It is daffodil time, so the robins all cry,
For the sun’s a big daffodil up in the sky,
And when down the midnight the owl calls “to-whoo”!
Why, then the round moon is a daffodil too;
Now sheer to the bough-tops the sap starts to climb,
So, merry my masters, it’s daffodil time.

–Clinton Scollard

First: Adventures in Depression by Allie Brosh @ Hyperbole and a Half

Second: Depression Part 2 by Allie Brosh @ Hyperbole and a Half

Over the past months I have slogged through feeling:
Hopeless
Helpless
Unmotivated
Pessimistic
Irritable
Angry
Sad
Exhausted
Isolated
Disconnected
Listless
Restless
Insomnia
Foggy-brained
Absent libido

You might argue that this is the human condition. And while that is true to a point, experiencing all these feelings consistently for the past many weeks signifies something is wrong.

If the video doesn’t show/play then click to watch it here.

I’ve not read any of David Foster Wallace’s books, but hearing this speech I can’t help but wish he was still alive.

If there’s a thing, a scene, maybe, an image that you want to see real bad, that you need to see but it doesn’t exist in the world around you, at least not in the form that you envision, then you create it so that you can look at it and have it around, or show it to other people who wouldn’t have imagined it because they perceive reality in a more narrow, predictable way. And that’s it. That’s all an artist does.

– Tom Robbins

Analysis has its peculiar scientific value, but the Spirit which passes from one person to another as a flame leaps from one coal to another grasps truth in its wholeness as a living thing united within itself. …Spiritual truth cannot be sharply defined like scientific truth. It exists on the dim edge of the unexplored region beyond the horizon of self-conscious thought. The language of the Spirit is symbolic and its suggestions are not so much facts as signs which point beyond themselves to the unseen ground of all existence. So inarticulate sometimes is the voice of the Spirit that it can be expressed only by a sigh, or even by complete silence.

-Howard Brinton

The silence is alive. Traffic zips down the highway.
Chairs creak. Birds gossip. Someone coughs or sniffs.
But if you really listen, you can hear the sunshine singing.

Sometimes the entire hour passes in silence. Other times
a few rise to speak, to share whatever they felt led
to share prompted by their discernment.

To wait in the Spirit, in Love, connecting with
and through each other. The tender embrace of silence.
Opening the door within. Welcome, quietude! Welcome.

After the hour someone shakes another’s hand,
signaling the end of silent worship; then handshakes
and smiles ripple through the room.

The invitation comes to share what we did not feel truly prompted
by the Divine to share in worship. Announcements are made.
An invitation is given to refreshments and conversation next door.

That is the Meeting of Friends.

…over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living which we know we are passing by. Strained by the very mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we are further strained by an inward uneasiness, because we have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power. If only we could slip over into that Center! … There is a divine Abyss within us all, a holy Infinite Center, a Heart, a Life who speaks in us and through us to the world.

-Thomas R. Kelly, 1941
Faith and Practice, Religious Society of Friends (Quaker)

They’re moving off in all imaginable directions,
each according to his own private belief,
and this is the secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal:
that everyone is right, as it turns out.
you go to the place you always thought you would go,
the place you kept lit in an alcove in your head.

Some are being shot into a funnel of flashing colors
into a zone of light, white as a January sun.
Others are standing naked before a forbidding judge who sits
with a golden ladder on one side, a coal chute on the other.

Some have already joined the celestial choir
and are singing as if they have been doing this forever,
while the less inventive find themselves stuck
in a big air conditioned room full of food and chorus girls.

Some are approaching the apartment of the female God,
a woman in her forties with short wiry hair
and glasses hanging from her neck by a string.
With one eye she regards the dead through a hole in her door.

There are those who are squeezing into the bodies
of animals – eagles and leopards – and one trying on
the skin of a monkey like a tight suit,
ready to begin another life in a more simple key,

while others float off into some benign vagueness,
little units of energy heading for the ultimate elsewhere.

There are even a few classicists being led to an underworld
by a mythological creature with a beard and hooves.
He will bring them to the mouth of the furious cave
guarded over by Edith Hamilton and her three-headed dog.

The rest just lie on their backs in their coffins
wishing they could return so they could learn Italian
or see the pyramids, or play some golf in a light rain.
They wish they could wake in the morning like you
and stand at a window examining the winter trees,
every branch traced with the ghost writing of snow.

–Billy Collins

For a long time I’ve lurked on the Floating Zendo‘s website, read their blog, learned about their teacher, Enji Angie Boissevain, and listened to her talks. I have used the excuse that getting to the weekly zazen at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesdays is just too hard to arrange (childcare, Hub’s work). This morning I went to the half-day sit they have monthly.

It’s located at the Quaker Friends House in San Jose. I was greeted warmly, and while there was an altar, the arrangement was very simple. The rituals and service were simple. The three sessions of zazen (40 minutes each) were simple but hard for me to do. After zazen, the teacher gave a short talk.

She told about a story Hui-neng wrote about Bodhidharma visiting Emperor Wu. Before I go on, I feel it significant to mention that many years ago — back in 1998– I came across a quote by Hui-neng that landed in my heart and set up home, so much so that it has become my standard “email signature quote” and the “about me” quote I use when joining social media sites. It became a mantra and koan to me even before I knew what those words meant, and it has been a touchstone for me. That quote:

The secret is within your self.

–Hui-neng

Back to the teacher’s talk (which I am writing from memory and may have paraphrased a bit, but the dharma is there). Emperor Wu had worked hard to help spread Buddhism, having temples and monasteries built, ordaining monks and copying sutras. He asked Bodhidharma how much merit he had earned. Bodhidharma replied, “No merit.”

Enji Roshi reflected that what Wu had done had generated blessings, both received and given, but merit is entirely different.

I was puzzled. Isn’t it misguided to care about merit? Isn’t that motivated by ego? So I asked, “What is merit? And why would a person want to accrue merit if the point of practice is to become free of the ego?”

Her reply: “But that isn’t the point of practice. There is no ego. And merit is the connection that practice creates, the connection with others and life.” Her answer felt like a splash of water in the face; she had pointed out an assumption I’d made about merit and practice. She asked me if I understood, and I replied that I did, but that I understood it more in my heart than mind. I said it made me feel emotional and thanked her for answering my question. Then as I sat there, listening to her answer someone else’s question, tears welled up and over. I understood the connection because it radiated through her — into and through me. This felt like home.

Maezen is still my teacher, yet Maezen has stressed the critical importance of face-to-face encounters with one’s teacher. For my practice to thrive, I understand that I need a local teacher. Roshi and I talked awhile after people departed, and I experienced the sense that I have met my teacher. I will be returning to Floating Zendo.

Here the viewer does not see the sky but sees the reflection which can lead the viewer to it. A teacher is not enlightenment but a signpost pointing the way toward it.

Accept indeterminacy as a principle, and you see your life in a new light, as a series of seemingly unrelated jewel-like stories within a dazzling setting of change and transformation. Recognize that you don’t know where you stand, and you will begin to watch where you put your feet. That’s when the path appears.

-John Cage

About the spiritual training of young, my view is a bit of the same. How you behave in your home is their spiritual upbringing. I think we have to be careful with all forms of ideological indoctrination, and that is what spiritual training is in children: the imposition of a set of abstract beliefs and ideals. Children will take these from of us, but I don’t think dogma serves anyone for long. After all, I was a very good Sunday School student, the star of my confirmation class, and yet I had my own spiritual crisis to resolve later in life. We all do.

I always remind myself that I’m not trying to raise a Buddhist child. I’m trying to raise a Buddhist mother, and it’s taking all my time! Not only my family, but also everyone everywhere will be served by my devoted discipline in my own training. Not because I’m self-important, but in recognition of the one true reality: no self. We are all interdependent, which means we are all one.

-Karen Maezen Miller

Drink some coffee
light a candle
Rain patters
light a candle
Cat purrs
light a candle
A child’s party
light a candle
Eat cake
light a candle
Buy groceries
light a candle
Fold laundry
light a candle
Clean the bathroom
light a candle
Pay bills
light a candle
Read books
light a candle
Sing carols
light a candle
Cuddle and tickle
light a candle
Wrap presents
light a candle
Color and draw
light a candle
Bake cookies
light a candle
Cook dinner
light a candle
Wash dishes
light a candle
Bathe the child
light a candle
Rock and cuddle
light a candle
Sing lullabyes
light a candle

light a candle
light a candle
light a candle
light a candle
light a candle
light a candle
light a candle

light a candle

Eventually she will lose her innocence, but I won’t hurry it along.

My heart aches for the children and families on whom this horror was thrust, and I pray for their solace.

Wherever you can, let children have their innocence.

There are two ways of spreading light; to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.

- Edith Wharton

Something else to remember:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers–so many caring people in this world.”

-Fred Rogers

“Observe your own body. It breathes. You breathe when you are asleep, when you are no longer conscious of your own ideas of self-identity. Who, then, is breathing? The collection of information that you mistakenly think is you is not the protagonist in this drama called the breath. In fact, you are not breathing; breath is naturally happening to you. You can purposely end your own life, but you cannot purposely keep your own life going. The expression, ‘my life’ is actually an oxymoron, a result of ignorance and mistaken assumption. You don’t possess life; life expresses itself through you. Your body is a flower that life let bloom, a phenomenon created by life.”

-Ilchi Lee

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.”

-David Foster Wallace

Like some winter animal the moon licks
the salt of your hand,
Yet still your hair foams violet as a lilac tree
From which a small wood-owl calls.

-Johannes Bobrowski

This is the end of Art Every Day Month 2012. I really enjoyed it, and I’m proud of my work. Thank you for sharing it with me.