Crossing Nebraska

Occasional days of warmth and sun and new growth peeking from the earth have blessed us, yet winter’s gray embrace seems here to stay. So many people I’m close to are struggling mightily these days with loved ones dying, relationships crumbling, or serious illness descending full force upon them. It reminds me yet again of the howling reality that life can plunge us in an instant from the sunny heights of all is well into the icy depths of pain and bewilderment. Thus, even with spring right around the corner, I find myself revisiting what Zen Buddhists refer to as the Great Matter —the mystery that each of us must resolve regarding life and death. The first spring flowers this year If unresolved, the Great Matter follows close behind wherever grief may lead—darkening it, deepening it, and making it lonelier still. On the other hand, resolving the Great Matter provides context for our grief. Contextualized, our pain joins the chorus of loss’s universality rather than being an isolated...

Gosh, it’s been almost a year since I began this series of posts recounting some of my recent experiences of synchronicity. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at it having taken so long, though, given that I knew from the start this installment was coming and would require of me a fair bit of emotional heavy lifting. In fact, this post may well be the most personally revealing one I’ve ever written, dealing as it does with the dysfunction of my family of origin and the karma it has wrought. But to disregard such messy context would be to excise these synchronicities from everything that gives them power and meaning in the first place. Please bear with me then, as I share enough background information to allow you privy to my state of mind at the time of these events. You may read the first two installments here and here . Interior of Liverpool's Bombed-Out Church First of all, I must say that I’m a Zen Buddhist and not particularly invested in any theories about the afterlife, not...

It’s not uncommon for those grieving the loss of a loved one to hope for a sign from them that all is well on the “other side.” Perhaps this is especially so for survivors left without any meaningful sense of closure. My mother, for instance, slipped inexorably into the quicksand of dementia without me being able to say goodbye in any meaningful way. Perhaps that explains my openness to receiving a sign from her, despite my Zen Buddhist leanings leaving me less inclined to believe in heavenly realms of souls and angels. Grief is never easy, but grief without closure is more difficult still. Euonymus, sometimes called Burning Bush In the first installment of Synchronicity and Meaning I described waking from dreamless sleep with an artist’s name on the tip of my tongue. The last name was Bosch. The first name rhymed with anonymous. Euonymus? No, that’s a plant of some kind. With the mystery yet unresolved, I fell asleep again. Upon awakening the next morning, however, I saw that a fri...

“Oh my gosh, I was just thinking of you!” Have you ever been party to a phone conversation in which the person on the receiving end immediately blurted this out? It would seem to be a fairly common occurrence. But does it mean anything? Is it synchronicity, or is it merely coincidence? For if there is no reason for such events, and no meaning for them to accrue, then they result in little more than “gee whiz” wonderment. I’ve been a “student” of synchronicity for many years. By that I mean I give due consideration to apparently synchronistic phenomena whenever I happen to notice them. I appreciate the way they nudge me from my comfort zone in the rational world and open me to thinking about new possibilities for the reality I might otherwise take for granted. That said, I’m no pushover! My rational mind can’t help but analyze these potentially synchronistic occurrences before getting too excited about them. For instance, when those intriguingly timed phone calls come from my spouse, w...

Surely this spring will not be remembered as just any other spring. For just as the crocuses are teasing us with tender blossoms and their promise of new life, so it is that hardship and even death lurk just over the horizon. A global pandemic has already taken some of us, and it will take an unknown number more. Surely all can see that life will not be the same for quite some time, if ever. How strange it is to lose that which we’ve taken so for granted! I now look back with fondness at the simple joy of sitting in a coffee shop on a weekend morning. And I lament that we were too busy to take my wife out for a nice meal on her birthday this past weekend, the last weekend we could have done so before the restaurants were ordered closed. I also just happened to visit the library earlier this week to renew my card, only to be told that they’d be closing the following day. How strange it is to say goodbye to one thing after another that all seemed so commonplace as to hardly be wort...

Missouri is often referred to as The Cave State for its many caves and grottoes formed by groundwater percolating through the limestone bluffs and hillsides. As such, in my youth I came to be a bit of a spelunker – not as much as was my friend, Mike, mind you, who seemed to have some special inside knowledge with respect to cavern whereabouts, but close. I’ll never forget the last excursion we went on together. Yes, it was the last one because, to tell you the truth, I don’t much like being stuck.   We were actually in a very well-known cavern, one known for having a “back door” up amongst the rolling hills far beyond the yawning main entrance. This time, however, we were off in a side passageway that we were hoping might have a similar, but as-yet-undiscovered, back entrance – perhaps a sinkhole at the bottom of a nondescript hollow or something. For some reason that I can no longer recall, I led the way. Maybe we flipped a coin, or maybe I was the stockier of the two of u...

It had been a workday like many others – not particularly memorable, but pleasant enough in its normality. Spring was just around the corner after what had been a long, dark winter. In fact, it was already warm enough for one to say that spring had arrived – in reality, if not in name. Briefcase in hand I let the door swing wide into our apparently ransacked living room, and from that moment on it seemed that life would not be normal ever again.   The first thought that appeared within the stunned blankness of my mind was that we’d been robbed. Unfortunately, however, it was a thought that couldn’t quite be squared with the reality of that which had been left behind. Why wouldn’t they have taken this? Or that? And then a pattern began to emerge. The walls were bare because her artwork was gone. Things were in disarray because her things had been removed. I went into the bedroom and threw open one of the drawers of the chest still standing where it had always stood; and t...

Hello again! I apologize for the delay in getting this post online. As I stated in a comment following my previous post, the holidays, a meditation retreat, and a persistent (albeit minor) respiratory ailment all combined to knock my writing routine off track. All is well, however; I hope it is so with all of you. The previous post introduced those states of mind that comprise the brahma-viharas , the “Four Sublime Abodes” of compassion, equanimity, sympathetic joy, and loving-kindness (Sangharakshita, 1980). According to Schuhmacher and Woerner (1994), these are the states of mind that should be cultivated in order to aid in the liberation of others. Recall, however, that each of these states of mind – these “sublime attitudes”, as Thanissaro (2011) referred to them – has a near enemy or imposter, which, while appearing in the guise of spiritual advancement, is merely a more base karmic tendency dressed up in its Sunday finest. And so we have pity m...

Compassion, equanimity, sympathetic joy, loving-kindness – these states of mind are sometimes referred to as the brahma-viharas – the “Four Sublime Abodes” (Sangharakshita, 1980, p. 141). Literally translated, brahma-vihara refers to “divine states of dwelling” (Schuhmacher & Woerner, 1994, 46) or the “dwelling place of brahmas” (Thanissaro, 2011), reflecting the belief that the cultivation of these properties will bring rebirth in the higher heavenly realm of the Brahmas. Figuratively speaking, however, the brahma-viharas are those “sublime attitudes” (Thanissaro, 2011) or “the four immeasurables” that the bodhisattva must cultivate in order to aid in the liberation of others (Schuhmacher & Woerner, 1994, 46). Funny thing, though, whenever we strive to cultivate something that we’re not already intimate with, we tend to look for evidence of its fruition in places where it might not yet exist – like when we cover a handful of seeds with carefully prepared soil...