At the beginning of last week I'd never heard of Frank Ostaseski. I had heard of the Zen Hospice (in San Francisco) but as I tend to live most of my life on the East Coast I can be a bit blind to what's going on on the Other Coast. When I was contemplating the Art of Dying IV it began to dawn on me that Frank was flying across the country to lead a day-long institute so perhaps I could drag my lazy bones out of bed a little earlier than planned and drive to Menla. Of course I did not leave my Zen Mind (Begginner's Mind) behind.
I arrived at Menla around 9:30 a.m. and much to my horrror found Phoenicia underwater and a state of emergency having been declared. The normally bucolic rivers and streams had completely overrun their banks. The waters rushed in a torrent and there's the sound of a flood and if you've heard a flood you know what I mean. A babbling brook's babble gets turned up beyond 10 and it sounds like a wall of white noise. In hearing this I was reminded that Mother Nature can give us the beatdown whenever she feels like it and we can take measures to protect life and limb and salvage property afterwards.
As I pulled into Menla I wondered how much the weather would affect the travel plans of everyone else who was planning on attending. In the end everyone, save Joanne who had died a week earlier of ovarian cancer, made it to the conference.
Friday at 10 a.m. I took my groggy self (I am not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination) and headed to the conference center. Here I met Frank. It will be old age and senility that drive from my memory the first day spent with Frank. Yup. It was that cool (for me). I'm sure a lot of folks were feeling him in there own way but it was my time and I was ready to listen and hear and synthesize Frank.
Today I emailed him asking permission to post the 5 Precepts to my blog and he asked that I not do that so that his words are not taken out of context and misused. (But it's okay for me to give a photo copy to my closest friends. You've all been forewarned -- the precepts are on their way to you...)
And there are plenty of books and lectures on tape out there for anyone who is interested in becoming a Zen scholar. I'm not here to flog the Zen horse.
But -- I am going to leave you with things that Frank said that resonated with me. If they do something for you, great. If not, please leave this blog and get to the things that matter.
"No contact with suffering -- not much compassion."
"Our relationship to our own deep nature can illuminate the darkness."
"Compassion has a fierceness to it."
"Compassion wants to snuggle up to pain."
"This is intimate work. You cannot do this work from afar."
"I find a great meeting place with others in my suffering."
"I have confidence in my suffering -- let me be with my suffering."
Kind of pithy and annoying on the one hand, kind of instructive and helpful if you're ready for it.
And now I'm off to bake cookies. It's finally cold and gray and rainy (like October should be -- yay!) and the kitchen is once again the place where warmth and the yumminess of baking belongs.
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