Yesterday's Talk

If you are looking at problem, picture this: A mountain, a river, and your practice. The mountain is the thing you cannot affect or change, the river a force either cresting or falling. When the river is fast and rising, one doesn't cross it, one waits. When the river is becoming shallow, one crosses. There is a proper time to wait and a proper time to cross.

Meanwhile, the one thing we can always count on is our practice: sitting meditation, compassion towards ourselves and others, and focused work.

Why Bother?

Election Day poses a problem that most voters and (especially) non-voters miss: why does anyone vote at all? Or more specifically, why does an individual vote? A single vote is a simple summation of some very complex processes, like any observable behavior. But at its heart is a paradox. And this can be said about any human endeavor. The paradox of voting is that one vote really amounts to almost nothing, and yet it is also much more than a ritual act of democracy. Lurking in the heart of every voter is this: what if I didn't vote and no one else did either?

Why bother? In this morning's meditation I asked this of the students. Why come to school on time? Why be kind to others? Why do your work well? At our school, we have few punishments or "consequences" (a term I am never comfortable with). We continually nudge a student's acts and words back onto them. Punishment usually only distracts from the serious grappling with one's responsibility. So why bother trying hard at all... it seems so much easier not to.

But, alas, it is not easier. Slowly one's awareness broadens, and along with it, one's conception of self-interest. But within this process- however long it takes- a person wrestles with the question. Or they avoid it. But at some point it becomes clear- in this school- that it is all about relationships. Why bother? The answer is not "because I have relationships". The answer lay within each of our particular web of relationships: to others, ourselves, our ambitions, and our desires.

No one can answer this question but the individual alone. The best teacher can't make a student work or give a damn. But the trust that must be the basis of a relationship- any relationship- is based on previous experiences and our deep inclinations as humans to have relationships. This is what the teacher and student steps into. The student must become conscious of all this. The teacher must manage the trust.

Trust is faith. There is every reason in the world to be nihilistic and not bother much at all. Yet we keep on bothering, most of us, every day. Those of us who can honestly ask the question every day are the best among us.

TBI (traumatic brain injury) and Vets

Good piece in the Washington Post about TBI, the extent of the injuries, and the hopes for treatment.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/02/AR2010100203969.html

Allentown's Veteran's Sanctuary

Last year, the student body voted without dissent to donate 500 dollars from the student fund to the Veteran's Sanctuary in Allentown, PA. With remarkable speed the organization running it has converted an old Catholic school- a giant one- into a fully accessible treatment center and residence for traumatized and brain injured combat vets, male and female. The program is family and mindfulness based. It is due to open in November.

This Tuesday, we are heading up their to prime and paint a number of dormitory rooms. This is an important relationship...why? Not to get too political about this, but these wars were planned to be mostly hidden. Sure, we have a sense of the financial costs, but the human costs are isolated from us. For those with eyes to see.

Our older students must come to grips with these wars and their costs. Not in the sense of risking overwhelming them and creating helplessness within them, but rather an orientation to life and death, suffering and relief.

My hope is that a few of the many students we have who seem interested in psychology take this injustice on as they grow older.