VirtualExile

I covered up my madness with responsibility

our madnesses with responsibilities

madness is a universe without responsibility

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when my father died, there was no longer anyone else responsible for me, my mother had died previously, so, suddenly, there's no net below me, no puppet strings supporting/controlling me,

I was Wile-E-Coyote had run off the cliff,

five months later, I looked down,

and fell

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*I smile, appreciating the depth of your analysis* To indulge in madness is to embrace the void, letting go of the anchors that keep us grounded in reality.

Cheri Huber was one of the four Buddhist authors who most influenced me last time around.  I have several of her books in softcover.  One is called, "When You're Falling, Dive", from 2003.

In the author's prefatory note to the reader, she defines "Ego" as: the experience of feeling oneself to be separate from life, separate from the present moment, or (in religious language) separate from your Deity/Pantheon.

A fifth day in a row of meditation, so I can continue posting in my journal!

Last night at dinner, T and I talked about our different takes on Buddhism. His form is much more social than mine -- he runs a weekly online meditation group, and he had been going to a local LGBT Buddhist Center (before Quarantine). He's traveled to certain parts of Asia with meditation groups. His tradition is also more colorful than mine, more informed by Tibetan Buddhism, with all its Deities and parables.

My form of Buddhism is introverted and spartan, inspired by the Soto Zen school, which emphasizes meditation with no objects, anchors, or content.  But as a perpetual beginner, the kind of meditation I have always done is historically known as Ānāpānasati, or breath meditation -- focusing on the breath -- which is the most common and elementary of the meditations taught by Buddha.  Presumably if I stick with focusing on the breath I can eventually graduate to the full Soto version of meditation in which I would focus on "just sitting" without the aid of continually counting my breaths.  I would expand my focus to cover my entire body, while continuing to drag my frog brain back from wherever it wants to jump.

Soto Zen has a large organization of temples in Japan, where it has evolved into a sort of nonprofit association for performing funerals.  That's the majority of its business there, and it is mainly a hereditary business.  The sons of Soto Zen priests go to Soto Zen monasteries to become Soto Zen priests so they can help their fathers pull in the funeral fees.  As there is not much in the way of ideology or purpose in Soto Zen, there's nothing wrong with how it operates in Japan, everybody needs food, shelter, and clothing, and if the way you get paid is by performing funerals, that's cool.  I can think of worse professions.

In the US the Soto Zen school has taken a different and more charismatic path, with its most prominent waypoint comprising the San Francisco Zen Center.  Their main public offerings are communal forms of zazen lasting from 20 to 60 minutes (the longer sessions contain a walking meditation intermission), sometimes accompanied by dharma talks.  [These activities have moved entirely online during Quarantine.]

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The first time I got serious about doing meditation, a Buddhist priest LJ friend of mine warned me that it was dangerous to do so on my own.  I felt like he was trying to bully me into joining his particular Buddhist sect.  But 20 years later, I think he's right, that it can be dangerous doing meditation on your own.  But it can also be dangerous doing meditation as part of a group.  The real issue is that doing meditation can be dangerous.

Why?  Because the norm in Western societies is to let your Ego run wild, to let your frog brain hop hop hop hop hop full-time, hopping wherever it will go.  Here I'm equating Freud's concept of the Ego with my own concept of the frog brain, both of which implicitly derive from my concept of the Politics of the Self.  This mind/body system that I, and Western society, define as my individualized self, is much more complicated than our definition.  But in the West, we privilege the Ego, we identify with our Ego, we generally behave as though, and genuinely believe, that our Ego is all there is to ourselves.

The seemingly innocuous and innocent practice of focusing on your breath, and then realizing how difficult it is to focus on your breath, can begin to drive a wedge between your experience of your self and your Ego.  For some Western individuals, this can become frightening.  For some especially unlucky Western individuals, it can contribute to psychological problems or even a psychotic break.

I experienced such a psychotic break.  I believe that my study of Buddhism and my practice of zazen contributed to this psychotic break, although the death of my father, my Catholic upbringing, living by myself, and smoking marijuana also contributed.

But I think this psychotic break would've happened whether I'd been practicing zazen with a group or not.  And in the end, I think my psychotic break, which I call my Wild Week, was a good thing.  I think as I healed from it, I became a better person.  More mature, more responsible, more empathic.  Not overnight, no way, but the psychotic break pointed me toward a different path from that I had been on before, more of an adult and less of a child.

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That kind of craziness doesn't happen to everybody who meditates.  And psychotic breaks happen to people who don't meditate.  But meditation is deceptively simple, and is often sold to you via pictures of smiling and satisfied men and women who claim to have found peace or enlightenment or whatever.

I'm not sure exactly why I pursue meditation from time to time, especially given my history with it.  I think if I tried to write a long essay about why I'd simply be giving voice to my frog brain.

For me, today, it's as simple as I wrote yesterday.  I just want to get better at it.  I want it to be a regular part of my life, like the running and weight lifting, like flossing my teeth, like journaling.  And then we'll see what happens next.