we do not achieve things …

by way of proclamations and slogans

but through

persistence,

effort,

and

enthusiasm.

“May 15” in Path to Peace by Shi Wuling.

***

The venerable Shi Wuling once came to South Bend, IN, and it is from her that I first learned about Buddhism. Lately I’ve delved into Tibetan Buddhism with Lama Surya Das’s audiobooks, Buddha Standard Time and Buddha Is as Buddha Does. Perhaps it’s working, because I finally feel more at home at home. It’s almost three years since we moved. Since I left my identity at the curb and took on a new everything. (Well not quite everything. The husband and dog are the same.)

And I swear we’ve both lost 10 years in attitude-drag. To see him on his e-bike & going to the gym, and me with my regular T’ai chi and Aikido sessions, we are both way more disciplined and physically fit than we were in our 50s. We’re also cheerful now. I think we are actually happy, most of the time. Pretty amazing in comparison with the stressed-out wrecks we used to be!

Funny, what you realize when you have the time to realize stuff.

• 

Creating intricate quilts with symbolic meanings and diverse textures continues to be my passion and way of communicating with the world. Above and below you’ll see some pics of my latest work, the “Respect” and “RARE” quilt projects, which have drawn me to connect with people of color from all around the USA and increasingly, here in my hometown. That development–and the chats, smiles, and thank you letters I’ve received–give me great pleasure and life satisfaction.

Thinking it over as I work in silence, I realize that these projects are a continuation of friend-making I learned to do in France. After years of feeling estranged in my beloved adoptive country, and never really connecting in a long-term way with a French person, I moved to France again in 2001. We would be there for two years, so I needed a friend. One day, I put up a card in the library, asking basically if anybody felt like being friends. Or at least talk once a week. Then 9/11 happened the very next day. And on 9/12, two French women called. It worked. Life-long friendships were born there in the Bibliothèque anglophone on rue Boisnet in Angers, France.

Now I’m trying to reach out, or deepen friendships, with people from a different population–namely my fellow citizens. Through the “Respect” quilts, I seek to support and celebrate people of color in the USA. And make friends, if possible. As a very white person living in a very white city, it is not that easy. But little by little, what do you know? The same technique seems to work. People like people who like them. A smile begets another. Hope begets hope. One person’s search meets another’s.

These latest quilts are for inspiring Black women who live in the Seattle area, a top-echelon hospital administrator (and a friend, whose name starts with “J”) and an award-winning high school student.

Drop by West Seattle Grounds coffee shop during the month of June and you will be surrounded by my handiwork. I’ll be there in person smiling at everybody, and hosting the “Make a quilt” game, during the West Seattle ArtWalk on June 10 from 5-8pm.

• 

On another note, it would be amiss of me to neglect mention of Taiyaki, a Japanese delicacy that I discovered today after T’ai chi class. (Which was fantastic as always.) The taiyaki truck Bean Fish parked right behind me. When I smelled that good smell and saw the truck sitting there, I thought: “If this is not synchronicity then I don’t know what is!”

Wow! Good call. I highly recommend the Food Truck, Bean Fish, for these deliciously comforting treats. I had an “original” with red bean paste and loved the warm, crunchy, gushy sweet combo of flaky crust, soft inner layer and perfectly textured bean paste (very important). Plus the adorable fish’s face and cute scales! It made me quite content, all the way home.

(Or for the rant version: all the way through the convoluted Pioneer Square detours, past the rude/terrifying speeders who zoom by and/or cut in on the highways, and behind the long lines of patient neighbors working our way back to “Vashon East”, otherwise known as West Seattle, cut off from the mainland since 2020 when our bridge broke.)

Either way, it was an excellent Saturday morning.

FYI: The Bean Fish truck is parked across the street from the busy and amazing Asian grocery store, Uwajimaya, for your shopping convenience.

Long live Seattle’s International District and Chinatown, for bringing the tastes, sounds, smells, and arts of Asia to the West!!

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day 80, just help

June 5 page from Shi Wuling, Path to Peace

fyi, the Honey Girl quilt offer expires today! see details on day 73.

day 58, accepting our limitations, admitting our imperfections, and getting on with it

More grey weather outside, another onslaught of scary, outrageous, sickening news in the paper, another day of mounting worries and anxiety: what else is new? LOL. 🙂

So I took out a little book that sometimes helps and turned to the message for May 16:

there are four things conducive

to the uncovering of wisdom:

association with those who are virtuous

hearing wise and true teachings

listening well and deeply

practicing sincerely *

to which I would add: “looking carefully at the photos of your work before posting them!”

That grey mask with the purple stitching was an experiment I conducted on inspiration from DJ Kevin Cole’s afternoon show yesterday on KEXP, when he issued a creative challenge to listeners to “use an inappropriate color.” For me, that meant using purple thread instead of grey thread on a grey mask. I was so happy with the results that I took a quick pic, submitted it, and patted myself on the back… until I looked closely at the pic, then the mask, and saw my error!  (one of the ties is not stitched correctly.) Yikes! I know it’s extremely small potatoes, in the big scheme of things, but I care that my work is as beautiful as I can make it. Luckily, this is one thing I can fix.  Yay for that!

Hang in there, any way you can, until tomorrow…

 

* Shi Wuling, Path to Peace

ten days left: a Zen rebuff of Bachelard?

Today’s thought from Path to Peace seems at first glance to present a sound rebuff of the sentimentalism of Gaston Bachelard that I quoted yesterday. In her reflections, Venerable Wuling stresses facts we must admit, such as: to be alive is already to be dying a little every day, every action is ephemeral, and all love will end.

Grim realities.

Or are they really that grim? And do they truly rebuff Bachelard’s perspective? I think rather that they are complementary. They describe human realities at different levels of magnification–from the laser-like focus on the subtle perceptions of individual thinkers living with the material world in Bachelard to the Olympian scope of a Zen sage, who from a distant and dispassionate perspective looks over eons of growth, blossoming, and death in endless cycles. Both may be right, depending on how you look at things.

Although the Zen writings seem depressing, perhaps they are rather to be read as incitements to resist the inevitable! to enjoy every minute or at least accept it, out of mischief if for no other reason. Just to spite the fates, like a trickster in your own life.

June 17

four things are constant:

no world lasts forever

but will be swept away;

it is no shelter

and protects not;

one will leave everything behind

in passing to the next life;

life is incomplete

and unsatisfying.

– Shuling Wu, Path to Peace, “June 17.”

I prefer the entry for June 16 instead:

one who is free

from desire and sorrow

leaves all fetters behind

to pass beyond birth and death.

like a swan rising from a lake,

he moves on in peace

never looking back.

 

day four, what is real?

Hello on day four of the five-day meditation in a mirror challenge,

It is already after noon yet the house is very quiet today, after yesterday’s tornado of family conflict, stress and strife, during the “birthday dinner.”

Today’s setting: the downstairs hall mirror–a full-length mirror ca. 1910–and the downstairs bathroom mirror–another heavy, gilt-framed antique that came with the house. I opened the closet door to allow the full-length mirror to reflect the bathroom mirror, and as I stood there I moved it slightly to see how they reflected each other and the things in between.

We think mirrors are “true” reflections yet look how easily I distorted “reality”: by slightly moving the door and camera’s focus, it is easy to create doubles. The camera shows doubles: doubles of the mirror, of me, of the Picasso print of a girl (Head of a Woman in a Hat, 1962): all those doubles are merely reflections created by the border in the glass of the full-length mirror.

So what is real? right now, cold feet and thirst are real. My ears resound in silent static and my intellect feels wary and weary of things social.

As Alan Watts writes about awareness, “This very simple ‘opening of the eyes’ brings about the most extraordinary transformation of understanding and living, and shows that many of our most baffling problems are pure illusion. […] Because awareness is a view of reality free of ideas and judgments, it is clearly impossible to define and write down what it reveals. […] The truth is revealed by removing things that stand in its light, an art not unlike sculpture, in which the artist creates, not by building, but by hacking away.”  (Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity, 76).

Letting go of a past “Identity” is scary. This applies to adults who must let go of one Identity, of being PARENTS–law-and-order border agents, battling evil to keep their children safe–and undertake a different Identity when those tykes grow up (anywhere from 18 to 35 years later).

From PARENTS, we must accept to exert less power and control over our children. We must let go of our PARENT domination and accept a new role as a kindly, non-invasive partner–merely a fellow human on a chronologically-defined journey we share with those people from birth (theirs) to death (ours, if the chronology works the way we hope it will).

That letting go is scary and hard. Words may help:

if in our anger, we realize

the other person is suffering,

we can free ourselves

from anger

and from suffering,

which also helps free the other.

–Shi Wuling, Path to Peace, Feb. 8

Sometimes abstaining from action and thought, what the Chinese call wu-wei, is the best action.

Especially when we’re all so tired of each other. Maybe we should all just tread lightly and remain silent for a while, like Honey Girl here.

 

A confession, an inspiration, and a way to feel better

1. A confession: I ate one-fourth of this pecan pie yesterday, all by myself! And that was after eating a very large and wonderful dinner!  Pecan pie, made from the family’s secret recipe, is one of my all-time favorite foods. So I enjoyed it and had three lovely big pieces.  And do you know what?  It was good, very very good. 

Since I went right back to my normal morning routine today, I feel great. I have no regrets. How do you feel? Perhaps a little groggy or overwhelmed by all the food, the drink, the sales, the crowds, and the looming craziness of the “holiday season”?  Although we cannot change the noisy chaos and emotional manipulation coming at us from all angles at this time of year, we can liberate ourselves from its grip.

2. An inspiring thought:

When the mind is quiet

With chattering thoughts at rest,

When the heart is gentle

With selfish thoughts given up,

The spirit will rise and soar.

–from Venerable Shi Wuling, Path to Peace, “November 24”

3. A pact to feel better. One of the most powerful facets of practicing T’ai chi and studying Zen philosophy is that they lead to greater appreciation of the self and the present moment. Try this exercise and make a pact with yourself today.*

Don’t put yourself down and don’t be angry with yourself, for a full month. See what changes that puts you through. Anger is an emanation of the mind. It is not a direct emanation from creativity (the Body-Mind) but one coming from the fashioned creature (the Mind). When you make a mistake, don’t clench your teeth, frown your face, and tell yourself how stupid you are.

Just laugh a little!  We’re all beginners at this game. And we humans really are quite funny to behold.

***

*I’ve been making and renewing this pact monthly since August 13, 2017. Although I admit to kicking myself on one or two Tuesdays evenings after teaching a particularly challenging graduate seminar this semester, I have caught myself and made myself stop. When it happens, I stop, breathe quietly with eyes shut for a few moments, and shake my head at the sneaky way the Mind works, trying to keep me in its miserable power.

And do you know what? The pact works. Those bad old feelings of struggle, self-hatred, and doubt are gradually ebbing away. Life simply is, and it is good.

For more on this exercise and the philosophy behind it, see Bob Klein, Movements of Power, p. 48.