side, my nephew and I walk towards them, making new tracks through a fresh filed of snow.

People Are Sad

I’ve been telling people I’m leaving for the monastery. Many of them are sad about it.

I’m surprised about that, and I’m also surprised that I’m surprised.  I knew they might be sad...and I also never expected them to be sad.

I also feel guilty. The whole point of Mahayana Buddhism is to end the suffering of all beings. In the bodhisattva vows we take every couple weeks, we promise to remain in the world until all beings are saved. Being a source of sadness to those I care about most by leaving for the mountains seems like a step in the wrong direction.

That‘s the scary thing about impermanence. There truly is nothing to stand on.  It’s not just that that I’m subject to loss and change and grief, but so are the people I care about. They are also going to experience these things, and however much I might want to, there’s nothing I can do to change that.

Except that’s not true in this particular case, is it? There is indeed something I could do: I could stay. I might not be able to spare the people I love the experience of loss, but by remaining here I could spare them from this specific loss at this specific time.

Saving all beings, right? That’s the bodhisattva way. And what better beings to start with than the ones I love and will miss the most?

The answer, when I search my heart, is this: Because that is not the kind of saving any of us need.

On the surface the bodhisattva commitment to saving all beings in all times and all places for eternity appears like an impossible task. It probably would be impossible except for one small thing bodhisattvas have working in their favor: all beings are saved already.

In other words, we’re all doing okay. We just don’t know it, and as a consequence, we create suffering for ourselves trying to solve problems we don‘t actually have.

My loved ones don’t need me to make choices to stop them from feeling sad. Furthermore, I do not need to make choices to shield myself from feeling guilty. Sadness, guilt, second-guessing, worry…these are normal parts of the process. It might be more cause for concern if some of those feelings WEREN’T there.

I don’t like that people are sad. I don’t like that I am also sad. I also don’t like that I feel guilty that people are sad, and I don’t like that I’m also happy people are sad because it means they will miss me, and I don’t like that I am worrying about many many many things. It’s uncomfortable.

It’s uncomfortable and it is also where things are.

And none of us need saving from that.

Undercover Monk

“It is futile to travel to other dusty countries, thus forsaking your own seat.” - Dogen

Sometimes I imagine myself as an undercover monk.

I’ll get to that in a moment. First, I’d like to talk about one of the biggest words in the English language, perhaps THE biggest word--and it‘s only two letters long.

That word is ‘if.’

It's a tiny word, and yet it is big enough to screen out the entire universe. It obscures our sight like a blindfold, putting up a smokescreen against the truth.

And it's blindfold we put on ourselves.

If they'd just stop putting things on my plate, I wouldn't feel swamped at work.

I'd exercise more if I had more time

If he could get his anger out of control, none of this would be a problem.

Those ifs distract us from the heart of what we are saying:

I feel swamped at work.

I'm not excercising.

This is a problem.

I play the same if game with my spiritual training. I fantasize about becoming a monk. If I was a monk, I think, my training would be so much better.

Why aren’t I a monk? Why more ‘if’s, of course.

If the monastery were closer. If my nephews were older. If the meditation group here didn’t need me and if I could get my visa situation figured out and if maybe there was an exception in the monastic vows where I could be a monk but also still have sex whenever I want with whoever I want and maybe tell dirty jokes in a comedy club and go salsa dancing once in a while…

Look! People would say as I led my partner into a turn while my robes swirled around me. A dancing monk. He’s serene and wise, but also funny, exciting and a little bit sexy. He’s a living example of how Zen Buddhists can be relevant to contemporary fast-paced modern life while still remaining grounded in centuries of tradition. We should train too!

If I were a monk,

If.

I’m not a monk.

The monastery is not closer.

My nephews are the age they are. They are getting older by the moment, but so am I.

I can’t be celibate and sexually active at the same time.

For the longest time, I convinced myself that those things were obstacles, and I was right. But I was right in a different way than I believed.

I believed that my distance from the monastery and monks meant I didn’t get access to the kind of teaching that would really help my training. I believed that until I became a monk myself and was able to live a life free from distractions, I might as well not bother.

I trained, but my efforts were always stitched through with a subtle thread of hopelessness. To me, training was like stand-up comedy--if you really want to be among the best, you have to be willing to give up everything else. I wasn’t doing that, so there was no hope of me reaching the heights I wanted for myself. And if I couldn’t be among the best, what was the point of doing it at all?

At a certain point I came to the realization that if I was serious about training, I was going to have to be my own monk.

Monks aren’t special because they’re special. Monks are special because they are no different from the rest of us. They’re human beings--subject to birth, old age, sickness, and death--and they’ve decided to train anyway.

If they can train, we can train. If they can be a living example, then so can the rest of us.

It’s not about the robes and the monastery. It’s about the mind.

In volume 1 of Roar of the Tigress, Reverend Master Jiyu says: “Love God, do your own training; love the Cosmic Buddha, do your own training. Love Allah, do your own training.”

Maybe that same idea applies as much to the material as it does to the spiritual. Maybe the idea extends to our every experience: Love your family; do your own training. Find your job frustrating; do your own training.

Which brings me to Undercover Monk.

It’s a thought experiment, more than anything. I imagine that I’m a monk, but I have to keep that a  secret. I’m not allowed robes or a monastery. I’m not allowed to tell anyone I’m a monk, and my training has to happen in secret. I’m assigned my job and my relationships and I have to go about those things as best I can. I need to pass a lay person while training as a monk.

How what such a monk behave? If I were in such a position--cut off from the monastery and deep behind enemy lines--how would I train and be an example of training in the world, without blowing my cover?

I think of those things and try and do that.

(This is a revised and updated version of a post that was originally published on October 30, 2014)

Ring Crew Blues: The Ring, My Monastery

(Originally published on September 8, 2014)

Sometimes, while securing a sheet of canvas over a frame of wood and steel while half a dozen giant men in spandex wait impatiently for me to finish so they can pretend to punch each other, I find myself thinking: I wonder if novice monks have days like this.

It’s an odd thought to have. I can’t imagine what putting together a professional wrestling ring has in common with preparing the altar for morning service other than the fact that they are both fields so specialized that the average person can live his or her entire life blissfully unaware that such a skill even exists. 

Granted, that could be true of a lot of things. Every morning after my shower, I pull a towel off a rack, dry myself with it, and drop it on the floor without ever once thinking, “Hey, somebody MADE that.”

I don’t make towels though. I DO help with the setting up and tearing down of wrestling rings. Over the last few months of my career in professional wrestling as a referee/ring announcer/commissioner, it has become the part of the show I most look forward to and the part I most dread.

In its finished form, a wrestling ring is unmistakeable, a raised four sided platform with ropes running along the sides, held in place by posts at each corner. Everybody--even non-fans--can recognize a match-ready wrestling ring when they see it.

On the other hand, I’m willing to bet most of those same people could peer into the back of a ring truck at an unassembled ring and haven’t a clue what they were seeing. Unassembled, a wrestling ring looks like nothing more than a mismatched jumble of canvas, wood, cable, and steel.
And while finished wrestling rings all look pretty much the same, the process of putting them together can be surprisingly different from ring to ring. Each time I find myself working with a new one, I feel like I’m starting over.

Still, there’s something satisfying about it. Part of it is the repetitive physical nature of lifting and carrying. Part of it is the satisfaction of seeing something grow from nothing. And part of it is the illicit thrill of learning a craft that 99.9% of the population doesn’t even know exists. 

There’s just one problem.

I’m not very good at putting together wrestling rings.

Sure, I'm better than the average person on the street. There might only be six people in the city that know how to put this specific ring together better than I do. The only problem is, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE IS IN THIS ROOM.

I am the weakest link.

And not just in terms of knowledge. Being the only non-wrestler in the room, I am physically the weakest, slowest, smallest, and least-coordinated human on the roster, David Spade riding with the Sons of Anarchy. 

In years past, I have compensated for my lack of ability and knowledge by mastering the fine art of Getting Out Of The Way.

You’d be surprised at how hard it can be to do that--how when we feel uncertain or out of our depth, the urge to try and make ourselves useful or prove our worth can be overpowering. The result tends to be meddling, clustering around offering opinions, or ’helping’ in ways that creates more problems than it solves when often the best course of action is to stand quietly aside and let the people who know what they’re doing do what they know.

Getting out of the way is not an option for me these days. The organization I’m currently working with has a small local crew, which means everybody has to help. If I don’t show up and help, it doesn’t get done on time. This is especially true after the show where the wrestlers tend to be either recovering from their matches or meeting with fans.

I’m completely unqualified for this job, and I need to do it anyway. 

The parts of it that I’m comfortable with are fine. They’re actually kind of fun.

It’s the parts that I don’t know so well or that I’m physically unable to handle that stress me out. It means I have to ask for help, and I hate that. By having to ask, I feel like I’m just confirming what everybody knows, but is too polite to say: That I don’t know what I’m doing, that I’m incompetent, that I’m a burden to pro wrestling society, a free-loading waste of space, unfit to contribute in any way.

I either want to know what to do and be capable of doing it competently OR I want to not have to do it at all. 

Instead, here I am, feeling like a child trapped in an adult’s body, looking around for someone to recognize my distress and rescue me from it.

Why should I have to do this? Why isn’t Wrestler X helping? He’s strong. He knows what he’s doing. Instead he’s just sitting there on the stage in his underwear with his boots unlaced texting.
The funny thing is, I bet I’m not alone.

The Promoter is trying to find transportation and accommodations for the out-of-town wrestlers while balancing the cash from the show and arranging for the ring truck while thinking to himself: I could use some help around here. Why do I have to be the one to do everything?

The Head of Ring Crew is struggling to balance coils of ring rope on his shoulders while patiently answering my questions without losing his temper and wondering what to do about the blood and table splinters all over the canvas that he has neither the time nor the equipment to properly clean. And the only person he has to help is the awkward ring announcer who doesn’t know what he’s doing. Why do I have to be the one to have to figure everything out? Why won’t somebody else step up?

The woman working Front of the House is dealing with selling tickets and keeping track of merchandise and security and making sure the venue is clean before we leave and...wait a minute. Why is it her job to do security? Isn’t she already doing more than enough? Isn’t it someone else’s turn yet?

Which brings me back to the subject of being a novice. I wonder if they have these same thoughts.

I wonder if they think: “Sure. I’ll do the incense. I’ll do the incense and sweep the cloisters and help with breakfast and organize the lay people and I’ll do it while bowing and smiling and not showing a hint of frustration while you swan around in your fancy purple kesa telling me to ‘say ‘yes’ to everything’ when what I’d really like is to say yes to shoving a stick of incense up your…”

A senior monk once told me: “We want to be around people we like doing things we’re competent at. Being a novice monk is doing things you don’t know how to do with people you wouldn’t necessarily choose to do it with. That‘s what makes a monastery a different kind of from almost anything else. There‘s no escape.”

Months later, I find myself arguing with that same monk in my head.  No, that’s not what makes a monastery different from anything else, I tell the monk in my brain. That’s what a monastery the SAME as everything else. There is never any escape.

It doesn’t matter whether we’re learning to be a parent, starting a new job, returning to school, scurrying hither and thither in black robes, or learning how to secure the ring ropes to the post so that El Ciclon, the Spanish Hurricane doesn’t take an awkward tumble when he goes to drop the big elbow on “Showtime” Sammy Starr.

It isn’t fair. This shouldn’t be my responsibility. Can’t people see I’m doing my best? I already have too much to do. Why won’t someone do this for me? How come the only time I get feedback is when I do something wrong? How about some credit, just a little appreciation for what I’ve already done instead being expected to do even more?

Decisions have to be made with incomplete information; things have to be done without the necessary skill or experience; and often we are the only people available to do them.

Maybe we’re all novices.

Or maybe I don’t need to think of these things. I can feel the fear and insecurity and—instead of making comparisons or wondering what others are thinking—I can go back to what is important now: the slap of wood on wood, the tension in the steel cables, and—as I pull to secure canvas to frame—the feel of rope sliding through my palms.