With the new order from on high, I had to spend three and a half hours on my feet today, to open doors, and smile at tenants and visitors, so that I might look more customer-responsive. This job only gets better. The new mantra is now, "Ten and a half an hour, November is not that far away, and they let me read the rest of the time." Lather, rinse, repeat. But as I played "lobby ambassador" today, the real diplomacy was going on inside my skull as it has since the end of my first week of work and the reality that I might pull the move to Seattle off sinks in. When I visited Seattle, one of the cool people I met there wanted me to play chess with him, and I told him chess wasn't my game. What I didn't see was I'm not good at that kind of chess. I have yet to utter a clue to my father of my intent to break away, and I'm playing mindfuck strategic chess as I have before every time I have told my father that I was going to do something I knew he wouldn't like. As I shelled out visitor passes and watched for cars parking in the red zone, I honed the tactical methods I would use to tell my father. Which power points to focus on, which emotions to evoke, which rational arguments to best wedge. I've been playing this game with my dad since I was a teen, and I've never felt more strongly why I have to do what I must do. This is a game I will never win. With my sister gone and my extended family falling apart as my parents' parents' generation drop like flies, I still cannot drive back the force of the sense that no matter how I make my arguements, I will be saying one thing. "Dad, I'm moving to Seattle, with or without your help. I am betraying you." What is worse is knowing that sooner or later, it would have to come to saying this. His world is a safe and comfortable place. And no matter how hard I try to make it otherwise, it is not my world.
Just Finished: Essays on Zen Buddhism, Volume One, by D.T. Suzuki. Normally, even the hardest books will take me a few weeks to finish, but this book took me a few months plus. I had to be ready for the impact of each essay, and each sentence in each essay. The kicker is that one of the major points in the essays is that book learning is a distraction from seeing your true self-nature. So I've just spent several months reading a book that told me that I didn't need to read it in the first place.
Now that I have finished that book, I've jabbed even harder by something I said, or didn't say being the case, a couple weeks ago. I was talking to the friend who first invited me to Seattle and then suggested I ask to move in to her home about how I've been feeling that something big is growing inside my deepest self, something coming together knit from reawakening memories and powerful synchronicities. She said that God was on the talking on the phone to me. I said that I think I'd picked up the phone, but I couldn't hear what I was telling the All. I directly quote her answer, "once more, since the answer is always YES...what do you want?" My response was something profoundly vague. I didn't answer what first came into my head. I wanted to answer, "Mu!" One of the Great Koans, the compact and cryptic stories given to Zen students to open themselves to the fullness of Zen, is this one. A monk once asked Master Joshu, "Does the dog gave a Buddha-nature?" Joshu answered, "Mu!" Meaning No! But this isn't really just saying, dogs are just organisms on four legs that like Milkbones, and therefore are without Enlightenment. This is the kind of No! that means Yes! and No!. It's the No! that defies the clouded mind to slice through the crap and find the All within. That's what I want. To say No! to the layers of illusion I've wrapped around myself to shield myself from suffering and risk, and yet say Yes! I am part of the All, if I reveal my self-nature and live without fearing life. Mu translates as Not a Thing. I seek emptiness, so that the I may refill myself from what is already inside myself. Maybe in the end, the answer I gave my friend was the right one. "The answer will be when I don't have to answer."
"Creator: A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh." - H.L. Mencken
Just Finished: Essays on Zen Buddhism, Volume One, by D.T. Suzuki. Normally, even the hardest books will take me a few weeks to finish, but this book took me a few months plus. I had to be ready for the impact of each essay, and each sentence in each essay. The kicker is that one of the major points in the essays is that book learning is a distraction from seeing your true self-nature. So I've just spent several months reading a book that told me that I didn't need to read it in the first place.
Now that I have finished that book, I've jabbed even harder by something I said, or didn't say being the case, a couple weeks ago. I was talking to the friend who first invited me to Seattle and then suggested I ask to move in to her home about how I've been feeling that something big is growing inside my deepest self, something coming together knit from reawakening memories and powerful synchronicities. She said that God was on the talking on the phone to me. I said that I think I'd picked up the phone, but I couldn't hear what I was telling the All. I directly quote her answer, "once more, since the answer is always YES...what do you want?" My response was something profoundly vague. I didn't answer what first came into my head. I wanted to answer, "Mu!" One of the Great Koans, the compact and cryptic stories given to Zen students to open themselves to the fullness of Zen, is this one. A monk once asked Master Joshu, "Does the dog gave a Buddha-nature?" Joshu answered, "Mu!" Meaning No! But this isn't really just saying, dogs are just organisms on four legs that like Milkbones, and therefore are without Enlightenment. This is the kind of No! that means Yes! and No!. It's the No! that defies the clouded mind to slice through the crap and find the All within. That's what I want. To say No! to the layers of illusion I've wrapped around myself to shield myself from suffering and risk, and yet say Yes! I am part of the All, if I reveal my self-nature and live without fearing life. Mu translates as Not a Thing. I seek emptiness, so that the I may refill myself from what is already inside myself. Maybe in the end, the answer I gave my friend was the right one. "The answer will be when I don't have to answer."
"Creator: A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh." - H.L. Mencken
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