A Holiday Contemplation

December 23rd, 2009 . Posted in Mind the Mind, dharma, life | No Comments »
Tags: , , ,

Later today I am taking a train to PA to be with my mom, whose broken toe has metamorphosed into cast-and-crutch-inducing nerve damage. That’s reason #1 why I am posting an excerpt from His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama’s book, Healing Anger: The Power of Patience from a Buddhist Perspective in lieu of a regular post. Reason #2 has something to do with the fact that nothing I write about dharma will ever be as elegant, intelligent, or complete as what HHDL writes. And reason #3 is that I’m genuinely interested in how all of you reconcile your Eastern and Western practices at this seductively glittery, well-decorated, present-laden time of year?

Q: Is it possible for a professed Christian to also take a Buddhist vow? I am a very committed Christian, indeed an ordained person, and yet there seems a compatibility and congruence in my understanding of the teaching of Jesus and that of the Buddhist path of spirituality which would allow assent to both, and practice of both Buddhism and Christianity, as they are pointed toward light, the path of truth, love, and freedom. ne of the teachers in my life has been Thomas Merton, a Catholic priest and monk, and a practitioner of Buddhism.

A: Of course, there are many common elements among all major world religious traditions.  Therefore, I believe, at the intial stage one person can practice both Buddhism and Christianity simultaneously, and perhaps some other religions as well.  I think that is very good.

But the question is when one reaches further.  Then it is like in the field of education: when one becomes a specialist, then one has to choose one particular field.  In the further practice of Buddhism, when one reaches a certain stage, the realization of emptiness is one of the key aspects of the path.  The concept of emptiness and the concept of an absolute Creator, I think, are difficult to put together.  On the other hand, for the Christian practitioner, the Creator and the acceptance of the Creator as almighty, is a very important factor within that tradition in order to develop self-discipline, compassion, or forgiveness and to increase them in one’s intimate relationship with God.  That’s something very essential.  In addition, when God is seen as absolute and almighty, the concept that everything is relative becomes a little bit difficult.  However, if one’s understanding of God is in terms of an ultimate nature of reality or ultimate truth, then it is possible to have a kind of unified approach…

As to one’s personal religion, I think this must be based on one’s own mental disposition.  that is very important.  So I tell people that as a Buddhist monk I find Buddhism is most suitable to me.  This does not mean Buddhism is best for everyone.  That is clear.  For other people, the Christian, Muslim, or  Jewish tradition, a tradition which is based on Creator theory, is more effective, that’s certain.  So it is very, very important to follow religion according to one’s own mental disposition.

…Generally speaking, I think it is better to practice according to your own traidtional background, and certainly you can use some of the Buddhist techniques.  Without accepting rebirth theory or the complicated philosophy, simply use certain techniques to increase your power of patience and compassion, forgiveness, things like that.

…An important thing to remember is that once you change your personal religion, there is a natural tendency, in order to justify your newly adopted religion, to take a critical view toward your previous religion.  This is very dangerous.  Although your previous religion may be unsuitable or ineffective for you, at the same time, millions of people may still get benefit from that tradition.  So we must respect each other’s individual rights.  If it is their belief, and millions of people get their inspiration from it, we must respect that.  And there are many reasons to do so.

~ The Dalai Lama, Healing Anger

Snow Lion: Ithaca, 1997. pp 69-71.


So…egg nog, anyone??


Finding Self, Dissolving Self, and a Question of Authenticiy

December 17th, 2009 . Posted in dharma, life | 2 Comments »
Tags:

So…AUTHENTICITY.

On two separate occasions in the last week, my authenticity has been called into question. Weird, right?

The first occurence constituted someone telling me that my clothes are off-puttingly neutral and that I “don’t have to be on the yoga channel all the time.” Then, a few days later, I was told that the way I move my eyes & turn my head while teaching yoga is too copy-catty.

Commence collective eyebrow-raise.

I’m not going to respond to these accusations (?) individually for two reasons: 1. I am trying to believe that these comments came from a place of compassion, and 2. what the WHAT?! How do you respond to that??

The bigger issue, for me,  is a question of authenticity.  If Buddhism and yoga practice share a common aim of dissolving the idea of “self,” how do we develop an authentic presence?

I can’t actually answer that question, though I’m sincerely hoping that some of you will offer your thoughts.  What’s been turning over again and again in my mind is this: What if we started accepting one another as 100% authentic? Obviously I’m not suggesting that we decide to get collectively duped by every smarmy sleaze-fest trying to sell us something, so don’t start ranting about my raging naivete. What I’m talking about is a mutual understanding of how hard we’re all trying to figure ourselves out.

One of the most excellent things about being an adult is looking back on pictures of your youthful self and laughing at how ridiculous your wardrobe and styling choices were. But I bet if you went back in time and asked six-year-old Becca why she wore a sky-blue, tie-dyed, glitter-accented-floral-print-applique shirt to school at least twice a week, she’d have a really excellent response that would have nothing to do with hiding a muffin-top or complimenting her skin tone. She probably just liked loved it. Pure and simple, 100% genuine.

The older we get, the more we doubt our innate ability to express ourselves to the world. We get so wrapped up in how our choices will be interpreted by everyone else, we stop acting from a place of authentic presence. But what if we gave each other a break? What if we could decide that whoever is in front of us is exactly who they are, with no put-ons and no hollowness? We could put down our torches and pitch-forks and just be with each other instead of perpetually trying to stab holes in the armor we assume everyone is wearing.

Until then I’ll be swathed in day-glo, hunting for a more honest way to move my eyeballs inside my skull.

Impermanence, Birthdays, and a Really REALLY Big Idea

December 8th, 2009 . Posted in life | 2 Comments »

I HAVE AN IDEA.

WELL, I HAD AN IDEA.

Birth of the idea THE IDEA:  On my birthday last year, I was sitting at my desk eating chocolate-covered strawberries (thanks, D-cer!) when it suddenly occurred to me that no one had asked me that painfully un-answerable question, “How does it feel?” in regards to my new, one-year-older status.  I realized that adults don’t ask other adults this question because we don’t want to face the answer, which is “It feels shitty.” I’ve never been someone to rue getting older, but I certainly understand the logic behind not wanting to celebrate the body’s slow and inevitable demise and our plodding advance toward death. I learned in a cultural anthropology class that the tradition of showering people with cards and gifts and cakes-on-fire emerged from the belief that a person is most susceptible to demons & danger on the anniversary of his birth; surrounding the birthday person with symbols of our affection is a way to ward off said demons & danger, who will balk at taking on such a raucous group of cake-eating, punch-sipping gluttons. I digress!

I decided to put the question (“How does it feel?” — keep up with me people!) to the test. I wrote myself a letter. At the top, it says something like THINGS THAT ARE IMPORTANT TO ME ON MY BIRTHDAY (2009), and is a page-long shout-out to all of the things I was worried / happy / sad / frustrated / excited about in that moment. I sealed it up and mailed it to myself with warnings on it like DO NOT OPEN UNTIL FEBRUARY 20, 2010 and, upon receipt, I hid said letter behind a Bed Bath & Beyond coupon in my mail sorter. I plan to do just as the envelope says and open it up on my birthday and see if anything I cared about last year still applies. It’s an exercise in impermanence, to be sure, and I am hoping it will help teach me a valuable lesson about the futility of playing into our daily dramas.

Relevance of THE IDEA: I’ve noticed a lot of folks getting real uppity about the holidays. It’s a stressful time. There are presents to buy, parties to attend, family gatherings, travel…it’s a lot to do, and it all costs money, and it all involves the blessing-curse of lots of time with family. Like I said: stressful.

Application of THE IDEA: When you are at your wit’s end and you think your holiday-filled head will explode, sit down with a cup of tea (or chocolate-covered strawberries) and make a list. You can call it whatever you want, but I recommend a highly generalized title so you don’t feel restricted (e.g., IMPORTANT SHIT XMAS 09). Start writing. Don’t think about what you’re writing, no matter how petty or trivial it seems. Heavy things (relationships, illnesses, metaphysical crises) can mingle with your grocery list, gifts you still have to buy, an argument over dirty socks you had last night. Just get it all out. Place your list in an envelope (tucking it into a holiday card would be a nice flourish), address it to yourself, plaster the envelope with warnings, place an actual stamp on that thing and mail it.

The first happy realization comes when you open your mailbox and find the envelope 3 days later and discover you’ve already forgotten half of what you wrote. Resist the urge to rip it open and remind yourself. Hide that shit somewhere out-of-sight, and set a reminder on your phone or in your planner for a day in December, 2010 (don’t forget to list the envelope’s whearabouts).

I’ll be opening my envelope in February and will share the entire contents of the letter with you when the time is right. I honestly can’t remember a single damn thing on that list but I really can’t wait to do a year-to-date review. I get a giddy, child-like feeling just thinking about sliding the paper out of its cocoon to reveal its now-defunct, totally irrelevant contents.

Just think: by this time next year, future-you could be considerably less stressed because present-you will have reached out from the past to smack your now-present-self in the face with the truth of impermanence. Bring on the egg-nog — there’s finally something to celebrate!

Bro vs. Buddhist: A Middle Way Conundrum

December 3rd, 2009 . Posted in life | 1 Comment »
Tags: , ,

Last night at around 8:30, I found myself walking home from the first OM Yoga Knit n’ Sit of the 2009-10 winter season. I live in a mildly liminal ‘nabe: south of the retail & restaurant district, north of the purely residential part of town, west of the industrial complexes and east of the swanky Prospect Park brownstones. Still, it’s an okay part of town where stroller-pushers and hipsters make room for one another on the sidewalk. Neat.

So it’s 8:30 and I’m hobbling home under the weight of a huginormous purse, an oversized canvas bag filled with scrap yarn, and a wool pea-coat that’s making feel claustrophobic. I’m chatting with a friend on my headphones because I’m newly terrified of iPhone-induced brain cancer. I’m feeling good.

I notice a Bro’ walking toward me. You know a Bro’ when you see him: co-dependence on his BroBerry, striped oxford shirt, dark washed (but distressed!) jeans and a jaunty swagger. It’s okay to have aversion to a Bro’ — we all understand.

This particular Bro’ seemed to be walking in a diagonal line toward me instead of maintaining our parallel paths on the sidewalk, which made me raise my eyebrows but I figured he was just trying to avoid some Bro’-repellent, like a child or a committed relationship or work outside of the financial sector.

And then, before my Bro’-dar alarms could finish peeling a warning blast, he gets THISCLOSE to my face and plants an air-kiss somewhere in the vicinity of my very very VERY personal space. He made contact with the entire left side of my body. I could smell him.

I would like to say that things like this don’t get to me. I’d like to tell you that when someone flashed me on the street four years ago, I didn’t contemplate jumping into traffic to get away from him; or that when a man decided to start pleasuring himself while staring at me on the M train two summers ago, I didn’t cry for days. I’d like to tell you that because I’ve taken over 100 hours of self-defense training — including an entire course on how to utilize and neutralize common weapons — that I never felt afraid or victimized. I would really like to say (and mean) all of those things.

What I can say with certainty is that d-bags like the Bro’ get their rocks off by instigating a single instant of intimacy in which they have all the control. The rules for coping with this kind of animal are simple: obliterate his sense of privacy by drawing attention to what he’s just done and shaming him so thoroughly his skeevy erection crawls back into his body, withers, and dies.

I said some very non-Buddhist things. I won’t repeat them here, but suffice it to say I used a series of colorful expletives, suggested a timely suicide, called his mother a whore, and questioned the masculinity of someone too weak to turn around and let ME violate HIS space.

I got home and cried about it. Here’s the kicker: I felt guilty for yelling at him. I told myself I should have more self-control, less violence in my heart. Then I told myself to shut the eff up and practice the cultivation of ninja-like reflexes so that next time, I can reach his jugular (or at least his BroBerry) before he has time to scurry back underground where he belongs.

My question to all of you is this: How in the world do you find the Middle Way when the road is littered with Bros?

Zazen, Satya, and Abusing the Wiggle

December 1st, 2009 . Posted in dharma, life, meditation | 1 Comment »
Tags: , , , ,

A few months ago I started sitting with the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care on Monday nights at OM. The sangha that gathers there each week is largely comprised of chaplaincy students and social workers, doctors and caregivers. The group is led by Koshin and Chodo, Soto Zen Buddhist Priests whose unflappability is at once comforting and terrifying. The session opens with 20 minutes of sitting, followed by a dharma talk and an open-forum discussion, then more sitting and a chant and it’s practically over before its begun.

Zazen sitting is rather different from the samatha-vipassana style I usually practice at OM, and at first this was enough to keep me away from the group entirely (umm yeah, new things are bad — didn’t you know?). But the truth is, sitting in a group for a half-hour once a week just isn’t doing it for me anymore. I’m hungry for sangha, a community of meditators who share the underpinning sameness of dharma. So I plunked myself down on a makeshift zafu (cushion) and sat.

Unlike samatha-vipassana, there’s no wiggle in zazen. People sit like pebbles at the bottom of a river, breath flowing in and around them, each inhale filling the rough pores of stone, each exhale smoothing edges to an undefinable finish. At first, I was less like a pebble and more like a leaf surfing the rapids; I relied on samatha’s flexibility to relieve excruciating sleepiness in my left foot or replenish my posture when it inevitably slumped. But over time (and a good deal of experimentation with blanket-folding & pillow placement) I found a seat that keeps both feet awake, my back straight, and my body still. Like all the best cookie recipes, my seat’s success is in the tweaks and details: a four-part accordion-folded blanket and a thin square cushion, a slightly more prominent tilt of my pelvis, the opposite crossing of my ankles.

Even though the first rule of samatha is to find a good seat, I never really bothered until I sat zazen.  If a practice has wiggle room built in, I thought, who am I to scoff at tradition? But I’m starting to see the truth of it, which is that I abused the wiggle. I’m not saying I sat with it at lunch and played with it at recess just so it would let me copy its science homework, but there was a certain questionable genuineness to our friendship. And of course, because I’m me and this blog is this blog, I started to wonder: where else am I abusing the wiggle?

In yoga, we talk about satya, “truthfulness.” It’s an honesty that goes deeper than speaking the truth or dealing fairly in business, though naturally it includes both of those things. Rather, it’s a kind of authenticity and integrity that permeates every thought and action, every moment. Like a laugh or a scream, satya originates from some interior, invisible place and radiates outward; it simultaneously encompasses and eradicates all other things. And for the first time in almost four years of sitting, I feel like my posture is imbued with that unspeakable, wonderful quality.

What would it mean to start incorporating more satya in our lives? What if we took the time to examine our everyday habits — how we sit, how we take coffee or tea, what we eat or even how we walk — and chose one to douse in a healthy wash of truthfulness? I wonder what we’d find…or what we wouldn’t.

Hometowns, Family, and Going Home (again) for the Holidays

November 17th, 2009 . Posted in life | 3 Comments »
Tags: , ,

Newtown, Pennsylvania is a borough in Bucks County situated about 70 miles south (and slightly east) of where I live in Brooklyn; it’s a 40 minute north-bound drive out of Philadelphia and lays almost directly west of Trenton. A sign on the way into town reads “A good place to Live, Shop, and Worship,” and its small downtown district is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In general, Newtown is a Philadelphia tributary.  We cheer for the Eagles, Phillies and Flyers, draw conclusions about a person’s moral fibre based on a preference for Geno’s or Pat’s, and take curious pride in the wide selection of TastyKakes exclusively available in the 2-1-5. So when I decided to attend college in NYC, I knew I was turning my back on 18 solid years of Philly-pride heritage and, at the time, I was thrilled. Like 7.2 trillion other unoriginal, angsty teenagers, I couldn’t wait to get away from my not-so-small small town and embrace life in a big city.

I loved it. I hated it. Blah blah blah — that’s a different post.

The real fascination for me is “going home again.” They say it can’t be done but really? Who are they, anyway? Of course, the logic is that you go out into the world and change in drastic, soul-shattering ways that prohibit you from returning home and being the same “you” that left.  The interesting thing is that no one but you knows about all your newfound depth and improvement, so everyone treats you exactly as they did before.  Not shockingly, this puts a big cog in your personal development wheel and several things happen at once:

  1. You revert back to being exactly who everyone expects you to be
  2. You are silently mortified by the realization that you haven’t actually changed at all
  3. You project your self-mortification onto everyone else & commence yelling about the audacity of whoever MOVED YOUR EFFING TOOTHPASTE without written consent, which they obviously needed even though you haven’t lived at this address — let alone brushed your teeth here — in 5 1/2 years. It’s still listed as your permanent residence for tax purposes, IS IT NOT?!

Breathe.

Part of the trouble with going home again is realizing that, for all our evolution, we never transform completely.  We retain the capacity to be who we were, even if it’s not who we want to be anymore. Returning home means going to the place where you made all your juvenile mistakes, the place where you can’t fool anyone with romantic notions about your past or grand statements about your sparkly-bright future.  Going home again means letting your family do its job: namely, cutting through all your bullshit and showing you who you really are.

Because here’s the thing: there’s no substitute for going home.  You can tout phrases like “My friends are my family” or “Friends are family you choose yourself” — but really? No. Your family is your family, and home is wherever they are. Go there with your whole, open heart and know that what you’ve been given to work with is probably exactly what you need. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche wrote: “Abstractly caring about others is not enough.  The most practical and immediate way to begin sharing with others and working for their benefit is to work with your own domestic situation and to expand from there.”

Go home this holiday season. Remember to do all the chores that have been held in escrow for you in your absence, offer to clear the dishes after dinner, and try not to be such a ninny about who you “really” are. Your family knows already, and loves you anyway.

Better than Some, Worse than Most, and Discovering the Full Extent of Your Awesomeness

November 12th, 2009 . Posted in life | 3 Comments »
Tags:

Maybe like me, you’re in the habit of enumerating for the world all the things you suck at (this list is, quite obviously, incomplete):

  1. long division & fractions
  2. skiing & snowboarding
  3. figuring out directions (N, S, E, W business)
  4. taking a compliment
  5. unplugging myself from my iphone
  6. meditating at home
  7. wearing high heels
  8. driving to new places

But lately I’ve realized that having a go-to list of things I’m not great at is lazy and a bit stupid, and certainly self-deprecating in a not-funny, ego-affirming kind of way.  And I arrived at that discovery by admitting that my list also used to include (among other things):

  1. baking from scratch
  2. cooking anything
  3. reading a map
  4. web page-y stuff
  5. yoga
  6. grammar
  7. meditating
  8. being a good daughter
  9. being a good sister
  10. coping with emergent situations
  11. being around yucky smells
  12. tolerating discomfort
  13. keeping plants alive
  14. jogging
  15. getting shots

Let me be clear: I haven’t mastered every item formerly attributed to the “Can’t Do” list, though I’ve gotten more adept at some things than others.  What I can say for sure is that I’m better than some and worse than most when it comes to items 1-13 above, virtually without exception.

There are plenty of reasons to cement our ideas about what we can and can’t do and sometimes, we might even be right.  But I imagine that, more often than not, we miss out on the opportunity to do something because we fear failure or mediocrity or both.  Maybe we can’t be great at everything, but we’re likely capable of far more than we give ourselves credit for. It seems to me that we’re as attached to what we can’t do as we are to what we can and, while that kind of thinking may save us from exposing our ineptitudes to the world, it certainly won’t help us discover the full scope of our awesomeness, either.

What’s on your Can’t-Do List? And more importantly, what’s on your Former “Can’t-Do List” List?

High Elevations, Labored Breathing, and the Continental Divide

November 9th, 2009 . Posted in life | No Comments »
Tags:

Loveland Pass (elev. 11,990 ft.) marks the Continental Divide in the Rockies.  My boyfriend and I ended up there last Wednesday after a failed day trip to Keystone, CO; we wanted to ride the gondola, get thisclose to a mountain peak, maybe take in a little cocoa and some fresh air. We drove for nearly two hours to find a ghost town and were told that opening day was Thursday. More than a little discouraged but not ready for the long road back to Denver, we decided to keep driving west, into the mountains.

Countless hairpin turns lead to a small parking lot off to the right, and…well…this:

Got mountains?

The view alone can take your breath away, but the nearly 12,000-ft. elevation certainly helps.  I was shocked at how anxious I suddenly felt, worried that we weren’t wearing the right shoes or coats to trek around in the snow and ice covering the peak. I felt clumsy and dwarfish and so small standing up there, and my mind raced with visions of turned ankles and face plants and tooth damage.

Boyfriend held my hand up the snowed-over steps and we found ourselves on the ridge pictured above.  My heart was already racing from the worry and the height, and every few (careful, tentative) steps left me gasping and a bit light-headed.

You see, yogis have a bit of a thing with breath.

I feel like I’ve spent so much time getting to know my breathing, welcoming my inhales as inspirations and following my exhales to their ever-changing, ever-deeper ends. I tell my students to follow the breath as if it were leading them out of unfamiliar woods, to lock eyes with it from across a crowded room and know true love for the first time.  I trust the breath’s innate intelligence, its ability to whisper the body’s secrets, its grace.

Having my breath compromised, even for a little while, was disconcerting and terrible and scary. And even though I felt better after a few minutes of sitting in the snow and quieting my mind, it occurred to me that the price for seeing such an incredible sight was rather…steep.

Over the course of the week I spent a lot more time in the mountains and indulged my breath to its great delight, allowing myself to suck in loud, sloppy lungfuls of air.  In a certain respect, they were the most “yogic” breaths I’ve ever taken: free and deep and uninhibited, utterly essential. They weren’t any better that noble ujjayi breaths or frenetically elegant rounds of kapalabhati, but they were somehow just as primal, just as informed.

There are countless adages about the value of moments that take your breath away, but after coming down from such a height I’m forced to wonder: what about the moments that bring it back?

Halloween, Torrential Downpours, and More Subway Dharma

November 1st, 2009 . Posted in life | 3 Comments »
Tags: , , ,

If you’ve never been in NYC for Halloween, let me give you the gist: roving gangs of drunken, overgrown teeny-boppers dressed as slutty versions of your favorite childhood storybook characters throng the streets around Sixth Avenue, clog the subway system with their MetroCard ineptitude, and cause a general raucousness above and beyond the standard level of raucousness one expects from a place purported to never sleep.

Harrumph.

On my way back from visiting my most excellent, newly-engaged best friend (Hi, beautiful! Yes it’s really real and yes, we’ll figure it all out and yes, you can still write your dissertation and plan a wedding!) in Hoboken, I walked right into the storm of bridge-and-tunnelers making their way to the parade.

Cue wildly overcrowded train.

When we arrived at 14th St., people were pushing and shoving to get to the turnstiles and I got swept up in the crowd, unable to get to my connecting subway through the station. Instead, I ended up at street-level, smack in the middle of the festivities.

Cue sheeting, blinding, torrential downpour.

I grumbled all the way to Union Square,  cursing New York with every cold, wet step.  After what felt like a veritable battle to reach the platform, I finally got on the Q and finally finally reached DeKalb, just 4 stops from home.

Cue elderly woman questioning me about how to get to Methodist Hospital, then telling me her entire life story up-to-and-including her granddaughter’s derelict baby mama who used to beat her with a cell phone, her determination not to be a burden to anyone, and her mysterious gas pains that — brace yourself — turned into bloody explosions of nasty in the middle of Canal Street earlier in the day. The conversation had a few false starts as I tried to disengage, but every time I had one side of my headphones in place, she would start up again. Eventually I felt bad about trying to evade her, and I silently reprimanded myself for not being more compassionate to someone so obviously lonely, so clearly suffering. I put away the headphones, stood a little closer, and stopped checking the track for oncoming headlights.

Cue elderly woman suddenly doubling over, muttering in Spanglish about how she can’t make it any further. “Do you need an ambulance?” I asked. And this absolute stranger looked me in the eye and said “I’ll do whatever you think is best.” I told her I couldn’t make a decision for her, but that I could help her get an ambulance at the station if she wanted. She did.

Cue frantic sprinting up the stairs, brief conversation with the station agent, and arrival of friendly NYPD officer. The latter two decided I should accompany Gloria to the bathroom, “to make sure she doesn’t fall and stuff.” I have a history of squeamishness activated by things far less extreme than bloody, explosive diarrhea, but I chastised myself again for my would-be heart-closing and walked into a bathroom that — sorry, MTA — already smelled like dead bodies. Gloria was struggling to get in a stall. Phrases like “It’s coming out!!” were being tossed around.

Cue Becca Faith almost almost almost losing her shit. So to speak.

Cue arrival of paramedics. Gloria reached up to hug me and I bent down to fit into her hunched frame and wrapped my arms around her and tried to pour love and compassion and healing into my embrace. She kissed me on the cheek and told me I was a nice lady.

As I made my way back to the platform to wait for the local, I couldn’t help but think about how much I heart the city that literally throws bloody shit at my pretentious irritation and attempts to separate myself from the rest of the world.  This city refuses to let me close my eyes to suffering, insists that I learn compassion, and demands my humanness.  This city is hard-core heart-core.  And this city? It’s home.

Word-fondling, Truth-telling, and Calling a Spade a Spade

October 27th, 2009 . Posted in life | 2 Comments »
Tags: , ,

Lately I’ve found myself tossing around a hackneyed catch-phrase in every other sentence: Call a spade a spade. Now, the Online Etymology Dictionary has this to say about it:

spade (1): “tool for digging,” O.E. spadu, from P.Gmc. *spadon (cf. O.Fris. spada, M.Du. spade, O.S. spado, M.L.G. spade, Ger. Spaten), from PIE *spe- “long, flat piece of wood” (cf. Gk. spathe “wooden blade, paddle,” O.E. spon “chip of wood, splinter,” O.N. spann “shingle, chip”). To call a spade a spade “use blunt language” (1542) translates a Gk. proverb (known to the Romans), but Erasmus mistook Gk. skaphe “trough, bowl” for a derivative of the stem of skaptein “to dig,” and the mistake has stuck. The original, then, is “to call a bowl a bowl.”

The irony of Erasmus’s mistake doesn’t escape me, but I think it was a happy accident because “bowl” is so clunky to say. It doesn’t cut through with a sharp s and prominent p the way “spade” does, and—

I know, I know. Enough with the word-fondling. It’s creepy and beside the point, which is this:

I’m getting really tired of everyone dancing around the things they want to say.  This may come as a shock to some, since we writers are notorious for adding verbiage where simplicity will suffice. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not advocating that everyone adopt a Hemingway-esque terseness; in fact, I’m not talking about style at all.  I’m talking about talking about the things that matter to us, and the way we try to avoid doing just that.

In the past three weeks or so, I’ve talked to at least a dozen friends who are all entrenched in some manner of relationship crisis. I’ve made a concerted effort to talk less and listen more, keep unsolicited advice in check, and open my heart to the hurt that hides underneath the “he said, she said” frustrations or the passionate anger coloring grandiloquent language. But no matter how different everyone’s individual problems are, they all share a common thread: no one says what they mean, and no one means what they say.

There are a million reasons to hide your true feelings, most of which have to do with avoiding loneliness, maintaining the status quo, and fearing rejection. But there’s one truly excellent reason to give all that up and just call a spade a spade after all, and it’s this: your truth is precious, and the only thing you have.

Chogyam Trungpa wrote that “truth always works,” and I wonder what would happen if we all decided to put this to the test.  What if we all stopped spewing empty threats and hollow I love yous, stopped using words as filler for perfectly good silence, stopped hiding behind things we tell ourselves to keep from seeing who and how we really are?

I wonder what we would say, and what we might hear.

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »