Brothers and Sisters

I’ve been looking to other people this week, to get the answer to the question of how we can  have an elegant inner world. How can we be unflappable in the face of fear, worry, meanness and ill-intent against us on the part of others or against others for our own part. How can we find a home in our own mind that welcomes and nourishes us or how can we use our mind to bring us to the home in our hearts.




I’m a Christian so I asked Jesus first. He had nothing new to say on the subject. Just the usual, “When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come He will lead you into all truth” and “My grace is sufficient unto thee,” and “Turn the other cheek.”



“Yeah, yeah, I hear that but I just need something fresh, some new way to manage my inner world. I need something I can understand.”



“How about, Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner, have mercy?” said the still small voice within me.




“Ahhhhhhhhhhhh. Been there, done that,” I said.



So I called up the Dalai Lama in India where he and the gang escaped from Tibet to avoid extinction by the Chinese and thus have been able to go on doing something useful in the world, and he answered on the first ring. He answers his own phone, you know.



I barely gave him time to say his warm, personal, heartfelt “Hello?”



“Dalai Lama,” I said, “You’ve got to help me. People are out to get me. They’ve formed a gang and they’re bullying me with behavior that excludes me and judges me falsely and it makes me feel really really bad. It makes me scared. It makes me angry back. It makes me want to hurt them big time. What do I do with all this feeling?



“Sweetheart,” said the Dalai Lama. “You are the pickle of my eye . . . like an apple but a little too much time in the brine.” He paused. I don’t know if he was gathering his thoughts or praying. But eventually he started talking and here is what he told me in his soft, clear voice:



All of those who are for you, and all of those who are against you, and all the billions of people who don't know you, never heard of you and could care less about you, have four things in common. Listen and take this in. It includes me and it includes you:



1. We all want to be happy.

2. We all want an end to any suffering we may be experiencing at the moment.

3. We all are only thinking about our own selfish selves most of the time.

4. In a fistful of years we will all be very very dead and every opportunity to support each other, love each other, accept each other, build something good and hold each other blameless will be over. We will be dust.



There was a pause while I took this in and made a few notes. “Dust” I wrote.



“Yeah”, I said, “dust. But what do I dooooooooooooooo?”



“Have mercy on me a sinner,” he said.



“What?”



“Sorry, I wasn’t talking to you. Listen,” he said, “and repeat after me.”



1. Do no harm. That means stop being angry back. That at least puts an end to the ugliness on your end. We are all connected.

2. Be kind to everyone. We are all connected. Trust me on this; it’s the only way to go.

3. Try to be still at least once a day and know that God is God. That God is for us. And that we are all connected.



“You’ve been talking to the other Guy, I accused.”



“Yeah. We chat,” said the Dalai Lama. “Look, I’ve got to say good bye now. I hear on NPR that six of my dear friends back in Tibet have just been executed by the Chinese. I need to meditate on love.”



He might have had a little break in his voice as he said that last part. Then he hung up.



I guess he did me no harm. And I’m thinking about what he said. We are all connected. I can’t hurt anyone without hurting myself. And vise versa. We are one.



So today, I’m feeling pretty unflappable. My thoughts, are sort of corralled, at least ocassionally noticed, according to type. I like my thoughts. I always believe they’re going to save me and they never do, and they still take up most of the inner terrain. But sometimes I can get a little distance on them, and I think that's what the Dalai Lama was pointing toward. He didn't actually say 'get over yourself' but that's because he didn't want to do any harm.



Today I've been sitting on the fence, so to speak, once in awhile, and watching my thoughts prance around. I had an image in my mind, and I think the Dalai Lama sent this to me, but maybe it was the other Guy, of my brothers and sisters and me sitting up here on the fence, their thoughts and my thoughts all in the corral stomping and shaking like wild horses, and we laugh. Now, when I imagine this, the Chinese are here too, AK 47's slung over their backs, a little blood spatter on their chests. And the dear Dalai Lama; he is with us.



Elegant? Well no but the view is pretty good from the fence. And I like sitting with my family, talking trash and watching the dust blow by. See it sparkle in the wind?

Stripped Down and Convenient to Occupy




Ernst Barlach: Old Woman Laughing

When I used to imagine what it would feel like to be old, back when I had logged in maybe nine years, a girl with flawless skin, I couldn’t imagine myself ever becoming an old woman. That dangling soft crepiness, those twisted fingers and toes, the possible foot long hair growing out of a facial mole (of which I would be unaware due to poor vision,) it would not happen to me. All that softness gone to seed was repellant to my straight, clean, limber nine year old self.



Mother drove the family car oblivious to the forensic scrutiny I was giving her appearance or my conclusions as an investigator of the crimes of time against the human body. Over the years I watched her skin turn to coarse, loose fabric, her jaw line ruffle. I took in her make-up and her earrings, her good hair, but even with all that help, I didn’t know how she could let herself go out in public that way.



I imagined myself getting old like a man, like my grandfather, somehow skipping the vulnerability of the whole breast growing, menstruating, constantly probed business of womanhood and going straight to strong, wise and slender with an unflappable awareness of human folly and little to lose.



I am now a somewhat old woman myself; twice the age of mother when I used to critique her skin. I was not protected by any magic from becoming curvy and I eventually enjoyed the changes so repellant to my nine year old self. But now, approaching 70, I’m back to wishing I were somehow tougher, leaner and altogether less vulnerable. As I head toward wizened I’d like to be wise, not decorated; measured and responsive, not busy, and stripped of clutter. And I keep thinking there must be a way to achieve that state. And I keep thinking I should already have accomplished that.


Being a man would not have helped me. I know that now. Old men really aren’t protected from the need for medical probings. They are not immune to grooming errors caused by poor vision, they’re just in the habit of shaving. Their skin gets so thin that the pressure of fingers can make it bruise. They are not tough. They can still be hurt in their hearts no matter how much detachment of intellect they may court. And it’s no easier for them than for women to be by-passed by power, have their wishes dismissed, or their intentions become humorous to others. They are not protected from pain any more than my mother was or I am.



So what does a stripped down psyche look like anyway? How does one become unflappable? Does it mean you just don’t care if you care? Or does one’s acceptance of human folly need to go so deep that one feels little but a slightly sad or slightly happy benevolence toward other people? Maybe even find the hilarity in the human drama? Is this possible? That's what I saw in my grandfather.



A stripped down body would be lean and strong but not obsessively so. It would be covered with comfortable, easy-moving clothing of little variety.



A stripped down home would maybe have, what?, 15-100 permanent items in it? (Would that include clothing?) And it would be convenient to places of interest, pleasant to occupy, have an extra chair or two for company?



Where do you start in your goal of achieving this? With the body, I guess. But the real battleground for simplicity is in the mind where we are alone, and absolutely accountable, and mostly out-of-control. What are the mental requirements for an elegant inhabitance of our psyche?



To be continued . . .

click here for the Time's Magazine U.S. article on 100 Things