From the Department of Again and Again

I love my morning walks with Trixy the Dog. We climb 250 steps to the top of Bernal Hill and then jog and walk and fetch tennis balls as the sun rises over the San Francisco Bay. In the winter, the bay burns bright with orange and red and as I breathe deeply of the crisp sky, I feel profound gratitude for my life.

I listen to podcasts as we walk, and I recently heard Sharon Salzberg talking about "beginning again" in meditation. She proposed that that the big work is not in sitting down, it is how one begins again on the cushion after spacing out, fantasizing, daydreaming, or worrying.

Over and over and over again.

In this sense, meditation is really a practice in failure resilience: I experience "failure" repeatedly, along with accompanying opportunities to choose to start over.

In my meditation, as in my life, I am endlessly interrupted by urgent and enticing sirens. “Don’t forget to take that file to work!” “Remember you need to pay that bill today!” “Hey, you never called your dad back!”

With more practice, however, I have come to realize that use of the word “failure” is a harsh self-judgment; distraction is a very ordinary and even lovable aspect of being a human being.

As sentient beings we are eminently distractible: perhaps it is a necessary element of curiosity. Our thoughts feel weighty, pregnant, and ripe, and pose incredibly compelling and seductive challenges. To remain present in our bodies requires discipline, attention, and practice.

While it is surprisingly easy to wake up to the present moment by breathing deeply and letting go of things, to continue to stay awake in it, especially in our turgid modern culture, can be very difficult.

Still, with experience and practice, and with amazing support and teaching from my teacher JunPo Dennis Kelly Roshi, I have come to see that my thoughts are in fact weightless and illusory.

As substantial and meaningful as they may seem, when I look at them from a distance, they are mostly revealed to be misleading, trivial or even ridiculous!

I have come to welcome these thought-mines, for each of these intrusions is a gift. I am continuously offered the opportunity to listen, acknowledge, and explore my mind, and then to choose to loop back to the body/place where I am sitting.

When I return, it's important that I am nice to myself.

For much of my life, my failure resilience was negligible: each new stumble and fall was simply more evidence of my long demonstrated inherent sucky-ness. My inner voice was a bully, haranguing me for my missteps and mistakes, and providing ever more fuel for the shame-machine.

Thanks to steady practice and lots of emotional work and attention, I have gradually shifted that voice to one that is gentle, loving, and amused. After a reverie into the future or the past, I now wake up, grin, and whisper to myself:

"Oh Dave, you sweet silly man, welcome home!!! The fire is lit, there's food on the stove, and how ‘bout a nice hot cup of tea?"

I find myself smiling broadly as my old judgment of "failure" shifts, yet again, to "human-ness" or "presence" or simply "being alive."

I worry about the many people I love that still speak to themselves with a harsh and unforgiving voice. Sometimes I will actually hear it out loud, as a friend scolds himself for a mistake.

Hearing this, I can't help but butt in: "Hey please don't be mean to you! You are a good friend of mine, and I stand up for my friends!" They usually smile and pause and smile again, sheepishly. Sometimes I don't think they knew they were saying it at all.

So to all you lovely friends on this glorious Tuesday, I invite you: Bee gentle with yourselves. Bee loving and kind. Bee here now.

Smile, and welcome yourself home!

(October 8, 2019 - On Purpose Newsletter)

Meditation and Starting Anew

Here's one from the Archives.

From the Department of Failures and Beginnings

I often listen to podcasts on my morning walk with Trixy the Dog. Today I heard Sharon Salzberg talking about meditation.

She spoke about "beginning again" in meditation: how the hardest work is not the sitting down and shutting up, it is how one shows up again AFTER spacing out, fantasizing, daydreaming, worrying and the like: starting anew, over and over and over again.

In this sense, meditation is a really a practice in failure resilience.

I sit and experience "failure" repeatedly, and then, because I remain seated and committed to the present moment, I have a chance to choose to start over, to begin anew.

To be sure, failure is strong word to use in this context, and the usage itself leads to the awareness that a critical element of this practice is the tone of the voice with which I welcome myself back. Is it kind and forgiving? Or judgmental and harsh?

Do I welcome myself back , or scold myself for the absence?

For much of my life, my failure resilience was negligible: I interpreted each new stumble and fall as simply more evidence of my long demonstrated inherent sucky-ness. Just more fuel for the grinding shame-machine.

Over time, with practice and attention, I have gradually shifted that internal voice to one that is gentle, loving, amused, and even delighted. After a reverie into the future or the past, I now (usually) wake up and smile:

"Oh Dave, you sweet silly man, welcome home!!! The fire is lit, there’s food on the stove, and here's a nice hot cup of tea!"

As I have become more gentle in my sitting, I often find myself smiling quite a lot. And with each smile the use of the word failure shifts again to "human-ness" or "presence" or just "being alive."

What could be more human to than to lose attention, to slip away for a reverie, and then to reluctantly but gratefully return home.

I worry about the many many people that I love that still speak to themselves with a harsh and unforgiving voice. Sometimes I will even hear the voice out loud, as a friend scolds himself for a mistake.

I usually can't help but butt in: "Hey don't be mean to [that person]. [That person] is a good friend of mine." They usually smile.

So to all you lovely friends on this glorious Tuesday, I invite you, be gentle with yourselves. Be loving and kind. You deserve it.

and here's a favorite poem on the topic.

Nobody Fails at Meditation by Michael Bazzett

Nobody fails at meditation

like I do.

They say,

Note the arrival of thoughts

and allow them to pass through

like clouds crossing a summer sky.

Let judgment go.

But one cloud

is always running

like a woman with a torn dress,

the wind pressing its folds

against her body,

and I suddenly wish

to wheel around on my horse

and thunder back to the farmhouse,

spattering her white frock

with mud as I swing from the saddle

into her trembling arms.

(May 26, 2020 - On Purpose Newsletter)

From the Department of the Willow-Heart

My dharma name in the Hollow Bones Rinzai Zen Order is Yoshin, which means “willow-heart.” I first heard the word many years ago when I started studying jujitsu, since the name of our school is Yoshin Jitsu Kai: the school of the techniques of the willow-heart.

It turns out that Yoshin is the name of a historic lineage of jujitsu, and of course there is a story about that.

A Japanese martial artist and healer decided to go to China to study, knowing that the Chinese have a very old and rich system of health and healing. He moved to a little cabin that overlooked a river. From the window he could see a river willow, with a broad and supple canopy, standing near a mighty oak, tall, broad, and monolithic.

One night a storm arose with fierce and howling winds. He watched the storm from the open window of the cabin, and in particular noticed the two trees.

The willow was taking a beating! It’s limbs and branches whipped and tossed and flailed in the wind, looking like it would be torn apart, while the oak seemed never to move an inch.

He watched for hours, until, in the middle of the night he heard a thunderous crack and then a dull thud. In the morning, he walked out to see what had happened, and he saw the oak was lying in pieces on the ground, the truck having cracked and severed at the top. The tree was destroyed.

Yet when we walked to the willow, he could see that it was perfectly intact! He was stunned, since this was the tree that seemed to get the worst of the storm at first.

He realized there was a great learning in this, that resistance to force can only work to a certain point. After that, as the force increases, and the resistance rises in response, eventually, the greater force will win.

On the other hand, if one learns to be soft and flexible and yielding, even one with much less strength can prevail. He took from this a principle which he applied to his martial arts AND his healing practice.

He then developed a system of fighting and healing based on training to be flexible, supple, yielding, and even gentle, and he called this Yoshin Ryu Jujitsu

In our jujitsu, we train ourselves to maintain our own balance, while disrupting the balance of the opponent. We learn not to attach to any particular move or response, but instead to remain fluid and open to any possibility. We learn to fall down and roll on the ground, even from great height, in a way that allows us to relax and remain soft, and therefore, minimizing injury.

Learning and practicing this art has changed my life in so many ways. I have learned to remain calm and grounded under pressure. I have learned that softness and flexibility are my most powerful abilities.

I have learned how to work with conflict and adversity in all areas of my life. I have applied this above all to my career as a public defender trial lawyer, where I am always representing a person who is in the weaker position in a courtroom where the prosecutors, police, and judges have all the power, and the law and the facts are often adverse.

And, jujitsu gave me my dharma name. When I got my black belt in 2001, I had the kanji for Yoshin tattooed on my upper arm, so when it was time 14 years later to receive a ceremonial dharma name in the zen order, I asked Jun Po if it could be Yoshin, and he agreed.

Little did I know at that time that the idea of the willow-heart would be essential to my evolution and training as a zen priest! More on that next time!

(May 12, 2020 - On Purpose Newsletter)

From the Department of Spring

This is the most beautiful spring of my life.

The flowers are bursting, the air is redolent and clean, and it is so quiet I hear birds far overhead and bees buzzing in the garden.

And, in the same moment, I feel dissonance.

Hey wait a minute, isn't there a catastrophe afoot? Aren't l sad and heavy. Aren't I afraid? What about the kids?

And yet, I feel pure joy and gratitude as I look at an aeonium plurparum blooming yellow cones of splendor. (pictured below)

I am breathless as I examine the tender hanging chandeliers of a Strawberry Tree.

I am rapt when I see a hillside covered with Red Valerian and Scotch Broom and Pride of Madera, so vibrant and determined in their luster.

And then I remember, oh yeah, I am part of nature too.

I am also flowering in this spring.

I am also opening up to the air and the sky and the sun.

I am also alive and brilliant and fertile.

I am, like the flowers, exceedingly temporary: a moment, a pause in the breath of the universe.

I AM the spring. I AM nature.

I AM ONE with all of this.

I am ONE with ALL of this.

And then....

I forget again.

I read the news, I feel afraid and disconnected, my judgment arises.

At times I am hopeless, as if the floor fell out from under me, and I am, like Søren Kierkegaard, desperately treading water over 50,000 fathoms.

And then, I go for a walk and I remember, again, in this endless cycle of remembering and forgetting, of contraction and expansion, or grief and celebration.

I Am Spring.

I am on a mission to learn the names of plants and trees and flowers. I have always had a story that my brain doesn't do that well, that I am not very taxonomically able.

There is some accuracy in this, yet the deeper and harder truth is I never really cared enough to learn.

I saw the plants and flowers as something over there, creatures apart from me like the animals in a zoo. They were not me. But this is my spring to start new stories for myself, and I am learning the names of things.

I hope you can all get out for a walk today, even in those places where spring is just beginning.

Because you are Spring too.

And we need you.

I will end with a favorite poem.

The Peace of Wild Things

by Wendell Berry

Listen

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Bee well and enjoy the spring dear friends, and if you have a favorite plant or flower or tree to share, please write!

(April 28, 2020 - On Purpose Newsletter)

From the Department of Scales

Like so many of us these days, I am on a lot of calls.

There's work, with calls to clients, family, expert witnesses, lawyers, investigators, so many calls.

Then there are the community calls, with The ManKind Project, Hollow Bones Zen Sangha, and the Freedom Within Prison Project, among others.

And there are the family calls, which includes blood relatives and chosen family, and so many more.

The question "How are You?" has become heavy and tentative.

There's a moment, a pregnant pause, where I fear what the other person will say.

I already know people who have lost siblings, whose parents are shut in and alone across the country, who have lost their work and income, who have had non-covid medical emergencies, who are having trouble in their relationships, and who are really worried about the kids.

It's such a huge spectrum of human experience.

Some folks really seem to have the hang of this thing. They seem positive and hopeful, and put things into the "big perspective" of evolution and growth. Some are delighted to be at home, freed of the desk job, and learning new things.

Others are feeling lonely and trapped. They are pulling their hair out trying to homeschool small kids, they are mute with loss and grief.It's such a range, and it feels like I have that whole span of feelings inside me too, and it's all shifting moment to moment, and day to day.

I notice that I want things to be linear. I want to "work my way" through the five stages of grief, and get to the acceptance part already!

I want to get to the big epiphanies about the future possibilities for humankind, the silver linings. Certainly there are some, and sometimes I get a glimpse and I feel hopeful and optimistic.

But then I have a day where I am simply wrecked. I can barely get out of bed. I don't want to see anyone or call anyone or take the dog for a walk. I want to go deep in the cave.

Then it shifts again. And again, and again, and again.

The truth is that none of this is linear.There are no straight lines through grief and loss, and no clear vectors to healing and evolution. I want it so badly to be otherwise, because then, I tell myself, if we just take it take by day, one day at a time, we will get through this. This will pass.

Instead it is like the musical scale. There is a way in which the notes are in a line: Do Re Me Fa So La Ti Do.

Then there is music, and right now the music is pretty jangly. It's hurting my ears and I can't make sense of it.

My mind strains for the patterns, strains for a sense of the future, of any future, yet the music is coming through a million channels, and all at once. I get caught in Phillip Glass-ian loops of repetition, and melancholy minor keys, and bright upbeat tail-wagging majors, and sometimes I can't hear any music at all, just a cacophany of kids banging on pots and pans.

I want there to be way straight through the Stages of Grief, but the stages are neither linear nor durable. The anger rises, then fades, then rises again. The denial becomes massive, and then shrinks. I am bargaining all the time. Depression is fog that rolls in over the hills in the morning, and then recedes again when the sun come out. Acceptance arises, and then can be fleeting.

I am learning that when I ask The Question, how are you, I need to be prepared for anything, anywhere on the scale, and make space for the experience this person is having right now in this moment, and for the experience I am having right now in this moment.

I prepare myself to listen, to really listen, with my whole body and heart, and without judgment or analysis.

I allow myself to let go of my need for patterns and lines and clarity, and to embrace the messiness of this experience, just like when we sit in circle and share our deepest truths.

It is all welcome, I tell myself, it is all a part of this glorious and inscrutable and heart-wrenching symphony of aliveness.

I feel joy, sadness, fear, shame, anger, confusion. I feel numbness, despair and hope.

It is all welcome.

I am listening with open ears and an open heart.

I am listening without putting it all into lines and patterns.

I am listening with curiosity and not-knowing.

I am listening.

(April 14, 2020 - On Purpose Newsletter)

From the Department of Repose

I am not good at answering the question: What is your favorite _________?

It's just really hard for me to just pick one thing.

I am an Enneagram 7 for one thing, which means I love novelty and experience and trying everything. I don't have a favorite ice cream, or I'd like to taste them all.*[*Except for coffee: Phils's small Ether with cream. 100%}

Yet for the last thirty years or so whenever somebody has asked me what is my favorite book, I pretty much always say Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner.

It's a story of a relationship, and the west, and it's beautiful and wrenching and exquisitely written.

The title is a mining term, and it means "the steepest angle at which a sloping surface formed of a particular loose material is stable."

From a personal standpoint, imagine you are climbing a steep sand dune. For every step up you lose ground as well. The dune is getting steeper and steeper, but you find a spot where you are stable not sliding. Not moving up or down, in repose. The slant of the hill is the angle of repose.

After a week of adrenaline, and a week of messy, I am finding this week a new stability and calm. I am delicately feeling my way into the angle of repose of this pandemic.

Some days I still slip down a few feet, and in that moment when the ground gives it is terrifying, and then I find my footing again and my balance and I stick to the hill, like an ant.

Or maybe cling is a fairer word.

This is what made me think of the book's title walking the hill the other day. Repose has always meant rest or tranquility to me, but in this term, and in the book, it has much more tension.

There is no rest on the side of the slope, whether it is the slope of sand, or the slope of relationship, or the slope of parenting. it's a constant effort, an intense concentration to keep it all together, and always feeling like it's about to give way.

I'm worried because I can feel myself getting tired. And I fear the angle is going to get a lot steeper soon.

My practice and my gut both tell me the best thing to do is to relax and breathe and soften and open and become as light as I can.

I know there will be a lurching slip again, and in turn there will be an adjustment, a conversation with the slope, a renegotiation with reality, and in turn, a new angle of repose will appear.

Someday, soon I hope, there will be some rest in the repose as well.

(April 7, 2020 - On Purpose Newsletter)

From the Department of Messy

Here in San Francisco, we are on day 16 of shelter in place with at least a month to go.

From the Department of Messy

I have been feeling messy for a couple days now. As in, I am an honest for goodness Hot Mess.

It's becoming quite clear that this whole pandemocalypse thing is really not agreeing with me.

I have noticed the arising of projection and ingratitude, especially as it concerns my teen-age roommates. I have noticed my listless and lazy focus, such that I can barely even watch TV. My "productivity" is greatly reduced and getting lawyer work done at home is very challenging.

I am at once eagerly hopeful for evolution to unfold, and then utterly fatalistic and hopeless for our species.

It's pretty messy in here.

One of the challenges I face when I am feeling messy is that I tend to hide out. I don't want to be seen like this, first of all, and I also don't want to add my downer-ville to someone else's plate. I get embarrassed by my messiness, and the controlling part of me wants to dismiss it, repress it, and above all, pretend like everything is ok.

Thankfully, I have been working on this a lot in the last ten years of training with The ManKind Project, and in my zen work with Mondo Zen/Hollow Bones Zen Cyber Sangha.

This morning I got up early to sit with the sangha, which is really to say I had been tossing and turning for a couple hours not really sleeping when it was finally time to get up. Indeed, it was a relief to get out of bed and take a hot shower and try my best to Wake Up.

There were about 20 of us on the call, from all over the globe, and after doing our morning service, we read from a book of commentary from Junpo Denis Kelly.

He asked:

"Are you walking around in a state of receptivity and openness? Are you the embodiment of unreasonable, wise, compassionate, joyful consciousness?

If not, your story needs to change."

The truth about my messy is that it is closed and unreceptive. It is fearful and projecting. It is reactive and critical. The truth about my messy is that it isolates me, or rather, when I let it tell the story, "I" isolate me.

So today I am choosing a different story.

I am choosing to open, to expand, to trust, to share, and to be vulnerable.

To be sure, I am doing this in my usual messy way, but I am forgiving the mess, accepting that its all part of this process, and finding all the parts of this situation that I CAN agree with.

Like spring flowers, and bird-song, and long walks, and blueberry pancakes, and breathing and love.

As Junpo says:

Zen is training. Zen is discipline. Zen is difficult. Zen is arduous. Zen is stern. Zen is ordinary. Zen is about stopping, remembering, and starting again.

Over and Over.

Here I go again.

Bee well dear friends, and stay connected! There are a ton of MKP Zoom online Igroups happening!!

(March 31, 2020 - On Purpose Newsletter)

From the Dept of Smiling All Night

I am still working on getting my writing voice back, and the pandemic has not made this easier.

Still, I am writing again, making myself sit down long enough to the words out. It's hard. I am super distracted, restless, unfocused. Even watching TV is a challenge.

And, there have been moments of profound beauty.

From the Dept of Smiling All Night

The Friday night before Shelter in Place began, I walked down to the grocery store to get few last minute things, and I stopped to talk with a neighbor who lives outside.

HIs name is Bob and we have talked a few times before.

He lives in the alcove entryway of a defunct Latin bar, and he uses a wheelchair. He is very clear to talk to, and I have heard him say more than once "I used to have a life. I never thought this could happen to me."

This night I wanted to let him know that rain was coming, supposedly a lot. He had no idea, as, he said, he doesn't see the news or hear updates at all. He is like a pioneer with the weather, and just looks up to see what's coming.

I realized he probably didn't know about the pandemic either, so I gave him that update as well.

I asked him if he ever sleeps inside, and he he said not since 2017 after he got out of the hospital. He wanted to stay outside.

I was worried about the rain, and I asked if he needed anything, like a tarp or some plastic, and he said, yeah that would be great actually.

I got him some chicken and a root beer, as he requested, at the store, and dropped it off on the way back. I told him I'd go get the tarp.

At home Enzo and I put together some stuff that seemed useful, like a tarp, and a big umbrella, and some handi-wipes and papertowels and a gallon of water all in an Ikea bag so he could keep his stuff dry.

He was really stoked when I came back this time, and eagerly accepted the gifts.

I was squatting down on my haunches, yogi-style, and talking with him and I started to feel really sad.

I thought about the empty rooms in our house, and wondered if I should invite him home.

But I didn't.

It seemed like a pretty complex thought, and definitely needed some discussion with my family. I let it go.

I apologized to him for not doing more, and he looked at me deep into my eyes.

He said "I see anxiety in you. You're worrying about me. You're thinking I'm not going to be alright."

Impressed by his emotional intelligence, I said, yeah, you're right, I feel guilty.

His eyes caught mine, and he said to me very directly:

"I want you to know that what you are doing is Enough.

It's Enough Dave.

Just by showing me care and concern and by talking to me like a regular person, that's Enough.

I can't tell you how much that means to me.

So thank you, I was having a hard day, and now because of you, I'll be smiling all night."

I burst into tears as his words went deep to the heart of my inner doubts and my fears and my old story that whatever I do, it will never be enough and it won't make a difference. That none of it really makes a difference.

That old story.

I sat with him a while longer, and then I said good night and headed home.

I could feel the rain coming in, and it did give me a moment of concern, but I remembered what Bob said, and after that I was the one who was smiling.

(March 29, 2020 - On Purpose Newsletter)