How a glass of water can be a disturbance of the peace

Before the next installment about the retreat, I can report that Don & I had our first “survivorship” program appointment at the hospital today. This is a new program to implement Federal requirements about follow-up information and care for cancer patients, and it consisted of a meeting with a very nice, smart, and supportive PA who went over a host of areas I might have questions and concerns about – diet, exercise, sleep, sexuality, genetics, long-term side effects of treatment, what to watch out for in terms of recurrence, resources in the community for support, etc. It was good, and reassuring about the various worries I’ve had – the bony bumps on my chest (“musculo-skeletal asymmetry,” she pronounced), the possibility of heart damage from the Adriamycin (highly unlikely at the dosage I received), etc. I guess I’m now officially a “survivor,” though I’m not that fond of the term.

Okay, now here's "How a glass of water can be a disturbance of the peace," or, "A Jew-Bu sociologist of religion on a low-fat diet at a Buddhist retreat at a kosher facility."

Reading all of this stuff about practicing meditation at a Buddhist retreat, some of my Jewish friends and other serious practitioners of Abrahamic religions may be wondering, “what’s a nice Jewish girl like you doing at a Buddhist meditation retreat? isn’t that a conflict for you (even if it is meeting at a Jewish facility)? Well, leaving aside the question of whether or not I’m a “nice” Jewish girl, the answer is, yes and no. No, it doesn’t feel like there is any inherent conflict between the teachings of the Buddha and my Jewish upbringing, except possibly, and importantly, the difference in the approach to suffering.

Remember that “short guide to comparative religions” that has been circulating since the 1980s? I remember it from 1989, where it was posted on the wall of the outhouse at Sandhill Farm where I was living, as looking something like this:

TAOISM: Shit happens.

CONFUCIANISM: Confucius says "shit happens."

HINDUISM: This shit happened before.

JUDAISM: Why does shit always happen to us?

CATHOLICISM: If shit happens, you deserved it.

ISLAM: If shit happens, it is the will of Allah.

PROTESTANTISM: Let shit happen to someone else.

ZEN: What is the sound of shit happening?

And, scrawled in hand-writing:

PAGANISM: Compost your shit after it happens.

In a Google search I couldn’t find the “original” list but there are a lot of ones that have been significantly elaborated since then. Here’s one at this link:  it includes

SECULAR HUMANISM: Shit evolves.

NEW AGE: If shit happens, honor and share it.

AA: Deal with shit one day at a time.

TRANSACTIONAL ANALYST: I acknowledge my shit, and it's ok.

POLITICALLY CORRECTIONALISM: Defecated matter occurs.

SHAKESPERE[sic]: To "pu" or not to "pu", that is the question.

NAT'L RIFLE ASS'N: Shit doesn't happen, people do.

And my personal favorite,

POLLYANNA: Where there is shit, there is life.

But I digress again. My point was, that while there are many wonderful aspects of Judaism that celebrate the beauty and sanctity of life, and that bless the smallest acts, there is also a tendency towards a culture of victimization – “why does shit always happen to us?” And, while I am deeply grateful for the teachings of “Tikkun Olam,” or healing the world, which come from my Jewish heritage, I have found Buddhism’s simple (Taoist?) truth that “There is suffering” to be a healing antidote to my Jewish sense of urgency to get things right and fix what’s wrong, with myself and the world. While I am not a practicing sociologist of religion, I did study it for my masters thesis research, and I think it’s a reasonable hypothesis that this particular aspect of Buddhism, the teachings about how to accept suffering as a way to minimize it, might be the biggest factor in why so man Jews are attracted to Buddhism that there is even a name for us (“Jew-Bu”s).

So, do I have difficulty balancing my Jewish identity and my deepening study of Buddhism? Yes, at times. For instance, you can only be one place at a time, and my Jewish congregation and my Buddhist sangha both meet on some Friday nights. At Pearlstone Retreat Center, my Jewish identity is salient all week, because it’s a Jewish retreat center. There is Hebrew and Judaic art everywhere, there is a mezuzah on every doorway (instead of bowing as I entered the dharma hall / sanctuary like many other participants, I would kiss the mezuzah); there is an eruv that crosses the hiking trail in numerous places (an eruv is a boundary line designating the inner or private portion of the property, of importance to very observant Jews on the Sabbath and other holy days, because it indicates the boundary across which it would be work (and thus in violation of the commandments) to carry something). And, the meals are kosher.

Now as you may recall, I grew up keeping kosher, and appreciate it as an early introduction to mindfulness of food and consumption. And, as a new wrinkle in mindful eating, I’d started an ultra-low-fat diet suggested by my oncologist about a week and a half before the retreat began (see “Is this the fast I asked for,” Sept. 26th). I’d been doing pretty well with it, including entering all of my meal details into the “myfitnesspal” app the nutritionist at the Cancer Center recommended. I was losing a lot of wait on it, and feeling pretty hungry, because I was having a hard time getting enough calories and protein without a lot of fat.

At the retreat, I decided not to track my nutrients, since I was doing a complete electronics fast, and since it would be awfully difficult to know how much of what I was eating. However, I was paying attention, and trying to avoid high fat foods as much as possible. In addition to keeping the kitchen and dining areas kosher, the retreat staff are quite good at accommodating other dietary needs such as gluten-free (which I also am), and there was such a wide variety of wholesome food at every meal, plus snacks twice a day, that I had a pretty easy time finding enough to eat, and didn’t lose quite as much weight while I was away as I had been before. (Though before going on this diet, I would usually have gained weight during a week where I was fed 3 full meals per day with a wide variety of food options!)

The combination of the extra mindfulness of avoiding fat, plus the silent meals where we were supposed to be doing eating meditation, meant that I was actually tasting food in a way I don’t usually. Since I was avoiding butter, oil, cheese, and the like, I was eating a lot more plain food than I’m accustomed to. And, tasting it. Savoring the taste of a plain, unadorned baked potato. Or salad dressed only with vinegar. Naked heart, naked food. And, as I was practicing appreciating aliveness, I was noticing how eating is itself a bit like an encounter with nature and aliveness – my own and that of the animal or vegetable substance I am consuming.

One of the ways they keep the kitchen and dining area kosher is not to allow anyone to bring in any food, and not to allow any of the dishes out of the dining area. They have a beverage area just outside the dining hall for tea, coffee, water, ice, etc., and everyone used it all the time. We were allowed to bring our water bottles that far, but no further. Now this wasn’t usually a problem, because there were glasses and beverages available in the dining hall. However, for some reason at breakfast, they didn’t put out glasses and water in pitchers like they did at the rest of the meals. I guess they just assumed everyone wants coffee, tea, or orange juice, and they used paper cups. Well, at a normal retreat this wouldn’t have been a problem – I would simply have asked for a glass of water. But this was a silent retreat, so I had been making do without a drink at breakfast. Not a huge sacrifice, especially since they had half-grapefruits to eat which quenched my thirst.

One morning, however, as I walked into the dining hall for breakfast, I noticed that one of the tables near the door had a few glasses on it, upside down in a group, like they had at the other meals. Obviously left over from the night before, I thought. I grabbed one and popped out the door without thinking, and filled it with water from the water dispenser. Uh-oh, I realized, I just broke a kashrut rule. Except, I remembered, glass is somehow immune to becoming treif (unkosher) (something about its lack of porosity). So I didn’t make the glass unkosher after all. Plus, I had been doing a lot of meditation on my fears of what other people think of me, and imagining a life less constrained by that fear. I resolutely took my glass of water back into the dining hall.

I made it to the table without being stopped by any of the staff, though if they’d seen the guilty, furtive look on my face they would have certainly been suspicious. I figured once I made it to the table I’d be home free. What I didn’t count on, however, was monkey mind. I spent the whole meal worrying about them noticing my glass of water and asking me where I got it! After all, I learned eventually that not everyone keeps the same rules of kashrut, so my cavalier attitude because I’d grown up keeping kosher and knew the rules might not work, if the rules I’d learned didn’t apply here! Of course, since I was practicing noticing my thoughts, I was also amused by my level of worry about it, and also already composing a blog in my head about how a simple glass of water can be a disturbance of the peace. Needless to say I didn’t eat very mindfully that meal. At the end of it, when I had to bus my dishes, there were no racks for glasses so I had to just put it down on the table!!