Maybe There’s a Joy So Deep the Whole Universe Is in It: The Curious Power of the Wind

Sometimes, just staying still and listening to the wind can be an event of great beauty. Nothing else is needed to feel full, satisfied. Happy. Those are rare and glorious moments.

 

Sometimes, wind is a gentle touch, a cooling breeze on a torrid day. Sometimes, it disappears. Sometimes, and too often lately, the day is hot, dry, seemingly lifeless; then it suddenly gets cold and the wind rages, sounds like a speeding train, and is too powerful to stand up to. Tonight, the earth gently whispers, a soft, steady sound. Then it almost goes silent. Then it builds until it sounds like a rainstorm is about to slam us, but there’s no rain. No rain clouds. Just wind. Then it calms before it rises once again.

 

The wind animates the world around us. It builds, and the trees dance; falling leaves, and papers lying in the street, fly around; bushes rattle, clouds stir, oceans wave. Just like the breath animates us, the wind can animate the world.

 

Ancient humans made a connection between wind and human breathing. After all, breathing involves air moving in and out of the body, animating us like wind animates the world. So, in India, for example, there was the concept of the five winds in the body, discussed in the Hindu sacred book, the Upanishads, in yoga, and later in Ayurveda, an ancient Indian science of medicine. When we breathe, we take in the wind of the world.

 

The Greek word pneuma can mean both breath and wind, as well as soul. The presocratic Greek philosopher Anaximenes said, “just as the soul (psyche), being air (aer), holds us together, so do breath (pneuma), and air (aer) encompass the world.” Anaximenes thought of air as the first principle out of which all else is composed. The Bible uses the word pneuma in a similar fashion. There can be spiritual as well as a mental and physical dimension to breathing practices.

 

If only we listen carefully enough, every wind can remind us of these interconnections. We can feel our surroundings calling to us or hear people all through time calling to us. We are not two. We are not two. Maybe if we listen, we might hear in the wind the trees, birds, leaves, and clouds speaking of our natural inseparability with the universe in which we exist. No air, no us.

 

We can make listening more deeply, with more curiosity and compassion, a regular component of our lives, along with exercises, as in yoga, martial arts, and mindfulness meditation that help us breathe and live more fully.

 

We can also think about what animates us besides the breath. What stirs us? What stirs us so much that, afterwards, we don’t feel we’re lacking anything? We don’t feel more in pain afterwards than we did before. But instead, it leaves us with a sense of Ah, yes. This I love. No other time or place or anything is needed. Just this, this moment, is sufficient. Wonderful.

 

What stirs us so much we hear our inner world coming alive, and hear the universe speaking?…

 

**To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project. Enjoy.

The Darkness Closest to Us: Don’t Get So Absorbed in the Universe of Words that We Lose the Universe of Being

One thing I love about many of my good friends is that they’re honest with me and willing to find and kindly tell me about holes in what I’ve said or argued, and to hear what I didn’t speak.

 

A great friend and college roommate found a point in a recent blog of mine that I had left unexplained and that had filled him with questions.

 

The lines were: Black holes the shape of trees, buildings, and hillsides stood silhouetted against a gray sky, a massive gray cloud filled by moonlight, yet with no moon visible. And the darkness appeared to begin in close to myself and lessen as it spread out into the distance. And he asked: “How did the darkness appear closer to yourself?” Or “why did it appear darker the closer you came to yourself?” Did you realize the implications of what you said?

 

Perceptually, the world was darker closer to myself because the only physical illumination was far off, from the lights of a nearby city, or from the moon itself.  But I rebelled against my own first understanding of the psychological or metaphorical meaning of the line. I heard “dark” as meaning sinister, something negative or evil. But I didn’t mean sinister or evil.

 

I later realized other meanings of dark, as in unknown or unknowable. As in beyond words. As in unrealized possibility. As in the unknown before from which everything after emerges. Before we speak there is an emptiness, a silence. Buddhists, Taoists, mystics speak of this.

 

Lao Tzu spoke about the emptiness out of which the universe, or fullness of life, emerged:

“In the beginning of heaven and earth there were no words,

Words came out of the womb of matter…”

 

Of course, since we don’t know what will happen or what will emerge from the womb of time and matter, we can feel frightened. We don’t know if what emerges will be helpful or hurtful. We don’t know if we’ll have the ability to face the unknown or do something with it we can be proud of.

 

We often think we know so much about ourselves, maybe too much. We might think we are so clear, obvious, unchanging. In fact, we can never fully know or fully capture ourselves or be contained in any number of words, thoughts, judgments.

 

Each word, each thought is an abstraction, a recording, or occasionally, as philosopher J. L. Austin argued, a performance or action. Think about an officiant saying. “I now pronounce you man and wife.” Or when we are overcome with beauty and all we say is “wow.” Words facilitate remembering and can help us evaluate, analyze, think about something. They can be so beautiful⎼ or painful to see or hear. They can lead to rumination or take us out of it. There’s so much that just can’t be spoken. Yet here we are talking.

 

In every moment, we have this choice….

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

 

I hope you have a wonderful celebration of Juneteenth, and a Happy Father’s Day.

Compassion Is a Key to Understanding: When the Sky Is Burning and the Earth is Coughing

There’s no rain, no rain clouds. It hasn’t rained more than a few drops for a month. Yet it’s midday and the sky is dark as dusk. But not that dark blue-grey verging on night black, but a red-orange gray, a color I’ve never seen before. Almost unnatural, certainly unusual; a color with a warning attached, a threat. Unnerving.

 

And the smell of the air is like fire, like burning leaves, trees, or garbage, and it tastes crunchy, topped with ashes. At first, yesterday, we only smelled and tasted it outdoors. But today, it has seeped indoors. Even the color has seeped in. No escape.

 

Over the last few days, it has gone from a health alert to an advisory, to hazardous. “Do not go outside for any unnecessary activity.” And if you do, wear a mask. This is one thing that COVID

has prepared us for.

 

Canada, especially Quebec and Ottawa, is burning. People in California, the Northwest and Southwest, have known this sky too well, along with people in many other areas of the world. And here in the US, in the Northeast, Northern Midwest, now we, unfortunately, also see and feel it. Our homes, workplaces, communities of nature are not burning, now, yet we share this burning sky, this coughing earth. New York City, for example, experienced the worst air quality it’s had on record.

 

Before this happened, when the days were clear, the sky blue and a fresh taste in the air, it might’ve been difficult to accept the reality of global warming. Now, it’s difficult to escape the taste of ash. The rich can mitigate it better than the poor, hide more comfortably, get faster and better treatment for scorched lungs, infected stomachs, stress. Yet, we all can be infected. Something else this climate emergency shares with COVID: we’re all in this together. When the earth itself is threatened, we’re all united in vulnerability, in no escape.

 

Yet yesterday, despite having read and written blogs about the climate emergency, I had a difficult time taking in and accepting what my senses were telling me. Yesterday, I went for a walk on my rural road. I had been somewhat aware that I should only take a short, moderately paced walk. But during the walk, a neighbor, driving home in the late afternoon, stopped her car to offer me a mask. I thanked her, we talked, then she drove on. And it hit me. I had not acknowledged the threat. I took off my hat and used it as a leaky mask. Today, no walk.

 

My wife also wouldn’t accept the reality of what she was feeling. She was gardening without a mask. She was already freaked out by the drought. Looking at, acknowledging the taste, color, and smell of the sky was too much for her to do.

 

But we have to acknowledge, accept it. ‘Accept’ meaning take in, look directly at what’s happening. The earth itself is burning, getting sick, coughing at us⎼ this is a warning. Take it seriously. Do more.

 

Do more to learn what we can do. Do more to hear what the earth itself is saying and what our own bodies are telling us….

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

Perceiving Ourselves More Clearly So, We Can Perceive the World Around Us More Clearly and Act More Powerfully

A wonderful friend wrote a powerful and frightening article about the situation we humans face right now. I can’t share it here because he’s sent it out and it hasn’t, yet, been published. But I would like to share its central insight.

 

Most of us already know how difficult the situation is now, between climate change, the threats of autocracy, hate-manipulated gun violence, war, etc. We might be consumed by so many concerns that we get lost in fears and retreat to the usual, the safe. But what we face is not usual and not at all safe.

 

I sometimes wonder if we can even conceive of the challenge we face. We need our rational minds to evaluate all the evidence. But maybe we need to feel it even more than grasp it. We certainly can imagine what a small town looks like after a massive tornado; or what a city like New Orleans looked like after the flooding of Katrina. Or what burned out towns in California look like or cities when sidewalks and streets melt from the increasing heat. This is the face of the climate emergency. And whatever we’ve seen in the past, we’ll probably be seeing worse in coming days and years.

 

We might read about what it was like living in cities like London before environmental regulations were passed, when people couldn’t go outdoors without getting sick due to torrential smog. Or we can imagine a world without any wildlife outside zoos, no lions, tigers, and bears, no elephants, no eagles and ravens, no owls. Or no honeybees. Without bees, no honey, no fruit, no crops.

 

Or what happens to a nation when increasing hate fueled violence, like in Buffalo, NY fills the streets. The number of hate crimes has more than doubled since 2015, when DJT first ran for office. Or what a dictator like Putin is doing to Ukraine or what would happen if a white nationalist or Nazis became president or Dictator.

 

Or what happens when children are forced to read or learn about only what people driven by hate, bigotry, and lust for power want them to read. Or when women are no longer allowed to control their own healthcare options or how their bodies are treated.

 

My friend feels the terrifying frustration of seeing a threat so clearly yet also feeling powerless to stop it. I think he speaks the fear and concern that a majority of Americans feel. But for him, only dramatic changes will be noticed. Little changes can get lost in the storm clouds of images of what might be coming. Crying out to the world, “Why can’t anyone stop this?” can drive anyone crazy.

 

Yet, a democracy is all about many people doing relatively small actions together. The wheels of law and change can move with painful slowness.

 

A few close friends talked with him about not obsessing over these awful possibilities. And he knows this. But words do not reach deep enough to lift us out of an image of oblivion.

 

He spells out or shouts out a clear line of action we can all take….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

Instead of Shrinking Our Lives, Expand Them: Going As One United Being into a Beautiful Day and Into that Good Night

Why does feeling the sun on our face, or even seeing it out the window, create a sense of happiness?

 

Most of us love it when, after days of rain or cold weather, the sun is visible, and the sky is clear. Especially in the spring, and the blue color just goes on forever, the day is not just physically but emotionally brighter.

 

Of course, if there’s been a drought or we’re allergic to the sun or worried about skin cancer, that spoils the fun. But a sunny day? We use that as an expression of being happy; or a sunny disposition as being positive, uplifting. Or we see the sun and feel that, as we look up, for now at least, we can enjoy a moment. We can allow ourselves a respite before the clouds move in.

 

And sometimes, we can find a sun living in ourselves. Or we might find a sense of quiet presence or get absorbed in something we love. Maybe it’s writing a story or meditating. Or we’re practicing a martial arts kata, dancing, listening to music, or walking next to a waterfall, and we’re gone. There’s nothing left of us but the creating, the kata, the dance, the music, the waterfall. It’s so amazing that we can feel most ourselves when, as the 13th century Japanese Zen teacher Dogen Zenji put it, we forget ourselves in action.

 

Contemporary Zen teacher, environmental activist, and author David Loy put it very clearly for me in a recent talk. When we do something not as a means to something else, or to get somewhere else; when we do an activity for it-self, not for what prize we may get from doing it, we can be transformed. We cease to be self-conscious and become more deeply conscious. We become sun conscious, activity conscious; we become more aware, more mindful of how one action, emotion, sensation, or thought flows into the next and forms our quality-of-life experience, so we can adjust, deepen that experience. In his talk, David Loy illustrated his point with the explanation of Karma yoga, the yoga of action, from the Hindu spiritual classic, the Bhagavad Gita. When we do something without being attached to the results, but aware of the rightness of what we do, we are more likely to be transformed positively by the action.

 

When we work for social justice, for example, we do the best we can, being as strategic as we can. We want to create better conditions in the world and make a difference; but our personal achievement is the action itself that we take. No matter what we do, we are most likely to have good results if we focus on doing the best we can, now, and not on worrying about the future or how far away it is.

One passage in the Gita says:

“You have a right to your actions.

But never to your actions’ fruits.

Act for the action’s sake.”

 

I remember, when I was teaching secondary school and students read this passage in the Gita, they at first disagreed with it, or disliked to it. They asked, “Why not be concerned with the fruits of our actions? When we do something well, don’t we deserve praise? Don’t we want to foster a concern with the fruits, or at least the ethical consequences of our actions on the world?” …

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

Companions Who Walk with Us Moment by Moment

COVID has been devastating to our communities and culture, terrifying to so many of us. But it had one positive result for me, and others. Our relationship with other species in our neighborhoods was enriched. As we became more distanced from other people, birds, turkeys, fox, peepers, possum, deer, bear, rabbits, eagles, owls⎼ all our non-human neighbors, depending on where we lived, jumped more frequently to the center of our attention, and became, sort of, friends.

 

Of course, the bear that crushed our bird feeder one early morning and knocked on our front door was a little scary and we had to chase it away. And one night at about 3:00 am one of our cats stood up on our bed, hissed loudly, and woke us up to a raccoon coming in the cat door. The raccoon got stuck and I had to push him out with an oak cane.

 

In the spring morning, the gold and purple finches, cardinals, and red winged black birds added color and songs to the air, and later, the peepers such comfort. And taking walks with such companions as oak trees leaning against each other to speak, and ravens coughing as they flew overhead added wonders to my day.

 

But hearing about the climate emergency and the extinction crisis we face⎼ I felt so bereft. I felt such grief over the increasing instability of nature itself, weather disasters, and the loss of species ⎼ for example, frogs, peepers, and salamanders, about one-third of amphibians ⎼ 12% of bird species, all threatened with extinction, as well as ash trees which used to fill the forests near my home. We must all take this emergency very seriously.

 

These species are not just companions. They are intimate mirrors of our lives and mental state that we can see them everywhere. The deep red of the Japanese maple in the garden, which is more of a bush than a tree⎼ what amazing feeling is right there. A crow flies overhead and its harsh call echoes in our body.

 

We often think of ourselves as located behind these two eyes, a mind isolated in this shell of a body, a shell within a shell within a shell. And only within this shell can we locate what is most intimately ourselves. Or we think of the red color and harsh call as coming from “outside” us.

 

Yet, is not that Japanese maple and the crow also, in some way, intimately ourselves?

Don’t we carry those colors and sounds in us? We don’t just hear and see and feel them. We give them life. The red of the cardinal is how our mind gifts color to the electromagnetic or light waves bouncing off the bird’s breast. Color is the way we perceive a wavelength of light to which our eyes are sensitive.

 

The harshness of the crow’s voice is how our mind translates the sound wave frequencies emitted by the bird. That red, that song is intimately us. No us, no song, just wavelengths.

Because conscious perception is awareness aware of itself, it simultaneously looks within as it looks out. It is a deeply felt mystery that we live. When we stop playing the shell game, the world is most intimately ourselves.

 

*To read the whole article, please go to the Good Men Project.

 

Remembering Those Who Have Loved Us: Only By Being Open Can We Understand What Love, And Life, Can Bring. Revisited.

Love is a mystery. Certainly, we can talk about what it feels like when we love or feel loved. Neuroscience can tell us about our brains in love, poets can expose some of the depths of the emotion, and psychology and mindfulness can awaken us to how it arises in ourselves. Yet, relationships touched by love have qualities that go beyond anything we can consciously explain.

 

My Mom died 15 years ago, yet every Mother’s Day I still have an urge to do something for her. I feel she is alive and have to remind myself she is not. She so often reminded me to be aware of other people’s feelings, not just my own, that I still search for her within myself.

 

She didn’t talk about empathy and compassion but showed it. She was able to take people in, to see who a person was and embrace them. When I first brought Linda, who is now my wife, to meet my parents, my Mom accepted her right away. There was no mother-girlfriend conflict. The same was true with her relationship with my brother and his wife.

 

She still appears in my dreams at times and talks to me. Maybe we all have similar experiences, not only with our moms but with anyone dearly loved.

 

One night, just as my wife and I were about to enter a restaurant in our hometown to eat dinner, I got a lesson about just how deep a connection can exist between two people. As I grabbed hold of the door to the restaurant, I suddenly felt an intense pain in my chest. I let go of the door and bent over. I stayed there for a few minutes, unsure what to do. In a few minutes, the pain dissipated, and we went in to eat our meal, feeling a bit worried and confused.

 

When we left, I checked my cell phone for messages. I often turn it off.  I had only one message; it was from my Dad. However, as I listened, I didn’t hear my Dad speaking to me. Instead, I heard his voice, sounding upset, and at a distance, mixed in with other loud voices. At first, I was bewildered. But as I listened, it became clear I was hearing a recording of EMTs trying to revive my mom. It turns out she had had a heart attack just as we were about to enter the restaurant. My dad found her a few minutes after the attack and called the EMTs. Then he called me and accidently left his phone on recording my Mom’s death.

 

If I didn’t have a witness, many people would doubt that this occurred. I even doubt it myself sometimes. To borrow from Shakespeare, there is more to love than can be dreamt of in any of our philosophies.

 

My mom modeled what it is to love. She did this in the way she took care of us. She did this with my Dad in the way they cared for each other. My parents showed me what relationship was about. They showed what life could give us. Whatever or whomever I love carries their influence. My Mom and Dad live in my ability to love.

 

It’s weird that we must learn and re-learn these basic lessons over and over again….

 

*This revisited blog was published by Medium and an older version posted by The Good Men Project.

Feeling Discombobulated: When the Universe, Time and Space, Wears Us As A Hat

It’s so easy to feel discombobulated or unbalanced. We might rely too much on one person’s advice and lose sight of ourselves, or care so much about other people’s opinions we no longer know our own. Or we worry so much about a future event we lose touch with the present. We might get sick, anxious, afraid and doubt our ability to recover or face a threat. We might try to check emails while texting or do any two tasks requiring mental focus at the same time and can’t accomplish either very well.

 

Einstein described how space and time were not separated in two but relative to each other. Each needs the other to fully describe either. As far as I can understand it, since light, or the universe is always in motion, describing the distance between any two objects ⎼ or to describe any place anywhere we need both the where and the when. The apple tree by my front door on this gray spring day is so different from what it was last January, or yesterday.

 

If we try to do the impossible and hitch ourselves intellectually or emotionally to only time, then space zooms by. We always need a where as well as a when, the context or the whole of a situation to understand any part.

 

Such is true with any duality. If we consider just one half of any such linked pair, they both disappear. Try describing above without below, a parent without a child, or separating mind from body, self from universe. Or similarly, we might lose touch with ourselves by mentally dividing now from a wished for soon or a lost then. Or when it’s raining, we make ourselves feel even wetter and more miserable by imagining we could’ve been dry.

 

Yet, when we feel chilled, for example, it can be helpful to imagine a warm mini sun above our heads⎼ and its comfort spreading, inch by inch, down through our body. Or when it’s just our hands that are cold, we can picture and feel we’re holding a smooth stone, warmed by the sun cupped in our hands. Visualizing is one thing, but wishing or blaming doesn’t warm us at all.

 

A Zen Master from the 13th Century Japan, named Daito Kokuji, wrote:

No umbrella, getting soaked,

            I’ll just use the rain as my raincoat.

 

I don’t think I can put into words exactly what this means. 13th Century Zen Master Dogen might have done what I couldn’t do, when he recorded his insight that time is not separable from being; that everything and every being is time, or “being-time.” The spring flower, this finger on the keyboard, this beating heart is time. We make a gigantic and painful mistake by thinking of time as only a phenomenon that ebbs and flows, or flies away from us, something we can divorce from beings and things. Dogen shows that when we realize this essential truth about the nature of time, the moment is absolutely alive, present, whole….

 

*The anecdote at the heart of this blog was published before by my own website and The Sunlight Press.

**To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

Meaningful Rituals: Fostering Compassion, Honesty, and Social Cooperation Instead of Hate, Violence, and Social Disintegration

When I was growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, I remember dreading many social rituals, especially those that had to do with death. I felt a funeral or memorial service, for example, was more to hide grief then help us face it. It felt like we, society, were going through the motions but had lost the substance. That was one of the messages I remember from the 1960’s, and afterwards; we needed to restore meaning to our shared social institutions.

 

Since then, our nation has developed new rituals or revived old ones, maybe ancient ones. Recently, I attended a memorial which was called a Celebration of Life of the deceased. A participant called it a tribute. Instead of the service being led by a Rabbi or Priest, someone paid to do it and not closely known to the people involved, the event was led by the husband, daughter, and friends. It involved laughter and photos shared, tears shed, and songs sung by family and friends.

 

But mostly, it was an afternoon of heartfelt stories. Instead of a campfire, we all gathered around our computers for a Zoom ceremony. And we were treated to great tales, some we knew, many we didn’t. The person came so alive to us. It was a sort of a resurrection, but without any religious attachments.

 

We valued the person and saw how valued they still were by so many. And this reminded us of our own value. By honoring one person in this way, the humanity of all of us was revealed, in a depth and breadth we hadn’t often felt before. We remembered how amazing a mother and dear friend she was, and suddenly felt befriended and loved. The deceased was seen in a larger dimension than many of us had often seen them. And in this realization, we ourselves were raised into a larger dimension.

 

Several good friends mentioned the deceased was very politically engaged, sincere, and committed, clearly illustrating with their life that the personal was political. How we act in our personal lives, with friends, family, and neighbors, is the root of the type of society we create.

 

The same thing is happening today with our political involvement, as is happening with some social rituals. Many of us had previously felt that who governed mattered little. That the voice and interests of the people were not being protected. That voting was an empty ritual. Or maybe, because we didn’t participate or weren’t allowed to, the ritual of politics lacked truth and meaning.

 

No longer….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

Feeling More Comfortable with Aging: Maybe If We Stop Fighting Ourselves Our Lives Might Not Seem to Pass as Quickly

All through my life, I felt I would continuously get better at doing things. With practice, I’d improve in sports, or writing, carpentry, cooking⎼ whatever I set my mind and body to do. Maybe most of us feel this way. Practice improves performance. But this is no longer true for me, at least not with physical skills and activities.

 

I had in the past assumed that if I had a pain, it was temporary. And if I treated it kindly, wisely, and went to consult a doctor or some form of healer, it would eventually go away. No longer. Pains appear and do not always go away. They change all the time, but do not disappear forever.

And meanwhile, time, life can go by too fast. Aging is changing.

 

The older we get, the faster our days, weeks, lives seem to disappear behind us; or the speed at which our life passes is directly proportional to our age. This seems to be a syndrome that plagues all (or most?) of us as we age. Maybe we should call it the aging time syndrome.

 

I first heard about it in a college philosophy class. The professor said it was often used as an argument against the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent creator. How could a beneficent God allow time to speed up for us as we got closer to death?

 

Why it happens is not understood. Is it caused by a slowing down in our ability to process information so we can’t keep up with time passing? Or is it because aging means we have more memories of old moments to shorten our habitation of the new? I don’t know.

 

But the more I think about it, the more it becomes clear that what happens is not that the present goes by faster. We still have moments that can seem to last forever. What happens, I think, is that as we age, the past gets larger quicker. We look back and suddenly feel the day, the week, the decade⎼ they were here one moment, and too quickly, they’re gone.

 

Is this sense of the past getting larger quicker an inherited alarm clock? An inborn prompt that evolved to teach us to live the last years or moments we have left more fully?

 

Last night, I discovered new twists in an old exercise. At 3:30 am, after pain woke me up and I had trouble getting back to sleep, I decided to return to window watching, a practice I had begun earlier this year. But I changed it a bit and discovered new applications for it.

 

Instead of gazing out the window to simply notice the beauty of the world, I took a breath and then looked to see what before I might have missed. I asked the night what beauty is here that in recent times had eluded me? What had I never verbalized to myself or others, or never felt? Or: what can I perceive now because of what I had noticed before? I looked outside; then closed my eyes and visualized the scene in my mind. Then l opened my eyes and looked again….

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.