the pathless path

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I need to get out of my head!

How can we ever leave where we are? But we do it all the time. In fact, most of us are sunk so deeply into our own mental images that we can barely even recognize where we are anymore. We need to learn to come back to a place we have never left. It’s absurd. But that’s the way it is.
– Brad Warner - "Sit Down and Shut Up," p 26

In other words, why, oh why, do we keep insisting that we live in some other reality far removed from the one we encounter all the time? ibid., p. 64

For the record, I really like Brad Warner.

He’s a 40-something Zen guy who has in his background stints with punk rock bands and also worked in Japan for a monster movie company. His books are both honest and irreverent. As such, he takes heat from some in the Zen world, who like their teachers to be gilded over with perfection.

When you come right down to it, Brad and I are doing the only thing we can do—we’re extolling the virtue of being present, while living in the non-imaginary world. One of the best ways of doing this is to be present in your body, while being aware (yet non-attached) to your thoughts.

I just reconnected on Facebook with three people I knew at good old Elmhurst College

—we all graduated in 73, and all of us still look pretty good, if I do say so myself. The two guys lived in the same dorm as me, and the woman was the editor of the school paper (I wrote… imagine… a rather rude column for same, until I finally insulted the powers that were and was "fired," but Joan let me get the final word in…)

The guys were part of a group that was really into jazz and the blues, and also enjoyed the use of recreational substances, so they were my kind of people. They imparted their love of the music (I didn’t "get" jazz before their intervention) and for that I’m eternally grateful.

I mention this because Darbella and I spent the weekend at the Kitchener Blues Festival. Among others, we listened to Canned Heat ("Going Up the Country") and David Clayton-Thomas (from Blood, Sweat and Tears.) The music was excellent, only a little rain, good food, good company.

My mind, as usual, accompanied me.

So, I listened to myself. Criticize, gripe, and complain (no doubt a famous law firm.) Mostly, I was doing judgements about people’s appearance, closely followed by "Why the hell don’t ‘they’ shut up and listen to the music?"

Now, be clear here. Doing this is not "wrong," nor stoppable. Our little minds take us away from (let’s call it) reality all the time. I pleased myself (another mind trip) that, in the main, I didn’t fixate on any of it for more than a second or so at a time. But I ruefully admit that those separate seconds of judgement were quite sequential.

Now, the downside to such internal distractions is that I couldn’t really listen to the music at the same time. And the music, you see, was reality. Or better put, my chosen reality for that time.

Now, don’t you find it interesting that we pick a reality to be present in, and then leave it to go to Fantasy Land?

In a sense, it’s like my mention of jazz. The thing, for me, about jazz is that it is unpredictable, and weird stuff happens. Jazz solos are impromptu, and I still find it unbelievable that someone can riff on a theme, be so seemingly somewhere else, and then end up precisely on track with the rest of the band (who do not seem to be exerting themselves to stay in the groove.) Amazing.

As soon as I try to analyze or compare what’s going on, I lose the music.

It is so that there is what is going on (reality) and what I think about it (fantasy.) This dovetails with last week’s article, which posed the question of "me" vs "them." This artificial construct is a product of mind. Things come into existence as I think about them. As do separations, and distinctions.

Where this gets odd is understanding that nothing around us, including us, is real, as in substantial and lasting.

Another music example. Canned Heat played at Monterrey and Woodstock. Their big hits came early, and "Going Up the Country" became the theme song for Woodstock.

Now, the two main guys from the band died decades ago, and I suppose the Canned Heat Dar and I just listened to are vaguely related to the original band. What I can tell you is that the music, 40 years later, sounded different. Even the flute playing was different.

Different, not wrong.

If my expectation was that things were going to be like they were 40 years ago (same thing with David Clayton-Thomas…) I was going to be disappointed. I was not disappointed.

I was struck (a good thing!) by the differences, noted them, and stayed with the music.

If you watched the video, above, you got a snapshot of the late 60s, and the culture of the time. (I love the nuns, 2/3 of the way through.) But, you see, none of those people exist, either back then, or now!

Me, in 73. (Or is it? Hmm…)
Susan! Stop staring!

It’s sort of like if you were to look at the actual film. Each frame of each person is a millisecond of time. You can cut a frame out and look at it, and say, for example, "Here’s Wayne in 1973!" What ridiculous statement.

A fragment of Wayne-ness exists in that picture. But it’s a chimera. There is never even a moment when I am the same as I was the moment before. I am not my stories of me, a reality proven again and again.

I wrote to one of the guys from Elmhurst College, and mentioned the music thing – how I remembered him teaching me about jazz and the blues. He wrote back, and remembered that I’d taught him how to use a darkroom, about existentialism, and (the part I liked best) "[you] just made me want go Europe and put my eyes & hands on things." I was quite struck – after he mentioned those things, I remembered them.

Our history is always and ever nothing more than the stories we choose to remember and focus on. We are not who we say we are! We are all of it, and none of it, and decidedly that parts we choose to forget.

This is Brad Werner’s point, and mine too.

We are endlessly committed to our stories, to the exclusion of what’s really happening. Which must be perceived and experienced, as opposed to clung to or rejected. It is what it is, and then it isn’t. Just like us.

In Bodywork, the hardest part is getting people to stay in their bodies, and totally present, in order to have a (excuse the pun) full-bodied experience. Bodywork theory is that trauma and delight are equally trapped in the body, and are not experienced. Rather they are (over) analyzed. This head tripping is encouraged in the West.

So, you go to a therapist, and hope to have your stories changed.

OK. That’s OK. That’s what this blog is sort of about – getting you to shift your story. But this is not enough.

The only path that is effective is to let go of depending on stories altogether.

The requires a willingness to be awake, while having the full experience of the present moment. In Bodywork, that means allowing the pleasure and pain to flow in and through your body, while observing and evaluating without judging. Or stopping it.

A popular pose for most people.

Because the world is decidedly off balance, and has been for several years, the legs, pelvis and belly hold all kinds of dramatic stuff. Pleasure and pain, charge, sexuality, self-awareness, and relationships tend to be the "off kilter" key points.

And most people suck up the discomfort, telling themselves endless stories, and hoping that shifting the story alone will shift the feeling, sensations, and physicality of the unbalance.

Doesn’t work that way.

It’s like, in Zen, the key is not a shift in thinking, although there is a component of this. The shift is to "I don’t know," combined with zazen, or just sitting. The key to the practice is the sitting. The physical act trumps endless rumination.

In a sense, it’s listening to the music now, and now, and now.

More on this next week!