Into companionship or close association

I’ve slept for eleven hours two nights in a row.  This has got to be a world record for me.  There’s not much oomph in the bod but I wanted to put something out into the world today.  So here goes …

The photo is of Donald Lopez Jr.  He’s a professor of Buddhism at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  My antennae are always up for good teachers.

First of all, a note about vocabulary:

“In Buddhism, sutras are sacred scriptures, considered records of the oral teachings of Gautama Buddha or his close disciples”

Donald had an assignment for his students.  In his words …

The second paper topic pointed out that Buddhist sutras were written for centuries after the death of the Buddha, with anonymous authors attributing their own words to the Buddha, thus allowing the Buddha to address important issues of the time, sometimes in the form of prophecy.  Using the literary style of a Buddhist sutra, the students were asked to compose a sutra, setting forth what the Buddha might teach those living in America today.

What a cool task to present to young minds!  The article I read didn’t give examples of student sutras but I bet there was a lot of spiritual energy flowing from student to prof within computer files.

***

A big Yes to the spiritual life of the planet

My brain is mush, as is my body.  I slept eleven hours last night and some more today.  Wayward, floating, wide open spaces … sounds transformational but actually it’s some type of virus.

(Oh … this is going to be a short post!)

This weekend is a Zoom retreat for the Core group of the Evolutionary Collective – six hours a day.  If you subtract for breaks, it’s about four-and-a-half hours of focusing.  On the words of the teacher, on the words when people share in the large group, on the words of my partner when we’re doing a practice.

I just didn’t have it.  Sentences drifted off into the ether, with their meanings invisible to me.  My mind floated away as well.  All I could do was “be with” my fellow members as best as I could, and silently love them.

But the sun was setting on Bruce …

This afternoon I decided not to attend the retreat today.  Four more hours would be beyond my grasp.  It was a good decision.  I’ll listen to the recording this week.

I woke up mid-afternoon from a long slumber.  I had closed the blinds.  And this is what I beheld:

Gifts always find a way

I mentioned Darlene Cohen a few days ago, that she had insights about pain that I decided to share only when I had some.  (This is not a photo of her)

Be careful of what you ask for!

The body isn’t working well right now.  Some virus has leaked the air out of my tires.  I’ll spare you the details.  It’s not extreme but it is a dis-ease.

And so it’s time for Darlene and me …

Here’s what she has to say:

We must penetrate our anguish and pain so thoroughly that illness and health lose their distinction, [allowing] us to just live our lives.  Our relief from pain and our healing have to be given up again and again to set us free from the desire to be well.  Otherwise, getting well is just another hindrance to us … another idea that enslaves us, like any other achievement.  Healing ourselves is like living our lives.  It is not preparation for anything else, nor a journey to another situation called wellness.  It is its own self; it has its own value.  It is each thing as it is.

Okay, this is difficult.  The content of Darlene’s message is clearly a challenge.  But so is stringing thoughts together when my head is woozy. 

I understand, Bruce.  Now write

“To set us free from the desire to be well.”  It sounds crazy, but it’s pointing me to the moon.  Am I willing to go there?

Is Darlene asking me to accept my current disorientation for the rest of my life?  On one level, I’m doing what I need to to have health return, such as taking an effective medication, drinking lots of fluids, etc. 

She’s not suggesting that I don’t take action.  She’s asking my eyes to see illness and health through a wider lens: simply life events, ones that we all face.  To hold them in a far bigger universe, to feel the space around them.

I’m back to wondering how I’m creating these words.  Wouldn’t it be better to write this stuff in a few days when I’m feeling better?  No.

Getting well as an “achievement”, more of the ego doing its thing.  How strange.

Just a glimpse now … a world beyond the horizon of health.

And a disclaimer: my current health problem is not large.  How would Darlene show herself to me if right now I was in excruciating pain?

***

I fear that I’m rambling

But I’m allowed

Rambling, paining, joying …

All part of it

This is Natalie Hampton.  Years ago she had a deep problem.  She felt the pain of it and didn’t stop there.  She acted.

Seventh grade.

Natalie Hampton walked into the cafeteria holding her tray, eyes searching for a place – any place – to sit.

Every table was taken.  Groups laughing, talking, locked inside their own worlds.  She already knew how this would end.  She’d tried before.

The rejection was instant.  Loud.  Public.  So she sat at an empty table in the corner.  Alone.  Again.

Have you been there?  I sure have.  And I’ve been on the other side of things too.  Once my emotional maturity started showing up, I became a welcomer for the alone ones.

Back to Natalie.  She created an app called Sit With Us, finding a way for teens to link up online, and at the table.  Brilliant!  And talk about viral …

Messages arrived from everywhere – Morocco.  Australia.  England.  The Philippines.  France.

Kids who’d been eating alone finally felt seen.

…

Today Sit With Us operates in 30 countries.  Natalie – now in her mid-twenties – remains CEO.

Now kids everywhere can open an app, find a table, and sit down knowing they’re welcome.

***

One person

A stabbing pain

A creation

And thousands of teens touched

I read marvelous words from Darlene Cohen this morning.  She talked about physical pain in a way that I’ve hardly ever glimpsed.

And I thought: “Write about this in your blog, Bruce!” 

And then I hesitated.  “I don’t know” showed up …

I realized a basic fact: “I’m not in pain right now.”  And my head started shaking “No.” 

I need to reflect on Darlene’s thoughts when I’m in the middle of experiencing what she’s talking about:  It hurts!

Of course, I don’t have to do it that way, but it would be far more valuable for me (and I expect for you) if I was living the life experience of pain in the moment.

And so I will wait for the nausea, or the dizziness, or the muscle ache to return.  Because they will. 

It might be tomorrow or it might be three weeks from now, but the speaking will be spoken.  Today something else was alive.

I left Canada three years ago, and now I’m home in Gent.  So deeply home.

As I look to my future, I know that I’ll visit my Canadian friends again and again.  But I have no desire to slog through deep snow and shiver in -20 Celsius temperatures.

So … I’ve had the thought: “I’ll never throw a snowball again.”

Wrong!

Five centimetres have landed, and it keeps falling!  Magical.  It’s the first time for me – Gentian snow staying on the ground.

I made a snowball on my way to The Cobbler this morning.  I dropped into various stores, threatening friends and employees with my white weapon.  Nobody seemed impressed, and I didn’t launch the ball towards any face.  No one thought it was funny.  Oh well. 

My snowball ended up in the sink at The Cobbler.  Upon leaving the building, I made another.  I came across three young boys doing what Canadian kids do – having a snowball fight.

I stood nearby with my hand behind my back.  I picked a victim.  And when he was focused on his friends, I wheeled around and launched!  Missed his head, got his chest.  Lots of laughs in every direction.

Okay, this may be a “one-off”.  Perhaps I won’t see this much snow in Gent again.

But what fun in the moment of now!

Have I ever said goodbye to someone for the last time when we were looking into each other’s eyes?  When we knew we’d never see each other again?

I don’t think so.

I stayed in my wife Jody’s hospital room as she was dying.  I said goodnight to her, not sure of her awareness of me in the moment.  And then in the middle of the night she stopped breathing.  Jody died.  No goodbye together.

In October, 2022 I sat alone with my friend Jo till about 1:00 am as death came near.  I said “Goodbye” before going to bed, but Jo was in and out of consciousness.  He died after I’d left.  No conscious ending together.

In April I visited many dear friends in Canada.  I said the magic words “I love you” over and over again and said “Goodbye” as I got into my rental car.  But it didn’t feel like an ending.  I thought I’d be back … sometime.  And I still think that.

So I’ve never said these words to an alert companion:

Goodbye, dear one.  You’ve made an immense difference in my life.  I love you

The moment will come …

Actually in my living room

Years ago I watched part of a Bruce Springsteen concert on Blu-Ray: London Calling.  I was disappointed.  Because of a curfew, most of the concert was during the day.  It lacked the mystery of nighttime, the energy.  I love Bruce’s concert performances … but not this one.

Last night I decided to give the Blu-Ray another chance.  After all, I’d spent good money to buy it.  Try again.

Woh!

It was nearly three hours of high octane Bruceness.  The E Street Band was rockin’.  Incredible guitar riffs from Nils Lofgren.  Deep saxophone solos from Clarence Clemons.  Bruce hopping off the stage to be face-to-face with front row folks as he belted out the lyrics.  The whole shebang was a blast of Born To Run pizzazz …

The highway’s jammed with broken heroes
On a last chance power drive
Everybody’s out on the run tonight
But there’s no place left to hide

Together, Wendy, we can live with the sadness
I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul
Oh someday, girl, I don’t know when
We’re gonna get to that place

Where we really wanna go and we’ll walk in the sun
But ’til then, tramps like us
Baby, we were born to run

And the crowd!  50,000 gyrating human beings, sometimes waving their arms back and forth in unison to Springsteen anthems.  The camera work caught the magnificence of it all.  Well done.

***

How can it be?

Black and white

It was …

“Something which baffles”

Before moving to Belgium, I’d never heard of anyone whose first name was “Puck”.  Times change.

For the past two years, I’ve followed the cycling exploits of Puck Pieterse from the Netherlands.  On the road bike, riding the cobblestones of Flanders and up to the mountain passes of the Tour de France.  On the mountain bike, navigating rocks and tree roots on steep slopes.  And through the winter mud of cyclocross.

But all that interest ended in August.  I came home from a meditation retreat in the USA with a renewal of identity as a Buddhist, and a falling away of some previous passions, such as cycling races in Europe.

Puck disappeared from my life.

And now she’s back.

It amazes me how I let go of my connection with her, my admiration for the athlete, but more so the human being.

Puck smiles.  She congratulates her opponents.  She does wheelies on the bike.  She recons cyclocross races on the Internet before the big day.  Look up “Zonhoven” on YouTube, a grunt through the snow before the cyclocross race that’s today!

Maybe it will be too cold today for mud but here’s a cyclocross pic of Puck at a warmer time.  Definitely a dirty athlete!

***

How could I let go of such an enthralling sport?

How could I let go of such an inspiring person?

It doesn’t matter … I did that

And now the return