Water

 If you go to the third floor of the Museu Afrobrasil, there is a dim room that is devoted to the history of the slave trade.  The nearest wall to you, on your left side, features poetry and essays written by black Brasilians about the legacy of this history.  Hanging amongst these words projected in large print along the wall are some of the metallurgical arts of the Trade: chains, hand and ankle and neck cuffs, those absurd hooks that were attached to chains at the neck, and some indeterminate tools a creative and determined mind could put to work.  If you haven't yet left the room, keep walking and you'll see on the consecutive wall two very large portraits of former slaves, one with his country marks very clearly arising from his cheekbones, like three not very long fingers branded into his face and swelling out to meet the surface.  

I hope you can tell me what is on the other two walls; I can't remember.  Because in the middle of the room is the frame of a slaver.  It takes up the entire volume of the room.  It is hollow; your mind can fill the space.  

Perhaps, like me, you'll leave the room thereafter and very quickly forget what is on the other two walls.  

And perhaps, like me, you'll pause for a long time on the second floor, amongst the dark-metaled sculptures that might ease the effect of that horrible skeleton of a ship.  There is one that you won't miss.   I am no welder, so I cannot name what material it is made from, but it is the color of coal.  And I am no engineer, so I cannot measure space without a tool in my hand, but I think it is a little bit over five feet long and perhaps about two and a half feet wide.  

It is a woman becoming water.

She is lying on her stomach, as if she'd been killed and she'd fallen into a river.  Her feet and her lower legs are water, and her body rises out at mid-thigh.  You'll see her behind prominently standing out, and maybe you'll make the same assumption that I made: she is indigenous.  (There are feathers strung to a cord around her waist.)  Only her beautifully sculpted back and part of her wavy-haired head and the left side of her blurry face aren't water.  Her arms are water and her stomach is water, and the female markers of her body are water.  

When you see the sculpture, you will see how difficult it is to determine where her body ends and where water begins.  The borders of her body are swallowed by it.

When you leave the museum, it might be raining.  Be careful not to mistake the raindrops for your tears. 

Spinning

When I was an undergraduate, my friends Amy, Megan and I (and probably others I've now forgotten) went to see a film called "Baraka."  It was the strangest movie I'd seen at that time in my life, and perhaps the most beautiful.  

Fifteen years after I saw the movie, I wrote a poem based on what I thought was its most beautiful image: light-skinned men in tall, conical hats and long gown-like coats, spinning 'round and 'round with arms out, one hand in limp surrender to the earth and the other facing up, gently lifting air.

Whirling dervishes.

It isn't certain why this image struck me so.  Something about the double spin of their dance: their bodies are gracefully spinning 'round while they are orbiting around the center of the space.  An orbit, being and not being.

In the film, there is no Sufi music in the background, so the audience misses the full effect.  It is also shown in slow motion.  But the image is still striking.  The men spinning, and another man in a darker cloak walking calmly amongst them.

Tonight, I learned that Candomble has an orbit of its own.  

First on the south side, and then on the east side of Sao Paulo, I attended two celebrations for the great spirits of Candomble, the creative and hopeful faith of seemingly powerless African slaves who were forced to labor in the sugar fields of the Catholic Portuguese.  At both celebrations, men and women of all shades, mostly dressed in white, danced 'round an offering in the middle of the room while three men (at both places) beat on drums with their hands.  Apparently in some kind of trance brought on by the great spirits of West Africa, the celebrants spun 'round on their own skillful axis while also dancing around the center.  Some of them wore masks, one danced with a large basket of bread on his head, another wore a curtain of beads dangling in front of her face, looking like a traditional wedding veil of Yemen or some such place.   

They were absolutely as graceful as the whirling dervishes.  And their music was contagious.  I found myself dancing along with them, only on the outskirts of the tribe.  

Watching as men and women were overtaken by the feeling, trembling and jumping and then dancing and spinning 'round, I wondered: what is it about spinning on an axis that is so mesmerizing?  It's got to be more than dizziness.  Why do the spirits need this twirling, or why do people need this whirling, to feel their interbeing with the gods and their normally unimaginable energy?  What is it?

I think I know what it is.  After you've been spinning for so long, your body feels weak, you sweat, and yes, you are dizzy.  You must surrender to the feeling, or give up the twirling.  You must depend on others to take care of you: to wipe your head, to tighten your clothes, to protect you from banging into something or someone, to chant and sing and clap out the rhythm of the accompaniment, to encourage you to keep going.  

In that action, the spinner and the nonspinner become one, inseparable, interdependent.  

I wonder if the Buddha ever tried spinning.  If so, I hope someone had his back.  

Un-Amazonia

If I stand out on the balcony of this hotel room, on the corner of Jau and Lobo, I can see unevenly tall buildings in the distance and the forefront.  On the roof of one building there are trees topped with reddish blooms.  Along the fence of another are clothes hanging out, presumably to dry, although it is overcast and a bit misty today.  Dr. Seuss-looking potted palms stand on the roof of a concrete-colored building, and to my right is a large shade tree set amidst short, dense cottages with orange tiled roofs.  One building is pink, another is yellow with blue accents, one about a block away is bright white and reminds me of a cruise ship that you'd see on the Mississippi.  As far as my eyes can see, there are buildings.  

It is Manhattan times ten.

Our flight into Sao Paulo was the most jarring flight I have ever taken.  As soon as we entered the Gulf, the plane began jerking side to side, and then lurching down and back up again, only to rest for a moment, and then resume the same dance.  At one point, I looked to my right and saw two men with British accents holding their cups of coffee out in front of them, trying to keep them from spilling on their preppy white pants.  I laughed out loud, and then hoped they didn't think I was laughing at them.

In part, I was laughing because I used to fear flights like this.  Any touch of turbulence sent my hands gripping the inadequate armrests, and my mind rushing to the horrible thought of death.  Not to mention my heart, which pounded so hard it blurred my vision.  I would look around at the stewardesses and wonder why they weren't running for their lives, even though there was no where to run.  

Not this time.  I found myself amused by the jiggling airplane, amused by the absurdity of all of us up there, enduring this sky-quake just to leave where we were to go somewhere else.  I even smiled at the thought, especially as we were passing over Amazonia, of falling from the sky.  Imagine landing on the bed of green jungle below.  What a place to perish.

When I wasn't pointlessly trying to sleep, I was reading "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki, one of my favorite teachers.  The last sentence I read before we landed was:

"Just to practice zazen and put ourselves into the oven is our way."

Welcome to Brasil!

Pre-flight

The last time I flew far away from home, I was traveling to Puerto Rico to attend a writing seminar at San Juan's University of the Sacred Heart.  The night before I left, I wrote a poem contemplating the flight.  In the poem, I asked the question (in so many words): have I hurt anyone?  Have I left anyone floating in the sky, gasping in an unfriendly atmosphere, grasping at the nothingness of the air?  I was thinking, what suffering have I caused?

This question comes to my mind every time I fly.  Because flying, to me, is such an unnatural act.  We gamble with technology, weather, and humanity every time we climb up into the sky.  It doesn't seem right to me.    

I don't belong up in the air.  I belong right here on the ground, where I can walk and touch dirt, plant seeds, ride my bike, kiss my son, and bow from the waist.  Flying seems like a sustained fantasy: we're all thinking that everything is totally normal; we're eating, sleeping, talking, daydreaming, reading, praying; meanwhile, the ground is far, far beneath us, and the vehicle we're sitting in is so much a weapon.  If we fall from the sky, we threaten any form of life down there on the ground, innocents who aren't up there.  But flying seems so benign, especially with a lapful of distractions.  Flying doesn't seem like reality to me.  It feels unreal.  

But thankfully, an airplane will take me to the places I yearn to go.  Vietnam, South Africa, New Zealand.  Maybe if I find a home in one of these places -- outside of the city, a simple life, mindful labor and love, reading and writing (all I want for my life) -- I won't fly again.    

Tomorrow, an airplane will take me to Brasil.  Tonight, I contemplate my actions.

Because everything is connected.

Logic

I wasn't sure what my son and I would do today, so I called my oldest sister to talk with her.  I told her that we might go to a temple in a neighborhood close to hers.  She told me, 'I'm not sure exactly where the temple is, but I don't think it's in the greatest neighborhood.'  

'What do you mean?' I asked.  

'I think it's gang territory over there,' she told me.  'It's gang-infested.'

How do we decide where we will go and where we will not go?  What had she learned about this neighborhood in the north side of the valley?  How had she learned it?  Reports of gang-related shootings on the local news?  Driving through and seeing walls tagged with indecipherable graffiti,  or short-haired guys hanging around with dragging pants?  Or just a reputation that the neighborhood has acquired?  

I generally do not stay away from neighborhoods labeled 'dangerous.'  Perhaps I should.  I offer a smile to people whose eyes meet mine, and I acknowledge the humanity of everyone I encounter.  I do not recoil from someone who might look dangerous, according to whatever dubious standards determine this.  Nor do I run to them like an innocent child and give them an opportunity to harm me.  I acknowledge their humanity.  This lessens the fear of the unknown.  

I know that I could be the victim of an ugly collection of crimes.  Rape, robbery, battery, murder.  I do not walk through life, holding this in my mind.  I make a daily effort to live mindfully.

I asked my sister, 'Do you think that I should worry about a gang-infested neighborhood on a Sunday morning?'

'Yes!' she answered me.  

I decided not to go.  Because my son is with me, he's never been there before, and I'm not sure how he would cope in a new temple.  There may not be any other children there.  They may practice silent meditation.  He may decide this is a day of defiance.  The 'gang infestation' is not keeping me away.  Deep in the core of a gang member, beneath the layers of fear and ignorance and grasping, is buddha nature.  Brutally disguised, it is still there.  

Movement

In the months before I began writing my dissertation, I found that I had an immeasurable amount of energy.  I had a small baby and an old man and my committee at NYU waiting for chapters.  I hadn't written any.  I thought I had writer's block.

When I write poetry, I feel the urge building in me for several days.  A subject is compelling me to write, but the words take time to surface.  When I have the initial image, or the first lines, then I can write.  And then I write for days or weeks until the feeling passes.  Or until I feel that I've exhausted the subject.  

It wasn't different for the dissertation.  I couldn't begin a chapter without the first lines, without the anecdote that would introduce that chapter's topic.  Once I found that, I wrote almost three hundred pages in about five months.

But before that, when I couldn't write, I felt that I could do anything else.  I washed the cars every other day.  I cleaned the house every night.  I swept the driveway with a wide broom every day.  I polished wood; I scrubbed floors embedded with the ubiquitous dirt of an aging construction worker.  I planted lantana and basil and nameless flowers in the backyard.  Every night, I lay awake, thinking about the work that I wasn't doing on my dissertation, and then I got up and cleaned something.

I'm feeling the same energy now, but I'm not writing a dissertation (thankfully).  It isn't manic.  It isn't o.c.d.  It is energy that wants to move.  I want to move.

I'm waking in the morning thinking, 'what work can I do today?'  I'm calling the monks in my community, asking them, 'can I come to the temple and work?'  I even called my mother and asked her if I can help her husband take care of the yard.  'You?  Do yard work?'  She sounded appalled.  I don't think I've ever pushed a lawnmower in my life.  I want to now.

Alongside sitting meditation, work is at the core of Zen practice.  We rake a field, we wash pots, we dig in a garden with one mind and one body.  With the mind on the action and the breath appropriate for the action.  Raking a field has the same value as bowing, sitting, chanting.  We can see our minds and see 'who am I' with every push and pull of the rake.   

I want to work.

Awake

Outside again, at dusk, working with a friend, in the heat and muggy air, I could feel the mosquitoes reliably surrounding my body and landing here and there, looking for sustenance.  Accepting their presence and the essence of what they do when they meet someone like me, I breathed and gently pushed them away.  Several on my neck, in the front and in the back, some drilling through my pants and shirt, several around my ankles and around my face.  There they were.

Swatting them would have been pointless.  Others would have quickly replaced them.

My friend walked away for a moment and returned with some anti-mosquito spray.  He thoughtfully sprayed me first, then himself.  After that, it was just the termites flapping around and giving up their wings.

In the back of my mind I did think, 'tomorrow I will be covered with mosquito bites,' but I didn't worry about it.  The next day, I found only two: one mathematically placed right between my collarbones, and one on the second joint of the second toe on my left foot.  And they didn't itch.

What happened?  I know those dozens of mosquitoes were piercing me; I could feel it.  But only two bites showed themselves.

I wonder: if I had been running around trying to avoid the mosquitoes, or if I had been swatting them and getting frustrated with them, self-righteously killing them, would I have had more bites?  

I think breathing saved my skin.  

Offerings

I was asked by a friend of mine, who is a Buddhist nun in graduate school on the East Coast, to read and edit a paper she is writing about women and Taoism.  I am happy to help her: I am an mindful editor,  I see this as an opportunity to learn, and I serve the sangha in any way that I am able and in any way that does not compromise anyone's precepts.

I read the paper and turned my thoughts to offerings.  

When I first entered the Buddhist temples in my community, I noticed artistically balanced plates of fruit, small bowls of rice, professionally arranged vases of flowers and leaf-stalks, and spent sticks of incense all set before the statues of the Pure Land tradition.  

Food on an altar?  Strange, I thought.  Why give food to deities that might not exist?  Isn't it wasted?  Or meaningless religious ritual?  

I never considered making an offering.  My only thought was to sit.  Isn't this what we do in Zen?  We just sit and see what happens, following Shunryu Suzuki's instructions.  Why make an offering?

Offerings are essential not to Buddhist practice, but to life.  We must make offerings to honor our own humanity and to recognize our common humanity with others.  I can see a pantheon of offerings:

offerings of food

offerings of medicine

offerings of knowledge

the offering of an open ear and a closed mouth

offerings of incense burned before an image

an open-ended offering to someone who is trusted

offerings of something we love and cherish rather than something we do not value

offerings of money

offerings of time

an offering of love that is selfless and wise

I made a number of offerings today.  I told a man that I loved him (and I meant it).  I lit incense for a friend who lost her mother to Alzheimer's (keeping in mind that this could be anyone's fate).  I listened to a friend express her disappointment in herself.  I rode my bike (an offering to myself and my not-so-thin-anymore body).  I drove a man to the airport.  I watered the plants around my house.  And I read my nun-friend's paper.    

I hope she gets an A. 

  

Termites

At dusk tonight, I took a bike ride.  Not a great decision.

I live in the Deep South.  It is May.  The termites were swarming. 

As I rode my bike, standing and engaged rather than sitting on the seat, I felt the termites flying around me.  Or rather, I felt them banging into my body as I barged through their nightly gathering around each streetlight.  

On my neck, on my hands gripping the handlebars, along my hairline, down the front of my shirt, in and around my ears: termites, hitting me and then staying put wherever they landed.  Soon, I felt them crawling down my shirt, down my back.  

I didn't worry and I didn't stop my bike.  I kept riding, knowing that I would encounter the flying termites until I reached my home.  When I arrived, I carefully peeled off my clothes in the dark of the kitchen.  I didn't want to kill any of the termites still clinging to my body.  I also didn't want to carry them into the house.  Three of them dropped from my shirt, one huddled inside my underclothes.  Using a postcard from India that a friend just sent in the mail, I gently scraped them up from the kitchen floor, and put them on the cement outside.  Nothing for them to dig into.

Flushing them was an option.  Termites ruin many places they call home.  But I couldn't do it.  

During the swarming months, I keep my house dark at night.  I light a candle to travel from room to room.  I keep the porch light off.  I hope that this will keep the termites away.

Last week, I went to a Buddhist temple to help prepare for the Buddha's birthday celebration.  On the lawn in front of the Buddha hall, a monk and I planted flowers around the bath that the child Buddha statue would stand in.  It was also dusk.  Soon, as we worked, we were surrounded by flying termites.  At first, it was annoying; I hoped they wouldn't fly into my mouth or get caught in my hair.  When I took the time to look down at them, I saw that they were abandoning their wings and turning into larvae.  All over my body, and the body of my friend: disembodied wings, and dewinged crawling little creatures, looking like innocent little zygotes.  My friend didn't seem to mind.  After some minutes, I learned to accept the sensation.  I knew they wouldn't hurt me. 

"We should practice meditation out here," I told the monk, "with the termites flying all around."

He seemed mildly amused.