For no reason that I understand, I found myself thinking about this old blog post yesterday. Then I checked my email and found that someone had written to me about it...

Tomorrow's show at The Washhouse seems to be generating some buzz. I hear that Rocky, the organizer (and frontman of the mighty Skinwalkers) has been getting calls from bands wanting to be on the bill, and he's had to turn them down because the bill is full.

I haven't decided what I'm going to recite yet. Maybe some poems, or maybe a chapter of a novel. Or maybe something else.

 For Those on the Soup Line, No Rescue Plans

By David Gonzalez 
blog 
New  York Times 
October 1, 2008


By the time the doors open to the soup kitchen at St.
Benedict the Moor Neighborhood Center, the line is
already snaking down St. Ann's Avenue.

Old people sit on crates, children shuffle impatiently
and adults avert their gaze. This happens every day of
the year in Mott Haven, no matter the weather. That is
because for too many years to count, hunger and want
have been a constant in their lives.

The people who run this Bronx soup kitchen and an
adjoining food pantry do not need economic analyses to
tell them things are rough. The growing line and
increased demand for food packages and hot meals -
sometimes from people who thought they were middle
class - is a sure-fire indicator.

And while politicians debate a $700 billion bailout for
Wall Street, they have long lived with the fact that
there is no emergency rescue plan for East 139th
Street.

Anthony Jordan, the center's executive director, said
that while Congress tried - and failed - to push the
bailout bill in a matter of days, it took about a year
to get a farm bill passed that helps food pantries like
his meet increased demand. On Wednesday, he is
reopening his food pantry, which no longer gives people
a sack like a handout, but allows them to browse and
pick from shelves stocked with pasta, cereal and baby
food. It's a matter of dignity, he said.

'We want to be open every day, but my fear is with the
economy the way it is, we'll run out of food in a few
days and just be open once a week,' Mr. Jordan said.
'There is no bailout for us. There hasn't been one for
years. The closest thing to a bailout for us is to do
more with less.'

This bleak little strip lies eight and a half miles
from Wall Street. Emotionally, it is a parallel
universe invisible to those titans of finance for whom
fat bonuses used to mean bigger vacation homes, fancier
toys and ever more exotic vacations. On St. Ann's
Avenue, a small bowl of meat balls, greens and mashed
potatoes and some free condoms are about the only
things to salve the sting of bad times.

While people wait for the soup kitchen to open, several
community-based health groups offer advice and help
under small tents lined up on the street nearby. Tables
are set up stacked with free condoms and brochures, as
people are encouraged to take a free H.I.V.-AIDS test
on the spot. Andres Gonzalez, a volunteer with the
Hispanic AIDS Forum, says he has seen little change,
for the better, anyway.

'It's all just going down, he said. 'Now they're
cutting money for H.I.V. prevention, even when there is
one new infection every 10 minutes. When will that
stop?' Even in his own life, he feels the pressure of
health care costs, too.

'Look at prescription drugs,' he said. 'They always
want a co-pay at the drug store. Sometimes I don't have
the money for the co-pay and the drug store won't give
me my medicines.'

Next to his table, St. Ann's Corner of Harm Reduction,
a nonprofit community health group, distributes free
hypodermic needles to heroin addicts and diabetics.
People line up, many of them in their 50s (or, at
least, looking like it), to get a small bag with
needles, alcohol swabs and condoms.

Often, people stop by and ask for referrals to detox
programs, soup kitchens and food pantries. Volunteers
there said referrals for food had tripled since last
year alone, to 150 a day. Many of them come from local
shelters, of which there is an abundance in this South
Bronx neighborhood.

Carlos Flores has been coming to this street ever since
he and his family had to move in to a shelter a few
blocks away. He lost his apartment when he lost his
truck driving job - an insurance problem left him with
no driver's license for a while, which was enough to
put him on the street.

Although he has been accepted into a program that
covers some of his rent as he starts to work again, he
cannot find a landlord who will rent him a place. 'I'm
still at the shelter,' he said as he waited in line
with his 18-month-old son, Sean Carter. 'We're trying.
We're looking, but it's hard, no lie. Now they took
away our food stamps when I missed a meeting with a
caseworker.'

Given how threadbare their existences had long been,
the idea that Congress had to ease the plight of
bankers as soon as possible struck many of these people
as preposterous, if not insulting.

'Why should we save a bank?' said Frances Hernandez,
who was hauling an empty shopping cart. 'Some people
don't have cards to go to banks.'

Edwin Avent and Eddie Fernandez stood near the head of
the soup kitchen line. Mr. Avent had just finished a
job training program for office help. He had yet to
find a job.

'What about the poor?' Mr. Avent said.

'He got to stop spending money on that war,' Mr.
Fernandez said. 'If they messed up that country, it's
on them, not us.'

'It's just heartbreaking what's going on,' Mr. Avent
said. 'Don't get me wrong - this is a great country,
but we should take care of ourselves first. God bless
the child who takes care of his own. Would you tend to
your neighbor's child before your own? We're spending
millions on another country and we got people here who
are hungry.'

Yet, even in this place of need, there are scenes of
unexpected generosity. It comes not from the
government, but from others who walk the same streets
with tired feet and haggard faces.

Anthony Echevarria and his wife, Tracy Rosado, stopped
at one of the tables asking when the food pantry would
open. Mr. Echevarria is a barrel-chested man. He used
to be a construction worker until he hurt his spine.
His wife just gave birth to a son, Nicholas Anthony.
The five-day-old infant lay asleep in a harness on his
father's chest.

'There are people dying in this neighborhood,' Mr.
Echevarria said. 'They could be giving $700 billion to
drug programs, food pantries or housing.'

He asked if the food pantry would open. It would not,
he was told, until Wednesday. His little family of
three walked away, calmly. He toted a small bag of
clothes his newborn child did not need. He gave it to a
woman leaving a church down the street.

On this gloriously sunny day, where the noonday light
revealed every wrinkled face, grimy shirt and busted
shoe, a man who received nothing managed to give a
little to someone who had even less. He did not call it
a bailout. He called it his duty.

'God is a good God,' he said, stroking his son's back.
'A giving God.'

Dogen says there is no point in trying to practice Zen without a teacher. Dilettantes and hobbyists do not like to hear this,  but it is true. Reading a few books and sitting on a zafu does not constitute a Zen practice. You can have a solo meditation practice, and that is not a bad thing, but do not mistake it for Zen. Do not mistake it for the Buddha Dharma.

Practicing meditation by yourself, you may well achieve some taste of awakening - but without  the support of a teacher and a sangha, that experience is useless, and may even be harmful.

There is a hugely popular book by a nondenominational spiritual teacher that is a solid example of this. The teacher is a good writer, and seems to be an intelligent and well-intentioned person, but his book is shallow and self-involved, even though its premise is the necessity of not attaching to ego.

Why? Because, even though I see no reason to doubt that he had an experience of what Zen Buddhists call kensho - an awakening experience - he had no training and no teacher, and so it is clear to me that he did not know what to do with it. His ego attached to it, and it was no longer a genuine awakening, just another head trip. And then he made a dogma out of it.

Well, that is my version of it. Here is his…

He says he  was miserable for the first thirty years of his life, and then, at the end of one particularly hellish night, he saw the first sunlight of the day come through the curtains, and he felt his sense of self fall away.  He spent the next few years in a blissed-out state, with no work, no relationships, no sense of self. Most of that time, he says, was spent sitting on park benches and feeling good.

What would happen if you did that? If you had a trippy experience and then just sat around in parks enjoying the feeling? What about your family? Your friends? Your colleagues? How would they be affected? What would your life mean if there was no one, at any time, wondering where you were?

The Buddha, after awakening, felt sure that nobody would understand  what he had to teach, and so he briefly considered just hanging out in the forest and enjoying being awake - which is to say, enjoying being the Buddha. But he could not do that. Because his awakening was complete, because he understood that there was no separation between him and every other being in the cosmos, he could not make anything about himself. And so he lived a life of service to all beings.

The Buddha did not get to his awakening by himself or by accident. He trained for years with various teachers, before going off by himself and awakening to his nature (the nature of all beings and all phenomena) under the Bodhi tree. His awakening was the result of a committed practice.

If we experience kensho without training, we experience it without context or understanding, and it is easy to attach to the experience, and to think we now know something - and, later, to start teaching the same delusion to other people. Sitting on a park bench enjoying the feeling of blissful non-attachment is no different than driving on the highway enjoying having an expensive car. It is entirely materialistic and entirely self-centered, delusion masquerading as enlightenment, a dream of awakening while sleeping deeply.

We need teachers to awaken us from that dream. Sometimes we need to be awakened by a whisper and a gentle touch, and sometimes by a shout and a rough shake, but always with sharp compassion.

I  just got an email from someone asking how to do zazen. It's vital to find a sangha to practice with, but , for those who're just starting out and don't have ready access to a teacher, here's how it's done:

Sit with your back straight, each vertebrae resting on the one below it. To get the position right, imagine that there are wheels on your pelvis, like the wheels on a shopping cart. Roll those wheels forward. Keep your head straight too, so that the ceiling could rest on your crown if it were low enough, and keep your ears in line with your shoulders. Place your hands just below your navel, palms up, left palm on top of right palm, thumb tips touching.

Half-close your eyes, letting them go out of focus. Breathe naturally through your nose, not trying to control it. Just observe the breath, at the point where you feel it enter. When thoughts arise, don't fight them and don't welcome them; just acknowledge them and return your attention to the breath. Don't tell yourself a story; when a story starts, just acknowledge it and return to the breath. Don't aim for any state, tranquil or angry. When you realize you feel angry, don't try to stop being angry, and don't get into the anger; just acknowledge it and return to the breath. When you realize you feel tranquil, don't get into the tranquility; just acknowledge it and return to the breath. Ecstatic, agitated, impatient, bored, rapturous, whatever - just acknowledge it and return to the breath.

Just sit. Be there. Pay attention. And, when the sitting period is over, get up and go on with your day. No story. No attachment. Nothing special.