Um...Who Dat!?

Dad graciously hosted the superbowl. Very interesting to see my parents so fervant about sports. Fervant about food, too, but that's not new. The fiance and I came with about four loads of laundry.

The first half of the game was quiet. We didn't say much as we ate hot wings and jambalaya. Step-mom was on the floor while fiance applied accupressure for her pregnant growing pains. In 3 months, I'll have another baby brother.

I was out back in the laundry room when I heard my dad screaming his head off. The Saints had just intercepted and turned the game around. In a way I was more relieved than excited.When I came in with our fresh load, I found our Who Dat shirts and we put them on. Dad already had his Reggie Bush jersey on.

I like being a football fan, but I don't really like football. It takes me awhile to get into a game. Being a Saints fan in New Orleans is like becoming part of a Sangha...and on game, there's not a place in town where you don't have a friend. This team spirit trancends race, class, religion- all for a bunch of grown men chasing each other around.

Even Zen teacher's aren't immune. At the end of our mundo session on Sunday, Robert (who has been known to disaper from temple functions in search of a TV for the Saints) intructed us to press our heads to the sky, our feet to the ground, and deep in our hara, root for 'dem saints.

Into the Dark Box

Dad used to go into confession while I'd wait in the kid's room. It wasn't weird for us to go on self-effacing excursions with Dad. He'd take us to meetings,too. My sister and I would play Monopoly while adults disclosed their character defects in detail. He never really talked about his Catholic faith or his program, but he was steady with his practice. He still is.

I never understood the idea of confession and my notion of the past complicated my view of it. I have a very simple Zen teacher who prescribes more Zazen on a daily basis and treats questions about karma and confession with overt annoyance. He's just not into talking about Zen. There are some things he loves to repeat and I'll be mumbling in my grave, but he doesn't want to talk about precepts, the 8 fold path, or anything "Buddhist." I don't think he's hiding his understanding. I think he's old(77)and cranky.

Although he's old and cranky, he's also well disciplined, and forms, chants, ceremonies, and samu is where I find my teacher. 90% watching, 5% listening to his rants, 5% feeling the Kyosaku. It's just his way. But in being well disciplined, he couldn't skip the confession part of our Jukai ceremony. And so, we all said, in Japanese:

All my ancient twisted Karma
From beginingless greed, hate, and delusion
born through body, speech, and mind
I now fully avow.

And I still failed to see the purpose. If all we have is now, what am I confessing? Who am I confessing for?

It took 20 days at Green Gulch, waking up each morning, and chanting the confession sutra in unison every morning to feel what confessing is. Hearing all those vibrating voices, all with a simple intention, brought confession into my body. I felt it. Can't explain it. Can't intellectualize it with Who am I? context.

What I felt at Green Gulch was an emerging resolve. It was just a start, but it gave me courage to pursue the way.

I think I'd like to explain what pursuit of the way is for me right now: Pursuing the way isn't easy and it's not glamorous either, like Dharma Bums. Pursuing the way has been the most difficult task of my life. It meant true confrontation. I was no stranger to confrontation, no stranger to resentment either. But I had to identify the true demons or enemies, and that's a daily process. Often times, it's not big business or status qua society, like my punk rock sentimentality suggested. First it was drinking. Then it was accepting things as they are. Some where in there was letting go of the idea that I'm so different from everyone else.

That's the big picture of my pursuit of the way. The small picture is even more boring: Sit in the morning, even though your tired. Stop judging your Zen teacher. Sit in the evening, even though your tired. Chanting matters, so do it. Put your head to the floor 3 times for Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Above all, do your best and stop thinking so much.

So this emerging resolve took me on a path I never thought I'd travel-a path of confession- into the rooms of A.A, into psychotherapy, and with constant strain of having students who need your support. And although my body's been in revolt, it's been communicating with me. For the last 4 days I experienced panic attacks, which started at 3 or 6am, while in bed. There was no cause that I could see, besides not going to A.A for a month, not sitting regularly, not exercising, but working for 12-15 hours a day in a high stress environment. No cause is an understatment, but what I mean is that work is hard, but work is good.

For the first three days, confusion ensued and I took refuge in every thing but the 3 treasures. On the 4th, after getting back on the zafu, the fog cleared. And just like Dogen wrote, suchness was there for the taking. As soon as it was, I called for help. I confessed. I asked my Co-teachers to call me the next day at 6am, I called my therapist (who I avoided for 2 weeks) and went back to work.

You know, I learned a lot. First that the way isn't self help for me, but that it's self perseverance. I don't feel like I need self help, or A.A, or a therapist. That's how I feel when things are good. Give me a month of no self-care, and I'll be a mess again. So A.A, therapista, and Zazen really aren't for me, but for everyone else. Self perseverance is for the whole world, especially my little world with a fiance, a school, and a community.

And confession is there to identify the defects in a non judgemental way. To be honest and in honesty find strength.

So this my not-so-glamorous-Bodhisattva-lay-life. Without a robe, I feel naked. Without living at the temple, I feel a little weak. But I just kinda gotta put one foot at a time into the muddy path to happy destiny.

revelations

It just occurred to me that there might not be anything wrong with me, but perhaps something wrong with the way I try to fit into the world. I've been struggling the past couple of days.

I work a lot, and I work a tough 7 class a day schedule, and some of those classes I'm not qualified to teach, but I teach them anyway. A lot of what I do is about picking up one foot at a time. But sometimes I can't pick a foot up. Sometimes the muscles in my rib cage contract and tighten and I can't breathe or move. I've actually had this happen at work and I've had to leave. I've been doing this for three years in one of the worst school districts in the country.

Immediately, I believe I'm flawed. That's not something new- I've always felt that way. Immediately, I believe I have depression or anxiety or alcoholism. And this perception urges me to cover it up- cover it up with more work, or recently, perhaps joining the Army.

My ego is out of control. It thinks strength looks a certain way, like volunteering for the hardest jobs. But maybe strength is looking at the self and finding where it belongs. Maybe it's to stop trying to be something that I'm not.

My Dad has this great quote- he can't remember where it came from: "What someone says about you is none your business." Don't I know that this is my life? That there's this chance to be human and that I shouldn't pass it up?

Always Want to Say Something...

...should be listening, watching.

Neighbors?

I didn't go to work today. Didn't sleep well- the fiance is sick and I was a bit riled up.

The obsession with the military didn't go away. So I researched and I researched and I sent my e-mails and I'm supposed to take a test this Friday to see what I can do.

And then there was the banging on the door, the car honking outside, the unidentified people on my porch yelling back at me as I yell at them, wondering just who the hell they are and if they're connected to the man who approached my fiance earlier that night.

I called in. My head's spinning. What the hell am I doing?

Living in this city, seeing so much need, I really wanted all of Avalokitesvara's arms. I wanted whatever tool or weapon to work my frustration out.

Reading the news for the first time ever. Just started by asking questions: What is the mission in Afghanistan? I couldn't find any military objectives but plenty of political ones, which must be so frustrating for our service men and women.

I'm feeling torn between what looks like needs doing and what I feel like doing. It looks like our public schools need teachers, so I do that, and have been doing it for three years now, reaping reward and accomplishment. And it looked like the military needed help, too. I really thought that. But help with what?

And so my question extends to the rest of my life: But help with what?

It's dangerous to get philosophical. A lot of my Zen training has been about getting away from the intellectual pursuit of what's right, what's wrong, and just doing. My arena of doing is the New Orleans Public Schools.

I wanted to quit from day one. I wanted to quit on day 365. I wanted to quit half way through last year and almost did. But this year I've really felt successful. Same kids, same school, but some how I'm effective this year. I'm moving along just the way my principal wants me to, but I'm starting to ask, for what?

I hate questioning the mission because I still need to finish it, no matter what. But I think this is the mission at my school- get these kids passing a state test, no matter what it takes, no matter how simple and binary we must become, no matter how much of your life (mine and my students) is sacrificed.

Can't be that simple. We do alot within our parameters. But I'm feeling that I've ignored my heart for the sake of sticking it out. And that this mission might not be the one for me.

My mind returns to Zen and to writing.

You have to be the change you want to see, not the change that is easiest to calculate.

You know, we want to make people proud. But then I ask, who's life am I living today?

This must sound like drippy existential crisis. I think it is, too. But I've had these before. Riding them out is best...actions should occur after the settling. That's something different about me I can recognize.

I used to buy plane tickets the morning of.

I shouldn't drink coffee at 7PM.

Always want to be something that's not right here, not right now.
The worst Zen student ever, I must be perfect.
Never really picking up the great matter, but really looking for the great answer.

If the great answer ever had a face would it be easier to forget?

Is that like, "If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him"?

Can you not kill what you can't see?

What's with all the killing...

36 degrees

Very cold start in New Orleans this morning. Very grey.

It rained yesterday. I made the best of it. The students were anxious and ready to leave as soon as they arrived. Conflicting directions from the administrators didn't help the mood of anyone, as it made our morning routine a lot of hurry-up-and-wait.

I fought hard for the students to be given a break. They tested for four days straight, from 8:30 to 4:00, following up with tutoring until 5. I told them friday would be a day of activity and reflection. Then I was told there was just one more section of the test they would need to take...

First, I objected because I had already told them we were finished. I did this in front of the class. I did it on purpose, because I knew I wasn't going to win, and I knew this new turn of events was going to damage their trust in me as their teacher. Secondly, I objected because another student advocate, the dean, had planned a high school vist for Friday morning until 10:00. Apparently, these administrators hadn't talked to each other.

Well, I was still called a liar. I did succeed in getting this last test pushed back so we could attend the high school visit, but then we were left in limbo for an hour and a 1/2 and the visit was canceled.

Toward the end, with 30 min. remaining, we broke out some games- heart beat and pulse- which always boost morale. It was student led, which always makes me feel good. We took our tests, and then it was on to fly high friday, which is what we call our half day of classes, followed by a school culture building activity. Sometimes the classes act together and sometimes we break off. The Alpha Kings (a self moniker for the 8th grade boys, which sounds more like a gang than an academic fraternity) wanted to play football in the rain. I let them. Even played with them, and no one got hurt.

I was satisfied when one student said, "Man, we do everything- car wash, christmas chicken dinner, now football in the rain!" And I expected some repirmand from the principal, as we sat musty and excited during the 2nd quarter awards ceremony for the last hour of the day.

When it was my turn to go up, the Alpha Kings cheered. Not sure for what- we had no A or B honor roll!! I did give three best improved awards.

The Alpha Kings are a complex experiment that is a little out of my hands. I preached, you are your brother's keeper from the very begining, and fiercely individulistic from a grab what you can culture, they rebeled at that notion of accountability. Through meditation (every morning no matter what) a class chant, and class missions, like a peace walk and a car wash, they have become one. There is very little bullying and only the top alphas really get into it, and I'm glad to say that we've had no major infractions, though we appear wooly. We had one fight this year, which was a reactionary when one student thought another spit on him.

I'm also proud of their collaboration and inventiveness. The Alpha Kings have sayings, like the "Be the anvil." They have 2 daps (one I know, the other is secret), a very annoying slow clap, a particular way of standing in a straight line (also very annoying), and a game they invented called Wolves, in which they howl each other's names.

They think they're pretty elite, but how elite can they be when their mediocre students and athletes? We're going to talk about that.