Monthly Archives: August 2018

Kilauea

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Kilauea

We are living in a momentous time.  The island of Hawai’i is growing.  The entire island is volcanic.  The northern portion of the island is dormant, the south is more active.  It is called the big island, appropriate as it is still growing.  The current eruption started sending lava into the ocean on May 22 and continues as of this writing, August 3.

It seems volcanos are popular places to settle.  Worldwide, people are killed or forced to leave as the earth starts emitting hot stuff near their homes.  Kilauea has forced more than 2000 evacuations.  When Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted in 1991, more than 60,000 people had to leave.  Fortunately, they had some warning which saved many lives.

It is a mystery to me why development was allowed on Kilauea where lava covered the land as recently as 1960.  Yes, people have property rights, but government has the power to zone property.  It rains a lot in Hawaii, and volcanic soil is fertile, so evidence of lava flow is quickly obscured.

I enjoy looking at the daily USGS reports and maps.  The flows go where they will, without any discernible pattern.  For a week a boat ramp becomes more vulnerable to the encroaching lava, then more lava decides to enter the ocean nearby.  It also seems strange the lava travels so far from the rift before spreading.  The channel from the rift is well established and the levees on either side are growing. The channel is rising and I expect breakouts much closer to the rift, but nothing seems to happen.  I just looked at yesterday’s map.  Lava has broken out upstream from the ocean entry.  I feel vindicated.

Asks usual, government agencies insist on limiting access to the lava flows.  Yes, I understand many people will put themselves in harm’s way and need rescue, but here in Colorado people regularly kill themselves in the mountains and access is allowed.  I would love to put on my heavy boots and look down on a lava stream.   As it is, I read online accounts of people sneaking into closed areas to look at a volcano at work.


Caldera Eruption

The crater is another phenomenon worth seeing.  Before this eruption the lava lake in the crater fluctuated in elevation due to varying supply from the magma reservoir below.  Once the fissures opened some distance from the caldera the lava lake began dropping.  The amount of lava now flowing down the channel exceeds the supply that was in the crater.  Thus, magma is flowing up from the deep.  The Hawaiian Hotspot is alive and well and the archipelago continues to grow.  Pele is not at all concerned about people scurrying around on her rocks.

Posted in Eruption, Geology, Kilauea, Stories

Stuck

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Stuck

Stuck is my current problem.  I have not been able to write a word for a couple of weeks.  That problem seems to be receding.  Writer’s block and my general lethargy stems from a deeper problem.

First, some of what I know of the Buddha’s thinking.  One of his core concepts is about what today we call the ego.  In our regular thinking we treat our egos as permanent things stemming from what we are as beings.  Not so, folks.  We have made it all up.  We draw from our genetic makeup and our interpretation of our experiences in living to form a sense of self.  This is necessary for our survival, both as individuals and a species.

In the tribe, boys learned how to hunt from the tribal hunters.  Girls learned how to have and raise children from other mothers.  Everyone’s experiences are somewhat unique, but have a lot of commonality with others around us.  If things go well, children grow up to be healthy, capable members of their group.

Often, however, things go wrong.  Trauma, disfigurement, disease, and deprivation can lead a person to develop a wounded ego.  This is true of all of us to some degree.  The wounded ego suffers.  Suffering prevents us from reaching our deepest innermost being, the condition often called emptiness.  It is pure being, free of suffering stemming from the decisions we have made about ourselves.  It is often called enlightenment.  A better word is peace.

Insight Meditation can lead to the state where we have let go of all the encumbrances of ego.  It doesn’t mean ceasing to act much like the suffering person we were once were.  It doesn’t eliminate the need to cope with the tasks of living in the world, (especially a world containing Republicans.)  it’s clarity, freedom free of suffering but not of pain, grief, infirmity, and death.

Letting Go

I have tried to reach this goal for a large part of my life.  I tried many paths, Christianity, Buddhism, raging atheism, and trying to ignore the whole mess.  An amalgam of the teachings and lives of Jesus and the Buddha is what I have settled on.  It works for me, and much of my suffering is gone, let go.

But not all.  As a young child I experienced some abuse that seems to have gone to the very core of my being.  I have had profound, life changing spiritual experiences.  I have had over thirty years of therapy, I take medication for depression and ADD/HD.  ( not to mention prostate medication). My spiritual work has done the most good, but the other stuff is important.  I couldn’t meditate or write before I got effective ADD treatment at age 59.

Still, the deep reservoir of unease and discomfort remains.  Now, I am not the greatest practitioner of Insight Meditation or prayer, although I practice them every day, sometimes for much of the day.  I still go to therapy, go to meetings a couple of days every week, see my shrink, actively meditate and study the dharma.  They help tremendously.  Drugs, alcohol, and the motorcycle did not work.

That pool of existential isolation remains.  My teachers tell me to continue the process and I will, but I have times when I despair.  Is it karma, I am destined to suffer throughout this lifetime?  Or as my teachers say, I just need to persevere.  Well, I will persevere, continue the struggle.

I usually can chug along just fine, but a few weeks ago, one of my teachers said the continued practice of letting go will do it.  It hasn’t, not that deep pool of anguish.  His saying that just triggered more agony. This stuff sure is taking a long time, and I am not sure it will ever work.  Do you have any ideas?  Maybe I need to go to the mountains.

Posted in Addiction, Depression, Family History, Insight Meditation, Letting Go, Stories

The Sell By Date

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Lately I have been exploring a new question.  Do we come with a sell by date?  We all have a date coming up and usually have no idea when.  Teenagers say “Never!”, and we old people are looking ahead with some anxiety.  Is our sell by date preordained or is it random, like much of life.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dukkha

As I age, am I living past that date?  Am I like that jug of milk past it’s date but not quite going off?  Well, a little off.  I slipped on the stairs yesterday and bounced down a few steps.  Earlier, I tripped on some sod I dug up and whacked my elbow.  Are these portents or am I already sour?  Some would say I have been sour for some time.

The death date looms for us all.  Most of the time we ignore the end, but events come up to remind us of the inevitability of death.  Often it is the death of a loved one.  So many go before us.  The earth is a graveyard.  All things emerge, exist, and go away.  Look supernovas up.  Our planet will participate in one some day.  We Americans are lucky, we probably won’t drown in the Mediterranean trying to escape being killed in our own country.  No chlorine gas attacks in Denver.  Bad things do happen, but most of us will live to, or maybe even past, that sell by date.  But, the end is coming for everyone.

Well, so what?  It happens, so why not have as much fun as possible until then?  I just wrote a couple of pieces on life.  Meaningless or purposeful?  For me, the purpose is the end of suffering, or dukka in the ancient language.  If suffering is the only end, why not go before that sell by date?  So, end suffering.  If I am going to get anywhere with ending suffering for all living beings I have to start with myself.

Suffering

I have a sore elbow and hip from my falls yesterday.  I feel pain.  From the pain, I have a choice.  I can just feel the pain, be in touch with it, and get on with things or dwell on the pain, lament having pain, regret the falls, blame the world for my suffering, and be miserable.  An alternative to the suffering is to sit in the coffee shop and try to communicate about how I often avoid suffering even when living with pain.

Here I am in this body with a big brain and limbs that mostly work pretty well.  The body is fragile, and all kinds of hurts happen, including our mental processes.  Pain is inevitable, followed by dying.  Suffering is a decision.  My skin and bones are a little damaged, but life goes on.  If I can avoid suffering because stuff hurts, maybe I can help others do the same thing.  Less suffering, a better world.

I remember a couple running a shop. They often refused to talk to customers or each other or replied with anger and sarcasm.  Their voices were always hostile with one another and the attitude spilled over to the customers.  The atmosphere in the place was toxic.  Not surprisingly, the shop is long gone, despite occupying an important niche. The other side is happiness.  The person I was working with yesterday always seems to be upbeat and happy.  She even laughs at my jokes, which seem to make others suffer.  She makes the world a better place.

There it is: the goal is to make it better.  End suffering, practice loving kindness, work on equanimity.  Find the good.  Life is too short and precious to spend it wrapped in discontent and negativity.  find love and peace, not hate and discord.

The sell by date is coming.  We may go a bit past the date, but then we die.

Posted in Buddha, Stories, Suffering

Ego

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Seeker

As I have mentioned before, I am a seeker.  I have always wondered about the hard stuff.  Is there really a god?  Does that teacher really know what he is talking about?  How many subatomic particles are there?  Why is the human brain so complex?  Why is the universe expanding in defiance of gravity?  Why do Republicans exist?  What is the difference between eukaryotic and prokaryotes and how can prokaryotes have flagella?

Vegetarian animals have their eyes more to the side of their heads in order to see predators, who have their eyes in front to see prey.  Therefore, should humans always be carnivorous?  What about biblical prophesy?  Are these the last days?  Is existential despair the true human condition?  Is there enough time left to reverse global warming?

Do you see what I mean?  I have lots of questions and not many answers.  In my college days an art major and I were scrubbing wax off the baseboards in the student center during semester break.  I asked him about the meaning of life as artists always have a different vision about the nature of things.  His reply?  “ Everything is what it is.”  We’ll, yes, but not very satisfying.   Artists look and render what they see.  I look and wonder why?

The Meaning of Life

This defect of my character has led me to seek out those people and traditions who purport to know the answers.  I was raised a nominal Methodist.  I found only felt figures on a felt board.  I did like the doxology, but hated the jello salads in the basement.

I had a profound period of existential despair after my mother’s death my junior year of high school.  Camus, the Blues, and Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony.   Being afraid of girls was no help at all.

The winter of my senior year I was the wrestling team manager.  I wasn’t much of an athlete (another reason for existential despair) so the wrestling team was great fun.  I was able to help and even make a difference.  The scourge of wrestlers is boils.  Sliding on those mats means abrasion, and bacteria find their way into the skin.  Evil, those boils.  As  team manager,  I insured there were no  boils because I kept the mats disinfected.  No pus and blood on my watch.

There it is, the answer to despair.  Stay engaged.  I prevented boils, Camus enjoyed success with the ladies.  There is almost always a way.  Still, I sought.  On a wrestling trip to Salt Lake I bumped up against the Mormons.  I read, studied, listened, even dated a Mormon girl.  One night during an attack of angst I realized I didn’t believe in that stuff.

I then embarked on a career as an agnostic, annoying all the believers I knew by challenging their beliefs.  I continued my search with little success for quite a few years.  I think I substituted addictions for having any meaning.  If you are getting off, the need to keep it up takes over, even while knowing addiction is fruitless.  I had read Kerouac.

Saved

Then, during a dark night of the soul after a divorce, I was living in a basement apartment in Lasalle Colorado with my black dog.  I was working in the Greeley sewage disposal plant and the Maintenance Foreman was a deacon in an Assemblies Of God Church.  I went to his bible study, prayed, and got saved.  I asked Jesus in and felt this overwhelming feeling of being wrapped in love.  I got involved, had many experiences of the Holy Spirit, the addictions went away for a year, and I thought I had found the Meaning.

But, life interfered, as well as knowing all that Fundamentalist stuff made no sense.  I couldn’t stay with the holy rollers and ended up an Episcopalian.  For me, my higher power manifests as Jesus.  I couldn’t, however stay with the organized church.  Churches are instruments of power and control, contrary to what Jesus taught.  I did learn how to pray, and prayer is what grounds me.  No answers to the Big Question, however.

In fact, I think I have given up on finding the Meaning.  It’s a mystery.  These days I practice Insight Meditation with all its Buddhist trappings.  The good thing about Buddhism is that it does not purport to answer those questions.  I fact, the Buddha mostly ignored all that stuff, saying the sole goal is to end suffering.  With our big brains, we look for reasons.  We think up explanations or buy into someone else’s explanation and create a world.  Almost always the core of that world is desire.  We want stuff, pleasure, a sense of belonging.

No way, dude.  It is all illusion.  Let it go and find emptiness.  That emptiness harbors the true meaning, a sense of being one with the Universe.  Well, I think so, anyway.  I haven’t even come close.  Maybe I need a Bodhi tree to meditate under.

My meditating has borne fruit.  I am finding equanimity.  I am less frustrated.  I am less angry.  I don’t feel as much despair.  I have periods of true happiness.  My addictions are losing their grip, especially if I do my part in my daily practice.  Can’t tell you about the meaning of the cosmos, but my cosmos is more peaceful.

 

 

 

Posted in Buddhism, Existential Despair, Insight Meditation, Jesus, Meaning, Meditation, My Story, Stories