Day 10 -- Stop the Presses -- Insight Meditation Leads to Insight!

Another post from my notes at Plum Village monastery, these from June 10:

Had a rough patch yesterday.   I would like to think, and I am probably right, that hay fever was to blame.  Dharma Talk was difficult.  Mostly about reconciliation and the so-called "war on terrorism."   Good ideas, but repetitive, and nothing new (this from the department of redundancy department).   Found myself desperate for the talk to end, with back hurting, and mind agitated and tired at the same time.

Gays and lesbians met for breakfast at the bell tower.  It was first mistakenly announced as a meeting for persons "concerned about, or interested in, homosexuality."   Sounded like a convention for homophobes, or people wanting to try something new!   I went to the event, and was happy to see stunningly beautiful and wonderful so-and-so there.  It felt good to sit close with him and have a friendly talk with him.  It made me proud to be gay, and I examined the glaring errors behind this.

I feel that I have had some insights during meditation.  For example, the truism is finally just beginning to sink in that I am good and valuable regardless of the approval or disapproval of others.  I should be absolutely fearless.  For another example, I am trying to look deeply into the sources for my high-school-style attractions to certain kinds of men.   

My father was a very handsome young man, whom I could not have.  I obviously craved his love, especially as a gay male child would, and my craving was never satisfied.   Perhaps nothing short of samadhi could have satisfied a craving like that.   I wonder if when I was a child, I even attempted to be intimate with him, and what his reaction would have been.  Probably not good!  (He was a Republican, enlisted in the Army, and I don't mean the Irish Republican Army!)  In later years, I was staying with a friend, whose 10-year-old child walked into the guest room and tried to climb into bed with me.  I asked him why.  He said, "you know why."  I did not let him.

My own attraction to certain men, who (surprise!) usually look like my young father did when I was a child, repeated itself in my adolescence and young adulthood.  This was the 1970's, in the South.  (See the movie, "Dazed and Confused.")  If gays had been treated equally, I would have been dating up a storm, taking a guy to the prom, and maybe planning a marriage.  But these things I could not have.   I'm not complaining.  (Okay, maybe just a little bit!)  This situation helped to make me an "outsider," and outsiders have a role to play -- one that I have reveled in for decades.  Instead of dating, I was reading philosophy and running an underground newspaper.  But my craving, instead of being smothered by fullfillment, or even by good old all-American domestic boredom, instead continued to spiral on, in ever-repeating efforts re-enact unfinished business from my childhood.  The same has been the case, even when I have been in relationships, because I always pick the wrong person, based not on who would really be good for me, but upon some compulsion to repeat cycles of attraction meets repulsion.

The point is that if my childhood situation is the objective source for my disturbing mental formations, then these desires do not suggest anything inherently wrong.  I am not, and will not become, a "dirty old man."  Any more than I am a weak or immoral person because I sometimes want alcohol.

I talked to Tei-Man, from Viet Nam, about Viet Nam.  I apologized to him for supporting the Viet Cong.  He shared in our dharma discussion group yesterday about escaping execution and torture at the hands of the communists, by fleeing with his brother in a fishing boat, the two of them hidden in a fishing net.   The sharings yesterday were especially strong.   One man cried uncontrollably, revealing how pesticides had rendered he and his wife childless.  A woman confessed that she was lonely and wished she were home.  Another member of our group tearfully told the story of how, as a child, he had to take the witness stand in a criminal trial, to testify against his father for sexually molesting him.  I briefly and irrationally wondered if he saw his father in me, and therefore disliked or even hated me.  But I did not allow this paranoid notion to take hold.  Even if this crazy idea of mine about him were accurate, such that he actually did feel that way about me, it would say nothing about me.

Hay fever hit hard in the afternoon, and I briefly entertained the idea of hitching into town for a drink.  One of my tent neighbors had suggested it earlier in the week.  I nicely asked him to stop asking.

Comments

[Silvia]

I just would like to thank you for your honesty, it is really refreshing and I am always looking forward to read your blog. Thanks for sharing this. It helps me looking at some of my ghosts with more courage. x

[Vanessa]

Hi Russell,

We met very briefly in Mysore a couple of years ago, but you probably don't remember me. We talked about blogging, though, and whether it was a wise thing to do to "put yourself out there", and how you were concerned about writing about your local friends.

I want to say thanks for putting yourself out there, and your honesty. Saving the distances :-) , a lot of things you say resonate with me, and I am grateful that I can read about them. Keep going, Russell, you are very much loved even when you don't feel so.

[yoga articles]

What an article. You are very honest of yourself.... Keep on going.....