when you get bad news

What do you listen to? In my twenties, it was the Allman Brothers, Tied to a Whipping Post. However, this one by the Stranglers just came on, and it's hitting home tonight. I interpret the "she" as life.

Life shows no mercy

Everyday you're working like a slave
Sweating buckets hoping that you get it right
Will it be as tough tomorrow?
Have to wait and see
Life shows no mercy

Everyday your love is getting warmer
Just look at her and love her did you get it right
Will she soothe your brow with kisses only meant for thee?
She'll show no mercy
She'll show no mercy

And when you hold her close to you
Just when you're feeling good it's true
Life shows no mercy

Life shows no mercy
Life shows no mercy
Life shows no mercy

Everybody has some secret wishes
Just keep your fingers crossed maybe they'll all come true
But don't worry if they just remain a fantasy
Life shows no mercy

Everybody seems the same all over
The search is on for love and comfort constantly
If it comes your way tomorrow count yourself lucky

Life shows no mercy
Life shows no mercy

And when you hold her close to you
Just when you're feeling good it's true

Life shows no mercy
Life shows no mercy
Life shows no mercy
Life shows no mercy

Crack the code, solve the crime

"I'm lying on the floor of my room in a great deal of pain and a pool of blood. I was trying to chase down a wood tick. Being shot is not as bad as I thought it might be," begins FBI Agent Dale Cooper.

Cooper exhibits second tier tendencies in all his interactions as he attempts to solve the mystery of Laura Palmer's murder in Twin Peaks. E was pontificating about this point last night, while we ate our slices of Cosmic Karma and sipped our Kashmir Ale. I think he's right.

First of all, though Agent Cooper is very bright and must deal with the towns-people and the local law enforcement agents, people who are all at various levels of development, he never condescends to anyone. He meets them where they are. He's a keen observer. He doesn't exaggerate facts. He analyzes his dreams with care, as if they are offering a mysterious code which, if cracked, will help him solve the crime. He rejoices in simple things, a cup of black coffee. A piece of blueberry pie.

As Cooper discovers, hidden beneath the peaceful veneer of Twin Peaks runs a poison thread of violence and degenerate moral enterprise that connects the entire community. The murderer, Bob, is not a person, but an owl, a breeze, a shape-shifting force whose actions cause untold suffering, and maintain the illusion of separation from the Ground of Being. Bob is Samsara.

Consider "Coop's" spontaneous litany of desire, while lying on his hotel room floor after having been shot at close range -- an experience he describes as similar to having three nine-pound bowling balls dropped on your chest from a height of twenty feet. Waiting for help to arrive, and hoping that his electronic recording device is set for voice-activation (it is), he calmly addresses Diane, back at his home office.

"I would like, in general, to treat people with much more care and respect.
I would like to climb a tall hill, not too tall, and sit in the cool grass, not too cool, and feel the sun on my face.
I wish I had cracked the Lindberg kidnapping case.
I would like very much to make love to a beautiful woman I have genuine affection for.
And of course, it goes without saying that I would like to visit Tibet.
I wish the Dalai Lama could return, I wish they could get their country back.
All in all, a very interesting experience."

Plus, it's a hell of a way to kill a wood tick.

neat, that matches my wallpaper!

A 15th century painting on silk depicting the Lohan Chudapanthaka, a Buddhist monk, sold for about $1.6 million in Sotherby’s “The Arts of the Buddha” sale in September.

-- From an LA Times photo essay on Buddhist icons that interior decorators are using as tchotchkes. Really expensive tchotchkes.

a remarkable book

Grace and Grit:
Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber

I finished this book over an hour ago, and my eyes still sting from crying. At one point E caught me sobbing with the book held open before me, trying to blow my nose, wipe my tears, and yet not stop reading. He silently lay down close beside me on the couch, and sweetly wrapped his arms around me.

Although you know from the subtitle how this love story is going to end, at the close, the circumstances around Treya's conscious death are still capable of surprising the reader, so I let myself surrender to the emotional waves as they washed over me. I felt like I was receiving a transmission from a high spiritual teacher, and I was a little overwhelmed, emotionally. But...a conscious death, without fear! I am in awe of their experience. As a dear friend of theirs says at the passing-over ceremony a few days later, "Treya taught us how to live, and she taught us how to die."

I've been afraid to read this. I could tell that E was a bit trepidatious when I became enthralled with it earlier this week. Yet I can be fearless. So what was keeping me from diving into this rich and nakedly honest, human story? Common cowardliness. Maybe I sensed that once I read it I would be called to respond with greater courage in the face of fear, illness and pain. Since the book reads as both a story about Ken and Treya's love and also as an introduction to the perennial philosophy, I feel like I've been enveloped in a sacred teaching all week.

What strikes me most is the story's intensely personal nature -- I mean, Ken publishes many of Treya's journal entries and her keen observations about her advancing cancer. We're privy to some hairy details. At the same time, it's the tale of every one of us. Falling madly in love, tasting human suffering, excruciating illness, and then getting torn from the paradise we've discovered. And finally, dissolving or being pulled, prepared or not, into the mystery of death.

And Treya's negotiations and discoveries about how to surf life's alternating patterns I find extraordinary, such as witnessing her fighting the cruel onslaught of the disease and simultaneously surrendering to a state of grace and acceptance, observing the simple dichotomies that make up life such as male and female, doing and being, day and night, as well coming to terms with what she views as her relentless search for meaning.

When I had finally finished, E looked tenderly at my swollen eyes and asked if I was glad I read it. It feels as if I've been given a great gift. I'm not as afraid (am I afraid at all?) of death. I'm more determined to deepen my spiritual practices, and to observe every moment, to love more. To really live every splendid moment in the kind of joy that Treya felt.

freeing up energy

Had an insight last night about moving into second tier. I used to spend a lot of energy either defending my position in any given argument, or probing to see where someone was wrong. It sounds worse than it was. I wasn't ever mean (of course, I would think so, right?), just always alert to perceiving the differences between me and whoever.

Now, however, I find myself automatically looking for the similarities; how we're the same. I notice it even while watching political pundits discuss this presidential campaign. Suddenly it's way easier to see other points of view. What used to enrage me now only slightly amuses or annoys. Yes I'm talking about the Fox network.

I don't know, maybe this is simply maturity and not second tier thinking. Whatever it is I can feel an almost visceral relief. Probing and being constantly vigilant for differences is like holding a rubberband in ready-to-fire position. It takes energy.

Shadow work has helped. That's the point of it, to free up energy. It's just that saying it is so different than actually experiencing it.

Earthship disaster

Here's where I peer clearly into the not-so-distant past at the earthship disaster. E and I walked onto the scene like Bambi v. Godzilla. We were Bambi. However, there is no bad guy here, although I used to think so. No Godzilla, just a pathetically dysfunctional situation involving a retro-romantic vision of sustainable living, and a couple of libertarian yahoos. That would be us.

To begin with, E and I committed sin numero uno: we made assumptions. I know! Looking back, having recently removed my retro-romantic lenses, it's easy to see where and when things began to go awry. But at that time, I was so psyched to leap into a new living situation that seemed to provide a lot of solutions to the problems of modern life as I saw it. So ready, that when E and I took our first step inside the first earthship we visited, we basically decided right there on the spot that we would like to build one and live in it.

And we figured, why not build and live right there in that very community? The people were cool, at least the ones we'd met so far, and since it was legal to build alternative housing there (at least to build an earthship), it would save us the hassle of looking for an appropriate piece of land where the building codes allowed for alternative building. We'd done a bit of research and knew that could be a major obstacle.

science + religion = not all bad

In The Marriage of Sense and Soul, KW talks about science and religion co-existing. This has something do with my newly-developed allergy to New Age thinking, which is really just that -- thinking. Void of a serious practice, you simply believe whatever you want, and if you focus on it hard enough, voila! You make it come true. New Age is the smorgasbord of religion. In fact, it's a smorgasbord of science too. Just look at What the Bleep, and its very partial very suspect scientific basis. A little of this, a little of that, whatever works. Fill your plate and stuff your face. It's all good.

Except it's not. Distinctions are important. Distinctions are necessary. It's confusing unless you know AQAL, or the Integral model. I'm trying to work this out because until very recently, I wasn't acknowledging the use of religion, or the beauty, or the power in it.

practicing pure perception

Lama Surya Das (whose mother often refers to as 'the Deli Lama') is discussing Dharma in a chapter called 'Seeing the Buddha in All: The Practice of Pure Perception.' This morning I got to practice seeing the Buddha in E's swollen tonsils, and in the kitty puke on the wood floor.

On my way to Greenlife for lemons and vitamin C I was doing alright, until a little white-haired old lady pulled out in front of me going 20 mph. I couldn't do it.

The question is how far can any of us extend ourselves toward including one and all in our unconditional loving hearts? Can we love and respect even those whose actions or personalities we don't happen to like?

The dialog in my head was going like this:

Me: Hel-OO! We're on the street now!
Her: You must learn to slow down, and I'm here to remind you.
Me: I don't give a rat's ass. I'm on a mission here. Step on it.
Her: Lala-lala-laa, I don't notice you in the rearview mirror tailing me.
Me: I've got two puking cats and a sick boyfriend and I'm not in the mood.

etc., etc., etc.

Sigh. Practice. Comes from the Greek word, praktikos "practical." The Dharma is practical.

What are you reading?

I hate reading online. However, I admit I do it more and more. I'm into speed reading blog posts the way you might scarf popcorn during a movie. And since discovering Mr K's Used Books, which is five minutes from home, I'm getting into real books again.

Books I've started over the past month or so include Awakening the Buddha Within, by Lama Surya Das; Grace and Grit, The Marriage of Sense and Soul, by Ken Wilber, and Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

Moby Dick was recommended during college, but since no teacher ever actually assigned it I never bothered. Melville's character sketches are odd and funny, and yeah, I know, it's a boy's book. We've just left Boston Harbor and there have already been fart jokes.