Lifting the Veil

In the film Orlando, the title character speaks to a lover about war, and about being a man vs. being a woman. If I were a man, she says, I might choose not to fight. I might think that freedom won by death was not worth having. In fact, the lover says, you might choose not to be a real man at all. He goes on: If I were a woman, I might choose not to sacrifice my life caring for my children, or my children’s children. I might choose not to be a real woman at all.

Orlando has considerable authority when she speaks of being a man; she is one for the first portion of the film. Changing mysteriously into a biological woman after waking from a long sleep, she announces: Same person. No difference at all.  Just a different sex.

This conversation is, for me, the crux of the film. Being a man, Orlando says, means fighting. Being a woman, Shelmerdine says, means sacrifice. The interesting thing about the film is the subtlety with which it suggests that it is possible to make choices in regards to gender, not to simply step into the role that the combination of culture and biological sex spells out as the given path.

Last weekend, I met some friends of the Photographer’s in the small town he lives in. There was one man in particular he had warned me about who had a penchant for getting drunk and saying ignorant things that, as a woman and a feminist, I was unlikely to appreciate. To my great surprise, I actually enjoyed talking with this person, who after introducing himself to me, asked the Photographer if he wanted to go deer hunting sometime, then asked me if I wanted to come too. I know plenty of women who hunt, he said. I replied that I have never shot a gun in my life. He said, well, you’d definitely have to practice that first.

I hold a special place in my heart for anyone who can appreciate the in-between of gender, who doesn’t make all of the usual assumptions within the first five minutes of meeting me (e.g., women don’t hunt or shoot guns). Though I’m quite certain that under other circumstances, I would have appreciated this person far less, and I’m equally certain that he harbors plenty of thoughts about women I’d find absolutely repulsive, I was happy to have the opportunity to see this particular side of him first.

Plenty of women I know sadly seem to believe that this is not the 1950s and discrimination no longer exists. Plenty of men I know have never even considered how being male impacts their sense of self and the life they live. But I say this as a woman who smokes a pipe: Gender is not the final word on what the self is, but to get behind it requires some effort. The practice of lifting the veil of gender to see oneself and others without it forever changes oneself and one’s view of the world. It is, in my opinion, a worthwhile spiritual practice in and of itself.

Ocean

NPR aired two stories last week, one on coastal erosion in Louisiana, and one on global warming in Alaska. In Southern Louisiana, a football field of land disappears under water every half hour or so. Meanwhile people in Alaska fall through ice while crossing frozen water in the dead of winter because the water doesn’t freeze as deeply these days.

As I heard these stories, I imagined the ocean slowly creeping up to cover the earth from all sides, silently and undramatically. I remembered what it is to stand on a shore and look out onto a huge, breathing mass of saltwater. It touches every human sense, the smell and taste of salt in the air, the feeling on the skin, its rhythmic swelling roar. I looked outside at my landlocked existence and found a certain peace in the thought of water covering all the places I have lived and cared about. What if every place I have walked and slept, everywhere I play out the drama of day to day life and everything that I let myself believe is important, slipped back into the ocean? Wouldn’t it be like some primordial force rolling furtively up to our collective feet, whispering, don’t you remember where you came from?

Seeing Into Things

I once went to a symposium on mindfulness where the speakers included Korean Zen teacher Hyon Gak Sunim and a psychologist. The psychologist came equipped with a powerpoint presentation and laser pointer. Perhaps it is no surprise that Hyon Gak Sunim easily bested him the minute he sat cross-legged on top of a rickety table without any notes and asked, what are you, before you are thinking?

Since then, nothing makes me smile quite like Korean Zen, with its playful impenetrability. In this single talk, Hyon Gak Sunim cut through the usual sticking points of Zen meditation. Don’t try to “quiet the mind,” as you so often hear, he said. It’s impossible; you can’t stop thinking. Let thinking happen without attaching to it. There is no correct posture, no correct mantra, he said. You can say “Om mani padme hum” or “Coca-cola;” the repetition is the meditation, not the words themselves. (It turns out the divine really is in everything, even a brand name.) All religions are correct, he said, and all spiritual practices “work.” One woman asked, how do you pick a spiritual path or practice if all are equal? He replied, “What flavor of ice cream do you like?”

I find tremendous freedom in this last idea. It shifts the focus point from one of intellectual understanding and belief to one of being and perception. (It reminds me of what the Photographer once called “seeing into things.”) It releases me from having to know. To see clearly, I intentionally cultivate not-knowing. So I love the things that stop my mind, the way Zen Master Seung Sahn’s advice does: If you don’t know, only go straight, don’t know.