The Naked Monk

Archive for March, 2010

Caroline finally go over her MS attack by undergoing a hefty prednisone treatment. She’s avoided it for eighteen years, but finally succumbed — read the fact-sheet on this synthetic hormone, and you’d avoid it too. Still, to her surprise, she liked it.

Doctor Lapierre, her neurologist, smiled wryly. “Everyone likes prednisone.”

The fact is, it made her feel normal. Yes, we blog philosophers raise our eyebrows at the slippery idea of ‘normal,’ and run off on tangents of relativity, but for Caroline it was tangible — she had energy. Guess what she did with it … tidied the garage shelves, organized her desk and took pleasure in the ability to do what the rest of us take for granted.

Now it’s worn off and, once again, her reaction’s not what you’d expect. A resigned shrug of the shoulders—ah well, it was good while it lasted—is not how she feels. In four short weeks her experience of normalcy became, well, normalized, and the return to a symptomatic life has hit her like a ton of bricks.

It’s easy to come up with logical solutions to these dilemmas, especially if you’re not the one suffering from it. Don’t worry darling, you’ll get used to it again — no, I don’t say that; my response is tougher. I bite my lip and remember that her experience is hers alone, that all I can do is sit with her through her sadness and take joy from her depth when she finds ways to cope.

In spite of her fear that this physical affliction is compromising our relationship, it’s her depth that I love above all, and that’s not going away because of the MS. If anything, it just gets deeper. How lucky am I? Also, how lucky are Caroline’s coaching clients? Her work is more than just a living, it’s a passion — something she excels at because of her experience, not in spite of it. We all have our afflictions, but we don’t have to be limited by them.

People are sometimes surprised to hear that I take my exercise at a local gym. Shouldn’t I—a former Buddhist monk and teacher of mindful reflection—be a dedicated yoga practitioner? Actually, I did practice yoga for many years, and also tai-chi, which I particularly loved. These days, however, I frequent the noisy, unassuming, weight room of the Hudson Racquet Club.

There seems to be a general consensus that yoga is spiritually superior, but I’m not of that mind; I hate the very notion of spiritual superiority. More to the point, neither yoga nor Buddhism are innately spiritual; nor are churches, mosques and temples for that matter; not even the most magnificent Himalayan sunset. If the word ‘spiritual’ means anything at all, it’s a state of mind. A calm, loving state of mind—right? Well … I’m not so sure of even that.

To me, spiritual is the opposite of material, and materialism is faith in the happiness-producing effect of stuff, which means anything that seems graspable. To be spiritual is to withdraw your hopes from those things, turn your attention to the grasping mind itself, and train it not to go where it doesn’t belong. That may eventually produce calm, loving states of mind, but in the meantime, there’s work to do.

I began weight-training for two reasons. One was a response to the horror of osteoporosis, which seriously deprecated my mother’s last decades and which I swore to fight—lifting weights grows both muscles and the bones they’re attached to. The other was to cope with the anger over my separation and divorce. The strenuous routine absorbed the physical symptoms, leaving my mind the space it needed to process the change in my self and my life. It was profoundly steadying.

Still, there are things I dislike about the gym; for a start, it’s almost impossible to work out in silence. Once again, if I want to concentrate and internalize the experience, you’d think a yoga studio would be more suitable, no? Well … no. In those havens of dim lights and soothing music I find myself drifting away in a semblance of meditation that’s really more like tuning out than in. Years of meditative retreats left me with a deep and, I must confess, inflexible attachment to peace and quiet; I become irritable when I can’t have it, even anti-social. How spiritual is that?

So, I try to forgive those people who chatter away instead of working out, and deconstruct my annoyance with loudspeakers that pump out loud, offensively predictable pop music. Now I’m in a quandary, because I’m convinced that mind-numbing, thump-thump music deepens automaticity, accellerates entropy and discourages mental growth. As the years go by, I don’t want my mind to grow rigid any more than I want my bones to go brittle.

So, should I give into my attachment to the quiet of yoga, zone out and let my brain deteriorate—or should I expose myself to the sound pollution that goes in the name of ‘pump-up’ music and let my brain deteriorate? Is the spiritual life really supposed to be this complicated?

From Inquiring Mind Volume 26 Number 1 / Fall 2009

“We’re all in the same boat. Born as we are in this human body, we can’t escape the blessings and tortures of the human brain. From our first breath, we yearn for love and understanding in the most complicated ways imaginable. We find it most satisfyingly as we learn to give it. The ability to do this comes from acceptance of our frailties. By understanding the conditions of our own lives, we accept the conditions of others. Compassion is not condescension, but a leveling of the playing field, a recognition of yourself in others and an acceptance that their stress is your stress, that their happiness is your own. The gulf between us all is imaginary, born of insecurity and fear.”

—It Begins with Silence (Chapter 9)

Caroline and I were watching TV the other night when we lost interest and turned to each other. It was just one of those things—we were on the same page and grateful for it. Sounds a bit dreamy, I suppose, but it was special. Then her eyes welled up. I reached for her hand and waited for her to speak.

“I was just thinking,” she said. “Each day we’re together, each moment—it’s one less.”

I know exactly where she’s coming from, and feel the same way. Like her I spent too many years with the wrong person, trying against all odds to make it work.

Those moments of exquisite happiness seem to come with searing pain built right in, don’t they? You can’t have one without the other. Most of the time, things hum along normally and we don’t notice the underlying stress of life, but it’s always there.