An Open Letter To Adolescents

By Art Rosengarten

With young minds “possibility” reigns large, and delusion is commonplace. You feel drawn to where others have failed and you multi-task like chimpanzees in quicksand. Your elders know nothing. Technology has made you smug, and if freedom is your mentor, consequence is your substitute history teacher. You crave to be unique just like everyone else. Sex and death are your constants, though the latter remains a fuzzy concept.

Adventure is jumping blindfold from airplanes, or maybe, matching and folding your socks as they were originally intended, and then returning them to the correct drawer.  Happiness is a virtual job.  Help comes in a reality sandwich, but you’re not hungry. You just ate a burrito. At least, not yet.

Contrary to the proverbial wisdom, youth is NOT wasted on the young—it’s actually a perfect holding-tank  for the cognitively-challenged and hormonally “bound-and-determined.” In practice, one observes youthful delusions in people of all ages, particularly in Southern California.  It’s simply easier to be delusional when you’re skinny, self-possessed, face-pocked, and driven by sex glands—there’s more free time for it,  AND the body holds up better under the stress.

“Imagination grows by exercise,” said Somerset Maugham, “and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.” I myself (no spring chicken, and admittedly half-crazy) have known some PRETTY impressive delusions in my day, but I’m one who has put ear drops in his eyes and (quite true) once left the telephone in the refrigerator. Perhaps I AM no one to speak on the subject of delusion but this hardly seems relevant, as I am old now and pealing away like paint on the shed.

It should be noted that NOT ALL “young-mindedness” is delusional–only those parts swathed in the pursuit of eternal DESIRE (think ‘The Endless Summer’, that original 1963 surf flick I can still access from my long-term memory), nor hammered by the HONOR of unswerving allegiance to the causes of their fathers—the boys and girls of great warriors, the Mormon Missions to Banana Republics, the drug addictions and Tennessee scotch, the Yacht Club membership at Belvedere Cove, or else those newly HYPNOMINTED by the promise of unmitigated hedonics before the chrysalis of instant enlightenment, weekends in Bali (plus The New IPhone and “MTV hips”).

The tattoo is the perfect token of youthful delusion—the brilliant judgment to brand one’s fledgling self-statement onto tender body parts BEFORE achieving a full self, to say nothing of the ritual masochism and risk of immense DEBT advertised in the wrong slogan and engraved upon physical features better left unnoticed (and definitely, unadorned!). Oh youthful folly-doers, the unnecessary suffering you so attract! My favorite inkblot is that skull-and-bones upper arm bearing the inscription bolded in red: “Ask me about my parents divorce.”

But delusion in the “young-at-heart” is ultimately blameless—almost a necessary initiation—that can be attributed to lack of practice-time on the playing field of impermanence.  Post-adolescence as a state of mind is crazily solid and predictable, no wonder it is the natural breeding ground for idealism and its ADHD cohort, fanaticism.  Only it cannot see itself.  Rock stars get laid by it, and advertisers rich on its fumes.

Often, these not-so-young (in years) are envious, and wish to rekindle past delusions.  They yearn for the pristine world of hormones and fantasies where the ultimate in sensory realization is imagined to exist from its own side. (Fat chance!) They can be spotted on red surfboards in the dead of winter. They are the legends in their own minds. Their delusions serve mainly to reinforce the false self-sense, a sort of “penile enlargement of The Me” which promises to keep their hair beautifully-coiffed when the fierce winds of impermanence begin to blow.

Art Rosengarten

Copyright 2003, Meta Arts Magazine.  This essay cannot be reprinted without the written permission of its author.

The Great Mystery

By Art Rosengarten

When discussing the conditions for enduring psychological transformation (individually, societally, and globally), Buddhists believe the core difficulty stems from the fact that we don’t really know who we are.

The argument goes something like this: We know ‘what’ we are, in terms of roles, preferences, and beliefs; we know ‘what’ we’re supposed to be, in terms of familial, religious, and cultural expectations and assumptions; we may even know ‘what’ we’d really like to be, in view of these things plus a little imagination. Yet despite our prodigious capacity to self-assess, we don’t really know who we are. We confuse the ‘what’ for the ‘who’ and at the end of the day, like an imposter in a 60 Minutes expose accused of feigning to be a brain surgeon at Yale University Medical Center, we too really don’t have a clue.

The “WHAT we are” refers to our content, the “who” to the carrier, agent, or driver of that content. Simply stated, the ‘who’ is the guy that’s minding the store (not the stuff on the shelves), and in some cases, the who “exists” even before the store has even been built.  The who says: “Let’s open up early today…don’t forget to call the tax guy after ten…Wow, who’s that? Nice ass…”

You might reasonably wonder: “All that silent conversation and mental chatter… who’s doing THAT?” The answer is we don’t really know. We’re more focused on collecting and expanding our stuff and then justifying its presence–the whats and the whys of existence– than solving the whos.  We’d rather know “what’s” for lunch (and why) than who’s eating it?

Those In The Know

Not long ago, I put this question to some 46 senators in the American Congress (4 insisted they could not reschedule their tanning salon times)—that is, while day-dreaming on my leather recliner on a slow Saturday afternoon. “Senator, could you tell me, in your own words, who you really are?” Below I’ve listed a sampling of their responses:

-A person of conviction and compassion

-The son of a twice-decorated war hero from Alabama

-A man who cares for the children of America

-A woman who understands the less fortunate

-A guy who believes in fiscal responsibility and common sense

-A proud son of the grand state of Louisiana

-The man standing before you, who else?

-Just a citizen with a vision for the American people

(And so forth…)

Obviously, by this survey, American senators have no idea who they really are. Fortunately for them, they are no different than 99.99% of human beings that have mastered fire since the Homo erectus. Unfortunately for us, they wield some influence over the future course on this planet and beyond. This got me to wondering: Except for a few intriguing possibilities from the emergent sciences, free Internet, and Sushi Bars, to put it politely, the world is as ignorant today as it’s ever been only with better-looking women and more savage toys of mass destruction. Darwin, after all, was no champion of gentility.

Not to say that we are a bad species or just plain dumb people, because we’re not intrinsically bad or just plain dumb at birth (despite what the Judeo-Christian and developmental theorists tell us).  By and large, human beings are fairly bright relative to other species and decent lot innately, we don’t just go around spitting on each other, lopping off heads, or throwing bombs in open marketplaces.  (Well, let’s say, MOST human beings are a fairly bright and decent lot and leave it at that). Humans pretty much do the best they can with what they have to work with.  Unfortunately, it seems, this does not include an easy capacity to know who they are. This points to what I call the  “Who’s Who In America” problem. Carl Jung pointed (partially) to the problem in his writings:

“Anyone who has any ego-consciousness at all takes it for granted that he knows himself. But the ego knows only its own contents, not the unconscious and its contents. People measure their self-knowledge by what the average person in their social environment knows of himself, but not by the real psychic facts which are for the most part hidden from them.”

From the Jungian perspective, “Who’s Who In America?” is really a story about What’s What in America– with the subtitle: A Compendium Of What’s Taking Up Space On The Shelves Of My Store and Why. Had one senator in my imaginary survey said simply “I am an observing center of awareness,” or “something that eludes me when I’m highly present in each moment,” or “an unfolding, non-local, experiential field of biological, mental, karmic and environmental factors,” or even, “Heck, mister, I have no idea who I really am but pretend I’ve got this thing figured out because it’s a lot easier to stay employed that way, and I even start believing it myself sometimes” surely the greater mystery might seem one day within each citizen’s grasp–a problem for another day.  Art Rosengarten

(Note: This article has been translated into French and Tagalog, under the titles, respectively: “Who’s Who In France,” and “Who’s Who In The Philippines)

See Art’s blog of creative writings and such: http://artrosengarten.wordpress.com/

A Psychotherapeutic Use of Tarot Cards

By Arthur Rosengarten, Ph.D.

Excerpted from Tarot And Psychology: Spectrums of Possibility (2000)

Before AIDS was so termed, an early victim of this incurable virus came into my therapy office to prepare for his death.  Diagnosed with “Kaposi Sarcoma,” his mysterious lesions continued to spread throughout his body, he had lost 40 pounds, was weak and chronically fatigued.  The experimental chemotherapies undertaken at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, California had done nothing to improve his condition.  David, age 55, a Ph.D., a retired school principal and life-long educator, to his credit had accepted that he was dying of some mysterious illness and now desired to psychologically ready himself (and his lover) to this tragic fate.

After four or five couple’s sessions over previous weeks we had worked through much of his relational loose ends, the couple often weeping together in my office, but remaining remarkably dignified under the stress.  I was struck by their ability to hold together.  David now wanted to center himself emotionally and spiritually for his immanent death.  His doctors had given him perhaps only a few weeks more to live.  I suggested we might use Tarot; he was unfamiliar with the cards but receptive to the idea.

Though Tarot readers without psychological training usually favor divination or what might be termed “empowered blind selection” for card access, in this case I sensed a more open-ended, process-oriented approach would be more therapeutic. Under the circumstances, predictive divination seemed meaningless as David’s fate sadly was all but sealed (short of some medical miracle), and there was little interest in this sort of “future-viewing.”  David, I should note, was himself quite agnostic regarding his beliefs about death itself and was not particularly interested in religious or metaphysical bromides.  On the other hand, reflective divination, based on symbol amplification and analysis, seemed somewhat futile if it meant merely a deeper scrutiny of his present circumstance.

There was really little left to reflect upon.  He was in incredible pain, his days were literally numbered, and he felt reasonably complete with the significant relationships in his current life.  He had appropriately contacted his few remaining family members in New York, informed them of his sad situation, and felt sufficient closure in that regard.  He could no longer work, and he was bed-ridden and nauseous for most of his days over the past months.

What David needed was to find himself in his last hours.  He wanted to put the meaning of his life into some discernible order, most of which resided now in his tangential memories of the past.  His present thoughts, beliefs, insights, and the inner places that touched him were for the most part overwhelmed by the stressors of his condition.  However, even under the most severe and ghastly conditions, as Frankl wrote of the nazi concentration camps in Man’s Search For Meaning, it is basic human nature to seek a sense of coherency and meaning to one’s circumstance.  Tarot is a natural facilitator of this need.

I suggested that my AIDS patient select a deck from several available in my office, one that most appealed to his emotions, that spoke to his heart.  He chose the Aquarian Deck as the colors and imagery had a soothing quality which he liked.  Then I placed the full set of 78 cards on the table, in no apparent order, and face up so that each card was in clear view.  The process was quite simple, and remarkably meaningful to him.  I asked that he slowly scan through all the images and pull out every card that touched him in some way without being stingy with his feelings.  It was not important that he know a card’s designated meaning, only that it spoke to him, tickled his imagination, or touched his emotions.  He relished the task, and slowly sifted through the images, picking out perhaps three quarters of the deck, one by one.  I believe anyone given the same task under normal conditions would likewise respond positively to the intrinsic evocative properties and possibilities laden in Tarot images.

I then laid out all the selected cards, and asked David to arrange them in some meaningful groupings that made sense to him.  Whatever felt right to him and connected to his own sense of organization and meaning.  After a few minutes spent rummaging through the cards, this task too was rather quickly comprehended and actualized.  He designated three groupings of cards: those he liked, those he didn’t like, and those he found mysterious and intriguing.  I then asked him to choose which of the three he preferred to explore first.  He chose “the cards I don’t like.”  Besides fostering coherency and personal meaning, the process was designed to empower a sense of personal choice, something there was precious little of in the wake of a deteriorating terminal illness.

The other two groups were removed and I placed only the aversive cards on the table, again face up and in no particular order.  David was encouraged to further order these in any way that made emotional sense, there was no “right way”.  After only a few minutes he had made three more sub-divisions that he called “childhood and adolescence, adulthood, and my present life.”  Within these three sub-categories I asked whether certain cards belonged together, felt interconnected, or else seemed more singular or isolated, and again asked that he make further arrangements to reflect these distinctions.

Of the eighteen cards David did not like, seven belonged to childhood and adolescence, six to adulthood, and five to the present.  His criterion for selection was that in some manner each card triggered feelings of guilt, regret, or despair.  From a structural Tarot standpoint they revealed no apparent rhyme or reason, though each grouping made remarkable emotional sense to David.  “This group here is related to my mother,” he said, “this group to my sexuality,” and so on.  The task was designed to allow David, rather quickly as time was of the essence, to sort through and organize the themes of his life.  The cards were like symbolic magnets drawing together the bits and pieces of David’s overwhelmed psyche.  The process was for the most part non-verbal and required no analysis or interpretation.  Only David could make those determinations.

Through tears and laughter we spent the remainder of the session free associating and recollecting from the stimulus of the cards.  I encouraged David to release what he could of the cards he didn’t like, and make peace, if possible, with the rest.  Under the circumstances, simply identifying and emotionally connecting to these symbols was perhaps the needed work itself.  Time was very short.  At the session’s close I handed David the stack of cards from his second sub-group–’what I like’–to take home and explore for homework.  We would do a similar process with this grouping on the next day.

On the following morning David returned notably more calm and relaxed.  He had spent much of the previous evening with his partner exploring the cards that he liked.  He said the experience had been “very therapeutic” and life confirming.  He had cried, laughed, and recounted many wonderful parts of his life.  I asked what was learned?  He said he had loved books, his work with children, and teaching primarily.  Certain cards had triggered such memories much as projective techniques are used to stimulate unconscious contents in psychological testing for diagnosis and assessment.  The exercise helped to stimulate positive images and emotions connected to his former healthy and productive self, now all but subsumed in the chaos and distress of current circumstances.  Tarot cards, through their imagistic power, often aid in suspending and preserving visual representations of past experience regardless of current or transient emotional states.

At the close of the session I then handed David his third stack of cards, those that he found “mysterious and intriguing.”  I invited him to explore these over the weekend, as with the other groupings, and return again early the following week.  The next time I saw David in my office would be the last time.  The illness was taking its turn for the worse and he died a week afterwards.  Our session that day however was powerful for the two of us.  I was touched by the receptivity of a person so near the end.  What David had found most intriguing was the entire Major Arcana itself.  Each trump card brought a different fascination and sense of hope, he said.  Their universality had rekindled memories of his early studies of philosophy as a young man, most of which he had forgotten.  He was now grateful to reconnect to larger principles beyond his own suffering. And he was reminded of the illusory and dreamlike nature of ordinary reality itself, his “reactive mind” as he called it, not to mention his illness.  The experience had had a tremendous calming effect.  He was now ready I believe, or at least willing, to approach the larger mystery of his dying.

–Dr. Arthur Rosengarten is a practicing psychologist in Encinitas, California and author of Tarot And Psychology: Spectrums of Possibility (Paragon House, 2000)

By Polly Young-Eisendrath

[From HAGS AND HEROES A Feminist Approach to Jungian Psychotherapy with Couples, Inner City Books, 1984.]

One day King Arthur is out hunting in the North, in Inglewood Forest, where he stalks a white hart until he wounds it with an arrow. Just as he goes to gather his kill, a monstrous fellow steps out of the woods. He calls himself, “Sir Gromer Somer Jour” and threatens Arthur instantly with death by his ax. Shaken and confused, Arthur responds that he is unarmed for battle, and Sir Gromer grants him a twelve-month span in which to answer a riddle or return for his death blow. King Arthur departs this encounter entirely crestfallen and confused about the intent of the riddle.

When he arrives back at the castle, only Sir Gawain, among the Knights of the Round Table, can elicit the story of the adventure from the king. Reluctantly, Arthur describes the details of his confusing encounter and ends with great perplexity about the riddle posed by Sir Gromer. Gromer has asked Arthur to answer correctly the question, “What is it that women most desire, about all else?”

Both Gawain and Arthur suspect this question is a trick because it seems so inconsequential. Gawain is optimistic, however, saying “After all, we have an entire year to collect answers throughout the kingdom. Surely someone will know. “ Arthur is less certain.

For an entire year, Arthur and his companions set about gathering data in their notebooks, asking the question of a broad and diverse sample of their population. Ultimately, they come together and compare notes, Gawain feeling certain that one of the answers will be right. Arthur doubts and worries, secretly assuming that no answer can be found to such a ridiculous question. With only a few days to go, he meanders again into Inglewood Forest, not too far from the place he originally shot the hart.

Out of the woods scrambles a hideous old hag who introduces herself as “the Lady Ragnell.” She challenges Arthur, saying she knows he does not have the right answer to the riddle.  Arthur is astounded by her officious manner, and replies that he cannot see how she might be concerned with his business. “The impudence of the woman!” is all he can think. Ragnell presses forward with a confidence that is startling to the king.  She insists that only she can offer the correct response since she is the stepsister of Sir Gromer and privy to information that Arthur does not have.

Himself unconvinced of the answers he has collected, Arthur finally responds by offering her land, gold or jewels for the right answer. Ragnell refuses his material rewards, replying, “What use do I have for gold or jewels?” and asserts that only one thing will do”: “If your nephew Gawain agrees to marry me, I will tell you the correct answer. That is my condition.” Arthur says that Gawain is not his to give, that Gawain is his own free man. Ragnell replies that she is not asking for Arthur to give her Gawain: she is only asking him to propose the matter to Gawain and to discover what Gawain chooses to do, of his own free will.

Although Arthur asserts that he cannot put his nephew on the spot in this way, he immediately goes back to the castle and makes the proposal. Seeing his uncle almost groveling before him, Gawain cannot but take pity on the poor king and vows that he would wed the Devil himself in order to save the king’s life. Together they go back to Ragnell and Gawain agrees to marry her if the answer she gives them is the one that saves the king’s life.

On the appointed day, Arthur and Gawain ride solemnly out to meet the monstrous Sir Gromer. With his sword raised and his eye glinting, Gromer listens to Arthur read off the answers the two men collected in their research. None of them is the right one, and just as Gromer is about to let fall his ax, Arthur blurts out Ragnell’s response to the question: What women desire, above all else, is the power of sovereignty, the right to govern their own lives!”

At this Gromer dashes off, spitting hateful remarks about Ragnell and screaming that Arthur could never have found that answer on his own.

Arthur, Gawain and Ragnell ride back to the castle in silence. Only Lady Ragnell is in good spirits. There follows a great wedding banquet attended by the lords and ladies of the castle. Everyone is uncomfortable, squirming and commenting on the ugliness and bad manners of the bride. Ragnell, however, is unabashed; she eats heartily and appears to have a very good time.

In the wedding chamber later that evening, Ragnell seems pleased with Gawain’s responses to her. “You have treated me with dignity,” she says, “You have been neither repulsed nor pitying in your concern for me. Come kiss me now.”

Gawain steps forward and kisses her on the lips and lo!, there stands a lovely and graceful woman with beautiful grey eyes. She turns round before him and queries, “Do you prefer me in this, my true form, or in my former shape”?” “Well, of course in this shape. I mean, what….what a beautiful woman you are!” Gawain stammers. Then he leaps back with a challenge: “What manner of sorcery is this? What is going on here?”

Lady Ragnell explains that her brother had cursed her for being so bold as to disobey his orders. His curse was that she should appear as a loathsome hag until the greatest knight in all of Britain willingly agreed to marry her. Arthur’s mistake of hunting in Inglewood Forest (the land Arthur had given to Gawain, but which rightfully belonged to Sir Gromer) was her first opportunity to be in contact with the king and to try to break Sir Gromer’s vengeful spell.

Overjoyed, Gawain rushes toward his bride, crying, “You have done it! You have freed yourself from your brother’s angry spell and now you are my own lovely bride!”

“Wait!” Ragnell interrupts. “I must tell you that only part of the curse is broken. You now have a choice to make , my friend. I can be in this my true shape during the day, in the castle, and take my other form at night in our chamber—or I can be in my true shape at night, in our bed and in my former ugly shape by day in the castle. You cannot have it both ways. Think carefully before you choose.”

Gawain falls silent. Pondering the intent of the question, but only for a moment. “It is your choice, Ragnell, because it involves your life. Only you can decide, “ is his answer.

With this, Ragnell becomes radiant with joy and ease. She says, “My dear Gawain, you have answered well, because now the spell is entirely broken. The final condition was that if, after I became the bride of the greatest knight, he freely gave me sovereignty over my own life, I could return to my true form. Now I am free to be beautiful by day and beautiful by night.”

Thus began the marriage of Sir Gawain and the Lady Ragnell.

by Martine Bachelor

Tricycle, Fall 2008: pp 38-41

Martine Bachelor offers a Korean Zen koan practice to refresh our minds and open us to creative wisdom. Martine Batchelor, the author of Women in Korean Zen, was a Zen nun in Korea for ten years. She teaches meditation worldwide. Her latest book is Let Go: A Buddhist Guide  to Breaking Free of Habits

IN sixth-century China, the Buddhist schools were quite scholastic and focused on the scriptures. To move away from this academic direction and toward the Buddha’s original teaching of practicing meditation and realizing awakening in this very life, the Zen school developed its koan practice, in which stories of monks’ awakenings became a starting point for meditative inquiry. By asking and focusing on a single question as a meditative method, Zen practitioners aimed to develop a rich experiential wisdom.

In the Korean Zen tradition, one generally meditates on the koan What is this? This question derives from an encounter between the Sixth Patriarch, Huineng (638–713 C.E.), and a young monk, Huaijang, who became one of his foremost disciples: Huaijang entered the room and bowed to Huineng. Huineng asked: “Where do you come from?” “I came from Mount Sung,” replied Huaijang. “What is this and how did it get here?” demanded Huineng. Huaijang could not answer and remained speechless. He practiced for many years until he understood. He went to see Huineng to tell him about his breakthrough. Huineng asked: “What is this?” Huaijang replied: “To say it is like something is not to the point. But still it can be cultivated.”

The whole story is considered the koan, and the question itself, “What is this?” is the central point—hwadu in Korean, or huatou in Chinese. The practice is very simple. Whether you are walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, you ask repeatedly, What is this? What is this? You have to be careful not to slip into intellectual inquiry, for you are not looking for an intellectual answer. You are turning the light of inquiry back onto yourself and your whole experience in this moment. You are not asking: What is this thought, sound, sensation, or external object? If you need to put it in a meaningful context, you are asking, What is it that is hearing, feeling, thinking? You are not asking, What is the taste of the tea or the tea itself? You are asking, What is it that tastes the tea? What is it before you even taste the tea?

My own teacher, Master Kusan (1909–1983), used to try to help us by pointing out that the answer to the question was not an object, because you could not describe it as long or short, this or that color. It was not empty space either, because empty space cannot speak. It was not the Buddha, because you have not yet awakened to your Buddha-nature. It was not the master of the body, the source of consciousness, or any other designation, because those are mere words and not the actual experience of it. So you are left with questioning. You ask, What is this? because you do not know.

We are not speculating with our mind. We are trying to become one with the question. The most important part of the question is not the meaning of the words themselves but the question mark. We are asking unconditionally, What is this? without looking for an answer, without expecting an answer. We are questioning for questioning’s own sake. This is a practice of questioning, not of answering. We are trying to develop a sensation of openness, of wonderment. As we throw out the question What is this? we are opening ourselves to the moment. There is no place we can rest. We are letting go of our need for knowledge and security, and our body and mind themselves become a question.

You are giving yourself over entirely to the question. It’s like diving into a pool: the whole body is engaged in the act, and the whole body and mind are refreshed. You are trying to develop a sensation of questioning and an inquiry that brings about the sense of bewilderment you feel when you have lost something. You are going somewhere, you put your hand in your pocket to grab your car keys. They are not there. You check this corner and that corner of the pocket again and again, and there is nothing. For a moment before you try to remember where you’ve left them, you are totally perplexed; you have no idea what might have happened. This is very similar to the sensation you are trying to develop in Zen questioning.

Concentration and inquiry are brought together with this technique. Concentration is developed as you come back again and again to the words of the question, back to the present moment. The question is the anchor of your meditation, the fixed point. By cultivating concentration, you allow for a certain calmness and spaciousness to develop. The process of inquiry is vivid, because you are not repeating the words like a mantra—the words themselves are not sacred, nor do they have a special resonance. They are just the diving board from which you dive into the pool of questioning. By repeatedly questioning with the energy and interest of someone who has just discovered she has lost something, you evoke a brightness in your whole being. This questioning gives you energy, because there is no place to rest, and it allows for more possibilities and less certainty. It is a kind of wonderment similar to a young child’s when he discovers and marvels at the world around him—very immediate, not lost in the future or in the past. This practice is just being with the moment and looking deeply, asking What is this? and being open to this as it happens to be.
If you meditate in this way, your mind will become more flexible, and you will start to see that actually you have more choices in your actions and behavior than you thought possible. This seeing will allow you to respond creatively to thoughts by knowing what you are thinking and realizing when you come into contact with a new thought. Normally, a thought emerges so fast that you are not even aware of its arising. You just think it and act impulsively or habitually. When you meditate, sitting quietly, trying to focus on the question What is this? you start to notice what takes you away from your focus. Generally it is a thought of one kind or another. The meditation is intended not to stop you from thinking but to help you discover what and how you think.

THERE are different practical ways to meditate with this method. The easiest way is to ask the question in combination with the breath. You breathe in, and as you breathe out, you ask, What is this? Master Kusan used to suggest asking the question by making it like a circle. You start with What is this? and as soon as you end one question you start another What is this? Another way is to just ask the question once and remain for a while with the sensation of questioning. As soon as it fades away, you ask it once more, staying with the pregnant sense of questioning until it dissipates again. You have to be very careful not to ask the question with too tight a mental focus. Usually it is recommended that you ask the question as if it were coming from the belly or even the toes. You need to bring the energy down and not tighten it like a knot in the mind. If the question makes you feel agitated, speculative, or confused, just come back to a simple and calming breath practice for a while before returning to the question.

Keep in mind that you are not trying to force yourself to find an answer. You are giving yourself wholeheartedly to the act of questioning. The answer is in the questioning itself. It is like a child who has never seen snow. You tell him it is white and cold. He thinks it is like a piece of white paper in the fridge. You take him near a mountain and show him the top. He says that it looks like coconut ice cream. It is only when he touches the snow, feels it, plays with it, and tastes it that he really knows what snow is. It is the same with the question, and the tasting is in the questioning itself.

Master Kusan was reputed to have had three awakenings—breakthroughs in understanding confirmed by his teacher—and still he continued to ask the question. A Western monk asked him why he continued questioning. After three awakenings, surely he must have found the answer. Master Kusan told him it did not work that way. As you meditated with this question, the practice developed in its own way and slowly evolved. So of course we asked him how he did the questioning at that point. He would not answer. He said that we had to find this out by ourselves. Any descriptions of his would give us misconceptions.

The most important part of the practice is for the question to remain alive and for your whole body and mind to become a question. In Zen they say that you have to ask with the pores of your skin and the marrow of your bones. A Zen saying points out: Great questioning, great awakening; little questioning, little awakening; no questioning, no awakening. ▼

GUIDED MEDITATION 
What is this?
• Sit in a quiet and secluded place. Keep your back straight. Remain poised, at ease, and attentive. With your eyes half-closed, gently gaze in front of you.
• With the first few breaths, connect the question to the out-breath. As you breathe out, ask, What is this?
• You are not repeating the question like a mantra; you are cultivating a sensation of perplexity, asking unconditionally, What is this?
• This is not an intellectual inquiry. You are not trying to solve this question with speculation or logic.
• Do not keep the question in your head. Try to ask it from your belly.
• With the whole of your being, you are asking, What is this? What is this?
• The answer is not found in the Buddha, or in a thing, or in empty space, or a designation.
• You are asking What is this? because you do not know.
• If you become distracted, come back to the question again and again.
• The question What is this? is an antidote to distracted thoughts. It is as sharp as a sword. Nothing can remain on the tip of its sharp blade.
• By asking this question deeply you are opening yourself to the whole of your experience, with a deep sense of wonderment and awe.
• When the session is finished, move your shoulder, back, and legs, and gently get up with a fresh and quiet awareness.

By Art Rosengarten

“In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order” wrote the Swiss founder of Analytical Psychology, C. G. Jung.  Nowhere is this irony more self-evident than in the everyday lives of ordinary people.

No matter how skilled we’ve grown in plugging the holes, the illusion of control jumps back like a yapping Schnauzer and bites us in the tightened buttocks of “business as usual.”  The world of conventional reality is a manufactured cosmos of deluded chaos; it scratches its dense skull in search of the only remedy it knows: the pursuit of perfection.

THAT SLOW LEAKING TIRE, running nylon, or bad-hair day, the ‘B’ you thought an ‘A’,  lone sour grape, or surcharge hidden in the fine print, ALL conspire to dissolve the joy you’ve envisioned in a flawless day. The state of perfection is outright libel though no laws protect us from its rampages. The impeccable is “oh so peccable,” the impeachable so easily impeached!

Flawlessness is itself a flawed vision (of perfection). To the contrary, “flawfulness” is perfection’s secret virtue—rendering the strange construction of “perfection” virtually null and void.  The odd is, in effect, the beautiful.  It’s the anomaly that generates “brilliance” in a quartz crystal–that which is most different, most natural, striking and unique, or more correctly, most “FLAWED” (if by that we mean “least commonplace”)–which makes for a thing’s true beauty and character. We might say its “atypicality.”

Naturally, this is not an indistinct, uniform, “flawfullness” which might then be “reproduced to perfection.”  Nice try. The Pet Rock only works once! And one must never attempt to redo the undone. Certainly this brought the death knell to rock n’ roll in the disco seventies.

Even the gods and goddesses sprout an occasional blemish, and the real deal is closer to the trashed “Out-Takes” in the film editor’s dustbin than the perfect teeth made from plaster of Paris implants in the Hollywood state of the mind. Sacred mistakes (because nature made them as they are) capture the trouble we’d rather not know we have.  Here we “make” the boat we’d actually be better off “missing.” The aftermath isn’t pretty or inspiring. Culture dies another vital strand each repeat performance for which the great monolith is reflexively imitated.  The perfect game every day. Desperately, though blindly, we recalibrate our slipping ‘predictometers’ hoping to lock-on to the emerging assets of the best case scenarios casted in our castles-in-the-sand.

Dying modernists that we are, we sorely regret the inconvenience, dissolution, and shifting of gears.  IT was our mother and hence we remain attached to predictable outcomes like goat cheese on gourmet pizza. When (mis)constructions of the “perfect picture” are not matched in actuality, when life takes on that “almost BUT not quite” quality, we filter away to masturbatory memories (of perfection tales) before the dreaded real reality returns. Go away! We want the Hollywood moment-–the perfect teeth and triumphant skies. “Jesus, it’s good.”

As such the cosmos appears contained in our small-mindedness.  Briefly, life feels unwrinkled and cooperative.  Uncle Gino gets a second opinion. And a secret order may now be plucked away from one’s vortex of disturbance. Good news! It bears no abeyance whatsoever to the Tawainese clocks and cashiers of the conventional order. We must respond now as artists, not escape artists. We must now use natural materials with no mention of perfection.

This new strategy goes to the heart of what I fondly call “the problem with trouble.” 
Rebounding too quickly denies us a rare opportunity— the wisdom of natural chaos. As the commentary to the third line of “Difficulty at the Beginning” (in the Chinese Book of Changes) states:

If a man tries to hunt in a strange forest and has no guide, he loses his way. When he finds himself in difficulties he must not try to steal out of them unthinkingly and without guidance.

The hexagram further tells us:

“Fate cannot be duped; premature effort, without the necessary guidance, ends in failure and disgrace.”

The problem with trouble is that we are a mad, trouble-fixing people. We fix to fix (and function to function) and miss entirely the secret order that an honest barrel of trouble provides us.  The sages called this barrel ‘Fate”:

It is only a matter of time before we meet it.  Fate is not antagonistic or vindictive; it is there to teach us, in an impersonal way, that the goal may not be gained through false means.

Fate is no way out of trouble but, paradoxically, into it.  Thankfully, “fate-born-of-trouble” stymies our misguided pursuit of perfection—and returns us to what matters, ourselves.

(1994)

Read other original essays and such on Art’s Blog at http://artrosengarten.wordpress.com/