Joel has been having ongoing challenges with his gmail account. I reached out to Rebecca, our wonderful webmaster, and she is on it. When he wrote saying, “I think I must have been cursed by the gods of the internet. What did I ever do to them….” I wrote back:

“Well, bless the sea snakes!!!! Rebecca is going to see if Geek Squad can help her help you!”

The following morning, Joel responded:

I don’t remember how the sea snakes got in this. They play a prominent role in Coleridge’s “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.” Everyone on the ship has died except for the “hero,” and the ship is floundering and adrift. The only person left alive on board is about to die. He has to bite his tongue to have enough moisture in his mouth to speak, but with what he thinks will be his last words, he blesses the sea snakes surrounding the vessel. With the blessing, the wind comes up, and the ship makes it back to England.

Recently I was listening to a dharma talk by Kyoun Sokuzan. Sokuzan met Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a preeminent teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, in late 1973 and became a student. In 1974, Sokuzan attended the first session of Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. In 1975, he established the Dharma Study Group of Battle Creek, Michigan. The group is currently meeting via Zoom. When someone asked Sokuzan if we need protection from the coronavirus, Sokuzan answered, “You don’t need protection, but you ask for protection. You participate in the realm you are in.”

Continuing, “Everything is temporary. Work with it however it shows up in your neighborhood.”

This all comes as I see my mind grasping for a safe way to be with friends and family. I hear Sokuzan say, “Go into the darkness. That is where the light is.”

Human experience is polarized. I was one of those odd ducks who was anti-abortion and pro-legalization of abortion. A woman desperate not to birth a baby will take dangerous measures to end that pregnancy. Coat hangers are just one… Truth. Some people argue that making abortion legal motivates more women to choose that option. This is just not truth. The same argument is happening around the legalization of marijuana. Truth?

Sokuzan: “It’s all relative truth. You can’t see the truth.”

A friend stopped by briefly yesterday, willing to do me a huge favor. I had placed the two chairs on our front porch at the furthest distance. I donned my cute little kitty mask (a gift from my sister, Janis) and went out onto the porch. As my friend got out of her car, she saw me in my mask. “Do you want me to put a mask on?” she asked. She had one in the car. I said I would appreciate her putting on a mask.

My friend was obviously not comfortable in the mask she was wearing. Every few seconds she would need to adjust it. The mask just did not fit her face well. As I watched, I had the thought it was more like a thong than a bikini. I hate when my underpants ride up in the crack of my butt. I have never understood someone wearing a thong. Maybe it is like Erma Bombeck’s having said she does not eat chocolate cake — she just smears it on her hips and thighs because that is where it is going to end up!

Early in the pandemic, I began making masks that are fun. Many of those iterations have been shared in previous posts. Why? Because, as Sokuzan says, “It’s all relative truth.”

If my friend or I had been an asymptomatic spreader of the virus, would our actions have been enough to protect the other? Sokuzan said we don’t need protection but we do need to work with things however they are showing up.

Sokuzan used a Buddhist teaching term I had not previously run into, unless I had heard it and did not yet fully embody the dharma these words are pointing to. Trycycle has an excellent article on the teaching if you are interested. Here is the link: “Drive all blames into one.” From the article:

“Conveniently, blaming others allows us to avoid looking into our own role in the problems and conflicts we encounter. We look outward, but we do not look within. And even in looking outward, once we have assigned the blame, we go no further. So we do not get to the root of the problem. We stop short, satisfied that we are off the hook and someone else is at fault.”

I think a lot about my family. I take drive all blames into one to heart. If we went for a visit (as we soooooo want to do) and one of them was an asymptomatic spreader, and John or I got ill and/or died, who would be to blame?

“This slogan {drive all blames into one} is quite radical. Instead of blaming others, you blame yourself. Even if it is not your fault, you take the blame. It is important to distinguish this practice from neurotic self-blaming or the regretful fixation on your own mistakes and how much you are at fault. It also does not imply that you should not point out wrongdoing or blow the whistle on corruption. Instead, as you go about your life, you simply notice the urge to blame others and you reverse it.”

If my action exposed me to the virus, not even the virus is to blame. But if my action exposed someone else to the virus, I am responsible. It is simply how things showed up in the neighborhood. Drive all blames into one….

“Pay attention to how blaming arises and what patterns it takes. See what happens when you take on the blame yourself. Notice what changes in your own experience and in what you observe around you.”

A friend rented a hotel room near her daughter’s cottage as the extended family gathered for the Labor Day weekend. My friend took her own provisions, and she was masked and maintained safe-distance as she joined them for the wonderful celebration of her grandson’s 25th birthday.

Other friends are leaving this weekend to visit their son and family out of state. They, too, will stay in a hotel and enjoy time with the family out-of-doors.

Soon, in the Northern hemisphere, it will be winter. “What then?” you might ask.

Bless the sea snakes….

Everything is temporary.