dianaschnuth

Luckily, I don’t attend funerals very often. Before Grammie’s service last week, the last time I’d been to a funeral was in 2003, when I attended a string of services: my Memaw’s in May, a drum corps acquaintance’s in October, and Amy’s grandpa in December. Each remembrance is different — Memaw’s, for instance, was held in a small room in a funeral home in Parma, with only close family and friends, while the service for Steve (a well-known and popular drum corps / drumline instructor) was held in a large church that held hundreds.

Never before Grammie’s service, though, had I considered the very different healing properties of a viewing or wake versus an actual funeral service. I think that, as atheists, Aaron and I ended up getting much more out of the viewing than the funeral.
Continue reading →

I’ve found myself being very irritable lately, and unusually quick to anger. I get defensive at the slightest phrase — and, oddly enough, this has been the most pronounced with the person I want to hurt the least. It seems like I’m excessively sensitive to his quips and backhanded comments more than usual lately, even the ones that aren’t even meant. I magnify my own guilt for being lazy or judgmental or what-have-you, by nature of it being brought to my attention, however slight or in a roundabout and completely unintentional way.

This weekend, I resolved to draw on my own inner personal energy to keep myself from reacting poorly in these situations. I told myself that I would focus on my center, take a deep breath, and deal with these situations more calmly and less hastily than I have been.

Sure enough, situations came up a few times. Once or twice, I did manage to take a deep breath and calmly (I think) verbalize what I was feeling, or what I had meant to say, or even backpedal and explain why I initially reacted in a certain way. Finally, though, I came upon a situation that angered and confused and irritated me more than usual, and I took a deep breath and tried to draw upon my personal energy.

It wasn’t there.

So I slammed the car door instead. I slammed it so hard, I thought I’d broken it when the window wouldn’t roll down easily. I sat in silence and calmed myself, the loud noise having jarred some sense into me, making me realize how juvenile I was acting and how superficial the cause was.

Later on, I remembered something Sensei had said at last week’s Sangha meeting. He’d said that only by sitting zazen can we build our joriki, our personal energy, so that it will be there for us to draw upon. I’ve known for some time that I need to actually start sitting daily and practicing on my own, but this was the first time I’d actually seen proof that, yes, if I’d cultivated that inner stillness and concentration before now, this specific outcome could have been changed.

Improving my relationship with my spouse and with myself is enough of an impetus to get me practicing on a regular basis, I think. I don’t know what’s causing me to be like this, but I know what can help me fix it.

I remember being in church as a young lass, and coming to the realization in my early teens that the answers to many of the questions posed to us by Sunday School teachers were all the same. Questions like, “How do we strengthen our relationship with our Heavenly Father,” or other similar, almost rhetorical questions. The answers were always things like read the scriptures, go to church regularly, pray daily, give tithing, go to seminary (early-morning bible study), and go to the temple (or at least remain temple-worthy, so no hanky-panky). I forget who brought up the phrase — possibly my mother? — but these all came to be known as the “pat answers.”

I’ve found, as I’ve gotten older, that many related questions in a field have the same set of pat answers. How do you get better in school? Go to class, do your homework, take notes, pay attention, ask questions. How do you get better at an instrument? Practice. Practice. Practice. (Oh, and take lessons, which then applies the answers above, as well.)

Zen has pat answers, too, but I haven’t learned all of them yet. The most important seems to be: Just sit. Practice zazen daily. I need to start doing this; maybe then, I’ll learn some more of the pat answers of Zen. Maybe they involve attending sangha meetings regularly, and going on sesshin retreats, and studying koans.

What I really need to figure out, though, are the pat answers about me. I know they exist, but it’s hard to see myself from the outside. Maybe some of the pat answers for what ails me include breaking large tasks into small ones, and making lists, and going for daily walks. Maybe sitting zazen regularly should be one of my pat answers.

I’ll figure myself out eventually.

Maybe it took me actually becoming an official member of my Zen community for me to even contemplate sitting down and determining where I stand, spiritually speaking. Seems kind of back-assward, I know — but I had been so sure that Zen, being a nontheistic religion, would be a perfect fit for my atheistic views. And it can be, I think.

My identity-crisis of faith started when I heard about the “meta-practice” that had been discussed at a meeting I’d missed. One of the sangha members referred to the practice as a “meta-prayer,” which set off my internal BS Meter. It turns out that this practice basically consists of mentally wishing a particular person well, which I can understand and appreciate on some level, if not the literal level that everyone else seems to understand it. Still, her unfortunate choice of vocabulary raised a red Zen flag for me, and that had to be dealt with before I could have peace of mind again.
Continue reading →

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.

This is a fascinating and powerful talk. I will warn my normal readership that the content drifts from the interestingly scientific into what some would call… well, I’m not sure what some might call it, but if you don’t consider yourself a spiritual person, you may scoff at Dr. Taylor’s interpretation of her experience.

Still, if I had felt I had achieved Nirvana and lived to tell the tale, I would probably share it in quite the same way.

TED releases this video under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivatives License. Please download and share this video freely in its entirety.