Thank You for Calling Roshi Travel. How Will You Help You?

So the wife and I are finally getting a vacation. We take at least a couple of trips regularly but for us, a vacation involves a couple of things.

• No drives over three hours
• Just us on the trip
• No visiting family members

Keeping those things in mind, we haven’t had a real vacation since a cruise three years ago.

So tomorrow we’re heading off to London for a week. This is something we’ve been looking forward to for a while now. I’ve done quite a bit of traveling as I used to be a travel agent. My wife has done some but not a lot. Interestingly, I’ve never been to London. I’ve been to both Scotland and Ireland but never England – unless you count layovers at Heathrow (I do not). The only time she’s been to Europe was our belated honeymoon to Paris so this is going to be a nice bit of exploring for both of us.

How will this fit into practice? Well, I could easily use this as an excuse to blow off practice altogether for a week but really I see vacations as condensed practice opportunities.

The great thing about traveling is the barrage of new experiences, new smells, new sounds, new flavors all coming at you, rapid fire. How one handles those sensations is, to me, what one’s practice should be about. There’s no pillow. No statue. No opportunity to sit. You simply move and experience and – hopefully – remain mindful through it all.

And in a city like London, if you do manage to remain truly mindful you get to absorb the buildup of over a thousand years of people’s lives and loves and works. Nice stuff if you can do it right.

Of course, I could be very wrong about this. This could just be the buildup of my own preconceptions of the small but shiny new insights that I believe I have acquired.

Perhaps one-on-one travels with a Roshi might be a nice way to practice.

We do have free net access in the hotel room. Perhaps I’ll write a blog entry every day while I’m there.

Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps.

P.S.

Thanks to “Irrepressible Angst”, my unofficial blogging muse. When I go a long time without posting, it’s due to my laziness. So far, whenever I start again, it’s due to her prodding.

Hark! Hear The Death Knell!

Something I discovered a number of years ago: when your employer starts hiring consultants to give its employees lessons on things like “effective customer service” and “team building”, it’s time to start looking for another job.

I’ve worked for three separate companies that did this. The first time, the “old timers” immediately started predicting doom. I couldn’t understand why. I thought, “no big deal. It’s a seminar. We learn something that helps us do our jobs more efficiently.” I stuck it out for another year but ended up having to take a job I didn’t want for less money before I ended up on the street because the company I worked for couldn’t afford to keep people. Within five years, my previous employer was bought by a larger company and dissolved.

When it happened the second time, my hackles were raised but I stuck it out anyway, hoping that the first time was an aberration. It wasn’t. Fortunately I didn’t stick around as long that time. Within a few weeks, the signs were everywhere. I, along with the rest of the management team was gone within six months of each other – all on our own terms. That company still exists but, from what I understand, it’s a financial drain on the owner.

The third time it happened, I hooked up with a couple of headhunters the day the announcement was made. Within three months, I had a new job. That company was bought by a “Consulting Services” group and was turned into a company that handled a completely different business. Most of the employees were let go. Of the few that remain, one is in upper management and doing extremely well. The rest are easily some of the most miserable people I know.

Flash forward to today. In my inbox was an announcement that we the minions of my current employer, are to attend a seminar being presented by a consulting firm. The announcement makes no mention of the nature of this seminar - just be there - but looking up the firm online led me to a description of a company that specializes in developing strategic marketing and sales programs for our industry.

This time it’s different, though. In the previous instances I was 1) living in major metropolitan areas and 2) considerably younger. I’m now hitting my mid-40s and living in an area where people are excited to get a job that pays $11 an hour because opportunities like that are few and far between.

Now, I should be able to deal with this. I mean, as I said before, I’m hitting my mid-40s. This shouldn’t be the kind of thing that bothers me but along with the maturity of middle age comes the responsibilities of middle age. I have a family to support. And besides having the income stream continue to flow, I’m pretty sure they’d prefer it if, when I came home I wasn’t pissed off all the time.

Then there’s Buddhism. If I really believe the things I say I believe, this should just roll right off my back. I should be focused on the truly important things (we’ll forget for the moment that paying bills is actually important and focus on things like the four noble truths and the eightfold path).

So it’s time to suck it up and play the hand that life deals to me. Right?

Um, yes. Apparently so.

So I sit tight, be a good little employee…and wait.

 

 

Are we there yet?

 

 

What about now?

 

Rate of Reality Absorption

OK. I fell off the practice wagon again. I’ve not been meditating or studying nor have I practiced any kind of mindfulness in any situation for weeks. I’d love to say that it’s because I’ve been horribly busy but the fact of the matter is, I’ve just been too lazy to do it. And too lazy to meditate? Now THAT’S lazy.

I do have one excuse I could feed you and this would be a fairly accurate reason – my meditation space got flooded about two weeks ago. Nothing major but with the constant, snow/rain/melt/snow cycle, getting the carpeting dry in there has been a bear. But I know that were the atmosphere in there pleasant, I still wouldn’t have done it. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

It hasn’t really gotten to me until the past couple of days. Now, I’m looking for something to jump start it. I did find something that’s a great resource. Shasta Abbey has produced a full English translation of the Shobogenzo and made it available online for free. This translation was a monumental task. Not only was the original written over 750 years ago and in Japanese but the concepts are pretty involved. Maintaining the original spirit of a document like this is hardly simple. Massive thanks to the Shasta Abbey.

Of course, someone too lazy to meditate a couple of times a day probably shouldn’t start reading the Shobogenzo.

I am going to take another stab at the Dhammapada though. I gave it what could only be described as a very cursory read a couple of years ago. That’s kind of like skimming the Bible.

I’m also going to try to make more of an effort of posting here. I just can’t deal with a breakup right now.

And of course, the big question: What have I learned?

Well, as fundamental a practice as Zen is, I (“we”, I’m sure) have been so trained all along to live another way, that these fundamentals are, well, difficult. There’s no coasting. Reality must be absorbed small, steady portions. Stop absorbing reality and you absorb, well, something else.

New Year, New Project, New Outlook

So I’ve been working with Jim Dougherty and the gang at 3 O’Clock Productions on their first short, “Waffles For Virginia”. The first trailer for the film is up at YouTube.

Jim and I have worked on a number of projects together. He and I both acted in and directed portions of Randy DeFord’s Postpartum and Jim directed my script of Chances. So when he asked me if I would be interested in working on this project, my answer was “yes” before I even knew what it was.

I won’t give anything away about the story. You can view the trailer for that. What I will tell you is that this crew of people has, to the person, been absolutely amazing. Having just come off a “professional” shoot that was a mess in every imaginable way, dealing with people who were organized, dedicated, pleasant and fun has been such a treat. I hope to work with them all again.

Some of them I know for sure I’ll be working with again. A couple of them will be working with Randy DeFord and me on our next production this summer. More info on that once the announcements are made.

This film has been a great start to the year. As soon as it’s released, I’ll post the info here.

Tagged by TMcG

So it would appear I’ve been tagged for a “meme” by TMcG. I actually had to look that up. It’s great idea in the “getting to know you/us” spirit of things. Here’s how this meme works:

• Link to the person who tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
• Share 7 random or weird things about yourself.
• Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs
• Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Here are the 7 random or weird things about Nodokusan.

1. I imitate basically everybody I know/have ever known but only when nobody is around. This is how I talk to myself.

2. On a semi-regular basis, I dream of plane crashes. I’m never in them and they are never violent. Basically, a plane crashes, usually in my backyard, and just gets stuck in the ground nose first. When it hits the ground, it makes the same kind of sound you get when you pop a cork out of a wine bottle. Then, a tiny little plume of smoke trails out of the tail. And that’s all. Nothing bad. Ever.

3. I find it easier to relate to my two year old granddaughter than anyone else. She just seems to be more reasonable than most people.

4. Once I start watching a movie, I have to finish it, no matter how much I dislike it. I can’t watch something for ten or fifteen minutes and say, “wow this is awful” and turn it off. Once it’s on, I’m there for the long haul.

5. I was drawn to Buddhism out of a need to become more grounded, more centered. While I am heading there, I’m also hitting the extremes (anger and calm, ego and humility, etc) more frequently than I was before. On one hand, it feels like exactly what I shouldn’t be doing. On the other hand, I feel like I am actually doing what comes naturally as opposed to following some sort of script. It’s very freeing.

6. I often wondered what a coma would be like. If you could have one without all the drama and injuries that generally accompany them, I would imagine they could be rather refreshing. Could be quite a business to open up. Kind of like the old sensory deprivation tanks, only you’d stay in them for a week.

7. I kid. A lot. Sometimes.

And so, without further ado, here are seven links. Hopefully we’ll see some good stuff from these folks soon.

~~BoDhI dReAmInG~~
The Eight Directions
Irrepressible Angst
Nineteen Sixty Eight
Not2
original remixed
Pink Italics

On Ike Turner and Jiminy Cricket

And that’s that.

It ended a week ago yesterday. Two days early for me as I decided I’d had enough. I won’t go into details. I’ll just say that this film was hands down the worst experience of my life.

A friend who also worked on this and I were talking one night and I related it to being bullied as a kid. As in those situations, it’s not like this situation was life or death. You can easily stop what happening just by standing up for yourself but you don’t – and that’s what hurts you. It’s not the things that other people do to you. It’s that you let them do these things. The fact that you let yourself be abused eats at your humanity.

I spoke with many people on the set who felt the same way. Phrases like “I don’ deserve this” and “never again” were bandied about frequently but now that it’s over everyone is talking about it in glowing terms, talking about how they can’t wait for the next one.

All I can do is shake my head, chuckle and wonder. I have to imagine that the afterglow has gotten to them. The bruises have healed and they only hear, “Ike loves you baby,” and so they swoon. Personally, I’m just happy to be back to real life. A steady job. Dogs to play with. A granddaughter to help raise. A loving wife to cuddle up to.

As for film making, I had an interesting conversation with one of the producers after a particularly grueling day. We talked about the desire for personal cinema. Movies that people make for themselves, inviting everyone else to come along for the ride if they like. Wouldn’t it be nice to see more films like this? Movies that weren’t made with a goal of being this summer’s big blockbuster but rather with the singular goal of telling a story. And not the same story that has been told countless times by countless people.

That’s where I’ve wanted to be all along. Small simple films that focus on telling a story. I don’t usually make New Year’s Resolutions but I do have one this year. I’m only doing my own work from now on. I’ve partnered up with a guy who is of the same mind and we have some good stuff planned for 2008.

So is that what there was to learn from this? Not quite. I already knew that Hollywood is not where it’s at for me. I already knew that real life was more important to me than the big show. I already knew what I wanted out of film making. So just what was there to learn here?

I deviated from my path. I chose a different road because it looked like it had been newly paved. It was a bad road, through a seedy section of town. Bad things happened there and when I got off that road, I was a little worse off. But I learned that I could have seen those bad things coming - in fact, I did see them coming - and could have avoided them.

My practice fell off in the days before the project started and was non-existant while it was going on. On one hand, it probably would have helped. On the other hand, I don’t think there was any knowledge that I didn’t already have that would helped in this situation. I knew what I needed to do but knowing what to do means nothing. It’s all about what you actually do.

I learned that Jiminy Cricket was right. “Always let your conscience be your guide.”

The Final Days of the Stress Circus

So with all the goings on involved in this film project I haven’t felt much like blogging about it. My time has been split pretty much evenly between working on it and bitching about working on it.

I went nuclear on the line producer this weekend. It was basically a matter of me saying, “I’ve had it and I want out,” and him calming me down and convincing me I didn’t. I think he was about 65% right. Honestly, I do want out but I’d be a fool to pass this up. I know that if I don’t do this, I’ll always wonder what I missed. I should be able to let that go but I can’t. Not yet anyway.

The one good thing that has come out of all of this is that it’s really made me appreciate my own work. Having had the opportunity to see how professionals do it, I now know two things. First, I know that my work stands up to theirs. Probably not from a box office perspective – which, if the various remakes and threequels are the standard against which I’m to be measured, isn’t breaking my heart – but certainly from an obviously subjective quality standard. Second, I know that I’d be infinitely happier making the films that I make on meager budgets, not losing any money and being proud of the work that I do than doing what amounts to volunteer work and going through this kind of stress circus to help someone else realize a dream that is purely monetary-based.

Do I sound bitter? Unfortunately, I think I am and that is not the fault of anybody involved with this film. It’s my fault and mine alone. I got involved with this project for the wrong reasons and now I’m not happy that it has not turned out the way I hoped. Was I made some false promises? Sure. Should I have seen those promises for what they were or more precisely did I and choose to pretend that I didn’t? Yes. I saw a shiny object and I gleefully picked it up. I should know better.

The obvious thing to do would have been to meditate on the decision first. Had I been mindful,  truly mindful, I could have seen this coming. It’s not like it was well-hidden. Of course, had I done that, I would have turned the job down and would have missed out on some great lessons about myself. Besides, this is no time for regret. No time for”should have”.

I have found one nice little diversion from the nightly beatings that have become my work on this project. When I get home from my regular job, I’ve got an inbox full of emails that must be answered. I start responding to them all and before I’m done, I start getting responses to my responses. After a couple of hours, I get to the point where I get five or ten minute breaks between emails. When that happens, I turn on my Wii and fire up Tiger Woods PGA Tour ‘07. I pick a course – often Pebble Beach because it reminds me of home – and play 18, sometimes 36, holes. Every time my computer beeps to let me know I have a new email, I put my hand up to indicate they must wait for me to finish the hole.

There is no “them” in Wii.

Fortunately, two weeks from today it will all be over. Even if this goes exceedingly well, it will be fortunate that it will be over. I need to get back to a place in my life that doesn’t involve these people and this film. A place that is about my wife and my kids and my granddaughter and the only true film career I have. The one I make for myself.

Which brings up another point. I have a friend that I make films with. He’s the one that I mentioned last time that turned down the chance to work on this film. I’m looking forward to getting back to working with him. When it comes to making films, he and I seem to be of an almost singular mind. We have a new project in mind for the summer that we both think will be very special. The kind of film we like to make. The kind of work we can be proud of. That sounds like perfection right about now.

And I’m Doing This, Why?

So I’m involved in this film project. Someone else’s, not mine.

I should preface this by saying that, with the exception of acting, I’m not big on working on other people’s projects. They rarely provide you with enough info to really get behind the event yet they expect you to bleed, sweat and cry every drop through every agonizing moment of making their little miracle happen. If you have real anti-social tendencies, crewing someone else’s film is like being forced to listen to hordes of hand models run their fingernails down acres of chalkboards.

The reasons I agreed to go with this one are 1) it’s a fairly large scale film (read: will be seen nationwide) and 2) I would also be acting in it and 3) the other job was Art Director which would look nice on the resume.

Well, the acting part went up in smoke and the Art Director position has turned into the snafu to end all snafus. I’ve had my props department dwindled down to a completely overworked Set Dresser and myself and with days left before shooting, new items are being added to our to-do list by the hour. The scale of the audience is still intact, though. So should things go south due to the HeadUpTheAssness exhibited by the higher-ups, all of America will get to see just how big of a screw up I am according to said higher-ups.

So, lessons. Right? What are my lessons?

I see many but they seem to be the kind of lessons I always had for myself, pre-Buddhism (which doesn’t necessarily make them wrong). Things like “don’t get involved with those people again” or “stop pretending that you want to work on other people’s stuff”. But I’m having trouble seeing any lessons from a Buddhist perspective. It could be that I’m just too close to the situation right now. Perhaps once it’s over.

There is a friend of mine who was asked to be involved much like I was who turned it down flat. His main reason was that he didn’t feel he was qualified. Everyone else felt he was but he said that it seemed that a higher level of professionalism was required for that kind of work and he didn’t possess that. That could very well be part of my problem. If so, it would have been nice to have that kind of foresight and maturity to recognize my limits.

But there’s something else going on here. This situation is bad and I’m sorry I got involved. I won’t quit because I committed to it but I can’t wait until it’s over and I can go back to making my own little movies again.

 

---

I was just about to post this when it clicked.

Last week, I wrote this:

Bodhi Girl made a comment about my little medical incident last week that really got me thinking. She pointed out that my predicament made it very easy to remember the First Noble Truth, that is the truth of suffering. More precisely, that life is suffering.

OK. Maybe I’m stretching here but could this week’s post be about the Second Noble Truth? That suffering is caused by craving? I took this job because it sounded like I could get what I wanted out of it and OH SNAP! Suffering.

Like I said, maybe I’m stretching but work with me here.

The Reduction of a Thousand Cuts

Bodhi Girl made a comment about my little medical incident last week that really got me thinking. She pointed out that my predicament made it very easy to remember the First Noble Truth, that is the truth of suffering. More precisely, that life is suffering.

On a First Noble Truth Scale, that particular bit of suffering was probably only about a five. I mean, it hurt but there are some truly horrific things experienced by people everywhere on a daily basis. Apparently though there has been some debate about what level of suffering was meant by the Buddha. There are those who say that when speaking of the First Noble Truth, the Buddha meant the sort of general dissatisfaction that come with being human.

I’m still very new at all of this but I have to think that the Buddha meant more than that. However, if we were to find out that’s what he meant, I could go along with that. We see people that overcome horrendous difficulties to not just weedle their way out from under them but to triumph and become better than they were. It’s the “thousand cuts” that seem to really tear an individual down. The tiny pinpricks of disappointments and humiliations and disregards that hurt one so greatly and so frequently that they give in and give up.

Some of us reach a point in our lives where we realize that this is happening to us and we make a decision to defend ourselves against the little hurts fed to us by others. Hey, that’s why I stopped using Windows™.

But some of us go too far. In an effort to defend ourselves, we build up walls around ourselves. We strike first. We hurt others before they can hurt us. We become the handers out of the thousand cuts. And Buddhist or not, we all know about Karma. What goes around comes around. What goes up, must come down. When it comes to dealing out cuts, a thousand out is a thousand back.

So what do we do? Well, the path I’m taking is leading me in a direction that will – should – is supposed to – BETTER – help me deal with those situations in a way that is healthy not only for me, but for others as well. But not everybody can or will choose to take this path. Certainly many will find other paths that lead them to the same place but others will not. What of them? What will they do? How will they cope? And how will those around them cope?

I don’t know. I’m asking.

The Beginner’s Mind - And Decorative Boxers

The past week brought an interesting situation.

I was in Michigan on business - training for some software we use at the office. Thursday evening, I’m sitting at the desk in my hotel room, surfing the web when suddenly I’ve got a horrible pain in my lower back. Within minutes, the pain is so bad that I’m vomiting and close to passing out.

I’ll explain more in a minute and we’ll find out it’s not life threatening but when something like this happens – sudden horrific pain coming from inside you that is causing you to black out – you start to wonder if you are indeed dying.

But I felt like I handled that well. No panic. No freaking out. I was actually pragmatic. I reasoned out that If I was going to die it would most likely be from hitting my head when I passed out. So I decided to lie down. Ah, but don’t forget Jimi Hendrix! I could have vomited again and if I lay on my back, I could have asphyxiated. So I needed to lay on my side.

Then I got considerate. I decided to lay on the bathroom floor instead of the carpet because if I did vomit or in some other way void myself while dying, it would have been a lot easier to clean up if it was on a tile floor.

The I got self-conscious. I was wearing a pair of boxers that my wife had given me that is covered in hearts and has a teddy bear on it and in big bubble letters says “My heart pants for you”. I certainly didn’t want to be found dead wearing those so I changed my underwear.

By that time, I figured I wasn’t going to die.

Soon enough, the vomiting was over and I was able to stand. Actually, I felt better standing. I got on the phone with my wife and talked to her for a bit and we decided that I should go to a hospital. Because my head was no longer swimming and because the hospital was only a couple of miles away, I decided to drive myself. That was an interesting idea.

Standing and walking I found that I felt quite a bit better and by the time I reached the Jeep, I was wondering if I really needed to go to the hospital. Then I sat down in the Jeep.

Oh yeah. I needed to go.

So I’m driving to the hospital on one cheek, swearing every 15 or 20 seconds, hitting every red light in Livonia, Michigan – and at 8:30 on a Thursday night, they’re all red.

To make a long story slightly less long, I get in, they check me out, freak out over my blood pressure (160/108, thank you very much), poke me, prod me, stick things in me – which isn’t as fun as it sounds – and declare me a victim of kidney stones.

They sign me up for blood work and a CT scan and when the results come back at 1:00am, guess what? No stones! The doctor says that he’d guess it was a small stone and that by the time I got to him, the event was over. I’d hate to think what a big stone feels like.

So apparently very little was wrong with me. It was just a scare. A little action in an otherwise dull week. If this had a design, I’d imagine that it was a test to see how I handled it all. I don’t know, I guess I got a B-.

But perhaps the real test is figuring out what this event means to my development.

In the beginner’s mind, it just means a glimpse of disaster. To me on the journey, it seems to have a greater significance. It’s a pin on my map, showing where I am now and days, weeks, months from now it will show where I was. Someday, it will just be a glimpse of disaster again. I look forward to that.