Life: The Endlessly Passing Show

I used to have a beautiful hand painted-sign that read: This too shall pass away. It meant the difficult times I was going through wouldn’t last, which I found hard to believe as I stood in the eye of my personal storm. Eventually, though, the storm did pass, and I moved on with my life. That was my first lesson in the Buddhist concept of impermanence, though I was far from grasping the idea at the time.

It is almost 40 years later. The sign is long gone, but its wisdom remains. Here’s what I have learned: Things change. Life is dynamic, like a river. It just keeps flowing, taking with it experiences we are glad to be rid of and those we had hoped to keep. Nothing is more dramatic proof of that than the recession that is not quite over.

People who were busy living their lives—going to work, enjoying their homes, buying things, watching their kids play soccer—suddenly felt as if they had been hit by a tsunami. Businesses, jobs, homes, income, security, gone—not only here in the U.S., but worldwide. That’s impermanence with a capital I.

A recession, a hurricane, a flood, death or divorce, bankruptcy, and illness are all pretty dramatic ways to learn that things change when we least expect them to. On the flip side, they can change in wonderful ways: a wedding, a new baby, a windfall, a best seller. These are the changes we welcome.

In 1970, a guy named Richard Alpert, who became Ram Dass, wrote a book called Be Here Now. He was trying to tell westerners what Eastern religions have been teaching for centuries: Enjoy now because now is all we have. He was right, of course. Joseph Goldstein, one of the earliest teachers of mindfulness meditation in this country and the author of One Dharma, was more poetic when he wrote: “All experience is part of an endlessly passing show.”

Now, that is a thought to meditate on.

A Celebration of Women

I went to the library, in a big hurry and desperate for a good mystery. Bad combination. All the current, best-selling mysteries were gory (what with that?), and I found myself standing at the new nonfiction section. I’ve always felt that the right book falls into my hands at the exact moment I need to read it, and once again, that’s what happened. Suddenly, I was holding Cokie Roberts’ 10^th anniversary edition of We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters. I left the library with that single little book … well, little, fat, 319-page book.

I'm a big Cokie Roberts fan. I love her voice, her incisive comments, and the breadth of her knowledge about what’s happening on the hill when she appears on NPR. Actually, I'm also a fan of her husband, Steve Roberts, who often subs for Dianne Rehm on NPR. Nobody manages a discussion better than he does. Recently, I have discovered Rebecca Roberts who does the greatest interviews on (you guessed it) NPR. She, too, has a warm, distinctive style. This is one incredible family.

We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters encompasses the personal, the political, and the profound. It is part memoir, part history, but mostly a celebration of women. It weaves intimate stories of Roberts’ own life with those of her amazing family, today’s headliners, and more obscure heroines. Equally comfortable with present day political celebrities and women we may never had heard of, Roberts made them all come alive for me.

I read this book as if it were a revelation, and in many ways, it was. I’ve always known that women are remarkable, but Cokie Roberts brought that home to me in ways I never thought about. We Are Our Mothers Daughters should be required reading in every women’s studies program.

As I reached the last page, I felt renewed pride in being a woman and in the special sisterhood we share with women who came before us and who are making a difference in the world right today. Thank you Cokie!

Freedom From the Should Monster

About 30 years ago, someone lent me a book that changed my life. Books can do that if they show up at exactly the right moment with exactly the right message. This book was called The Path of Least Resistance. It was written by Robert Fritz in 1943. Fifty-six years later, I still find its message relevant and compelling. I’ve taken seminars and read other books that have taught the same concepts as if they were new. In fact, I have even taught them in my own classes. I don’t even know if Robert Fritz made them up or if he, too, adapted them from someone else’s teachings. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that these ideas still provoke thought, create change, and work.

I’ve been thinking about this book a lot lately. I’ve read it many times and highlighted it until the pages are almost solid yellow. To review it all at one would take much too much space or give short shrift to its complexity. But what I’ve been pondering these last few days is the subject of “fundamental choices”— which Fritz doesn’t even mention until page 103—and particularly one of those choices: to be free.

First, let me explain that “a fundamental choice,” in Fritz’s words, “is a choice in which you commit yourself to a basic life orientation … a state of being.” Fundamental choices are unaffected by changes in internal or external circumstances. Once you make such a choice, convenience and comfort are irrelevant. Once you make such a choice, you begin to deal with reality in an entirely new way.

Fundamental choices are not always conscious, though it’s best if they are. The ones people tend to make are to be free, to be healthy, and to be true to oneself. They all sound so simple and straightforward; yet, I have spent a great deal of time over the years contemplating what they really mean. For example, what does it mean to be free? Of course, being a writer, I looked it up. Here are a few of its meanings:

• not under the control or in the power of another; able to act or do as one wishes : a free choice.
• subject neither to foreign domination nor to despotic government : a free press.
• not or no longer confined or imprisoned : set free.
• not a slave
• able or permitted to take a specified action : free to leave.

In this country, supposedly, we have many of these freedoms, at least in a big-picture way. We are not subject to foreign domination or a despotic government, and when we think we are at risk of either one, we take action through demonstrations or at the polls. Most of us are not confined or imprisoned, and those who are long to be set free. We are not slaves, since slavery has been banned, and we are free to do anything that falls within the law. All of these points can be argued, I know, but on the surface, they are true.

So, as I contemplate the fundamental choice of being free, what else could I possibly want? I live in America, the land of the free. I am free come and go as I please. I work at a job I love. So where does this choice come into my life? Well, to tell the truth I want to be free of “shoulds,” the invisible controlling little voices that keep popping up in my mind.

What is a should? (back to the dictionary)

• A should is an obligation, a duty, a correct behavior, typically when criticizing someone else's or our own actions : You should call your mother every day; you should finish this assignment before you take a break; you should take the job because it pays well.
• A should is a desirable or expected state : You should know what you want to be by now; you should be financially stable; you should be married.
• A should gives advice or suggestions, usually unsolicited : You should lose some weight; you should tell him what you really think; you should discipline your children.

Shoulds are tyrants, very persistent, relentless little tyrants who never seem to shut up. Sometimes, they are other people—your mother, your boss, a friend, even a total stranger. But more often, they are you, talking to yourself. You may call it your conscience or your critical parent; I call it the should monster. I have recently become more aware of its ubiquitous presence in my life. You should do this; you shouldn’t do that, and on and on. What’s worse is the running dialogue I engage in with my personal little monster. I know. I know, I tell it. I should exercise, but I am so tired right now. I’ll do it later. OK?

OK? Did I really say OK? Did I ask an imaginary voice for permission to forgo exercising? Am I truly a slave to the instructions of some formless, non-thing that thinks it’s knows what I should be doing? This is embarrassing, but apparently so. I am eternally grateful to Robert Fritz for offering me a choice in the matter—a fundamental choice. So, here and now, I choose to be free of the should monster.

I feel better already.

Happy 5770

I’m not ordinarily an observer of holidays—religious or secular. There are so many of them, and most seem irrelevant or inappropriate to my life. So, they come and they go and, at best, they may tack an extra day onto the weekend, giving me more time to work. But there is one holiday that matters to me, one that seems worthy of celebrating, albeit in my own unconventional manner.

The holiday is Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year and the start of the High Holy Days. If one is Jewish, this day holds enormous meaning. I was trying to find an official explanation of that meaning and came across this opening line of an editorial in a weekly newspaper, the St. Louis Jewish light.

“As the shofar sounds on Rosh Hashana to open the Gates to Heaven, we have a duty on earth, to open our hearts and minds to the great potential of working together in lovingkindness.”

What struck me about this sentence was the word lovingkindness, which is fundamental to the teachings of Buddhism. There are many books on that word (my favorite is by Sharon Salzberg), and people spend days at meditation retreats just focusing on the practice of lovingkindness, or Meta. It suddenly occurred to me that, if we reduced the basic teachings of all of the great religions of the world to one idea, it would surely be lovingkindness.

Believe it or not, making that connection was epiphany for me, a simple explanation for the meaning behind this ancient holiday. This is an idea I can embrace, contemplate, and, yes, even celebrate.

Today, which happens to be Rosh Hashana—the start of year 5770—seems an appropriate time begin.

A cure for just about everything

I just returned from visiting my grand-dog. We spent a glorious 10 days together, playing, walking, chatting, going in, going out, rolling on the floor, and just hanging out. If you want to calm your jangled nerves, pet a dog. If you want to feel needed, get down on the rug, and let him curl up next to you with his head on your leg. If you think you’re not important, walk out of the room and watch him follow you. Nothing like it, I swear.

The thing is I don’t own a dog. I am just in love with my daughter’s little guy. He looks like a puppy, but in truth, he is anything but. Still, to watch him prance on his hind legs when he wants a treat or gallop across the lawn to be let in or set too fast a pace when I walk him, one would swear he was just a kid.

All of this begs the question: WHY don’t I have a dog? Why don't I go to the rescue shelter and save a little life? (It would have to be little because we have condo association rules about size). Or, if I want something fluffy and cuddly, why don’t I go online and look up fluffy, cuddly breeds or go to Pet Smart and just pick out a puppy?

I have a gazillion reasons, including bad weather, unexpected expenses, and arthritis; but they really don’t hold up. After all, I’ve made an utter fool of myself by creating a website for my favorite furry friend, put his picture on my computer screen, and considered getting Skype so I can see him up close and personal.

I feel a little silly writing this, as if I’m hoping someone will talk me into running out and actually finding the dog of my dreams. The problem is I have already found him, and he lives 900 miles away.

Words! Words! Words! I’m so sick of words!

I’ve been an NPR junkie for years. I thought I was hooked forever on all that “in-depth news and intelligent talk” (my local station’s slogan). Then, one day I realized how sick and tired I was of the same repetitive news all day long and the incessant babbling on the topic de jour hour after hour.

How can they stand it? I wondered. Don’t Carl Kassel and Korva Coleman get tired of rearranging the words of the same headlines 50 times a day? Don’t Diane Rehm and Neal Conan and Robert Siegel get bored with  the endless interviewees and callers after a while? And, most of all, don’t they wonder if the only things worth talking about are bleak, depressing, and enough to make one think the world is going to hell in a hand basket?

Suddenly, I thought, if I have to listen to one more commentary on the things people have been commenting since five o’clock this morning, I will lose my mind. And if I never again hear the words, “critics say,” it will be fine with me. Why do these people feel duty bound to tell us what critics say on every subject? Why must there be an equal and opposite side to every single issue? Why can’t they just report on one side for once and talk about the other side some other time? Perhaps this is their stab at balanced reporting, but, if so, it isn’t working. Most of the time I would be just as happy not knowing what critics are saying. Let the critics have their own stories. Why do they have to hitch a ride on someone else’s?

Why do we have to hear polarized opinions in every debate and why, for that matter, does it have to be a debate at all? This is not an original question. Author and sociolinguist Deborah Tannen, Ph.D., posed it in her 1998 book The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue.

“The argument culture urges us to approach the world—and the people in it—in an adversarial frame of mind,” Tannen wrote. “Our determination to pursue truth by setting up a fight between two sides leads us to believe that every issue has two sides—no more, no less … But opposition does not lead to truth when an issue is not composed of two opposing sides but is a crystal of many sides. Often the truth is in the complex middle, not the   extremes.”

In other words, life is not a tidy, black-and-white photograph. It is many shades and textures of gray. I would love to buy several copies of The Argument Culture and send them to every newscaster and commentator on NPR with instructions to absorb its wisdom. Would it revolutionize talk radio if they actually put these principles in action? Or would they all simply be out of a job for not being fair and impartial?

If NPR did dramatically change its program strategy and begin to provide real in-depth news and intelligent talk; if every issue didn’t devolve into a war of words; and if the purpose was to promote full understanding of issues, rather than crowning the winner in each discussion, how much more knowledgeable and tolerant might we all become?

I can’t answer that question, but I know one thing for sure: I would turn my radio on and once again become a devoted NPR listener.

 

Minding Our Moments

I do a lot of reading about the Buddhist philosophy, the heart of which is the concept of mindfulness. It’s all about paying attention to what’s going on right this minute. This is hard from me since I tend to romanticize the past, which I remember as perfect (it wasn’t) or stressing out over the future, which seems scary (it probably won’t be).

This is not a new concept of course, though it is back in fashion with a vengeance. Way back in 1970, a guy named Richard Alpert, or Baba Ram Das, as he preferred to be called, wrote a book called Be Here Now. He was high on LSD when he wrote it, but the title and the idea had staying power.

I have a complete shelf filled with books on this and many other Buddhist teachings; but, as one of those teachings famously observes, “a finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.” Similarly, reading about living in the moment is not actually doing it; it’s just reading about it.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, the modern day mindfulness guru, keeps pointing out that this moment is the only moment we have, and, if we don’t live it, it’s gone. Then one day we wake up and find that we are out of moments.

Believe it or not, I just got that. I was talking to my oldest friend, who was telling me a story about a father and daughter who had not spoken for 15 years. The daughter wasn’t ready to break the silence … yet. She may never be. "So sad,” my friend said. “She’ll never get those years back. They’re gone. Wasted. Life not lived.”

After all those years of reading, all those books, all those words — just like that, I understood. Fifteen years doesn’t sound like a big number; 473,040,000 does. That’s how many moments of her life that girl lost. How many have I not lived, ignored, wasted? How many do I have left? I don’t know. Nobody knows.

I guess that’s the point.