Growing Fingernails

Do you grow your fingernails or do your fingernails grow themselves? This was the kind of tree-falling-in-the-forest discussions we had in college, burning up our tuition dollars in late night metaphysical speculations in hazy, smoke-filled rooms. And all these years later, I find myself asking it again. I cut my fingernails too short the other day and it hurts to play piano, so I’m wanting them to quickly grow back. But it is, so to speak, out of my hands.

A Zen student told her teacher with a bit of pride, “I’m getting much better at sitting zazen (Zen meditation) with concentration and fewer distracting thoughts” and he responded, “When you sit well, you don’t sit zazen. Zazen sits zazen.”

I know what he means. I feel it at the piano sometimes when the music is pouring out of my fingertips and playing itself. If someone walks in the room and I self-consciously want to show off, the whole tower of blocks falls down. When everything’s flowing just right, music plays music. Zazen sits zazen. Basketball plays basketball. Teaching teaches teaching. All we have to do is get out of the way.

Of course, “all we have to do” is the understatement of the year. To get to that place, you need a solid, determined, willful self that puts in the hours to make it happen—no sidestepping that. But the problem is when that ego wants to take credit—“Look at ME! I’m growing my fingernails!” All that directed energy from the self ultimately aims for the self’s demise, kind of like a slow, purposeful suicide, not from despair, but from joy that our little self has joined with the large roaring larger self of World, just one cell in a singing body of World, one breath joining the inhale and exhale of World. Having worked so hard with our tiny self at the center of our tiny world, we now have the capacity to get out of the way.

I had such a moment last night playing piano alone in my home and can’t wait to jump back into that refreshing river. But it will be better when my fingernails grow themselves.

Mark Twain Revisited

Mark Twain once said: “The coldest winter I ever spent was in the Goodkin’s house in January.”

Okay, he didn’t really say that. But he would have if he stayed here. Our hallway heater just ain’t got enough ooomph to warm all six rooms when the temperature outside is in the 40’s. And for some bizarre reason, we refuse to keep the heat on all night. It’s freezin’ in here!

Do you care?……… I didn’t think so. But so as to not entirely waste your time, I’ll offer some juicy Mark Twain quotes. Real ones.

• Training is everything…cauliflower is nothing but a cabbage with a college education.

• It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse-races.

• There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.

• When angry, count to four. When very angry, swear.

• “Classic.” A book people praise and don’t read.

• Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.

And of course, the famous real quote paraphrased above:

• The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.

Change Yourself. Change the World

“In Wisdom literature, the principal evil to be attacked is in oneself and the secondary evil to be opposed is the power of anyone who victimizes the weak.”

–      David James Duncan

The year was 1969. I was an incoming freshman at Antioch College attending an orientation week. On the first day, in the middle of a meeting, a strong-voiced older student stood up and took the floor: “The most important thing you all need to learn here is how to get involved in the Revolution! We’re here to change this evil, fascist world!” Then a long-haired soft-voiced second student stood up, “I don’t think we can change the world without changing ourselves. We’re here to learn to work on ourselves and if everyone does it, the world will change.” They argued back and forth a bit: “How can you do yoga while people are dying in Vietnam?” “But if the war stops and people haven’t dealt with the violence in themselves, nothing will change.” And then at some point, they both confessed that what appeared spontaneous was set up ahead of time. But the point was well-taken—the boundary lines of my college—and later experience—had been set. Change yourself. Change the world. But the key to the dialogue lay in the prepositions. What began as “either/or” changed to “both/and.”

Seven years later, I found myself in an old boy scout camp on top of Mt. Baldy in Southern California, immersed in a seven-day Zen retreat whose rigorous schedule was designed to awaken to a core selfless self. Awake at 3 am, bed at 10 pm and most of the hours in-between spent sitting silently face-to-face with all our mutual ignorance, attachments, ego-clinging notions, breathing ourselves with good posture, pained legs and pointed focus to a larger definition of Self. It was the most profound practice of changing our self I had ever encountered, before or since.

And I often felt, standing outside in line in the early morning dark with 25 other black-robed beings, in company with the first morning birds and mountain breeze, hearing the bell and walking in unison down the gravel-path, that we strange creatures moving together on our way to the sutra hall to chant ancient Sino-Japanese sacred texts, were somehow holding this broken world together. No one knew we were there, but our dedicated work was rippling out in unseen ways to bring light and healing. This was not something I could rationally defend, but a deep conviction that helped make my step lighter and made the pain and terror of facing oneself squarely with no distractions, excuses or intermediaries both bearable and important.

Seven years later, I found myself in meetings of the Nuclear Freeze Movement being trained to give little talks and show the video of The Last Epidemic, a doomsday warning based on the work of Helen Caldicott. Hours and hours, with my first-born daughter a tender 3 years old and ending up speaking to groups of 10 people or so in church basements. It seemed important and necessary work, but never did I feel so helpless and hopeless and ineffective.

I finally turned more of my attention to creating opportunities to give Orff workshops to teachers around the country and later, the world and here’s where the “both/and” part of change began to kick in. I had found my little corner of the world from which to speak and in addition to voting, protesting in the streets, signing petitions and such, the necessary duties of being an active citizen, I found myself using my position as workshop leader to speak out against the power of those “victimizing the weak” and speak on behalf of children, of art, of the black folks who created the wonders of jazz and more. Always in the context of the joyful work we were doing. It’s never enough to just critique what doesn’t work, we need to show and model and live what does.

So while the “change your self” part of the work meant creating instant safe communities where people take risks and discover untapped parts of themselves in company with other risk-takers, the “change the world” part meant looking at the forces in the world that seek to shut us down and gathering the courage to speak out against them. Hardly a workshop goes by where I don’t point out the harm done by educational policies and practices, from cutting out arts programs to reducing them to ways to make math scores better to insisting that machines be used or behavioral compliance enforced. If I’m teaching jazz, I never fail to tell stories about what these musicians went through and insist that if we’re going to feel the joy of dancing to or playing Count Basie, we have to know who to thank and vow to work harder to end the racism they suffered from.

It pisses some people off, some people appreciate it, some people endure it, but at this point, I don’t care. It’s my way of fusing together the twin mandates of that college orientation. And what would it be like if everyone used their position, skill, opportunity to speak out for the same dual purposes—to help people enlarge their narrow experience of self and to speak on behalf of those whose voices are not represented in the national discourse, be they children, trees, native peoples or the long list of marginalized people, processes, ideas?

Change your self. Change the world. I heartily recommend it.

The Gift

            “You give all your brightness away and it only makes you brighter.”

                                                                         - Incredible String Band

I found the perfect gift for my nephew recently—The Gift by Lewis Hyde. But it was more than just cute to give The Gift as a gift—it fulfilled the premise of the book. Subtitled Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, this classic study looks at the role of art and imagination in a consumer society. It flips the shallow notion of the antipathy of art and money by looking at economics from a large perspective that includes Spirit and generosity. Drawing from sources as diverse as the potlatch of the Kwakiutl Indians, folk tales from around the world, the teachings of Meister Eckhart, the poetry of Ezra Pound and Walt Whitman, it considers the role of art in the energy exchange between people that all money economies begin from.

The central premise is that work that dips below the line of mere commerce, goes out of sight into the world of spirit and mystery and returns again, is work that perpetually refreshes. Despite the pressure at Christmas to deliver the goods and all the stress and anxiety it causes until people (like my wife) throw up their hands and proclaim, “I’m done with giving gifts!”, I still take a great pleasure in trying to imagine each person and either give them something they desire or, better yet, something I loved that I think they might too and might not have encountered without my gift. My nephew is deep into mythology and Joseph Campbell and such and I remembered this sleeper of a book from the 1980’s that I thought would intrigue him. If it catches, then the ideas are charged with new energy being received by a new reader and their spirit is re-charged—a gift that keeps on giving.

Here’s how Lewis Hyde describes it:

If, when we work, we can look once a day upon the face of mystery then our labor satisfies. We are lightened when our gifts rise from pools we cannot fathom. Then we know they are not a solitary egotism and they are inexhaustible. Anything contained within a boundary must contain as well its own exhaustion. The most perfectly balanced gyroscope eventually winds down. But when the gift passes out of sigh and then returns, we are enlivened. …when the gift circles into mystery the liveliness stays.  (p. 20)

Yesterday I moved through my always-intense Friday schedule at school. 6^th grade, 8^th grade, 8^th grade, 10 minute break, 5-year olds, 5-year olds, 30 minute lunch, Elementary Singing Time, 4^th grade, 4^th grade, carpool. 45 minute classes where I’m front and center directing the group energy of 12-16 kids (100 in Singing Time) of all ages, inviting the chaos of kids moving and chanting and singing and playing drums and xylophones and going off into groups to create things. That’s a lot of energy released and non-stop for seven hours. And I’m no spring chicken—not the kind of work we imagined for our fledgling senior citizens.

But when it’s over, I drive straight to the Jewish Home for the Aged and play piano and sing for another hour. Yesterday a friend of my daughter’s came with her 1-year old to join in the singing. And after a few songs, I paused for a moment to find a song in a book and the 1-year old made the sign-language sign for “More.” Her mother was amazed. This was used mostly to communicate her child’s desire for more food and was the first time she ever used it for something else. I don’t need more affirmation that music is “food for the spirit,” but I’m happy to receive it and especially from a 1-year old!!! And I also received it from the 107-year old who awoke from a sleep and smiled ear-to-ear held by the comforting arms of exquisite music.

Music is the gift that, when done well and with the proper spirit, constantly dives below the surface and emerges renewed and refreshed, the gift that must be given away to realize itself, the brightness that increases its light with each new person it is gifted to. I can make jokes about how little money I make for the immense amount of work it takes to meet music’s demands, but the fact that I fell into this work and kept at it all these years is a gift beyond measure that is its own reward a thousand times over.

Today is Saturday and what will I do? Why, go teach a 6-hour workshop, of course! 

Nothing Takes You All the Way

Music alone, meditation alone, mirth alone won’t do it. Poetry, Pilates or politics can’t get you all the way there. Satie and Samba, Bach, Bird and Brown (James, that is), Chopin and Shakespeare will offer you comfort, challenge, fun, along the way, but the engine isn’t powerful enough on its own to take you to the end.

Not that there really is an end, except that elusive gold at the far side of the rainbow’s curve. But that day to day work of being a fully functioning and joyful and kind human being needs a thousand paths—or one path with a thousand details—to really do its work.

Today I leaned on the Buddhist side of my multiple paths to help shine up the gold of my students and give them a doorway into their own possibility. It’s January, after all, the month of two-faced Janus who can look back and forward at the same time, that god of gateways and doorways opening into a beckoning unknown. He’s the right one to petition in this first week back at school and a few tips from the Buddhist tradition can help children—and adults—give some direction to their hopes and dreams. Gift wrap them in a conscious intention offered in community ritual, at once private and witnessed by fellow seekers, which is all of us.

The short story is kids from 5 to 11 years old sitting in a straight line in Japanese seiza (I call it kneel sitting) position, their back straight, the hands on their knees, their eyes focused down and following their breath as they feel the immense and necessary inner power of stillness. Then one by one rises to sit between two gongs, one large and one small. They ring the large one to send behind them all their regrets from the previous year and then the small one to send forward their hopes and resolutions. These are kept private in their mind as they ring, but I let them know they’re welcome to share either with me at any time, especially if I can help them in some way.

The ring must be firm and clear—not so soft as to vibrate their wish back short of the mark, but not so hard the all vibrations are scattered and the wish dissolves in all directions. They then step through a doorway I set up and sit down behind one of the bells laid out in a circle. Discipline and silence reign throughout—no one is allowed to touch the bell until I give the signal after the last child had passed through the doorway. Deferred gratification is a needed practice for their growing-toward-genuine-adult selves.

Once again, I can’t help but be struck that no newspaper will consider witnessing this class and sending the story around the media circuits. But why not? It is a wonder to behold the different capacities of 5 year olds and 10 year olds and the way they are so clearly hungry for simple little ritual forms like these. It’s a wonder to sit in silence with 12-15 children of all ages and watch how they sit between the gongs, see their minds working, observe precisely how they strike the gong and listen time and time again to those two beautiful tones frame the welcome silence. At the end, we pick up our bells and roar forth an exuberant “Happy New Year!!!” while ringing them and they’re back in the comfort of kid-land. Most kids don’t need to be taught how to whoop and holler, but to sit still, listen attentively, feel their breathing, this is a discipline adults can and should offer—and indeed, with the growing popularity of the mindfulness movement, it is making its way into the curriculum.

But of course, it’s just one tool in a large toolbox. For me, I like to throw in some West African drumming and dancing, some Mother Goose and Shakespeare, some basketball and hiking, some jokes and serious talks about social justice, great films and funny TV shows, some cooking and cleaning, jazz, jazz and yet more jazz, games, games and yet more games and so on. Not one of them alone will create that elusive ideal person wholly in their body, wholly open in their heart, wholly awake in their mind. But they all help. Step by step, day by day, minute by minute, building the citizen of tomorrow armed with disciplined skills and habits, clear vision given muscle through practice and the constant presence of fun and pleasure in every step.