Monday, May 28, 2007

The Love Wars

The little harbor has been something of a Love War Zone this weekend.

A fraternity of neighbors are nearly five hours into the third day of Bean Bag Toss Torture.

Initially a lovely backyard family game, the clatter of bean bags on plywood, and roars of "Whoa!", has rarely quit at all this beautiful weekend.

On earlier weekends, the soundtrack to this game was a pretty good party mix. This weekend it has crystalized into only one song, played a couple of times each day: "Love is My Religion".

And while I'm finding Other Things To Do and Other Things To Listen To, I am watching this irritate my Downstairs Neighbors significantly, since they are much fussier than me.

It seems maybe the bean bag toss has turned into something of a Discussion Among Neighbors. There were loud snippets of "The Landlord Said..." floating along the lawns and water today and I'm seeing sheepish looks in the mornings as the party messes are cleaned up.

Today, Downstairs is having a soiree of their own, and they are loudly playing their own love music - Frank Sinatra.

For a "weighty" Quaker, this might become a spiritual exercise in peace-making. But since there's actually no such thing as "friendly fire" in a war zone, even a Love War Zone among respectable neighbors, I'm reluctant to enter the discussion.

I've resisted the urge to visit the Boys with a Parchese set, for instance, or Scrabble, or even badmitton. Or perhaps a game requiring skill. Nor have I brought over a 6-pack of good beer and asked if I could play too.

I haven't hired someone to steal the bean bag game, called my landlord, called their landlord, or started a game by myself at 5:30 am when I get up for my Ashtanga class, since I am taking the High Road.

The politics that rule this roost will to have to sort it out and hopefully it won't take all summer. I may pray for rain.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Heaven with Alik

Another train ride to Manhattan wearing the interview suit and heels. Into my bag, next to resumes, I have placed a little digital camera because New York is always surprising. But it's on the Greenwich platform that I receive grace.

A grandmother and granddaughter are sitting together on the platform, not on a bench, but down on the cement platform itself, under the big sign that says "Greenwich." The little girl is sitting between her grandmother's legs, wearing her large sunglasses, and holding an enormous book that spans both of their laps.

And they are reading together and tooting - I mean, pulling their hands like a train engineer pulls a train horn and saying "Toot! Toot! Toot!"

The platform is beginning to collect commuters, and these two travellers are having an exceptional time waiting for the train and tooting. I can't resist them.

I walk over, apologize for interrupting and ask the grandmother if I can take a picture and email her a copy. They are so deep in play that it takes a minute for them to notice me, but she smiles broadly and agrees, and her granddaughter leans back into her breast, lowers the glasses on her nose and tips her head for the camera.

For her 4th birthday, I learn in an email the next day, Alik has chosen a train trip from Larchmont to Greenwich, and lunch with her grandmother, Mary. They would have also gone to the Bruce Museum but it was closed, so they went to Diane's Bookstore, "and had a grand time."

I also learn that two months earlier Mary lost her husband of 43 years. They were both college professors in Duluth, MN. And while Mary is thanking me for being a "grandmother's good fairy" for taking their picture and sending her a copy, I am grateful to them for the unabandoned joy they shared with each other in the presence of strangers. She tells me she will tell the story for many years to come.

My friend Gerry sent me the end of the hell/heaven story.

The warrior, overcome with anger and hate at the monk, drew his sword and prepared to cut his head off right there and then. As the sword swung, the monk said "That is hell."

The warrior hearing this, stopped and dropped the sword at once. Overwhelmed, he began to cry tears of gratitude for his newly melted heart. The monk then said "and that... is heaven."

And thanks to Mary and Alik, I have gone to my interview with a grateful, wide open heart. A little piece of heaven.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Hell, and Heaven?

Thank you Anonymous commenter [see below]. In your beautiful version of this story, the warrior riles himself with no help at all from the monk. That seems exactly right, doesn't it? -JB

I'm looking for the ending to a Buddhist story I once heard in a yoga class. I should have heard the ending but maybe there was a cramp in my leg, or the teacher spoke softly. However it happened, I missed it.

Here's the beginning.

A very rich, successful samurai warrior has conquered all of the neighboring kingdoms but finds himself deeply unfulfilled and unhappy. He decides to go to a mountaintop to ask a wise monk about the nature of heaven and hell.

He takes along an impressive entourage of his family and soldiers and advisors. After a long and arduous journey up the mountain, the warrior locates the monk and humbly asks him to please tell him the nature of heaven and hell. He explains that he has been successful in all of his worldly pursuits but is still very unhappy.

The monk ignores him, and walks away, but the warrior, not used to be being ignored or embarrassed in front of people, runs after the monk asking him again. The monk continues to walk, leaving behind the warrior, who is growing more angry by the minute.

Finally the warrior grabs the monk and spins him around and shouts his question: "I have come a very long way and demand an answer!"

The monk looks at him and says loudly "You overblown, ugly, arrogant pile of crap! What makes you think I would share the secrets of heaven and hell with such a stupid and disgusting man." And the monk continues like this while the warrior turns red in the face and begins to draw his sword.

Just as the warrior is about to cut the monk's head off, the monk says "Look how angry you are, my friend. That is the nature of hell."

Sadly, I missed the definition of heaven.

I'll suggest that heaven is to ignore the negative words that someone says to us, or that we say to ourselves, and to live in the moment. Buddhism and yoga are always reminding us that most of our internal lives are self-constructed and have little to do with what is actually going on around us at each moment in time.

But I'm sure the ending is more elegant than that. I will find out.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Muddy River and Child

Searching for some beauty yesterday, I landed on Liberty Street in Manhattan, a block south of a lively Happy Hour, a block west of the hole that is the World Trade Center, and a block east of a children's playground next to a swollen, muddy Hudson River. As I arrived, the police were starting full-on hunt for a child who may have been thrown into the river strapped to his stroller.

There was a police helicopter loud and beating the water just off the Esplanade where divers were suiting up. A stretcher had been pulled close to the railing, and the police were starting to manage the deepening crowd of joggers and dogs and children from the playground. They cordoned off a staging area for emergency workers who were still arriving.

As I watched the water and the stretcher and the faces of the people around me, a boy with red hair and freckles ran up to a young cop and asked him what was going on. "Oh nothing," he said. "They're shooting a movie." And the boy ran back to his family, smiling. I am sure he went home and told his friends about the very cool movie that was made in their neighborhood tonight.

The cop turned and said "No way I'm going to tell him." But he told the man next to me. And we all looked back at the stretcher and the divers and the awful water, muddy from storms the night before.

I remembered that cops and reporters are exposed to things like this all the time. And as I stood watching the emergency workers, I could see horror flicker into the faces of the younger ones, while the older ones seemed more focused and quiet. And I wondered how many were stationed in the area back in 2001.

I went into the City specifically looking for the Camino de Paz labyrinth at the foot of West Street in Battery Park where Quakers meet on Thursday nights in warm weather. Sally has spoken lovingly of it and whenever she does, I'm sure I know exactly where she means, but each time I've tried to attend, I've gotten lost and frustrated. Tonight I ended up at a formal boxwood garden next to Liberty Street which a cop assured me was the labyrinth I was looking for.

Unable to be still, I walked the scattered edge of the crowd, looking for my Quakers, winding past dog leashes and many children in many strollers, praying someone would find that one stroller, and one mother's child, and then everyone could go home, hug their families and share a warm meal. And I wondered if people know just how much another person may wish for a child in their lives and how deeply blessed they are if they have one.

As I started to leave, a man walked up to me with a baby in a papoose on his chest; his wife stepping to my side.

He leaned in to ask me over the roar of the helicopter "Maybe a lot of people have asked you, but do you know what happened?" His baby's downy face was close to mine, smiling, and I was breathless.

And I wept for a second, caught my voice and tears, and told him, repulsed at the words, and grateful his baby was too young to understand.

And I turned again, and starting walking back south to the subway at Bowling Green, unwilling to try to cross the World Trade Center site for a closer subway uptown.

On the train out of Grand Central, I called my dear friend, Liz. She asked me if I had read the Harry Potter books and explained that down at Liberty Street tonight we were in the presence of a Dementor - an entity that completely sucks the happiness out of a place. She agreed I probably needed some prayer and a hot bath. And then she caught me up on the lives of her husband and teenage children.

Later that night I called the NYPD's Deputy Commissioner of Public Information and explained that I'm not with the media anymore, but know them because I once published a newspaper in Northern Manhattan. I know they are the only source of breaking police news in the City.

The detective told me that the reports are unconfirmed about whether a child was in the stroller or not. One witness said the stroller was open; another said the stroller was closed. The search had been called off for the evening but would resume in the morning.

So I have been sitting on this post, wondering whether I further the Dementor by telling the story, as it can now suck a little happiness out of anyone who reads it. Ben Franklin advocated a free press, but warned that a publisher has a responsibility for the welfare of his readers.

On the other hand, it is good to know that children may need extra care because people can do evil things. And maybe mothers know that is where prayer and meditation come in - to still the Dementor so that we can wisely see how to help.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Grass in my Neighbor's Toes

Last evening was stormy and neighbors around the harbor tucked themselves away. Sunday was glorious, though, and I sat by the water with a book.

My elderly neighbor joined me, pulling a hat down to the top of her sunglasses, and drawing up a lounger. She smiled, commented on the evening and the water and opened her book.

I don't know my neighbor's name, although I'm sure I've heard it. In saying that I'm aware of the differences between writing a newspaper and a blog. Here, I don't need to know her name - she is very warm, has a Swiss accent and lived in Tanzania for her husband's work in the 1970's.

Like this we sat together and read.

It has been a very long time since I've sat in a back yard and read with a neighbor. In New York City, there are too many people going too many directions, so if you manage to sit still for a moment in some quiet beautiful place, chances are the person nearest is not sitting still at all, but has just flown by on some errand.

Or maybe it's a park bench and you sit next to someone, but never speak to them. Or if you speak to them, or even chat for a moment, chances are you'll never see them again. Cities have their downsides.

But there's my neighbor with her blue crush hat and big glasses. She is reading a library book about bipolar children. I think this could have something to do with a grandchild, or maybe another neighbor's child, since she does not have young children that I know of. But I do not ask. I am reading a dialogue between the Dalai Lama and western scientists about the nature of emotions.

Mostly I'm not reading, though. Mostly I'm watching some swallows dive over the juniper tree above me and I'm watching the piece of flowery grass stuck in my neighbor's toes. She has walked barefoot through the yard to the lounger on the water's edge.

By the time my grandmother was this woman's age, her mind had been emptied by Alzheimer's. It was a very scary place for her. But I remember that it brought her no end of happiness to receive a bouquet of flowers since every time she saw the flowers, they were new to her and she would ask who had sent them. If you made sure not tell her how many times she had already asked, she was delighted and really grateful all over again.

Unlike my grandmother, this woman is enjoying her advanced years fully aware, but hasn't noticed the grass in her toes. And I sit wondering if there is grass in my toes, and glance down, hoping there is. I am looking forward to the summer.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Stan's Ashtanga Yoga Shala

To speak of the quiet breath practice of Ashtanga Yoga feels almost to disrupt it: a wind across the surface of still water. But why have words at all if not to share something inexplicably lovely?

Greenwich Yoga is perched over the dam of a refurbished old mill. Early this morning, before the hedge fund capital of the world springs awake, the only sounds I hear are the hum of my breath, a quiet roar of water coming over the dam, and my inelegant jump-backs to chaturanga dandasana.

Stan Woodman has just started offering Ashtanga as Sri K. Pattabhi Jois teaches it in Mysore, India. It is a rare opportunity. Last week I enrolled, and today I was the only student in the room.

Unlike so many of the wonderful yoga styles available, in Ashtanga there is no music to engage the mind, or to coax one through a particularly difficult asana sequence. There is growth through the Primary Series as one gets stronger and more flexible, but as the sequence is the same every morning, there is no drama of "What cool thing is next?" Just quiet movement, quiet breath, and a warm room.

Stan stood to the side, reminded me of the standing sequence he began teaching me last week, helped me align my slight scoliosis a few times, and told me that eventually my toes will actually glide back to chaturanga. He also agreed, when I asked, that I had miscounted my breaths.

I found myself miscounting when I remembered that my teacher was watching or when I worried whether I had counted correctly. My earliest challenge then is to drop the worry, drop the ego when I forget the sequence, and to stay present in the breath.

Mitchel Bleier is teaching Anusara yoga at Saraswati's Yoga Joint in Norwalk. He talked about the breath in a class recently. He noted that we cannot, of our own volition, simply stop breathing. It is as though the universe is breathing us, and not, in fact, the other way around. He said that we might even understand that the universe has actually chosen us to breathe into.

I love teachers like Mitchel. They help me understand the challenging Eastern ideas in yoga. But how divine to walk up to the waterfall and let it all drop away to a sea of quiet breathing.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Blessings of the Milk Baba

Yesterday I was blessed by the Milk Baba.

All of us visiting the Greenwich Yoga studio had the option of being blessed by this little Hindu holy man who sits under what is said to be more than six feet of dreadlocks wrapped around his head - 52 years of hair.

In the previous hour, I'd understood little of what he said. I heard him mention Krishna and Buddha and Shiva, but his English was minimal and my Sanskrit worse. I'm pretty sure he said nothing about Jesus.

Which raised the Christian question for me - Can he be holy? Is he really in a position to bless me when he's clearly idolatrous?

I liked his smile, though, which lit whenever the yoga students sitting upright on bolsters around the room in front of him forgot to chime in with his call and response singing. I also liked his words on inner light and the love that people can share with each other, even when they're from Nepal and claim to find divine insight by drinking only milk for 17 years.

By living on only 2 litres of milk a day, I gathered, he was able to clear his mind of craving, first the craving of food, then the craving of other bodily desires, and then the larger cravings of his ego. This brought him intense happiness. And he is travelling the U.S. to share the bliss of simplicity.

So I left the studio wearing the string of red and yellow that he tied around my wrist. They are the colors he wore on his forehead to signify that he had said his morning prayers. I know the string is meant to stay on until it has absorbed as much of my bad karma, or sins, as it can bear, and then it will drop away. It was the perfect accessory to my outfit: a long pink shirt-dress I bought in India a few years ago, tan A&F capris, and silver ColeHaan flip-flops.

Driving home from the Milk Baba, smelling the rose oil he rubbed on my hand, I could also smell the lilacs in season in Greenwich. The Avenue, our Rodeo Drive of the East, was packed with shoppers. And despite the fumes rising from the cars ahead of me, I thought "Why go see the Milk Baba for blessings of happiness when Greenwich is plenty lovely? Kate Spade has great bags; and the woman who just walked by looked like a movie star."

And I rued the fact that I would probably need to make a second trip out to the grocery store as I hated to go in wearing the long shirt-dress.

So today, in Quaker Meeting, when a man stood and spoke of religious fanaticism and intolerance as the greatest root of war, what he said rang inside me for a few minutes.

I believe that to be tolerant, every person has to explore their own spiritual edges - where does my soul end and yours begin? Is holiness so deeply universal that we might each understand it even if you pray to Shiva and I pray to Christ?

I stood and shared the blessing I received from the Milk Baba and my thoughts on why he might actually be holy. Others also stood and spoke of their own exploration of other religious traditions and what they had learned and how they had grown. And this, as part of the Quaker process, is to describe and define how we bring the idea of peace into the world. For my part, it meant accepting and cherishing a little piece of love and blessing from the Milk Baba.

These seemed like fair questions and thoughts in the context of the Iraq War, where the US is fighting to claim oil that does not belong to it, and where the issues of religious intolerance are large.

The last person to speak was a plain-clothed, plain-spoken woman sitting next to me. She shared that she sincerely hoped people understood that the earth is plentiful and there is plenty to go around, that we need not be scared. That was all.

She didn't look at my shiny ColeHaans, or mention consumerism by name, but the greed of some in the face of the true need of others is the more material cause of our current war and it will be an even larger problem as the planet's population grows.

So it's her and the Milk Baba. And me and my karmic string that I'm not sure is going to match my interview suits this week.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Cob Houses

"How can we separate your hands and hearts from ours in this clay of earth?"
-- Dr. Ramu Manivannan, Director, Buddha Smiles
Kurumbupallayam, Tamil Nadu, India, January 2004

Cob houses, it may interest you to know, are not made of corn cobs.

In the brick-burning village of Kurumbupallayam, Dr. Ramu Manivannan recently bought several large cow fields where he is building a school for poor and orphaned children. Kurumbupallayam is the village next to the ancestral home of his mother and a place where Mani, as Dr. Manivannan is known, has deep roots.

He prefers not to use the bricks of the local village, though, since mud, once it has been fired, does not peacefully release back to the earth. Like the International-style cement block houses going up as India prospers, brick becomes landfill material in a country with no landfills once its need has expired and the materials have failed. And even cement cannot indefinitely rebuff the monsoon that sweeps over the Eastern Ghats in June, returning in October along the same path. In fact, cement buildings in South India are most notable for their black moldy stains and walls puckered with humidity.

Cob, the material Mani has chosen for his school, has no pretensions of being as independent, as indifferent, as brick or cement. Cob is clay, sand, straw and water, mixed with bare feet on tarps or in pits, and pressed into the shape of walls. Cob walls require a good foundation, solid roof, and regular application of mud, lime or cow dung plaster. With care, a cob building can last hundreds of years.

Gandhi's ideas on care, trusteeship, and education are deeply interesting to Mani.

Mani's first cob schoolroom went up in January 2004 as part of a natural building workshop organized by Kleiwerks, Cob Works, and the natural building team from Buddhist monk Sulak Sivaraksa's ashram in Thailand. 150 banana trees were planted to filter graywater, and organic farming is envisioned as an integral part of the education of orphans and children whose parents are too poor to allow them to go to school. With Gandhian intent, just as these children will learn to read in the hours after their workday, they will continue to learn and practice the trades and crafts of their villages.

Like most of the 15 or so people who crawled across the planet to build a school in cob, and who returned home with clothing forever red-stained with the clay of South India, I discovered Mani's workshop on the World Wide Web at http://www.kleiwerks.com/.

Mani doesn't have a website, yet. But I am interested that he have one soon and I've begun to wonder, WWGD [What Would Gandhi Do] with this clay earth finely draped with the conduit for shared human intention?