In a Dark Time Test Site

Inspired by a Seattle Times article entitled Before beginning, though, I decided I needed to clarify some terms, beginning with the term “middle class,” which is a term both parties seem to use rather loosely, perhaps not too surprising when you realize how many people claim that they are “middle class” or aspire to be “middle class.”

After searching the web for a definition, I ended up here, which seemed to offer the most comprehensive definition of this, at best, rather nebulous term.

It seemed to me that the technical definition offered, that the middle class is that part of the population that lies between the bottom 20% and the top 20%, is rather meaningless. Does that mean that in an impoverished third-world nation that someone who makes a $1000 a year is middle class? Using this definition, it’s impossible to argue that the middle class is disappearing because by definition there will always be a middle class, no matter how impoverished the nation might be.

Personally, though, I was more upset by some of the ramificaitions of that definition. Here’s one way of using those guidelines to define “middle class” from the article referenced above:

Another way to determine the economic middle class is to take the median household income of $40,800 and define as middle class those households that are between 80% and 120% of the median…that is households between $33,000 and $49,000.

According to that definition, I wouldn’t be middle class at all. I’d be part of the upper class, by a rather considerable margin.

Another application of that definition seems even more suspect in my mind:

… using U.S. census data from 1999, the middle class is those families whose incomes are more than $17,000 and less than $76,000.

I’m extremely doubtful that $17,000 would allow a family to live what I would call a middle class lifestyle. Here in the Pacific Northwest, at least west of the mountains where I live, at least half of that income would go for housing. Half of what’s left would have to go for food, and most of what’s left would go for car payments and gas money. They certainly couldn’t afford family health insurance or money for education. I doubtthey could even afford to outfit kids for school, except by going to charitable organizations.

This definition would, depending on the year, again put me in the upper class. It would certainly put most of my friends with two working family members in the upper class, which, again, seems like a questionable categorization to me.

Issues like this make me wish I’d taken more classes in economics or, even, read more widely in the field. I do know that I’ll be thinking a lot more on what the term “middle class” really means to me and why I’m so convinced that protecting what I call the “middle class” is essential to the long-term welfare of our nation.

I’m not sure whether I was more amused or outraged by a story from BBC yesterday. Yes, yes, I know it’s strange to get your political news from the BBC, but since NPR seems to have taken several steps to the right, I’ve been getting more and more of my news from foreign sources. Just like I’ve watched more of the Olympics on the Canadian Broadcast System than on NBC.

Anyway, you need to take a look at this rather amusing article about why the Republican mayor of NY City decided that protests against the upcoming Republican Convention must be prevented.

Turns out that the Republicans are more concerned that the grass might get trampled than that people’s First Amendment Rights are being trampled.

How ironic that a party that has plundered the environment to benefit corporations should suddenly be so concerned about the quality of the grass in Central Park. Are they afraid that the grass won’t be able to counter the effects of acid rain from coal plants if it gets trampled on by thousands of protestors? Or is it simply that they know so little about the enviroment that they think the grass would be permanently damaged by environmental protestors?

Or, is this just another attempt by the Republicans to obscure their motives, to preserve their “good name” by once again calling a spade just an upside down heart. You’ve got to give them credit, the Conservatives have certainly mastered the fine art of shoveling it deep.

Red Pine’s note that the focus of Book Two:Gathas is “less personal and more instructional” probably helps to explain why I didn’t like the poems in this section quite as much as the poems in the first section. Still, there were a number of poems that I did like.

My favorite selection was actually a series of ten poems beginning with “Below High Cliffs.” Here’s my favorite from that series:

7.9
Below high cliffs
I don’t dress up my body
I eat roots and wear plants
my socks are hemp my shoes are sedge
dense bamboo shades my windows
thick moss covers the steps in front
desires die in the quiet
cares disappear it’s so still

The Chin River flows from Maoshan northwest into the Yangtze at Nanking and parallels the route between Nanking and Huchou. In number 68 of his Zen Talks, Stonehouse refers to Pinghu’a Fuytsan Temple as Lake Temple. Here, however, the reference must be to Huchou’s Wanshou Temple on Tao-changshan, where Storehouse lived for a time with his teacher, Chi-an. The last line recalls choangtzU: “Though he has a body, he doesn’t harm his mind” (6. 1 a).

Perhaps I like this poem even more than I normally would because I am feeling rather stressed at the moment. It’s a reminder that we can forget our cares if we work at simplifying our lives and quieting our desires.

Certainly much of the stress in our lives is self-made. We want so many things that we drive ourselves crazy longing for them as if they will somehow complete us, and once again make us whole. How strange when we actually get them we are no longer interested in them and find ourselves wishing for something new.

Another favorite poem in this section is:

11 Autumn on the Chin River Road

Everywhere the west wind rains down leaves
chance led me back to Lake Temple’s shelter
among those I knew how many remain
of a thousand worldly cares not one of them is real
all of life’s turmoil turns out to be a dream
clearly every harvest depends upon the seed
knowing this truth has helped make me free
I’ve never followed those who harm their minds

Obviously I haven’t mastered my mind nearly to the extent that Stonehouse has because, no matter how hard I try, I can’t convince my mind that “life’s turmoil turns out to be a dream,” though it often appears so when looking back at events.

However, I’m sure that my body would appreciate it if I were able to hold steady to this idea. I’m convinced that too often stress can defeat the very actions we try to take to resolve perceived “problems,” and at the very least makes it harder than it needs to be to address and solve problems.

I’d like to think that now that I’m retired and have little to do in my life that I’ve managed to escape stress and its effects, but apparently I’d be wrong.

Lately I’ve been suffering from a rather painful case of
pompholyx, something I haven’t suffered from in nearly fifteen years.

I long suffered a mild case of pompholyx on my feet, an ailment aggravated by my fondness for long hikes. I simply learned to live with it, a small price to pay for how much I enjoyed the hikes.

It’s one thing to have heat blisters on your feet, it’s something quite different to have them on your hands. Having your hands break out in a rash can be nearly debilitating, making it nearly impossible to complete physical tasks.

Strangely, I vividly remember the first time I suffered an attack of pompholyx. It was a hot summer day and I was trying to tile a bathroom for the first time. I was having trouble getting numerous small tiles to line up with each other. In the middle of laying the floor I received a phone call from a union leader who told me that the superintendent of our school district was trying to fire a vice-principal who was a good friend of mine, the result of a long-term power struggle between administrators and teachers in the district.

After the phone call, I went back to tiling since there was little I could do right then to solve the problem, and, besides, the cement mix was rapidly setting up. When I finally finished the job hours later and peeled off the heavy duty rubber gloves, my hands were covered with a mass of small “heat blisters” that itched and oozed a clear liquid when I was foolish enough to scratch them. A few days later the skin over the blisters started peeling off, exposing a raw mass of nerves.

It took a cortisone shot and two weeks of treatment with a steroid cream before I was able to function semi-normally, and the rash reoccurred with a frightening regularity for many years afterward. I really don’t remember when the rash finally disappeared long enough that I could forget that I had ever suffered from it. I suspect it was a while after that superintendent had been dismissed, my ex-wife had moved to Bellevue, and my stress levels had fallen to those of a normal high school teacher.

Perhaps, then it’s not entirely coincidental that this rash should suddenly reappear in the middle of the summer while working on this house. I tend to be a “perfectionist” while still wanting things done quickly, not necessarily a good combination.

I’ve been living in this house a year now and as long as I wasn’t responsible for the way things looked, I’ve been able to live with the house as it is, barely. Once I started working on it, though, all the things I’ve disliked about it became painfully obvious.

When you know how things “should be done” and you want things to be done “the way they should be done,” it’s stressful when you realize how poorly they’ve been done even in a relatively “expensive” house. It’s frustrating when you realize contractors have cut corners to save a dollar here and a dollar there, only to end up costing you thousands of dollars later when you try to fix them after the fact.

The point, of course, isn’t that contractors are too often con-artists who use cheap, inferior products to give the appearance of quality, but, rather, how does one keep one’s expectations from causing unnecessary and debilitating stress? How can apparently positive characteristics that make others admire your work turn on you so easily and undermine your very health?

After all the years of reading and meditating, why is it so easy to give in to life-long traits that are so counter productive and are guaranteed to create greater problems than the problems that they confront?

Despite being retired and relatively free to do whatever I want to do, once again I find that Time’s demands cannot entirely be ignored, perhaps proof that old habits die hard.

Lately, between Leslie’s urgings and my own feeling that I should get more done, I’ve felt the need to finally get started on some long-standing projects around the house.

I suspect that for me the real motivation is the “end-of-summer” syndrome, a feeling that overwhelmed me for nearly thirty years of teaching. This syndrome, in turn, was probably an extension of a far older rhythm, that of the procrastinator, a personality that operates more effectively under the pressure of deadlines, real or imaginary, than in open-ended schedules where little seems to get done.

Without deadlines, I’m generally a “dabbler,” far more interested in the process of what I’m doing than in actually completing something. I have far too many former “projects” lying around than I’d ever care to admit, particularly since I also pride myself on being frugal and self-reliant.

Our current project is to re-paint and, perhaps, re-furnish our bedroom, though I’m more interested in the repainting than the refinishing. If I hadn’t spent most of my time in the bedroom sleeping with my eyes closed, the room would have been refinished long before now. The former owners painted most of the room a sickly pink, except for one wall poorly covered in rose-filled wallpaper that was lifting at the edges.

We knew when we moved in that we couldn’t live with that room, but we had other priorities, particularly solving storage problems so that I could actually get at my tools buried in the garage. Unfortunatelly, the garage is still mainly a storage area, not a working shop, but as our one-year anniversary in our home approached and summer drew to a close, we felt an increasing urgency to refinish the room. We moved furniture out of the room and finally started steaming wall paper off the walls last weekend. As of today, we’ve nearly finished the room, and all that’s left to do is to touch up the line dividing the walls from the ceiling, a little more than an hour of work.

We still have to buy new shades and decide whether or not we will replace the bed with a king or queen size bed. Personally, I’d prefer to stick with the old bed, but that’s probably because I made it nearly fifteen years ago from some beautiful walnut lumber I had and from old flooring that I salvaged from a gym floor. It supports the futon that I bought after my first divorce and slept on on the floor until my daughter complained, thus motivating me to make three beds that summer.

After sleeping in a king-size bed while on vacation, I realized that my long-standing arguments against buying a bigger bed were probably unfounded. It turned out that both Leslie and I slept sounder in the larger bed. Go figure. Though I’m not willing to spend my money on a new bed, I guess I’d be willing to throw away the old bed if Leslie wants to replace it.

It occurs to me that the first section of The Zen Works of Stonehouse as translated by Red Pine could aptly be named “Poems for Retirement” instead of “Mountain Poems.” Perhaps that’s merely because the poems were compiled after he retreated to his mountain home at the age of 67. In a deeper sense, though, the poems offer the kind of advice that can only be practiced by someone who has “retired,” either in the sense of retiring at the end of a career or in the sense that a monk “retires from society.”

Admittedly, I’m feeling a little hypocritical about presenting these ideas while I’m in the midst of repainting our bedroom and making some other “much needed” changes to our house before the first year anniversary of our move. The hectic schedule we’ve been maintaining the last few days hardly fits the spirit of this work, though perhaps reinforcing Stonehouse’s advice.

There were so many poems whose advice I enjoyed that I had a hard time limiting myself to four selections, but I think these are representative of Stonehouse’s key ideas.

The first of the five selections could actually serve as a brief summary of all the poems:

5.
To glorify the Way what should people turn to
to words and deeds that agree
but oceans of greed never fill up
and sprouts of delusion keep growing
a plum tree in bloom purifies a recluse
a patch of potatoes cheers a lone monk
but those who follow rules in their huts
never see the Way or get past the mountainsp>

Again, as in his previous work I discussed, Red Pine’s notes provide an excellent key to reading Stonehouse’s works:

Confucius said, “A man can glorify the Way, but the Way does not glorify a man” (I. unyu: 15 .28) When Tzu-chang asked how he should act, Confucius replied, “To your words be true, in your conduct be sincere” § The plum blossom’s association with purity and seclusion was immortalized in the poems of Lin Ho-ching, a Sung-dynasty recluse who lived outside Hangchou. Zen masters often summarize the Buddhist path with the saying, “When I first entered the Way I saw mountains. After a while, I saw that mountains were not mountains. Now I see that mountains are mountains.”

I particularly liked the phrase “oceans of greed never fill up” because it increasingly seems to me that the greatest barrier to happiness, and certainly to “enlightenment,” is greed and its many manifestations. As you’ve probably noticed, I also have a personal prejudice against rules and traditions, preferring to seek any enlightenment I can find not in the practice of traditional religions but, rather, in the immediacy of life itself.

I’m afraid my recent attraction to the art of blowing bubbles also attracted me to this:

31.
This body’s lifetime is like a bubble’s
may as well let things go
plans and events seldom agree
who can step back doesn’t worry
we blossom and fade like flowers
we gather and part like clouds
earthly thoughts I forgot long ago
withering away on a mountain peak

The Diamond Sutra ends with this gatha: “All dependent things / are dreams or illusions, bubbles or shadows / they’re dew or they’re lightning
/ regard them like this.”

My recent brush with cancer for a second time and my increasing awareness of how fragile life really is have reduced me to short-term planning. While others may make plans for next summer, I find myself planning for next month or the month after that. I’m limiting myself to the kinds of plans I four-year-old can understand, a trip to Disneyland with a grandchild in September or October. For now, I’m content with enjoying the day, even if that includes sore muscles from painting overhead too long.

I certainly agree with Stonehouse when he says:

38.
Scorpion tails and wolf hearts overrun the world
everyone has a trick to get ahead
but how many smiles in a lifetime
how many moments of peace in a day
who knows a toppled cart means try another track
when trouble strikes there is no time for shame
this old monk isn’t just talking
he’s trying to remove your obstacles and chains

One of the first measures enacted by the First Emperor when he unified China in 22, BC was to standardize the axle length of carts so that all tracks would be the same width.

The Five Obstacles include desire, anger, tiredness, anxiety, and doubt. And the Ten Chains include shamelesness, sensitivity, envy, meanness, regret, laziness, over-activity, self-absorption, hate, and secretiveness.

Despite commercial messages to the contrary, “scorpion tails and wolf hearts” insure that most commercial transactions seldom end in smiles. If you want “smiles” and “moments of peace” you’re going to have to find them on your own, not in the worlds of things that others would foist on you.

Though I’m not sure how generally true it is, I agree with:

59. br>
Most of the time I smile
old men can relax
my mind is free of troubles
nothing but mountains meet my eyes
the P’eng soars into the sky
a leopard blends into mist
I’m more like the flowering plum
I wait for the year-end cold

The P’eng is the great bird in the first chapter of Chuangtzu, where it is used as a symbol of transcendence. It is so big it must climb ninety thousand miles into the sky before it has room to turn south. ln the Yiching: the leopard that can change its spots is used as a metaphor for the person who succeeds in eliminating his vices through the cultivation of virtue. The P’eng represents the goal of Taoist practice, while the spotless leopard represents the goal of Confucian cultivation. The flowering plum, meanwhile, is China’s symbol of perseverance in the face of hardship, blossoming during the coldest period of the year.

I’ve certainly found that I can “relax” in ways that I could never relax while teaching. Although I sometimes am a little embarrassed by how little I “get done,” not having to get things done has set me free in ways that I have never known before.

It may appear, yet again, that nothing is going on over here, but nothing could be further from the truth. Well, actually, it’s closer to the truth than I’d like to admit, but I’ve been doing lots of things, so many things that I haven’t had time to do what I usually do, read poetry.

Even that’s not quite true, as I’m currently reading Red Pine’s translation of The Zen Works of Stonehouse. The problem is that he’s packed so many poems on a single page that I haven’t managed to finish the first section yet and don’t feel I should comment until I’ve done so. Thankfully, part of the problem is that I’ve liked so many of the poems that I’ve been reading slower than usual. Once I’ve finished the first 184 poems, I’ll have more to say.

When I finish Stonehouse, I’ll return to Buson and Basho, ending this summer precisely where I began, hopefully with a greater appreciation and understanding of their poetry. It somehow seems appropriate that I should end the summer precisely where I began it, yin and yang perfectly balanced.

As well it should be, since the only real constants in my life this summer have been my daily walks, which have kept me firmly grounded, and my weekly Tai Chi classes which have helped me maintain my equilibrium.

Strangely enough, my comments today on Mike Snider’s site about Whitman’s “When I heard the learned astronomer” and a poem that Mike had written caused me to remember a long-forgotten, but beloved, film that Mike reminded me was called The Power of Ten.

With the title in hand, I made a quick search of the net which led to me to their site and, not surprisingly, to order a DVD of the film, not to mention a CD that seems to explore the same concepts in much more depth. Once there, I had to spend some time to explore this fascinating site and check out the fantastic number of links to similar concepts.

Strangely enough, following the site’s links to fractals, a concept I mentioned on Mike’s site, led me to this, which in turn led me to this, explaining, of course, why I spend much of my summer focusing on Taoism and Tai Chi.

I was distracted for a good part of Sunday by Jonathon Delacour’s Of course, I realize as a Vietnam Veteran who periodically complains that most of my life has been dominated by war that I’m probably not in the ideal position to counter that argument. In fact, merely having to make that admission makes me wonder if Jonathon isn’t right.

You know you’ve been away from home too long when you come home to find strange flowers blossoming on your front doorstep:

I haven’t really decided whether I love or hate this flower, but I better make up my mind soon because the plant producing it is nearly four foot tall and loaded with blossoms.

Judging from its appearance, I’m mildly concerned that it may be an invasive species from another planet, which may explain why Skye keeps running up to the den window and growling half the night (of course, an alternative theory may be simply that the cat next door misses its owners and is constantly meowing in order to get some much-needed attention).

If it is an invasive species, it would seem to hold the potential to reproduce rapidly, judging from its rather bold display, though the large bumblebees that are so attracted to other flowers in the bed seem to purposefully avoid this particular flower. Perhaps it reminds them of “Rapaccini’s Daughter, as it does me.

Like Dave at Groundhog Day I must “confess I’m not paying very much attention to the convention, and only slightly more to the webloggers who are paying attention to themselves, pretending to pay attention to the convention.”

After all, I’ve never been too enthralled with those who merely preach to the congregation, telling them what they already “know” and what they want to hear, true or not.

Still like Raye at By Sand and Sea, who I borrowed the following link from, I’m glad I heard the powerful speech by Barack Obama, a relatively young politician from Illinois.

Obama who would seem to embody the American Dream through his own personal success, has not forgotten his roots or those things that made his success possible.

If you need some inspiration, go listen to or read Obama’s speech.

If you’re still here, and you shouldn’t be, let me just note that the following excerpt seemed the essence of his speech for me:

That is the true genius of America, a faith in the simple dreams of its people, the insistence on small miracles. That we can tuck in our children at night and know they are fed and clothed and safe from harm. That we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door. That we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe or hiring somebody’s son. That we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will he counted or at least, most of the time.

It is this ability to empower all of its citizens, to provide an equal opportunity for success that has made America the most successful country in the world, even if that “success” has too often been measured in material success for my own tastes.