It has to be a pretty good movie to be better than no movie at all. It has to be a pretty good poem to be better than no poem at all. It has to be a pretty good song to be better than no song at all. It has to be a pretty good museum to be better than no museum at all. It has to be a pretty good book to be better than no book at all. It has to be a pretty good bookstore to be better than no bookstore at all? It has to be a pretty good class than no class at all. It has to be a pretty good apple than no apple at all? It has to be a pretty good coat than no coat at all? It has to be a pretty good conversation to be better than no conversation at all. It has to be a pretty good cat than no cat at all? It has to be a pretty good cat toy than no cat toy at all. It has to be a pretty good video game than no video game at all. It has to be a pretty good performance than no performance at all. It has to be a pretty good friend than no friend at all? It has to be a pretty good test to be better than no test at all.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Hi. One cat is asleep on the couch the other is somewhere else. Outside a man in a blue coat is walking down the side walk and two others, one a grey coat and one in a brown coat are behind him. It must be a little cold then. If I want to know what to wear I look out the window. A couple more are now walking down the same strip. One is wearing a hat. I could do this all day. If I want to know who is walking down the sidewalk I look out the window. Monday.
It's the fifth week of school. At some point today I'll enter the quarter point "progress grades" that are good indicators for students who have never been to class. On Friday a student came for the first time. It was the fourth class. I told him I was sorry, but it was too late to join. Another student used the term "blackie" in his memoir, and I gently let him know that it's not a word we in California often use. Other than that though, two good classes. More energy so far in the Thursday class but it's only a comparison if I make it one. It's hard to cover the same material twice and at the same time stay open to spontaneity. In other words, it's hard not to form attachments to the good things that happen in one class and want the same thing to happen in another.
The sun has come out in the time it took to write that last paragraph. It's been relatively chilly but only because it got up into the low seventies on Friday. February. It's so confusing what month it is. From a free write we did in class on Friday from the word Sun:
It's the fifth week of school. At some point today I'll enter the quarter point "progress grades" that are good indicators for students who have never been to class. On Friday a student came for the first time. It was the fourth class. I told him I was sorry, but it was too late to join. Another student used the term "blackie" in his memoir, and I gently let him know that it's not a word we in California often use. Other than that though, two good classes. More energy so far in the Thursday class but it's only a comparison if I make it one. It's hard to cover the same material twice and at the same time stay open to spontaneity. In other words, it's hard not to form attachments to the good things that happen in one class and want the same thing to happen in another.
The sun has come out in the time it took to write that last paragraph. It's been relatively chilly but only because it got up into the low seventies on Friday. February. It's so confusing what month it is. From a free write we did in class on Friday from the word Sun:
The sky is full of sun but instead of suns we call them stars, banks full of coins or cars full of gas. Our sky is full of stars. As we get closer we might call them suns but we won't get closer and there is no other way to know them. Points of light or pinholes in the canopy but it never feels like a jar and I don't live in a hole. As we zoom out we look small but there is no such thing as zoom a blade of grass to an ant an elephant standing next to a mailbox. There is the sun and there is scale. One is hot, the other an idea, cold as the heart of the speaker. A hole in the sky where instead of darkness light pours forth, somehow. The root of our evil not within us but eight minutes from us. All that is good.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
This is my attempt to write about the newish Haruki Murakami book 1Q84. Q is pronounced "que" which is the phonetic version of the number nine in Japanese. So the book's name is 1984, but a little bit different. I finished it last night, all nine-hundred something pages of it, over the course of a couple months. Since about page one-hundred and fifty I've really enjoyed it, savoring it slowly. Reading to find out what was going to happen but also paying attention. It's my favorite of his books since Norwegian Wood and like NW, IQ84 is fundamentally a love story. But unlike NW, it has a happy ending.
Many of the reviews, and the ones that compelled me to read it, mentioned that it was a strange book. And it is. I concur. Not in terms of narrative, or structure, or characters or plot, but in terms of symbolism and ideology and the ideas in the book. There are no archetypes in this book. The world it creates is not recognizable, nor are its themes or details. Part of the reason I read a bunch of reviews after I finished it, was because even after reading it, I'm not sure what it was actually about. Which is kind of what it's about. Not a post-modern mishmash organized by theme, but an entire world of unrecognizable values. The quote that begins the book is from the song "It's Only a Paper Moon," and goes: It's a Barnum and Baily world, / just as phony as it can be, / But it wouldn't be make-believe / if you believed in me.
As I came to the end of the book the quote started to make sense, the idea that all these symbols and characters and references have meaning because we give them meaning. Or more specifically, we give them meaning together, hence the love story. Janacek’s Sinfonietta, a billboard that says "Put a Tiger in Your Tank", a little dog running through a yard as the main antogonist's last thought, "the little people", along with a zillion other references, all hang out, unexplained. And this is what makes the book strange. It doesn't even attempt to round up all the errant wound up toys. Instead it only ties up the ones that are important to the main characters, leaving the rest of this world to run its course.
Normally this kind of thing might make a reader feel like it was a waste of time, and that is what some of the reviews have said. A minority but that's too bad, because I think they missed the point. Busy looking for something outside of the book in front of them. Other reviews have been as thoughtful as the book. That said, I would be the first to say that Murakami's books all started to blend together, Kafka on the Shore being my breaking point, and I had really planned to stop reading him: no need to keep reading the same story over and over again. But this review is the one that committed me to the book. Slightly negative review but it ends by saying that despite their confusion upon finishing, they kept thinking about it. Which is where I find myself now, a little bit under a mysterious spell. Good or bad I don't know, but it's something, and that's more than I can say for most.
Many of the reviews, and the ones that compelled me to read it, mentioned that it was a strange book. And it is. I concur. Not in terms of narrative, or structure, or characters or plot, but in terms of symbolism and ideology and the ideas in the book. There are no archetypes in this book. The world it creates is not recognizable, nor are its themes or details. Part of the reason I read a bunch of reviews after I finished it, was because even after reading it, I'm not sure what it was actually about. Which is kind of what it's about. Not a post-modern mishmash organized by theme, but an entire world of unrecognizable values. The quote that begins the book is from the song "It's Only a Paper Moon," and goes: It's a Barnum and Baily world, / just as phony as it can be, / But it wouldn't be make-believe / if you believed in me.
As I came to the end of the book the quote started to make sense, the idea that all these symbols and characters and references have meaning because we give them meaning. Or more specifically, we give them meaning together, hence the love story. Janacek’s Sinfonietta, a billboard that says "Put a Tiger in Your Tank", a little dog running through a yard as the main antogonist's last thought, "the little people", along with a zillion other references, all hang out, unexplained. And this is what makes the book strange. It doesn't even attempt to round up all the errant wound up toys. Instead it only ties up the ones that are important to the main characters, leaving the rest of this world to run its course.
Normally this kind of thing might make a reader feel like it was a waste of time, and that is what some of the reviews have said. A minority but that's too bad, because I think they missed the point. Busy looking for something outside of the book in front of them. Other reviews have been as thoughtful as the book. That said, I would be the first to say that Murakami's books all started to blend together, Kafka on the Shore being my breaking point, and I had really planned to stop reading him: no need to keep reading the same story over and over again. But this review is the one that committed me to the book. Slightly negative review but it ends by saying that despite their confusion upon finishing, they kept thinking about it. Which is where I find myself now, a little bit under a mysterious spell. Good or bad I don't know, but it's something, and that's more than I can say for most.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
After class on Friday I walked down to the Powell Street Bart station to catch the train back to Oakland. Because of some construction at the station, the ticket kiosk, a twenty foot long box, was closed on one side so there were only three machines, and three long lines to get a ticket. Usually I just swipe my Clipper Card at the turnstiles but there was no money on it, and I resigned myself to standing in line. It took about fifteen minutes to get to the front of the line, listening to the chatter of some high school girls behind me and observing the odd trio two spots ahead of me, slotting money, coin by coin into the machine. It would of been easy to get annoyed but I was mostly done with my week, and had accepted the fact that it was going to take a little longer than usual.
When I got to the front of the line, facing the machine, a man stepped up to me, a foot away and asked if he could, "real quick, get change for a dollar." He was a little thuggy, but also a little dirty. His dollar bill was pretty crumpled. I didn't get a good look at his face but I was determined not to let him go ahead of me, and said no, and turned back to the machine. As I got out my debit card and swiped it, he stood there and cursed me: "mother fucking faggot ass little bitch etc. etc. etc. faggot mother fucker fuck you etc. etc." I punched in my PIN, swiped my Clipper Card, saw that the dollar total was correct, "faggot little bitch fuck you bitch mother fucker fuck fuck etc. etc." hit accept, swiped my Clipper Card again to get the money on it, "fuck you fuck you fuck you etc. etc. etc." and put my debit card back inside my wallet, and walked to the turnstiles.
As I was walking away I heard him ask the high school girls behind me the same thing, but didn't hear their answer. It was scary, not knowing exactly what this guy was going to do but I don't think he was crazy, and merely wanted to avoid standing in line. To get change or maybe to get a ticket I don't know. Either way, I stood there and absorbed the abuse. I could almost viscerally feel his hate washing over me, but it didn't feel scary. Instead I was focused on my routine, not rattling but moving slowly and deliberately. There was almost something kind of peaceful happening in those moments. Once I got free though, free to think about it, through the turnstiles and down the escalator, there was a train waiting. I hopped on relived to get away, thinking about what just happened, feeling the adrenaline in my system and a little bit of pride.
When I got to the front of the line, facing the machine, a man stepped up to me, a foot away and asked if he could, "real quick, get change for a dollar." He was a little thuggy, but also a little dirty. His dollar bill was pretty crumpled. I didn't get a good look at his face but I was determined not to let him go ahead of me, and said no, and turned back to the machine. As I got out my debit card and swiped it, he stood there and cursed me: "mother fucking faggot ass little bitch etc. etc. etc. faggot mother fucker fuck you etc. etc." I punched in my PIN, swiped my Clipper Card, saw that the dollar total was correct, "faggot little bitch fuck you bitch mother fucker fuck fuck etc. etc." hit accept, swiped my Clipper Card again to get the money on it, "fuck you fuck you fuck you etc. etc. etc." and put my debit card back inside my wallet, and walked to the turnstiles.
As I was walking away I heard him ask the high school girls behind me the same thing, but didn't hear their answer. It was scary, not knowing exactly what this guy was going to do but I don't think he was crazy, and merely wanted to avoid standing in line. To get change or maybe to get a ticket I don't know. Either way, I stood there and absorbed the abuse. I could almost viscerally feel his hate washing over me, but it didn't feel scary. Instead I was focused on my routine, not rattling but moving slowly and deliberately. There was almost something kind of peaceful happening in those moments. Once I got free though, free to think about it, through the turnstiles and down the escalator, there was a train waiting. I hopped on relived to get away, thinking about what just happened, feeling the adrenaline in my system and a little bit of pride.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
I sometimes look to my cats and their relationship as something to emulate. Not to say they don't have problems. When I come home Jinx will usually charge towards Kitty Girl (KG) and bite the back of her neck, bringing her down to the rug. Then he might get on her and keep her pinned down, dominating. When they were younger, it seemed to cause KG a lot of pain, and she'd cry out for a few seconds, then flip around and wap him in the face, hiss, and run off. It's embarrassing when I have guests, people who haven't spent anytime with them might think I willingly lord over their violence, and encourage them by my unwillingness to stop it.
Though for years when this would happen I'd always break them up at the first sign, pulling him off her by the back of his neck. Recently though, in part because he's gotten old and feeble, it's like some weird dance, not totally felt. KG allows him but just kind of stands there and waits until he's done. He doesn't have the strength or the will to prolong the ritual like he used to, and seems to be satisfied with going through the motions. "Yeah yeah, you're the boss." Which in my mind is kind of sweet, this allowance. As the stronger one these days she could beat him up but she doesn't. Instead they sleep together throughout the day, body on body. Keeping warm and keeping each other company. They've been together most of their entire lives and I really don't think they know what they would do without each other. They are symbiotic, always looking to the other, for better or for worse.
Granted they haven't had much of a choice, always stuck together, and in the last five years, stuck with me. Eventually I decided to just let them conduct their relationship without interference. Whatever it is they're doing, it's beyond my understanding. They communicate, but they don't reason. Instead they have their own way and I believe whatever it is they are working out between themselves should remain between themselves. It's really sweet when the spend fifteen minutes cleaning each other but then they bite each other, hit each other, hiss at each other and run away. I don't understand how they flip rapidly from what looks like the deepest love the world has ever known to punching each other in the face, but something about that seems natural. High and lows yes, and what's important is not so much the details as much as the commitment to being with each other. At any rate, Happy Valentines Day. I need to go to work.
Monday, February 13, 2012
In the early days of teaching creative writing and the rhetoric class, occasionally a student would ask how the material was applicable to the "real world." In response, I'd ask "isn't this the real world?" And that would usually end the conversation, not that I wanted it to end but my question always came off as a joke rather than an open inquiry. I mean, really, what about the classroom is not real? Am I not real? Is this conversation just a dream? Combating the fallacy we sometimes tell ourselves, that when there is more at stake we work harder and do better. From what I've learned, doing well is more of a habit than a talent, and the issue of the real world, waiting for it, becomes an excuse not to be fully wherever we are. One of many.
Last semester I started thinking about outcomes. In the curriculum development class the instructor shares a lot of student art work, and it's striking how much of it is good in a technical sense. Clean lines and concepts. Work that is truly finished. Whereas in the rhetoric class I teach, very rarely does an essay, a proposal argument for example, reach a point where it's unquestionably finished. Or say, the writing of an English as a second language learner, even though it might be very well thought out and organized, there will be grammar irregularities and other signs that keep it from perfection. Maybe it's not fair to compare visual images with writing, but there is a difference between expectations. With writing, at least as I've experienced learning and teaching it, the goal is improvement. Yet if you write a grant proposal, you either get the grant, or you don't. It's a binary in the "real world" yet at the college level, it's okay to fall short.
Maybe this is part of what makes an American style education an American style education: room to experiment and try new things and slack off and charge forward and give up and restart and in general, an education that gives us room to consider the process along with the material. People from all over the world come to universities here despite all the bad news about education in this country. But there must be something to the material fact that it's never life or death in school. I write this not to get all rah-rah about an American style education, but to point out this strange paradox between process and product. If we think about testing, No Child Left Behind and increased standards and measures by which to determine success, education becomes a matter of life or death, of funding and economics and resources. Of jobs and students and numbers. Our interactions translated into dollar values, a real-time symbolic logic that takes us away from where we are, and what we are doing.
Last semester I started thinking about outcomes. In the curriculum development class the instructor shares a lot of student art work, and it's striking how much of it is good in a technical sense. Clean lines and concepts. Work that is truly finished. Whereas in the rhetoric class I teach, very rarely does an essay, a proposal argument for example, reach a point where it's unquestionably finished. Or say, the writing of an English as a second language learner, even though it might be very well thought out and organized, there will be grammar irregularities and other signs that keep it from perfection. Maybe it's not fair to compare visual images with writing, but there is a difference between expectations. With writing, at least as I've experienced learning and teaching it, the goal is improvement. Yet if you write a grant proposal, you either get the grant, or you don't. It's a binary in the "real world" yet at the college level, it's okay to fall short.
Maybe this is part of what makes an American style education an American style education: room to experiment and try new things and slack off and charge forward and give up and restart and in general, an education that gives us room to consider the process along with the material. People from all over the world come to universities here despite all the bad news about education in this country. But there must be something to the material fact that it's never life or death in school. I write this not to get all rah-rah about an American style education, but to point out this strange paradox between process and product. If we think about testing, No Child Left Behind and increased standards and measures by which to determine success, education becomes a matter of life or death, of funding and economics and resources. Of jobs and students and numbers. Our interactions translated into dollar values, a real-time symbolic logic that takes us away from where we are, and what we are doing.
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
I'm done writing about meditation, okay? Instead I'm going to begin a fifteen part series about my cats. It will be called "About My Cats" and will begin with parts 1-15. Here goes: CUUUUUTE. Now it is over. The semester has started and today I finally finalized my final schedule. Today I also discovered the Higgs boson particle. Both are significant achievements but finalizing the schedule means no more worry about money this semester, so as, now I can relax. In other news, an audio piece of mine is appearing in the new issue of textsound along with many others, including Bronwen, who I went to graduate school with back in the day. It's a good publication and there's lots of interesting things to listen to. That is all. Hope all is well. See you.
Sunday, February 05, 2012
About Vipassana (part 5)
It's Sunday night and I just watched the last five minutes of the Super Bowl. I didn't really care who won but I always like to watch people celebrate sports championships. The crazy high of all that work, maybe a life's work, must be something else. They're so happy! A couple years ago I made some recordings from the internet (before homeland security blocked most of the illegal streaming sites) of the press conferences after the Lakers won their last one and made it into a really depressing song. You can listen to it here. But speaking of a crazy high, it's been a week since I got back from the meditation course and even though I wasn't exactly "high" I felt pretty good last Sunday. Very clean and clear headed, at a distance from wanting the usual things. Over the course of the week, as stressed piled up from the new semester and as I fell off the schedule of evening sits, I'm remembering what real life is actually like.
This has been the big question upon my return: how far do I want to go with the practice? It's one thing to know how to meditate and use it to reduce stress, have a little more patience, and be a little kinder, or whatever, but it's another to make spiritual teaching the center of a life. What's different this time, is that this far into it, I feel like I can see where all this is leading, and I'm not sure I want to go there at this point in my life. Thus I rebel. So far this week I've been eating meat, having sex, and lying (though I don't know exactly how I've lied, I just figure it comes with the territory of talking), which leaves only stealing and intoxicants before I'm back to where I started. That is to say, it's really difficult to keep it clean. More importantly, I love my friends, and I feel like I would have to get new ones if I were really wanted to commit myself to living a righteous life.
Is there a compromise? I don't know. They don't teach that at the course, so I guess I'll have to figure that out on my own. Morning sits and trying to keep my mind open is the best I can offer. Asides from that I'm not going to make any commitments other than those I've already made to teaching and writing. Maybe when I actually accomplish something in the secular world there will be time to pursue meditation with the commitment it requires. That said, Vipassana has pretty much changed the way I see the world in some fundamental ways. Ways that I believe have allowed me to live a much richer and fuller and in the world kind of life. There is so much to learn by turning one's attention's inward in a trained way, and really, I'm lucky to have a job where I can get away for weeks at a time to study. No ending or conclusion. I'm going to get into bed and read a book. In the morning I'll sit and start my day.
It's Sunday night and I just watched the last five minutes of the Super Bowl. I didn't really care who won but I always like to watch people celebrate sports championships. The crazy high of all that work, maybe a life's work, must be something else. They're so happy! A couple years ago I made some recordings from the internet (before homeland security blocked most of the illegal streaming sites) of the press conferences after the Lakers won their last one and made it into a really depressing song. You can listen to it here. But speaking of a crazy high, it's been a week since I got back from the meditation course and even though I wasn't exactly "high" I felt pretty good last Sunday. Very clean and clear headed, at a distance from wanting the usual things. Over the course of the week, as stressed piled up from the new semester and as I fell off the schedule of evening sits, I'm remembering what real life is actually like.
This has been the big question upon my return: how far do I want to go with the practice? It's one thing to know how to meditate and use it to reduce stress, have a little more patience, and be a little kinder, or whatever, but it's another to make spiritual teaching the center of a life. What's different this time, is that this far into it, I feel like I can see where all this is leading, and I'm not sure I want to go there at this point in my life. Thus I rebel. So far this week I've been eating meat, having sex, and lying (though I don't know exactly how I've lied, I just figure it comes with the territory of talking), which leaves only stealing and intoxicants before I'm back to where I started. That is to say, it's really difficult to keep it clean. More importantly, I love my friends, and I feel like I would have to get new ones if I were really wanted to commit myself to living a righteous life.
Is there a compromise? I don't know. They don't teach that at the course, so I guess I'll have to figure that out on my own. Morning sits and trying to keep my mind open is the best I can offer. Asides from that I'm not going to make any commitments other than those I've already made to teaching and writing. Maybe when I actually accomplish something in the secular world there will be time to pursue meditation with the commitment it requires. That said, Vipassana has pretty much changed the way I see the world in some fundamental ways. Ways that I believe have allowed me to live a much richer and fuller and in the world kind of life. There is so much to learn by turning one's attention's inward in a trained way, and really, I'm lucky to have a job where I can get away for weeks at a time to study. No ending or conclusion. I'm going to get into bed and read a book. In the morning I'll sit and start my day.
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
About Vipassana (part 3 & 4)
As I pulled back the curtain in the kitchen I could see that it had rained last night. I set out some food and tried to remember if I heard the rain falling, half asleep. Around five the cats come into the bed to get warm and also wake me up. I don't really ever get a solid nights sleep but I don't mind so much when the black one paws at the covers and eventually after a few turns finds a place on the pillow to set his head. The brown one is only interested in food but that's her job as the female component of the pair, to do the hunting. In this case, the hunting consists of getting me to open the refrigerator and dig out half a fork full of cold chicken pate. It hardly seems worth it but I'm not a cat and I don't really like to eat cat food. On bad days I curse her and throw her off the bed. On good days I get up when I wake up and don't spend much time dwelling on how much sleep I'm not getting.
Today I wanted to continue writing about Vipassana, leaving off from yesterday when I finally remembered what it was I wanted to write about: the conflict between a meditation practice and adopting some kind of religious practice. On the one hand, it's kind of like talking about the merits of different cooking shows instead of cooking and tasting the actual food. But when I speak to my friend Aaron he sometimes calls me a Buddhist and I say no I'm not, all defensively, because I have some negative associations with being anything vaguely religious. I grew up entirely secular, though my dad did take us to a non-denominational church for a little while, and the very large majority of friends and people that I knew wouldn't call themselves religious or believers of any faith. It's kind of a dirty word, one that implies a blind faith or didactic ignorance about science, or social policies that make moral discriminations from an unintelligible logic.
As the course was ending and the "noble silence" was lifted I had a long conversation with a guy named W, who had a mustache and a build that reminded me of the bass player from Do Make Say Think, and I sat across from him during lunch on the last day. We were talking about the course, it was his first time, and were talking about what we felt were the most difficult parts of the last ten days. I spoke specifically about the sixth day, how I was going a little bit nuts thinking about things I'm not going to write about here on the blog and literally trying to figure our reasons to present to course management so that I could go home. On every course I usually have a moment like this, sheer panic followed by a ton figuring out the best way to justify this panic, like a philosopher using his rhetorical powers to justify why the dishes don't need to be washed.
**
W talked about his problem with the meditation, that during the hour long discourses we listen to in the evenings the teacher says many times that Vipassana is not a "rite or a ritual" and is not an "organized religion." But there we are, following a strict a set of rules and practices. To boot, there is chanting at the beginning of some of the hours, and there is a call and response that happens sometimes as well. At first the chanting put me off but eventually I came to not mind it, and even enjoy it because at the very least it gave me something to "do" (listen) asides from paying attention to what was going on with myself. W asked me how long I had been practicing and I told him, three and half years, three ten day courses, two three day courses and on most days I sit an hour in the morning. That sounds like a religious practice he said, and I have to agree with him.
W came from North Carolina and his family is Christian in the Southern Baptist tradition, a faith that, even though he doesn't go to church anymore, he still feels has relevance. As a person who actually has a lot experience with organized religion, he knows what he's talking about. Taking it a little further, we talked about similarities between Jesus and Buddha and more contemporary leaders like Gandhi and Malcolm X (note: not between Christianity and Buddhism) and the idea, referred to above, that to have a religious identity is generally considered a bad thing. Why is that, and it comes back to how we see ourselves. That any question of I don't want to be this, or be that, is really a question of how we perceive other people, and more broadly, how we see the world. That instead of accepting things as they are we're drawing lines and separating ourselves, (a skill that I am very good at).
At any rate, a more useful distinction might be in the realm of semantics, as in, what exactly is a religion in the first place? One could argue that the gigantic evangelical megachurches are better described not as religions, but as businesses. In the history of the world at large, religion has mostly been used to justify wars and economic expansion. One thing to be said for the communist revolutions in Russia and China is that at least they didn't hide behind ideas like "spreading democracy" and "nation building." Which is the thing: if religion is no more than a belief system one acts upon, then we should consider what exact "religion" the hedge funds and lobbyists and politicians are practicing when they make decisions. In a sense, we are all "religious", some of our beliefs open and on the surface while some of them hidden even from our own eyes. Regardless of what we say we are, it's useful to make a study of our own actions, to know what it is we actually believe.
As I pulled back the curtain in the kitchen I could see that it had rained last night. I set out some food and tried to remember if I heard the rain falling, half asleep. Around five the cats come into the bed to get warm and also wake me up. I don't really ever get a solid nights sleep but I don't mind so much when the black one paws at the covers and eventually after a few turns finds a place on the pillow to set his head. The brown one is only interested in food but that's her job as the female component of the pair, to do the hunting. In this case, the hunting consists of getting me to open the refrigerator and dig out half a fork full of cold chicken pate. It hardly seems worth it but I'm not a cat and I don't really like to eat cat food. On bad days I curse her and throw her off the bed. On good days I get up when I wake up and don't spend much time dwelling on how much sleep I'm not getting.
Today I wanted to continue writing about Vipassana, leaving off from yesterday when I finally remembered what it was I wanted to write about: the conflict between a meditation practice and adopting some kind of religious practice. On the one hand, it's kind of like talking about the merits of different cooking shows instead of cooking and tasting the actual food. But when I speak to my friend Aaron he sometimes calls me a Buddhist and I say no I'm not, all defensively, because I have some negative associations with being anything vaguely religious. I grew up entirely secular, though my dad did take us to a non-denominational church for a little while, and the very large majority of friends and people that I knew wouldn't call themselves religious or believers of any faith. It's kind of a dirty word, one that implies a blind faith or didactic ignorance about science, or social policies that make moral discriminations from an unintelligible logic.
As the course was ending and the "noble silence" was lifted I had a long conversation with a guy named W, who had a mustache and a build that reminded me of the bass player from Do Make Say Think, and I sat across from him during lunch on the last day. We were talking about the course, it was his first time, and were talking about what we felt were the most difficult parts of the last ten days. I spoke specifically about the sixth day, how I was going a little bit nuts thinking about things I'm not going to write about here on the blog and literally trying to figure our reasons to present to course management so that I could go home. On every course I usually have a moment like this, sheer panic followed by a ton figuring out the best way to justify this panic, like a philosopher using his rhetorical powers to justify why the dishes don't need to be washed.
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W talked about his problem with the meditation, that during the hour long discourses we listen to in the evenings the teacher says many times that Vipassana is not a "rite or a ritual" and is not an "organized religion." But there we are, following a strict a set of rules and practices. To boot, there is chanting at the beginning of some of the hours, and there is a call and response that happens sometimes as well. At first the chanting put me off but eventually I came to not mind it, and even enjoy it because at the very least it gave me something to "do" (listen) asides from paying attention to what was going on with myself. W asked me how long I had been practicing and I told him, three and half years, three ten day courses, two three day courses and on most days I sit an hour in the morning. That sounds like a religious practice he said, and I have to agree with him.
W came from North Carolina and his family is Christian in the Southern Baptist tradition, a faith that, even though he doesn't go to church anymore, he still feels has relevance. As a person who actually has a lot experience with organized religion, he knows what he's talking about. Taking it a little further, we talked about similarities between Jesus and Buddha and more contemporary leaders like Gandhi and Malcolm X (note: not between Christianity and Buddhism) and the idea, referred to above, that to have a religious identity is generally considered a bad thing. Why is that, and it comes back to how we see ourselves. That any question of I don't want to be this, or be that, is really a question of how we perceive other people, and more broadly, how we see the world. That instead of accepting things as they are we're drawing lines and separating ourselves, (a skill that I am very good at).
At any rate, a more useful distinction might be in the realm of semantics, as in, what exactly is a religion in the first place? One could argue that the gigantic evangelical megachurches are better described not as religions, but as businesses. In the history of the world at large, religion has mostly been used to justify wars and economic expansion. One thing to be said for the communist revolutions in Russia and China is that at least they didn't hide behind ideas like "spreading democracy" and "nation building." Which is the thing: if religion is no more than a belief system one acts upon, then we should consider what exact "religion" the hedge funds and lobbyists and politicians are practicing when they make decisions. In a sense, we are all "religious", some of our beliefs open and on the surface while some of them hidden even from our own eyes. Regardless of what we say we are, it's useful to make a study of our own actions, to know what it is we actually believe.
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