On the Subject of Bitches
When a man in charge is frank with his opinions, curt with his commands, and just has abrupt no-nonsense way about him, he is seen as a guy who knows how to lead and is respected and well-regarded. He may not always even be the nicest guy - he can be kind of a dick even - yet something about him seems to command respect. Well, people say, it's the fact that he's intelligent, level-headed, and knows what he wants and, though he might even be a bit headstrong, he really does know how to do it and he gets it done. He may not even be the clearest and most honest person in every corner of his life but when it comes to work, he knows what he wants and how to get it and goddammit, people say, you just gotta respect that.
Put a woman in his place, though, and people call her a bitch, if not to her face then behind her back. So hard to work with, they say.
Some Gratitude on a Chilly Evening
I'm rounding the corner, walking home from the organic market that we shop at, and it's a chilly evening. The sun is well past gone. I have a small bag of groceries in my arm - chocolate, coffee, some vegetables, some coconut milk creamer - and a man pushing a grocery cart filled with plastic bottles and aluminum cans passes me. He looks to be smiling but then again maybe he's grimacing and I wonder: what stroke of life gave this man a cold evening to push a grocery cart filled with plastic bottles, maybe just trying to find enough to make a few dollars and buy something to eat - and me, walking to my warm home. Sometimes, driving through downtown LA, I end up on one of the blocks of homeless people living in tents, pushing shopping carts that contain everything they own, living in the gutter. I wonder at how it is that I am in my car, listening to music, on my way to a meeting, or a dinner with friends, or just getting on the highway and heading home and they are there, stuck in some all together different way of life. I wonder at how the uber-wealthy end up so high up on that pedestal they place themselves upon, sometimes unable to truly value the little things.
I wonder at this... this world with all of it's countless threads of lives going on: where some are bombed, others are swaddled, some are cared for, and some are left to be trodden upon, some walk tall, some walk small, some don't walk at all... I wonder how it is that man is legless and I walk along or that child was born without sight, and I can see. How that person appears to be ahead of me, and that person is behind. The vast multitudes and all the myriad walks of life. I wonder at it and I wonder at how I ended up here: making art, doing what I love, living unafraid, neither angry nor resentful, but loving it. I'm in a wonderful marriage to a wonderful woman, with a home that is warm and, right now, smells like fresh baked bread, with a cat on my lap and soft music playing and soft lighting. I wonder at it all and the only thing I am left with - the only answer that comes back to me, echoing from my heart and what feels like the heart of all things - is gratitude: at this gift, this life.
Compassion and Vampires
“Compassion automatically invites you to relate with people because you no longer regard people as a drain on your energy.”
Chogyam Trungpa - "Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism"
I read the 'Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism' years ago and it has forever echoed in my mind. The title pretty much carries it's message: it's not about how many mantras or sun salutations you can do or how many retreats you've been to or how spiritual you dress or look or what temple you visit or how many holy books are on your bookshelves or how many pictures of holy beings are on your altar - it's about you and your process, everything else is just icing - a mask, something we identify with. I consider this often when I am in my day to day life - when I am interacting in my day to day world - buying groceries, crossing the street, cleaning out the cat litter box. It's al just stuff and my buddha statue on my altar is no more or less holy, it's just a different reminder, a placeholder - an icon to jog me back to - it doesn't matter what the fuck you are doing - if you do it with compassion and wisdom, it's awesome.
Form, Formlessness, and Life
This afternoon, after a short time, I closed my eyes while sitting in the hanging chair suspended from the eave of my house. My sleepy sleep deep mind rocked back and forth like a babe in a basinet and I could feel each rise and each dip so supremely deep that I might have been rocked to sleep, if even for a moment. Eventually tho I rose again and put the book back - Shambhala: Sacred Path of the Warrior by Chogyam Trungpa - in which was spoken of and I read of the act of recognizing and indentifying oneself through countless reference points - now I am doing this, now I am thinking this - and then the act of forgetting, losing oneself in that. And then, if we encase ourselves in a sea of I's - how terribly lonely it gets! Because we have separated ourselves from everything at that point. Good food for thought and meditation. I find myself meditating on these things while making dinner, petting the kitty, working on whatever my work may be, while walking down the street, into a store, driving my car. I find myself considering - form is formlessness but formlessness is also form.
I read somewhere someone once - we'll say a monk or a lama - saying that, while form as formlessness/emptiness is relatively easy to understand - the reverse, that formlessness becomes form, is sometimes much more difficult to fully realize. We can intellectualize these things - we often intellectualize- we know this or that - but until we have the direct experience of it, it's sort of a useless tool. It's like having a hammer and knowing completely and thoroughly how it works but til we use it - til we actually lift it and heft it's weight and feel it's balance and swing it do we see how one might use it. Until then, it does us no good what so ever. the same goes for various concepts of form, compassion, wisdom, awareness. It feels that the more i understand the nature of emptiness, the calmer I am, the more loving, the more compassionate, and the less prone to whims of this or that. I've gotten better at it for sure over the years. but still... I get into arguments. I hold back. I do this or that. To be the warrior is to be exposed, to be raw, and to know that nothing - nothing what so ever - can hurt you because there is nothing, ever, that can be hurt that is you. Or me. Or anything. And so we are simply 100% honest - with others and, most importantly, with ourselves.
The Multifaceted Diamond
Over the years I've encountered numerous philosophies and ways of being in the world. I've tried them on like outfits. Some fit okay but weren't suitable for all occasions and had to be left behind. Others didn't fit at all and, in their metaphorical stitching, were shoddily made, had too many loose threads and too many hidden pockets. I can't deal with that sort of mess. Some have fit rather well - sexy when they need to be sexy, respectable when they need to be respectable, and secure, when they need to be secure. In essence, some have reflected deeper ways of being for me than others. Some have fit in far more circumstances than others.
One proverbial outfit that I have been drawn back to, time and again, is Buddhism. This isn't to say that I identify as "a Buddhist", just that it's approach and philosophy - it's way of looking at the world - has continually supported my growth and, at it's core, it's basic system of understand, has yet to have show any loose ends.
The Spectre of Self-Doubt
Self-Doubt is a mask worn over the mask of Self-Destruction that is worn, ultimately, by Fear. Self-doubt: I-don't-know-if-i'm-good-enough. It's a mask that says: maybe I should never have started. Self-doubt says: am i - is it - will it be ever be good enough? Do I actually suck and no one is telling me? Even when they congratulate me and pat me on the back? Even then? Will I ever make it? Am I ever good enough?
The Wright Brothers: for some reason or another they come to mind. Two guys trying to fly a plane - to lift this thing off the ground. I'm sure they heard more "You'll never make it" than "I believe in you." So they worked daily on believing in themselves. In the end, though, math doesn't lie and their math was, in the end, sound. So they succeeded.
Mansions of the House
I've got to step up inside myself and stand there at my door sometimes; you know, not hang out deeper inside the mansions of my mind, thinking someone might find me back there, painting or daydreaming, biding my time, enjoying the view. Sometimes I've got to step up and be the doorman. Welcome! Welcome I say, politely, but with gusto, not over bearing but with just the right amount of exuberance tempered by tactfulness as a good host must be.
There is often, I think, a great hesitancy of inviting people in like that: what might they find there? How well do I, myself, the supposed master of my house, know this mansion? Did I leave the doors unlocked? Are there any demons hiding under a bed or behind a door with sheets over their heads? How might it show it's face? In what glance or gaze or quirk of speech or passing phrase might it be evident in the course of the conversation between you and I?
One’s Craft
The artwork I create has to do something to ones spirit. Otherwise, it is simply decoration. While I am a craftsman, I am not just a craftsman. The same goes with being an artist: while I am an artist, I don't want to be just an artist - to be "just" anything is to be simply performing the mechanics of the thing - going through the motions - without partaking in the spiritual component of whatever action one might be engaged in. It is to be just a mechanic. However, the mechanic as well can transcend his own position to be not just anything; I do not mean to disparage mechanics. Does what you do uplift others? Does it challenge them to step beyond ordinary perception and push expand boundaries and, while you are engaged in your art, do you push yourself to be more open, more expressive and more aware of where your own edges are?
On Marriage
Marriage is a spiritual contract not just between two people but between two souls with the whole of the world as witness to their union. This spiritual contract, this union, is based on trust, commitment, admiration and, most of all, love. This love has no fine print, no conditions, and no murky sub-clauses. It is exactly as it is stated. The two souls entering into this union share a trust of each others intentions and motivations. They are committed to each others spiritual growth as well as to their own. They admire the life that each other leads now, has led and will continue to lead. And they love each other as they are, wholly and completely, not as they could be, as they would like them to be or as they once were. When we love another person fully, we extend our boundaries to include them within our sphere of existence. Their growth process becomes our growth process, their failures and triumphs become our own. We allow that their process may be different than ours and that it has gone on long before we ever entered the picture, but as long as that process is healthy and valid, as long as it allows for love, growth and change and does not create discordance of spirit both within and without, we support and engage it with them. When the growth process closes, when the door of the heart seems to shut, we do not turn our backs but, again, offer support, compassion and the challenge to move beyond such obstacles to a more harmonious and loving existence. There is strength in numbers and in the spiritual union of marriage, a container is created for greater growth and deeper spiritual connection, for a broader experience of life than the two spirits here before us have experienced on their own. The goal of a spiritual life is to live in harmony with the world - to rise as the world rises and set as the setting sun, allowing that all things are one, are dependent upon each other and come from and go back to Spirt. It is wise to enter into a union with one who seeks to support such harmony, to spread love and wisdom and to create a wise and compassionate world. The two spirits, Michael and Violet, have deemed it wise, each other fit as well as themselves, to enter into such a union.
The Soul in Nature
Walking in the woods, sitting alongside a river, surrounded by tall mountains and blanketed by a silver layer of clouds I find myself once again. I find myself sitting, in a pause, loosing myself in the sound of a river rushing past- in the birds, in the reflections upon the ripples of the sky and the leaves of the trees. Walking, the sounds come into my head and leave again as if a thousand conversations. Approaching the river, I hear only the distant murmur. As I get closer that murmur is a sound that is definitely in front of me, significantly more distinct- like a thought coming clear. As I get nearer and nearer the sound becomes like a rushing torrent of words, until I are in the middle of it, standing on a rock, alone, in a valley, surrounded by green on all sides, with the rushing torrent of sound crashing about me and on all sides, tumbling rocks and passing right by with a thousand other places to go and, if I sit for a moment, even if just in my mind- if I listen for just a moment- immerse myself in that rushing crashing tumbling sound of thoughts cascading into one another and let myself go into it, forgetting that there is a destination, forgetting that there is any possible conclusion and simply surrender…. When we walk onwards, with the sound now behind me, there is an unintended cleansed feeling – a clarity and a sense of peace. With the sound of the river fading away behind me like a room of conversations with no conclusions, I feel refreshed.
I need this sense of escape into the mountains- into a world untended and unhindered. With bushes that have not been trimmed, flowers whose seeds were not placed by human hands. Surrounded by rocks that were not carefully positioned along rivers whose course was not chosen by discerning and engineering minds. To be surrounded by the holistic ecology of nature - that dynamically breathing, living being, is to step inside the outside, to embrace that which tries, yearns, to embrace us.