The social media spiral continues

On nights like these I wonder about my continued use of Instagram. I think I’m using it to feel connected to other people: “what are my friends doing?” But it’s not news to say that this is not true connection. 1) I am not in the room with these people, 2) these are curated moments of their lives, where they are at their best selves (unless they’re sharing “vulnerable” moments, and 3) how many of them are really friends that care about me and come to my aid?

The illusion of connection through social media is so strong, even though I understand these three points, I’m still drawn into watching instagram stories, scrolling through my feed, and staring at post after post until my eyes are blurry and my neck hurts (cause honestly, usually I’m propping myself up in bed in a most uncomfortable position). This is borderline addictive behavior.

I know that I’m going on the ‘gram to fulfill a need, which is to get out of loneliness. I don’t feel that need for human connection satisfied after a night of binging on social media or watching netflix. In fact, tonight I felt the most satisfied after spending an hour with a friend doing zen practice. We did mindful movement and breathing, then za-zen for 15 minutes, then shared about our lives and read from Dropping Ashes on the Buddha (a great book of teachings by Zen Master Seung Sahn, worth a read). I came home and felt the most fulfilled I had all day. Then I got sucked into social media and that all went out the window.

So, breaking the cycle, I’m writing about it. Checking in with feelings: just now, I feel a little lonely, though a lot less now that I’ve named it and broken away from the insta-shame feed. I have this feeling of, “is everyone hanging out without me?”
“Wow, this person’s learning to surf, and started her own business, and met someone through that project. What am I doing with my life?” “This person wears amazing clothes.” With like 10 people: “Wow, they’re getting married and putting perfect pictures on instagram, and I’m alone in my underwear on my bed.”

Putting that down on digital paper in long-form makes me feel a lot better. I wonder about how my dad might have felt about seeing the kinds of writing that appear on social media. He was an english professor, and a professor of remedial writing at Brooklyn College. I don’t know what he would say. But I do know that I feel better, because somehow even though I know I’m going to publish this when I’m done, it feels less like I’m tailoring my perspective in a 10×10 box with a picture and text and hashtags.

I am coming out of my foot injury, and being able to walk and move helps a lot. Exercise is amazing, and one of my biggest self-care practices. So when I fractured my foot I lost that. Hopefully I can get to the dance floor this friday. But it still comes and goes in waves of anxiety, frustration, and deep sadness. I mean, this is my own emotional experience of helplessness.

Movement will help a lot. Social media won’t help a damn thing.

Depression

It’s hard not to take it personally. My mind and heart are a roiling froth. I’m like a child that has had recess taken away and has all this extra energy coursing through him. In fact, take away the simile–I am that child. My fractured foot is now 7 weeks into healing and I have cabin fever in my own body. Sure I can leave the house and go to work in an air-boot but all my recreational pastimes are physical. Running, biking, hiking, dancing. Even in my zen practice my favorite technique is the most physical one: bowing, or prostrations. Up, down, up, down, up, down, repeat for a total of 108 times for one set. It’s simple, but involves the most ankle and foot flexion of anything I like to do so right now it’s out of the question. But this is the practice that keeps my stupid mind habits at bay, because it expends all the extra energy of my inner no-recess child.

And I’m bored. So here I am writing something to keep my creative mind alive. In the healthcare debate the usual questions are, how do we pay for this? Are the premiums too high for people to live? We don’t talk about how something as small and temporary as a foot fracture can have lasting effects on mental and emotional health. Health insurance will fight you tooth and nail to cover only a fraction of what you need, so it makes me not even want to try, when I’m in a fragile state all around and need their help the most. How does that make sense?

All I want is to be healthy again. I want to be able to run a marathon, dance in a lindy hop competition, ride a bike cross-country, or spar in a taekwondo tournament. Anything. I want to hike the appalachian trail, walk across the country, walk across the entire world. In all these desires, really all I want is to be able to take one step without fear again.

Boredom mind, depressed mind, happy mind, crazy mind, want-to-jump-out-of-my-skin-for-no-reason mind, tired mind, focused mind: all these are appearing and disappearing in rapid succession day in and day out these days. It’s really, really hard not to take it personally. But I do. I can’t stand it. But isn’t that how my mind is usually? It’s just easier to get knocked over by it because I’m not able to blow off steam the way I usually do.

Fuck this. I can’t wave a magic wand, so I’m going to have to practice patience. But I’m so impatient.

“I can,” then you can.
“I cannot,” then you cannot.
You decide.

– Zen Master Seung Sahn

My choice. Still, I hate this.

“Kind” vs. “Nice”

kind² /kīnd/

adjective
Having or showing a friendly, generous, and considerate nature.

nice

adjective
1. pleasant; agreeable; satisfactory

What is the difference between being nice, and being kind? I have been thinking about this recently, because my mother is often fond of saying, “well, that’s not very nice.” And I find myself wondering, as I do, why does she fixate on “being nice?” Words have meaning. Kindness and niceness are two different things. So I did two Google definition searches, and found these definitions above. Kindness is about being “friendly,” “generous,” and “considerate.” Niceness is about being “pleasant,” “agreeable,” and “satisfactory.”

At first glance, these seem to be the same. In fact, I’ve heard people use these interchangeably. “You’re nice,” seems synonymous with “you’re kind.” But spend a bit more time on these, as I have, and you’ll notice some subtle differences. “Pleasant” describes being easy to be around. But that’s also what my slightly-socialite, British baby-boomer mother says about mildly warm weather. “Agreeable” is the same thing. And calling someone “satisfactory” seems to imply that they fit tidily into some invisible criteria that one has set for them. All three definitions seem to connote a passivity, as having attributes conferred upon one by someone else. Well, isn’t that nice.

Being kind on the other hand seems to be more, well, engaged. Kind people are generous, friendly, and considerate. They are often nice, but this is conferred after the fact. You “carry out” kindness, like you carry out a military order. People carry out “random acts of kindness,” not “random acts of niceness.” You can train in kindness, and act out kindness, and exercise it like a muscle or skill. You can change someone’s life with kindness. In fact, the Buddha talked about practicing “loving-kindness”:

Bhikkhus, when the heart-deliverance of loving-kindness is maintained in being, made much of, used as one’s vehicle, used as one’s foundation, established, consolidated, and properly managed, then eleven blessings can be expected. What are the eleven?

A man sleeps in comfort; he wakes in comfort; he dreams no evil dreams; he is dear to human beings; he is dear to non-human beings; the gods guard him; no fire or poison or weapon harms him; his mind can be quickly concentrated; the expression of his face is serene; he dies without falling into confusion; and, even if he fails to penetrate any further, he will pass on to the world of High Divinity, to the Brahma world.

– Shakyamuni Buddha, from the Anguttara Nikaya, 11:16

Notice he didn’t talk about being “nice.” But the “heart-deliverance” (by which he just means putting into practice) of “loving kindness,” brings “eleven blessings.” You sleep unfettered by discomfort, people like you and cherish you, and even one’s “mind can be quickly concentrated.” Wow, the benefits of being kind are… well, pretty nice.

The Whole World is a Single Flower

     On Vulture Peak, so the story goes, the Buddha’s followers had gathered to listen to the Buddha give a dharma talk. Everyone was accustomed to their teacher giving these long, prolific treatises on the Dharma, on meditation, on suffering, and so on. But this day seemed different: the Buddha sat still, silently, unmoving. Forty minutes passed, and finally he got up, walked over to the table they had set up, and picked up a lotus flower that was in one of the vases. He held it aloft to the assembly, turning it in his hand. No one assembled got it; but one old monk in the back, named Mahakashyapa, smiled. At this point, Buddha, seeing this smile, acknowledged something had transpired between them, saying: “I have the all-pervading true Dharma, incomparable Nirvana, exquisite teaching of formless form. Not dependent on words, a secret transmission outside the sutras, I give to Mahakashyapa.”

What did Mahakashyapa attain from this? What did the assembly miss?

This is a very famous story in Buddhism, especially in the Zen lineage, because it is the first instance of the Buddha recognizing that one of his students had “got” what he taught. And what was the teaching? Everything was right there: the whole teaching is contained in this moment, in this flower, in this assembly, in Mahakashyapa’s smile. Mahakashyapa was a very old man, who was actually one of the Buddha’s newest students at that point, so that is why he was in the back. In the sangha, the earliest students got to sit at the front, closest to the teacher, because they had seniority. So not many people even knew about Mahakashyapa. He had been practicing meditation for many years without being a formal student of the Buddha. Suddenly, this exchange happens, and boom–he got something! “Oh, that’s it! That’s all there is to it, wonderful!” I can imagine a lot of people in the front turning around to see who this newcomer was, getting confused, maybe even envious that they had spent all this time and energy on something that this new guy seemed to just “get” like that.

I sat a one-day zen retreat yesterday at the Chogye International Zen Center of NY, led by Steve Cohen, JDPSN. He likes to go through the book of kong-ans (“public cases”), the stories and questions that convey the teachings of Zen and Buddhism, one by one, day by day. There are 365 of them, so one for each day of the year. Yesterday was day 285, so the case was this story about Shakyamuni Buddha holding up a flower.

Time and time again, I am brought back to the simplicity of this practice. Sometimes it is so easy to get caught up in all these intellectual concepts: “nirvana,” “enlightenment”, “anuttarasamyaksambodhi”, “emptiness”, “sartori”. People with only little understanding of Zen and Buddhism will fixate on levels of enlightenment, or “deeper” levels of meditation. But here is this story of Buddha silently holding up a flower, and one of his newest (and physically oldest) students smiling.

That’s it: Buddha held up a flower, and Mahakashyapa smiled. Then Buddha started speaking in his usual “flowery” (so to speak) language, talking about “all-pervading Dharma” and “incomparable Nirvana,” and “exquisite teaching of formless form.” All that is pretty, but you might say it’s already too much. Because what if Mahakashyapa had said, “Lord Buddha, thank you, but I already received your dharma, I don’t need this transmission?” What could the Buddha have said in response? How could he have commemorated the moment? It’s really very simple!

In each moment of our lives, it’s actually just like this instance. Each moment is complete. Buddha holds up a flower, and an old man in the back smiles. I make coffee, pour it out, and then drink it. That’s it. I open my computer and write out a blog post, then I finish and publish it. That’s complete. Each moment is a flower. How can we simply connect with it, and then share it with others?

Usually we want more–the simplicity of the moment is not enough for us. We want to create something extra, like painting legs on a snake. But this moment is already enough. What else do you need?

Even if you were someone in the assembly who didn’t “get” it, you still got something. Zen Master Seung Sahn used to say, Mahakashyapa got transmission, but everyone else got “don’t know”. Which is more of a gift?

I hope you receive each moment like a flower held aloft, and smile.

Lean into Discomfort and Listen

An interactive biopic on The Guardian’s website shows a running tally of all the people in the US who have been killed by police or who have died while in custody, and a breakdown by state, race, by total and per million. I spent about 10 minutes slowly looking through the faces of all those people who died, month by month. I didn’t finish the list, but I didn’t need to. If I cried more easily, I would have been sobbing.

A friend of mine, in a recent conversation about race, said “I don’t see race.” She’s white; I am also white. I looked at her skeptically: “What do you mean, you don’t see race? Come on.” She then said something like, it doesn’t matter to me, you can be white, black, brown–it’s just, it’s all love, man. (For privacy’s sake, I’m not using names.)

My thoughts were the opposite. “I deliberately see race,” I told her.

Why?

Race is something I don’t have to think about. If it’s dark out and I’m walking home, I’m not in danger of getting harassed by the police. If it’s daytime in my car, I’m in no danger of getting shot in the face during a traffic stop for not having a front license plate. I can go to bed right after writing about this, not having to worry about whether I’ll be given weird looks in the neighborhood where I go to grad school, or even leaving my house.Long story short–and I’m not breaking any new ground here–race doesn’t “exist” for me, cause I don’t have it thrust into my face. That’s white privilege. It’s not life or death for me. But it is for people of color.

So because I don’t have to deal with it, I feel an obligation to “see” race. To see what struggles my friends of color deal with. To truly look race in the face and examine it, take it apart, and see how all the parts fit together. In Zen Buddhist practice, there is a saying that “when mind looks at mind, mind disappears.” When you run away from it, it still exists, and actually becomes stronger and more sinister. But when you stop, turn around, and say, “okay, fine, let’s sit down and have tea and get to know each other,” you can start to understand it, and really deal with it.

As a White person, I have an obligation to see race. I am obligated to listen to my friends of color and empathize with their daily experiences. Now, empathy is not the same as sympathy. Sympathy comes from a place of fear: oh, you are in a terrible situation that I don’t want to think about or deal with, so I’m going to feel sorry for you. Empathy comes from a place of courage, and embracement: I see you are a human being like me, so I’m going to become fully empty, so I can listen and be filled to overflowing with your experiences.

But really, honestly? That’s hard to do.

Pema Chödron, an American Tibetan teacher, calls that “leaning into the sharp points.” Human beings are notorious for running away from the truth, especially if that truth is uncomfortable and full of suffering. We cannot even bear to handle our own suffering, so hearing someone else is suffering beyond comparison? Change the channel, turn the page, close your browser, hang up the phone. But the problem with this is that we become ourselves jumpy, distracted, fearful, and uneasy. We end up making more suffering for ourselves rather than less, and we also make suffering for those people we were running away from in the first place. But if we jump into the fire, keep our ear to the phone, keep listening to the difficult stories, keep reading about the news that’s hard to bear, and truly listen to our own reactions, then we can start to heal as one people and to truly grow.

Race isn’t going away any time soon. (I swear to God, I have heard “If we just stop talking about race, it will go away” so many times it makes me sick.) Repeat: race isn’t going away! So stop running from it. Don’t lean back, lean in. But–and white people, I’m talking to us–CLOSE YOUR MOUTH AND LISTEN. Listen with 100% attentiveness, clarity, and compassion. Because we need less White opinions and voices on what Black people should and shouldn’t do, or how they should or shouldn’t be, or that their struggles are real or unreal–we’ve been doing that since we learned Black people existed, so shut up and learn your place. And that’s in the outer circle, listening to real talk and asking educated, appropriate questions.

Saying “I don’t see race,” is a cop-out. Don’t do it.