Delate Wawa

The hardest thing in this world, is to live in it.

Be brave.

– Buffy the Vampire Slayer


(Photo of young Iranians standing against the forces of autocracy courtesy of Samoel Safaie and Wikimedia Commons.)

Cross X

I've been listening to a podcast about cults, the primary sin of which (as well as many so-called mainstream congregations, including some that claim to teach Zen), is clerical abuse. Regular readers will recognise this as one of my hot buttons.

The hosts of the show (Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and Manipulation) are both cult survivors – one of a Mormon offshoot, the other of a radical Protestant church. Their personal experience lends valuable insight into the journey their guests have made to end up in front of their microphones.

The manner in which larger society receives cult survivors also comes up. I find this particularly interesting, since it's clear to me that if you drill deep and with unflinching honesty, a whole schedule of self-destructive behaviours – cult membership, suicide, abusive relationships, depression, personality disorders, addiction, most crime – usually originate in social violence.

And former cult members, like spousal abuse survivors, are prime targets for lazy critics. You were weak, stupid, cowardly, you gave tacit consent, and therefore you remain entirely responsible for any misdeeds you committed, or enabled others to commit.

The reflexive question survivors typically face is, "Why didn't you leave?" Moral equivalent of Groucho's "answer yes or no, do you or do you not still beat your wife?"; this challenge is impossible to answer without incriminating yourself. The question itself reads unfinished; it wants "…you idiot" at the end.

But as the hosts of Trust Me point out, it's much more productive to flip it:

"Why did you stay?"

Implied judgement is still there, but whereas the first query rings with fault and blame, this one accepts the equal possibility of decency: Why were you loyal? Why did you commit to this? What did you invest? Who were you afraid to hurt or disappoint? What dissuaded you from acting in your own interest?

Like all penetrating insights, this one is applicable to a lot more than just cults. In Zen we're taught that our true motivation for any act, casual or momentous, is almost always occult; layer upon layer of mind functions work in the dark, so that by the time thought hardens into action, we may be entirely ignorant of its origins.

Nowhere is this more evident than when I confront others in judgement.

Worst of all: when I stand in judgement of myself.

Therefore, henceforward, when interrogating others on past decisions, instead of asking "Why didn't you leave?", I will undertake to ask, "Why did you stay?".

Even when the accused and Crown Counsel are the same person.


(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

Chemistry

Here's a brief rumination from an anonymous blogger about a topic I've raised here before:

https://przxqgl.hybridelephant.com/2017/04/21/depression-4/

Reading this, I'm reminded that my own depression never "just happens". It's a response to targeted violence from others around me, and common among those who take refuge in a spiritual path. Because when we pill depression away, we green-light further abuse, typically on grounds that our society profits in some way from the consequences.

I'm on record as endorsing the treatment of depression with meds. I also endorse plaster casts for broken arms, but I don't pretend broken arms are the result of an innate cerebral dysfunction; even less that the occasional need for a cast indicates disability.

Yet the medicalisation of depression implies both. When I question this, I often hear that depression patients are a kind of evolutionary beta release; we're just not bundled with the latest DNA upgrade that allows us to function productively in a society whose survival relies on toughness and insensitivity.

This in spite of the fact that it's the animalistic members of the human family who are by definition the atavists.

Thus my various intellectual reactions to objections that the nation will fall unless citizens are permitted to abuse one another, none of which are, "Oh, I see – carry on, then."

So check out the post linked above. My brother's two paragraphs are short and to the point. At minimum, they prove I'm not the only one who's noted a touch of self-service in our culture's take on this matter.


(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

Mending The Roof

After 20 years of this I know that practice is not like mending a roof and now the roof doesn't leak. It's more like patching a roof and now it doesn't leak there anymore. With each subsequent sit you patch another leak, until sooner or later you're replacing that first patch again, and then the rest, and placing still more new ones.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

We don't mend things in this practice. We practice mending things. This isn't why they call it "practice", but from now on it's why I do.

For some this open-endedness is a hard truth. It leads some non-Zenners to reject our religion out of hand, on the grounds that it's unproductive. I've tried pointing out that it has this in common with everything else – that material productivity is ephemeral at best, in all contexts – but they tend to defend their thesis by defining their terms very narrowly. ("My family life isn't unproductive. My wife and kids make me happy." I sincerely hope so… but your investment won't return any longer or better than mine. This statistic greatly disturbs some folks, in a culture that encourages us to view achievement as a thing that somehow outlives the achiever.)

All of which is old news for any Zen student of average smugness. So it's a bit galling that many of those think practice can change your fundamental nature: stop pain from hurting, loss from evoking grief, discomfort and lack of control from generating fear and anger. The patches you lay today will remain in place forever if you practice properly, they insist. Eventually you'll have a whole roof.

Or to put it scientifically, that web of random gravitational attraction holding in momentary proximity a squirming conglomeration of volatile components, none of which is a roof, will become a roof.

The only roof in the universe, no less. Because that's the power of a single human being and its mighty attitude.

And so the eternal issue of why practice comes up again. As we face the daily failure and futility of this existence – the fact that the register of paths we didn't take is multiplying hourly – we start to feel like frauds. We aren't buddhas. We don't have control of our emotions and reactions. We're still getting angry and sad and disheartened. We aren't sitting enough, or right, or maybe at all, sometimes.

In these moments I try to stop beating myself up for not being fixed. To look beyond complaints that my progress isn't permanent, my product isn’t perfect, and my monkery hasn't made me greater than the human being I was when I started.

Bit much to ask innit, in a universe where none of those things are possible.

But I can nail a mean patch now. I can bang down others as well, at standard human speed, with standard human results.

After which the roof is less broken, even if it isn't fixed.

If not this, what would you have me do?


Fondest compliments to the Nation of Seekers. This thing we do isn't easy, but neither is anything else.



(Photo courtesy of Sergeant Gustavo Olgiati, US Army; the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service; and Wikimedia Commons.)

A Bit Too Close To Home

(A meme from Zen Twitter.)

Good Article on Depression

It's old now – 2012 – but still entirely germane. In a nutshell, Psychology Today author Alison Escalante's position is that depression is a logical response to environment, not a medical disorder. And as I've often mentioned here, that's my belief as well.

Says Dr. Escalante:

"When we think of depression as irrational and unnecessary suffering, we stigmatize people and rob them of hope. But when we begin to understand that depression, at least initially, happens for a good reason we lift the shame. People with depression are courageous survivors, not damaged invalids."

Have a look:

We’ve Got Depression All Wrong. It’s Trying to Save Us.


(Photo courtesy of JJ Harrison and Wikimedia Commons.)

Street Level Zen: Strength

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”

Ernest Hemingway

(Photo of welded saw blades courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

Good Song: Don't Judge a Life

If you don't know John Gorka, you should know John Gorka.

Few artists sing the human heart like John. A number of his songs sum up affecting moments of my life in ways that not only people my isolation, they help me understand what happened.

But in this case he's addressing a wider problem. The immediate topic is fellow poet and good friend Bill Morrissey, who possessed much the same gift as John's, had much the same sort of career – ignored by the machine, adored by initiates – and died in 2011 from complications of a dissolute life.

An Amazon reviewer who knew Bill quoted him from a conversation they'd had:

"Most everybody knows that I've had some rough sledding for the last few years, including my well-known battle with the booze. A couple of years ago I was diagnosed as bipolar and I am on medication for depression, but sometimes the depression is stronger than the medication.

"When the depression hits that badly, I can't eat and I can barely get out of bed. Everything is moving in the right direction now, and throughout all of this I have continued to write and write and write."

And then he was gone.

Don't Judge a Life – bookend to Peter Mayer's Japanese Bowl, spinning the issue from first to second person – is a reminder we all need on a daily basis. I particularly like this part:

Reserve your wrath for those who judge
Those quick to point and hold a grudge
Take them to task who only lead
While others pay, while others bleed

Readers with a solid base in Christian ethics will instantly recognise the source of this counsel. The same precept in the Buddhist canon is a little less explicit, but our teachings on bodhisattva nature clearly endorse and require it.

And both faiths stand firmly on the last verse.

DON'T JUDGE A LIFE
by John Gorka

Don't judge a life by the way it ends
Losing the light as night descends
For we are here and then we're gone
Remnants to reel and carry on

Endings are rare when all is well
Yes and the tale easy to tell
Stories of lives drawn simplified
As if the facts were cut and dried

Don't judge a life as if you knew
Like you were there and saw it through
Measure a life by what was best
When they were better than the rest

Reserve your wrath for those who judge
Those quick to point and hold a grudge
Take them to task who only lead
While others pay, while others bleed

Tapping the keys in a life of rhyme
Ending the tune and standard time
Silence fills the afternoon
A long long way to gone too soon

Don't judge a life by the way it ends
Losing the light as night descends
A chance to love is what we've got
For we are here and then
We're not

(Photo courtesy of Jos van Vliet and Wikimedia Commons.)

Good Video: Suic!de and Ment@l He@lth by Oliver Thorn

As I've mentioned in past years, August has by a series of dependent co-arising become Suicide Month here on Rusty Ring. Along with depression, isolation, and alienation, it's a topic I often contemplate, as being an epidemic our culture both militantly ignores and wilfully misattributes. (That is, refuses to take full responsibility for.)

So, this being August, and a sangha sister having some time ago alerted me to his worthwhile and relevant talent, I rate it time to introduce readers not yet privy to my man Oliver Thorn.

Olly, as his legion of fans call him, has earned a legion of fans through his Philosophy Tube channel on YouTube. I suspect I'm not alone in appreciating his steady, well-informed leftist responses to the rightwing conventional wisdom of our era. Olly's commentary is better than balanced; it's rational, amiably sardonic, and self-mocking.

And I never trust a person who trusts himself.

Also – big surprise – it turns out Olly has a history of suicidal tendencies. Because the dumb and brutal don't suffer from that. Which tells you most of what you need to know about that responsibility I mentioned above.

Olly's admirers learned about his relationship with despair something less than a year ago, when he uploaded the above video. The man's raw courage is breath-taking, and while this particular post bears little witness to the research and humour that's earned him his rabid (and apparently largely male) following, I suspect I'm not alone in considering it one of his best.

If you've had suicidal tendencies, or someone you care about does, by all means treat yourself to Oliver Thorn's globally public self-interrogation.

Which is all of you. So hop to it.

For the rest, bear in mind Robin's Rule of Reason: "Killing yourself because everyone else is crazy is unskilful."

I Want, I Fear, I Surrender

I learned this meditation from AJ Smith of Restoration Church, an urban Evangelical congregation in Philadelphia featured on Gimlet's Startup podcast. In a moment of self-doubt and uncertainty, AJ engages this mantra, which I gather is fairly common to seekers on his path.

"I want, I fear, I surrender" has a definite Insight ring, don't you think?

If "surrender" seems a little New Age-y, we can always substitute "accept". That formula you could easily sell as straight from the Ancestors, and none would be the wiser. (Hey, wouldn't be the first time.)

Anyway, I think this is a powerful meditation for those moments when you're paralysed by anxiety. Or just as a technique for confronting the koan of anatta.


(Photo courtesy of Nagesh Jayaraman and Wikimedia Commons.)

Gratitude Kyôsaku

"All you single people who think you'd be happy if you were married, ask a married person.

"All you married people who think you'd be happy if you were single, ask a single person."

Ajahn Brahm


("Korean thanksgiving day night [Fractal art]" courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

Addiction

If you'd told me when I was 22 that the day would come when I would cherish my ex-girlfriends, I would have called you mad.

As a young man, I did relationships like a drug. Heroin, to be specific. I loved hard, like diamonds, and lost harder. I wore rejection like a crown of thorns, bled from it like stigmata, dragged it across the earth like the Holy Cross. Cowardice, caprice, indifference, were feminine vagaries I could not forgive.

I was the ex-boyfriend from hell.

I don't know what changed. I didn't hear from my ex-girlfriends for years, and then I did. And I was ecstatic, like a pilgrim who falls to his knees on the far edge of the desert, weeping for the pain, and laughing for the weeping.

No-one was more surprised than I.

So perhaps, sometimes, even I grow up.

Perhaps even heal.

My ex-girlfriends are interesting, caring, engaging women, and a gift to my life. They have great husbands, brilliant children, and there is nothing I wouldn't do for any of them.

There's no word for this unexpected love. It's not possessive, like a lover's, or exclusive, like a brother's, or conditional, like a friend's.

It just is.

And whatever it is, it brings me endless joy.


(Adapted from Rough Around the Edges: A Journey Around Washington's Borderlands, copyright RK Henderson. Photo courtesy of Peter Dowley and Wikimedia Commons.)

You Damn Well Can Do Something About It

This week I encountered a piece of apparent fluff from The Stranger, Seattle's edgier (or maybe just more sophomoric) alternative newspaper. And as often happens in The Stranger, it turned out to be hard-hitting insightful fluff.

A Playlist for the Brokenhearted is a Valentine's Day laundry list of good hurtin' songs for the damaged, courtesy of Sean Nelson. (By the way, Sean, if you see this: pretty much the entire Magnetic Fields catalogue. Not just Smoke and Mirrors. I Don't Want to Get Over You. I Don't Believe You. You Must Be Out Of Your Mind. I Don't Believe in the Sun. Seriously. Throw a dart.)

Seems like a throwaway premise, until you start the half-page preamble, which turns out to be an extended Zen contemplation on a "little morsel of non-insight" that crushed people are often thrown:

"The past is past. Nothing you can do about it now."

Regular readers know that facile responses to suffering are one of my detonators. And the writer goes on to vivisect this one with literary power, even citing at one point an early work by Alan Watts. (Is Nelson a Zenner? He writes like one. Not a Baby Boomer Western Zen "When Things Fall Apart" mandarin, but a gritty younger guru-sceptic "Hardcore Zen" type, from our invisible-but-still-next generation.)

The text amounts to a didactic consideration of the philosophical ramifications of love – something the Buddha suggested we'd be better off just not doing. But we're gonna do it, since it's our nature. It's also about forgiveness – of others, of ourselves, of love itself. To which end he offers his mixtape, as a means to revisit and reanalyse the reader's specific train wreck.

So I'll just let you savour it yourself. There's much to appreciate, even if the playlist itself turns out to be beyond your tastes or knowledge. (Again, you'll find the Stranger article here.)

In the meantime, I'd like to drop a bomb of my own:

You damn well can do something about it.

As William Faulkner famously said, "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."

Yeah, the events – and often the people – that hurt you have fled into the past, where you can't reach them.

But the suffering is right here and right now. Where you can totally kick its butt.

The fact that Zen is all about here and now leads some to imagine it means ignoring the wrongs and wounds of the past; to insist they're not alive, not important, not still banging around out there causing suffering in all directions.

If that were so, Zen would be a pointless New Age pipe dream.

So let me be perfectly clear: you damn well can do something about the pain, regardless of what caused it or when. You can make it bearable, which is the same as declawing it. You can even turn it into insight, forgiveness, fulfilment, contentment. And in a very concrete sense, you can go back into the past, to the place where the past lives, and pull it out by the roots.

Many paths will take you there, but I advocate zazen as a good start and the foundation of a lifetime practice.

I also advocate Zen and Buddhist insight into the origin and nature of emotional pain.

Most of all, I advocate awakening to the fundamental nature of reality and our own existence.

It works.

Peace and progress to all brother and sister seekers.


(Art from Sean's article in The Stranger.)

Everything Doesn't Happen For A Reason

A few weeks ago a friend directed me to Everything Doesn't Happen For A Reason, by Tim Lawrence. It's attracted an enthusiastic following online, and since August has become the traditional time for Rusty Ring to address such topics, I figure this is my opening.

Tim's central hypothesis – you gotta love writers who state their thesis right in the title – is also a primary Zen principal, but his objective trends rather more to the negative than affirmative.

Specifically, he's that tired of grieving people being told they're "suffering for a reason", that it's all part of some great compassionate plan, that "God never gives you more than you can handle."

"That's the kind of bullshit that destroys lives," he says. "And it is categorically untrue."

Preach, brother. The problem with the "everything happens for a reason" crowd, aside from their faulty analysis, is that they lay a giant trip on the injured, just when their resistance is low. Now they're dumb, weak – hell, even ungrateful – as well.

Tim goes on to finger the origin of this nonsense:

...our culture has treated grief as a problem to be solved, an illness to be healed, or both. In the process, we've done everything we can to avoid, ignore, or transform grief. As a result, when you're faced with tragedy you usually find that […] you're surrounded by platitudes.

…In so doing, we deny [sufferers] the right to be human. [My emphasis.]

It's a hallmark of some worldviews to meet dukkha with weapons-grade denial. If you insist the Universe is ruled by a benevolent force, or that a given socio-political system is self-correcting, you'll immediately bang your skull on the titanium grille of the ever-oncoming First Noble Truth. Then you'll have to abandon all positive ends and exhaust your remaining intellectual capital on explaining why bad things keep happening in your Dictatorship of Infinite Good.

Therefore, for the benefit of all sentient beings, Ima say it right out loud:

Life is pain.

This is a direct result of the inescapable nature of existence. (Seriously. Don't try to escape it. That's a major source of pain. Second Noble Truth, for those of you playing at home.)

All of that is orthodox Buddhism – though Tim is an Anglican monastic. There is, however, one aspect of his programme that flirts with unskilfulness.

He's big into "letting people go".

Not that this isn't often an excellent idea. Good people tend to allow themselves to be abused, on the belief, inbred or inculcated, that they somehow deserve it, or that they owe it to others. Like other decent folks, I've suffered at the hands of those who took advantage of my patience and good will. I should have let those people go right off. Ideally before I picked them up.

However, like all weapons, this one is apt to wound its wielder, especially if overused. Thus Tim:

If anyone tells you that all is not lost, that it happened for a reason, that you’ll become better as a result of your grief, you can let them go.

Seems a tad trigger-happy to me. I've often said useless things, maybe even hurtful ones, to people I authentically wanted to support. Problem was I didn't know what to say.

(Free tip from our Hard-Earned Insight Department: Sometimes you can't help. Sadly, the world is still awaiting the self-improvement book How to Help When You Can't Help.)

So let's not lose our humanity, here. When I've been in the worst possible shape, my capacity to remain human in the face of inhumanity has been tremendously gratifying.

Tim also loses me when he suggests that grief won't make you a better person. It damn well will, if you're determined that it will. As self-centred as I am now, I'm a buddha compared to what I was before. If recent politics prove anything, it's our moral obligation to suffer intelligently.

But of course it's not skilful to say that to someone in the throes of heartache. Instead, I try to offer tested survival tips from my own laboratory. And, since guilt and regret are key components of grief, I also bear witness to their decency. Psychopaths don't suffer.

Still, advising others is fraught. Often the best tack is just to accompany the sufferer in shared silence, accepting the person and the pain. Especially, to remember him or her actively. Call and text (that strange word again: "and"), visit, invite him or her out, break the isolation that's the warhead of both shame and grief.

Tim makes all these points, and others as well, in his timely essay. There's a reason it's been so well-received. Whether you're in pain yourself, or accompanying someone who is, give it a read.

(Photo of artist drawing Kanzeon, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, courtesy of Republic of Korea Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism and Wikimedia Commons.)

How To Be Perfectly Unhappy

This week I'm deferring to Matthew Inman, the Seattle bodhisattva who stands against evil and pointless suffering under the nom de guerre The Oatmeal. You may remember him from our 2014 nod, Happy Las Casas Day!

In How To Be Perfectly Unhappy, Inman takes on the Happiness Mafia, and he does so brilliantly and analytically, as is his MO. No Zen master (that is, no shingle-hanging Zen master) ever laid it out more cogently and succinctly.

At any rate, not more entertainingly.

Therefore, as part of my on-going outreach to fellow depression sufferers – and to our non-depressed brothers and sisters, who are equally responsible for it – this time around I'm directing you off-site to Matthew's nefarious lair.

Nefarious, I say, because once you step inside you'll never get out again. Clear your calendars, Zen droogies. I'm convinced it's called The Oatmeal because it's gluey and inescapable and "Quicksand" or "Spider Web" or "Satan's House of Infernal Temptation" would have been too on-the-nose.

You'll find the current example at How To Be Perfectly Unhappy.

And happy reading. (See what I did there?)

(Cartoon panel from The Oatmeal teaching linked above. Because the first hit's free.)

Good Song: Christmas Song

I've pointed out before that Christmas is a Buddhist holiday. Now comes a brother (not Buddhist, so far as I know) who's found the same wisdom in this ancient pagan celebration.

The lyrics (below) to Eliot Bronson's Christmas Song mirror orthodox Zen teaching on the self. They also gibe perfectly with the timeless Yule theme of the past ceding to the future.

This year I'm sharing Eliot's brilliant meditation because Christmas is a tough emotional time for many of us. Especially those who find themselves alone, cast out, lost, or remorseful amidst all the love and conviviality. Some even come to hate this season.

But my brother is telling it like it is here. And his Zen-friendly, John Lennon cadences are all the more powerful for their simplicity.

The millstones of time are a gift, brothers and sisters. And you are a great deal more than anything you've ever been or done. It's a central tenet of the Buddha's teaching: you can change your bio anytime.

Merry Christmas.
You can start over.

Again and again and again.

If you've got nothing else to celebrate, celebrate that.


(By the way, this recording is available for sale here. Note that Eliot has donated it to a charitable project that funds pediatric cancer research. At a big 79¢ US for the file, it's a karmic bump we all can use.)


CHRISTMAS SONG
by Eliot Bronson

You're not the place you're from
You're not the things you've done
In a world turning 'round the sun
Isn't that strange?

You're not the name you're called
You're not who you recall
Because after all
We can change

Merry Christmas
You can start over
You can start over
Merry Christmas
You can start over
Whenever you want to

You're not what you can do
You're not what you've been through
And the lines between me and you
Are lies

You're not what you can see
Not even what you believe
And there's a part of us that's always free
Like the sky

And Merry Christmas
You can start over
You can start over
Merry Christmas
You can start over
Whenever you want to

Good Song: Toujours debout

Renaud was one of the heroes of my youth. Equal parts Springsteen and Dylan (to whom his voice bears an unmistakable family resemblance), his lyrics have a Villonesque flourish that only a French proletarian poet could wield. Throughout the 70s and 80s he was the public conscience of his country – often much to its dismay. Calling down national hypocrisies and – unforgivably – making merry with the French language, Renaud kept the whole nation turning on a spit.

Then he married and became a father. Some whined about the conjugal turn some of his songs took, but the halogen candour he once brought to politics he now turned on domestic life. His love songs were devastating: an adulterer begs his wife not to leave, without quite being able to articulate why not; a parent forbids the child he's just beaten to run away from home.

And then Renaud just… disappeared. Much later we'd learn that he'd poured so much alcohol on his family that his wife took the kid and left. Then he lost his recording contracts. Then his friends.

One morning eight years later he woke, showered and shaved, and called his old studio to book time.

"Not possible," he was told.

Why not?

"Renaud is dead."

Renaud assured him he was not, but with that implacability only those who know the French can fully conceive, the voice on the phone would not relent.

In the end he had to call a collaborator from his previous life, and, after a similar conversation, ask him to call the studio and book time.

The result of those sessions was 2002's Boucane d'enfer (a play on "unholy racket" and "whiff of Hell"), Renaud's all-time bestselling album.

I wish the story ended there, but sadly the intervening years have brought relapses: lost weekends, lost weeks, lost months; a second wife departed with a second child. Renaud battles addiction like a rat with a boa constrictor: he survives, but he doesn't win.

And the press haven't been kind, to say no more.

Which is why this song, appearing after yet another long silence, belted out in Renaud's trademark working-Paris growl, grown breathless and broken, hit me so hard.

Because it sounds just like him, and so different. Because his voice reminds me of my past, and also of my own serial resurrections. And because I've always loved curses spat in the face of a bully.

Here-follow the lyrics. As usual the translation is mine, and it's been the usual heartbreaking grind. How do you land the one-two punch of « Qui me dépriment, et qui m'impriment » with the English "Who depress me and print me?" (You'll see what I went with below.)

There's also profound poignance in a hooligan like Renaud suddenly opting for the inoffensive; « nom de nom », a softer form of the French "God dammit!", has a pathos that "dang it" doesn't really convey.

More globally, the song just comes off as more petulant and defensive in English. The original French is more along the lines of "nice try, dickweeds", with a warm sense of renewal and reunion.

But not to translate would leave non-francophone readers in the dark, and that's not something I'm prepared to do.

So, with apologies for the treason, the gist:

TOUJOURS DEBOUT
par Renaud

Toujours vivant, rassurez-vous Toujours la banane, toujours debout J'suis retapé, remis sur pieds Droit sur mes guibolles, ressuscité Tous ceux qui tombent autour de moi C'est l'hécatombe, c'est Guernica Tous ceux qui tombent, tombent à tour de bras Et moi je suis toujours là Toujours vivant, rassurez-vous Toujours la banane, toujours debout Il est pas né ou mal barré Le crétin qui voudra m'enterrer J'fais plus les télés, j'ai même pas internet Arrêté de parler aux radios, aux gazettes Ils m'ont cru disparu, on me croit oublié Dites à ces trous du cul, j'continue d'chanter Et puis tous ces chasseurs de primes Paparazzis en embuscade Qui me dépriment, et qui m'impriment Que des ragots, que des salades Toutes ces rumeurs sur ma santé On va pas en faire une affaire Et que celui qui n'a jamais titubé Me jette la première bière Toujours vivant, rassurez vous Toujours la banane, toujours debout Il est pas né ou mal barré L'idiot qui voudrait m'remplacer Je dois tout l'temps faire gaffe Derrière chaque buisson A tous ces photographes Qui vous prennent pour des cons Ceux là m'ont enterré Un peu prématuré Dites à ces enfoirés j'continue d'chanter Mais je n'vous ai jamais oublié Et pour ceux à qui j'ai manqué Vous les fidèles, je reviens vous dire merci Vous m'avez manqué vous aussi Trop content de vous retrouver Je veux continuer nom de nom Continuer à écrire et à chanter Chanter pour tous les sauvageons Toujours vivant, rassurez-vous Toujours la banane, toujours debout Il est pas né ou mal barré Le couillon qui voudra m'enterrer Depuis quelques années, je me suis éloigné Je vis près des lavandes sous les oliviers Ils m'ont cru disparu, on me croit oublié Ces trous du cul peuvent continuer d'baver Moi sur mon p'tit chemin j'continue d'chanter

Still alive, rest assured Still smiling, still standing I'm reconditioned, back on my feet Steady on my pins, resuscitated People falling all around This place is a slaughterhouse, it's like Guernica All these people falling, discarded en masse And me still here Still alive, rest assured Still smiling, still standing Ain't been born, or else just out of luck The jerk who's gonna bury me Don't do no more TV, don't even have Internet Don't talk to radio or newspaper types They thought I was dead, think I'm forgotten Tell those assholes I'm still singing And then all those bounty hunters Ambush paparazzi Who depress and im-press me All the scams and scandals All these rumours about my health We won't pay them any mind And let him who has never stumbled Buy the first round Still alive, rest assured Still smiling, still standing Ain't been born, or else just out of luck The jerk who's gonna displace me I gotta always look Behind every bush For those photographers Who think you're all dumbshits Those guys buried me A bit too soon Tell those jackasses I'm still singing But I never forgot you And to those who missed me You the faithful, I'm back to say thank you I missed you, too Delighted to see you're still here I want to carry on, dang it Carry on writing and singing Singing for all the untamed Still alive, rest assured Still smiling, still standing Ain't been born, or else just out of luck The wanker who's gonna bury me I've been away for a few years Living close the ground, beneath the olive trees They thought I was dead, they think I've been forgotten Let the assholes blather on Here on my little journey, I'm still singing

(1978 photo of Renaud Séchan courtesy of Paul Kiuj and Wikimedia Commons.)

Shipwrecked

I recently re-read a journal I kept in January 2003, during the period of my divorce. I was struck by the events and emotions it recorded, and particularly the role of meditation and Zen in helping me weather them. Although the period was one of the hardest I've traversed (and there are lots of candidates), in some ways I remember it as the best. The log, which I kept to gain insight into my mood swings (and, I confess, to have someone to talk to) ends up documenting a proven strategy for surviving adversity. So for the benefit of others in similar straits, I'd like to share a few reflections.

The first pages, written when my wife was still living with me but flaunting an affair – and getting in a lot of gratuitous cruelty on the side – are especially gruelling. I was living in the great Canadian G.A.N. ("God-Awful Nowhere"), 3000 miles from my family and friends, in a culture (Québec) that wasn't mine, with no car or income. In short, I was in an abusive relationship and there was no escape. No wonder those paragraphs are so full of angst and fear.

A litany of suffering is listed there: ghastly nightmares; medical issues; niggling terror; my wife's sneering, baiting jibes; and conversely, the odd oasis of peace and reflection. Most of the latter are associated with meditation; I had been sitting twice daily for nearly a year, and snowshoeing in the forest, during which I often meditated as well. Then, suddenly, after my wife announced the date of her departure, a marked drop in stress. Pointed insight, if only in retrospect.

The role of my growing monastic practice in enduring all of this is clear in entries such as:

Good AM meditation, followed by Zen study and tea. Sunny in my cell [a tiny room in which I barricaded myself, often for whole days]. Attitude rises. Productive day. Some sadness at night, before PM meditation. The sit was OK. Cut branches outside this afternoon. Felt very good during and after. Work helps.

Yet I took her actual leaving surprisingly hard. Surprising, I say, because I'd quite had enough of her by then; I was eager to live in a whole house, in peace, without a demon from some Buddhist parable whose personality had dwindled to just two channels: cold and screaming.

I've long since forgiven, in light of what I've learned, and no longer take the abuse personally. But I vividly recall what life was like with her. So it's interesting now to read the lines of grief and despair I wrote the day she left.

Still, the bedtime entry, last one in the log, sums it all up:

Things remained sad and shaky until I meditated at 10PM, for almost 50 minutes. Now I'm still sad, but less so.

Because the journal ends there, it doesn't detail the accruing strength and calm of the following months, due in part to the full-on monastic discipline I adopted. Nor does it record the inevitable relapses, when depression and desperation paralysed me for an hour, or a day – or in one instance, four straight days – before I took up the practice again and forged on to healing. But the seeds of that story germinate in the telegraphic chronicle of the last month of my marriage.

Things don't happen to me,

I wrote toward the end,

they just happen.

And then, in response to my wife's constant insistence that I was the source of all her unhappiness:

They don't happen to her, either.

Zen saved my butt, and not for the last time. I'm a monk today for the same reason my grandfather remained an FDR man till the day he died: not for theory or pretence or cachet, but from sheer fire-hardened memory. So if you're suffering, be assured that you're not alone. Others have been there – others still are – and there's an end to it.

In my case, the Four Noble Truths, and the practice they inspired – not just reading and reflecting, but the actual doing – were that solution. It may be for you as well. Any road, you might as well try; sitting is free.

The path is always there, regardless of trailhead. May we walk it with the Buddha's own diligence and humility.

• Readers interested zazen [Zen meditation] will find good instructions here.
• Zen students suffering through depression or despair will find support and companionship here.

(Detail from Winslow Homer's Gulf Stream courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art [Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1906] and Wikimedia Commons.)

Everyone

Everyone has a room to air.
Everyone has a soul to bare.
Everyone has a horn to blare.
Everyone has a cause to care.
Everyone has a task to chair.
Everyone has a doubt to dare.
Everyone has a bent to err.
Everyone has a hull to fair.
Everyone has a flame to flare.
Everyone has a growl to glare.
Everyone has a hound to hare.
Everyone has a glove to pair.
Everyone has a call to prayer.
Everyone has a chance too rare.
Everyone has a crow to scare.
Everyone has a song to share.
Everyone has a snipe to snare.
Everyone has a coin to spare.
Everyone has a debt to square.
Everyone has a scowl to stare.
Everyone has an oath to swear.
Everyone has a page to tear.
Everyone has a road to there.
Everyone has a robe to wear.

(Photo of Fuke Zen monk courtesy of Urashima Taro and Wikimedia Commons.)

Good Book: At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace

I'm not sure he'd appreciate the label, but Claude AnShin Thomas is the most prominent hermit of our generation. Though an ordained priest in Bernie Glassman's Zen Peacemaker lineage, his practice is in the tradition of Bashō. In his own words:

"I made the decision to take the vows of a mendicant monk primarily because I wanted to live more directly as the Buddha had. […] Also, in witnessing the evolution of Zen Buddhist orders in the United States, I wanted to evoke the more ancient traditions of those who embarked on this spiritual path and to live my commitment more visibly."

AnShin specialises in walking ango – long voyages on foot, without money, living off the Dharma and the compassion of others. He calls them peace pilgrimages, and to date he's walked from Auschwitz to Vietnam; across the US and Europe; in Latin America; and even the Middle East. He also leads street retreats, a unique Peacemaker practice wherein Zen students take the Buddha at his word and become Homeless Brothers in the urban core of a large city for a specified period of time.

Where, you wonder, does a guy get gravel like that? Well…

In At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace, AnShin describes his military service in Vietnam, where he clocked 625 combat hours in US Army helicopters, many behind an M60 machine gun. By his own recollection, he was in combat virtually every day from September 1966 to November 1967. He was, in short, the classic "badass American fighting man" so beloved of Hollywood.

Except it wasn't as fun.

He came home, like all war veterans, to a society desperate never to hear about those not-fun parts, or to pay for the care he now required for life. The tale that ensues has been told a hundred times, and each time is the first.

Re-reading At Hell's Gate (one of my all-time favourite Zen books) I was struck again by the sense that the author would rather not be writing it at all. There's a reticence in AnShin's prose, a tone of compelled confession, that suggests modesty, circumspection, and discomfort with the writer's art, at which he clearly doesn't feel proficient. Which is exactly why he is. You're not reading a writer; you're reading a veteran, in much more than just the military sense.

Interspersed among terse, almost telegraphic accounts of his past is some of the best how-to on practical meditation I've found. His themes are universally relevant: depression and despair; atonement and redemption; suffering and transcendence. All from a guy who speaks with thunderous authority.

His eremitical bona fides are equally evident. He writes:

"Anyone can come with me on a pilgrimage. It's not necessary for a person to become a student of mine or to spend time with me to learn this practice. It is open."

In these angos – which he defines as "just walking" – he's revived a practice largely abandoned in the era of institutional Zen:

"There is no escape from the nature of your suffering in this practice. When you walk, you are constantly confronted with your self, your attachments, your resistance. You are confronted with what you cling to for the illusion of security."

Should anyone require more evidence of AnShin's hermitude, his Further Reading section includes Zen at War, The Cloud of Unknowing (a classic of Christian contemplation), and the Gnostic Gospels, though none of them are cited in the text.

My lone criticism of At Hell's Gate is its light treatment of those incredible pilgrimages. In fact, I wish AnShin would write a whole 'nother book just about them. I appreciate his desire to avoid the odour of self-glorification; first-person journalism is a hard beat for a non-narcissist. And as a mendicant, he likely doesn't have time or space to sit down and write. But it's badly needed. I hope AnShin's sangha convince him someday to transmit and preserve these vital experiences, for the benefit of future generations. After all, where would we be if Bashō had remained silent?

Nevertheless, the book we already have is all by itself a repository of rare and hard-earned wisdom, a chronicle of unusual violence and damage, leading to unusual insight. The man himself puts it best:

"Everyone has their Vietnam. Everyone has their war. May we embark together on a pilgrimage of ending these wars and truly live in peace."

If you're suffering – whether firearms were involved or just plain-old heartbreak – read this book.